A Russian 9/11: The Raid on Moscow 

It is astonishing how Russia, the USA, and Iran are nearly identical and in a truly quantic political situation. Today, Russia, after the Islamic State raid on Moscow, resembles the USA on September 11, 2001, when Al-Qaeda raided Washington and New York. It is as stunned as Israel was on October 7, 2023, when Hamas raided the Israeli towns and villages in the Gaza Envelope because of the Islamic State attacks on Moscow. Russia had been feeling secure from attacks by Islamic movements such as Hamas, Ansarullah (the Houthis), and the Taliban because it did not condemn the Hamas raid, had maintained a discourse sympathetic to their plight, and used its veto power to their advantage. Its reaction to the attacks mimicked Iran’s reaction when Israel intensified its attacks on the bases of Iranian advisers, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Faylaq el-Quds in Syria, as well as the attacks on Iran’s allies in Iraq. Iran then responded by bombing civilians in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, Pakistani Balochistan, and Idlib in Syria in December 2023. Similarly, Russia’s response is being directed against Ukraine following the Islamic State attacks against the Crocus City Hall in Moscow.  

The Iranian theatrical response did not secure its officers in Syria, with Israel bombing Iranian targets in Damascus only a few days following the Iranian attack. Instead, it emboldened Israel because the latter learned that Iran would respond outside of Israel, where Israel would not suffer any consequences. Russia will also encourage Islamic State fighters, as well as other Islamist movements, who are staking Russian interests and civilians in cities if it launches revenge attacks against Ukrainian cities and towns.  

The chaos ruling Russian strategy since 2016 and the setbacks of its policies are leading it toward total failure.  

Russia had been on a straightforward path until 2015 when it entered Syria and saved the Syrian state from Islamist movements and Turkey and Qatar. After June 2016, when Turkey expressed its regrets for downing a Russian SU-24 fighter jet in November 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin started giving Turkish President Recep Erdogan geopolitical and geostrategic advantages, hoping for an alliance with Turkey that would pull the latter out of NATO. Consequently, Russia’s strategy entered a stage of chaos. It overlooked the Azeri, Turkish, and Syrian mercenaries’ invasion of the Artsakh-Nagorno Karabakh region in 2020 when they achieved a strategic victory against Armenia in 2023 under the watchful eyes of Russia. The Russians did not comply with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) provisions to save Armenia from a strategic defeat. In contrast, it saved the Tokayev regime in Kazakhstan under the threat of riots in January 2022, under the provisions of that Treaty. However, Tokayev turned against Russia to enter an alliance with Washington, Turkey, and Azerbaijan to reinforce the foundations of The Organization of Turkic States (OTC), which will be a significant threat to Russia in the coming decades because of these countries’ linguistic, religious, sectarian, and blood relations with the Muslim republics within Russia.  

The Moscow attack perpetrators are undoubtedly ethnic Turkics from Central Asian or Russian Islamic republics.  

Turkey, strengthened and supported by Putin, will lead the Turkic world and spread strife and division inside Russia.  

Russia believes it is secure today because the current rulers of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan have lived in the Soviet era. They speak Russian and maintain Russian political customs and traditions. For instance, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, a Shi‘i Muslim, graduate of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and son of Soviet leader Haider Aliyev, is closer to Putin than Orthodox Christian Armenian President Pashinyan.  

Russia is overlooking the fact that Ilham Aliyev and other current leaders of the Muslim Turkic states in Central Asia are the last Soviet generation ruling their countries. With the exit of this generation, a new Turkic, Islamist political elite devoid of respect and knowledge of Soviet political traditions will ascend to power, and Russia will then realize the consequences of its strategic failure.  

Terrorism is one. There is no good terrorism facing evil terrorism. All terrorism ought to be condemned regardless of its perpetrators.  

The Aleppo Artillery School massacre, led by officer on duty Ibrahim el-Youssef and members of the Fighting Vanguard (at-Tali’a al-Muqatila) and led by ʿAdnan ʿUqla, is terrorism that ought to be condemned, as well as the 9/11 attacks in the US, the Bali attacks in 2002, the Riyadh bombings in 2003, the attacks in Madrid, London, Bombay, Paris, and Nice in 2015-2016, the attack against Al-Nour mosque in New Zealand in 2019. Other attacks that should be condemned are the Camp Speicher massacre on June 12, 2014, when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) executed 1,700 Iraqi Shi‘is, and the attack that targeted the Homs military college graduation ceremony and left casualties among civilians and members of the armed forces who were in attendance on October 6, 2023. Similarly, Hamas’ attack against Israeli civilians in the Gaza Envelope on October 7, 2023, was an organized terrorist attack that brought death and destruction to Gaza and harmed the Palestinian cause unnecessarily.  

Moscow was attacked after it had abstained from condemning Hamas’ October 7 attack, believing that this would deceive Islamists and lure them into its camp in the war against Ukraine and its hostility toward the West.  

If Islamist movements are not contained and militarily and actively combated and attacked when they target civilians, other Islamist movements will be emboldened to ramp up their attacks as well.  

Russia rightfully asked the international community to condemn the Moscow terror attacks on March 22, 2024; why, then, did it abstain from condemning Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attacks? If Russia contends that the plight of the Palestinian people justifies Hamas’ actions, it follows that the Islamic State can use Russia’s attacks against it in Syria since 2016, killing thousands of its fighters and civilians in Tadmor, Al-Sukhna, Ash-Sholah, and Deir ez-Zor to make the same claim.  

Terrorism is one. It is absurd to rationalize, justify, and condone one strand of terrorism while repudiating and disparaging another.