Terrorism in Russia blamed on corruption
Associated PressPublished February 18, 2005
MOSCOW - Terrorism is expanding its reach in Russia, in part because of corruption and lawlessness in government, the police force and the military that make it impossible for impoverished people to improve their lot, a Kremlin aide said Wednesday.
Aslambek Aslakhanov, a former Soviet and Russian Interior Ministry official who serves as President Vladimir Putin's adviser on the North Caucasus region, said terrorists are finding more recruits across Russia's south.
"Terrorist attacks aren't always politically motivated. Sometimes they're carried out for revenge - against the corruption of authorities, the lawlessness of police and military structures, mass unemployment and the inability to feed one's family," he said in an interview with the Associated Press.
"They try to do something (to improve their lot) and are not allowed to, and it's the bureaucrats who are to blame," he added.
Aslakhanov, an ethnic Chechen, said Putin has given him the task of tackling poverty in the region by creating an international corporation to attract investment to the North Caucasus, particularly war-battered Chechnya, where he said unemployment is as high as 90 percent.
He said government forces, which are supposed to ensure order, often help fill terrorists' ranks with their methods.
"The excessive cruelty of certain police and military structures in the country, especially the abduction of people, their torture and execution and disappearance without a trace ... has an impact on the terrorist situation," he said.
Russian forces have been fighting rebels in Chechnya for the better part of a decade, but over the past few years police clashes with Islamic rebels in other regions of the North Caucasus have increased.
Aslakhanov said he believes the various groups have ties; for example, some of the groups get extremist literature from a single source. But "organization, strict discipline, subordination one to the other - these things still don't exist, thank God," he said.
Aslakhanov, 62, a former member of the Russian parliament from Chechnya, withdrew from the race for Chechnya's presidency in October 2003 to take the Kremlin position.