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| Russia |
| Bribery culture makes Russian security a bad joke |
| 2004-09-02 |
| Each time Chechen terrorists strike a fresh blow against Russia the same question is asked - with security supposedly at ever higher levels how do they ever reach their targets? The answer is usually that they have bribed their way through. In one of Russia's most notorious terrorist incidents, Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord, led a convoy of more than 100 heavily-armed rebels dozens of miles across southern Russia in 1995, passing through more than 24 checkpoints. He later joked: "We would have got all the way to Moscow if our money hadn't run out." The group of nearly 20 terrorists, armed with assault rifles and several pounds of explosive, who seized hundreds of children hostage yesterday had driven a lorry through one of Russia's most heavily-guarded regions. In Ingushetia and Northern Ossetia, the two republics just to the west of Chechnya, there are security checks every few miles. Each driver must stop and produce identification before being allowed to proceed. Car boots must be searched. The checkpoints are intended to starve the troubled republic of weapons and terrorist reinforcements. In practice, they are an opportunity for corrupt traffic police and militiamen to extort money. The usual payment in the Caucasus is 10 roubles per car (about 20p) even on the main roads inside Chechnya. Nor does that transaction require any particular skills of persuasion. Documents are simply handed through the window with a folded note inside. After a cursory glance they are returned minus the note. "It's a bit like driving a toll road," a local told me during a recent visit. Another Chechen told how a Russian soldier given 50 roubles joked with the driver. He asked: "What have you got in the back of your car, a bomb?" But still he did not bother to open the boot. At the large, reinforced checkpoint on a roundabout outside Nazran, only 20 minutes from the scene of yesterday's attack, duty officers demanded a "premium", pushing the cost to 20 roubles. When bands of terrorists, reportedly led by Basayev, attacked Ingush security forces in June, killing nearly 90 people, they were understood to have bribed their way into the centre of the republic. Preliminary reports show a female suicide bomber who brought down one of two passenger planes that exploded last week may not have shown identification and even her name was written down inaccurately. During the terrorist attack on the Nord Ost theatre in 2002, two blacked-out vanloads of heavily-armed terrorists drove through central Moscow in the busy early evening, apparently without being stopped. |
| Posted by:Bulldog |
| #3 Executions for everyone on duty along the terrorists line of advance. Rinse, repeat! A few evolutions of this and I think things would change. I am delusional. CiT |
| Posted by: CiT 2004-09-03 12:17:50 AM |
| #2 I just visualized it and it ain't pretty. |
| Posted by: Zarathustra 2004-09-02 9:09:57 PM |
| #1 I wonder if anyone will bother to "rotate" the staff at every one of those checkpoints the hostage takers drove through? Maybe the parents of all those schoolchildren will if the officials don't. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-09-02 9:06:31 PM |