A Step At A Time

The U.K.-hosted site of Chechenpress has published an extensive article by ex-KGB and FSB senior operational officer Alexander Litvinenko, who now lives in London, on the ramifications of Russia's "war on terror", which he sees increasingly as a facility for controlling Russia itself. The available translation of the article is very uneven from the point of view of English style, and it's not possible to present an edited version of it, as the original Russian text is not accessible. However, even in this rough and ready form, Litvinenko's analysis is worthy of attention. The opening paragraphs read:

Hardly less than a year has passed since the tragic events in a small North Caucasian city Beslan, but still the society has more questions about the reasons of the event, than the answers to them. Because this time everything happened the same, as it has always been, according to one devilish script written in the Lubyanka. I mean the explosions of apartment houses in 1999 and mass liquidation of hostages in the theatre "Northeast" in 2002. First the special services organized an act of terrorism and liquidation of citizens of their own country; then the main security officer Putin with a furious look was publicly telling lies, accusing Chechens in the massacre of people. And already after that, according to the same Lubyanka script security officers arranged judicial shows appointing innocent people for the role of the guilty ones. And once again, using the common fear, confusion and permissiveness of the special services, represented to us as a necessary measure for protection of the society against terrorism, Putin and his security friends cleaned off everyone, who with his reasoning about democracy and human rights prevented them to grasp the authority and business in the country.

As the result of this so-called struggle against the international terrorism, the Russian society has received a stable growth of number of victims of this terrorism acquiring more and more severe and mass forms. And meanwhile "the fighters against terrorism" strengthen own authority, increase personal well-being. And the quantity of money withdrawn from Russians by security officers is in direct ratio to strengthening of terrorism in the controlled by them territory of the country. The more terrorism we have, the more authority and money security officers "struggling" against it have. Here again, as well as in any business, everything develops according to the precisely made scheme of earning money: "The goods - money - the goods". However, in Putin's Russia this Marx formula has acquired a "creative development" with a gangster bias, or, speaking differently, got a kind of a classical racket, but with unprecedented hitherto scales.

This scheme is as primitive as effective: gangsters arrange explosion in a firm, and then they come to the frightened owners and offer their "protection"; "owners" agree and get in servitude to gangsters. Putin and his security gang, having got experienced in gangster "talks", have successfully applied it in whole Russia . So, in 1999, having blown up houses with people sleeping in them, security officers make a terrorist attack against their own people; then, using common fear, untwist an extreme anti Chechen hysteria and a psychosis among the population. The first stage of classical racket is reached: "The client" (that is the population of the country) is frightened, and he will already easily accept the security officers' protection. Using fear of the population before terror, Putin's security clique begins an aggression against the Chechen Republic Ichkeria, thus imposing their racket services, ostensibly, protection against Chechen "fanatics-Vahhabists" to the society. And, finishing the racket combination, on the quite of the war unleashed by them, they grasp the Supreme authority in the country and all its riches.