Zhemukhov, Baev: Threats Surrounding Sochi

(The Financial Times) Nearly every day, Sochi’s tens of thousands of law enforcement officers receive another name with an accompanying photograph. There is 27-year-old Zarema Isayeva; 24-year-old Dzhamilya Mamayeva; 19-year-old Zalina Akayeva and nearly a dozen others. In their photos, the young women’s faces peek out from headscarves or hijabs. Almost all of them are from Dagestan. With just a week to go before the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia has put the southern resort city on high alert for a potential terrorist attack, a threat that has become even more real following three suicide bombings in the city of Volgograd last year. In the final run-up to the games, security forces are directing their attention to Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region where Doku Umarov, leader of the terror group the Caucasus Emirate, has urged his followers to use “maximum force” to disrupt the games, and Vilayat Dagestan, the group that claims responsibility for two of the three Volgograd bombings, has warned of a “present” for visiting tourists. […]

“The threat [of terrorism during the Olympics] is very real. The events in Volgograd proved it,” says Sufian Zhemukhov, a North Caucasus expert at George Washington University. Many of Russia’s most high-profile terrorist attacks in recent years have been carried out by female suicide bombers, including the first bombing in Volgograd last year and twin explosions in the Moscow metro in 2010. Authorities have already named at least one woman, Ruzana Ibragimova, 22, as a potential female suicide bomber whom they believe to be at large in Sochi.

Mr Zhemukhov called the appearance of Vilayat Dagestan – the group behind two of the Volgograd bombings – especially troubling. The group had been virtually unknown until this month, even to Russian authorities. “Suddenly there is this new organisation that announces it takes responsibility [for the attack]. And the security forces couldn’t figure it out before they announced it,” he said.

Pavel Baev, a research professor at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, compares Olympic Sochi to “a fortress”, arguing there may be a bigger risk of a power failure or structural collapse triggering a “false alarm” and setting panic over the city.

Russia’s other cities may now be more vulnerable with fewer law enforcement officials on hand because of the mass security exodus to Sochi, he says: “The harder the target is in Sochi, the easier it is to go to some softer target where security is weakened.”

Read the full article ("Russia Tightens Security at 'Fortress Sochi' to Protect Olympics" by Courtney Weaver and Geoff Dyer, 01/30/2014) © The Financial Times