Putin forgot Islamic State thinks he too is the West
BY MARC CHAMPION - BLOOMBERG
Three lessons on the perils of a multipolar world can be learned from the Moscow attack
Three facts stand out as clear after Russia’s arrest of the alleged perpetrators of Friday’s appalling terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue — and all three shine a light on dangers inherent in the new multipolar world we live in.
The first is that Russian President Vladimir Putin had dismissed the United States' earlier warning that the attack was coming, both in public and to his top security officers. He labelled American intelligence that Islamists were planning an assault on a large Russian venue as blackmail, aimed at destabilizing his country — a vague notion that he did not explain.
There was a time not so long ago when Putin understood that Washington considered Islamist radicalism as a shared threat, one taken so seriously that it was ring-fenced from other disputes. The Russian president would have heeded the warning, even if he could not prevent the attack.
Yet so shredded has trust become between Moscow and Washington since Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, if not since his 2014 annexation of Crimea, that he fell victim to paranoia. Had he been able to think rationally, Russia’s president would have known this was a game the U.S. would not play, because it could only lose.
Toward the end of the short address to the nation after Friday night’s attack, Putin said he would work with all "genuinely” concerned nations to fight international terrorism — so perhaps he has recognized his mistake. Though I very much doubt it.
The second piece of clarity is that while Putin has, remarkably, managed to persuade much of the Global South that his invasion of a former imperial possession somehow makes him a fellow victim of Western colonialism, Islamists are having none of it. They do not care a hoot about Ukraine, but they also make no distinction between Russian and Western colonialism.
As far as Islamic State (IS) or al-Qaeda are concerned, Putin’s military interventions in Syria and Chechnya are no different from America’s in Iraq and Libya. Nor is the presence of a large Russian military base in predominantly Sunni Muslim Tajikistan — the ex-Soviet country that the arrested suspects are from — any less offensive to Islamist ideas than the presence of U.S. military bases in the Gulf.
Russia is for them a part of the Christian West. It does not belong anywhere on the territory of their imagined Islamic caliphate.
Finally, Putin could confidently hint at Ukrainian responsibility, thus absolving his own lapse of vigilance, because no matter what evidence emerges to the contrary, he knows he should be able to sell whatever story he likes at home — such is the totality of his control over the media and eradication of organized opposition.
Putin has demonstrated this ability repeatedly throughout his war in Ukraine, and it is deeply worrying. He can now generate domestic popular support for virtually any decision or aggression. Worse, the creeping spread of what one might call populist "authoritocracies” makes this true for a growing number of world leaders.
We cannot yet know for sure that Ukraine did not facilitate the Moscow attack because it is very hard to prove a negative. The only verifiable evidence of Ukrainian involvement that Putin has cited — that the killers were arrested while driving in Ukraine’s direction — is weak. Involvement would also imply a near-suicidal stupidity on Kyiv's part. There was a roughly 100% chance that Putin would blame Ukraine for the attack, and the U.S., implicated by association, would not forgive being pulled into something that jeopardizes so core a security interest as counterterrorism.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the atrocity in Moscow, and that is likely true: The group has put out footage of the killers taken before the attack, which matches with images Russian television showed of the men afterward. The four men arrested near the Russian city of Bryansk at the weekend and shown in court on Monday were identified as Tajiks. Also, the U.S. believes the branch responsible is Islamic State Khorasan, a province of Islamic State’s nonexistent caliphate that would include much of Afghanistan, the northern part of which is ethnic Tajik, as well as Pakistan and Central Asia, including Tajikistan.
The Russian security services said they foiled another Islamic State Khorasan attack in Moscow just a month ago. Two of the men detained pled guilty to carrying out Friday's attack, which killed at least 137 people. That does not, of course, prove that the IS operation did not get an assist from Ukraine, but that thesis has the smell of a conspiracy theory.
The confession by a captive to his Russian guards that an anonymous caller offered him 1 million rubles ($10,850) to conduct the attack would certainly be inconsistent with an IS-directed operation, but the information was offered under duress: on camera, on his knees and at the mercy of armed security officers.
There is no recording of what came before, so we do not know what he may have been told to say if he wanted to stay alive. The eradication of trust breeds conspiracy theories and also makes them all but impossible to shoot down. So it is likely Putin will stick with his Ukraine story.
That was not always as attractive or as easy to pull off as it is now. Yes, the U.S.-dominated, globalized world that followed the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 was hardly safe; it was also deeply flawed and unequal. Yet the trade and economic integration that it relied on placed some basic boundaries — and required a minimum of mutual acceptance among governments that made space for the kind of warning the U.S. gave to Moscow to be believed, even when relations in other areas were poor.
That minimal level of confidence also allowed for organizations such as the United Nations and Group of 20 to function as more than gladiatorial arenas for performative diplomacy. But no more.
About: Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East.
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Behind Closed Doors, the U.S. Pushes to Shape, Not Stop, the Rafah Operation
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Israeli defense minister met with senior U.S. officials in Washington after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled his aides’ visits
By Michael R. Gordon - Vivian Salama - March 27, 2024
WASHINGTON—In two days of meetings between the Israeli defense chief and senior officials in the White House and Pentagon, discussions on Israel’s planned military operation in southern Gaza focused not on how to stop it, but on how to protect civilians during its rollout.
The businesslike tone of the talks was a departure from previous weeks, when top U.S. officials bluntly warned Israel against an all-out offensive on Rafah—where more than a million displaced Palestinians have taken refuge—while Israel’s prime minister defiantly vowed to press ahead.
Rafah has been at the center of a growing rift between Israeli and U.S. political leaders. Those tensions boiled over on Monday, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a visit to Washington by top aides to discuss U.S. concerns over the planned offensive on Rafah, where Hamas fighters are making a final stand. The tit-for-tat move was in response to the U.S. abstaining from a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for an immediate cease-fire while also demanding the release of hostages.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, however, proceeded with his meetings at the White House and Pentagon on Monday and Tuesday, which had been previously scheduled. Gallant is part of Israel’s three-member war cabinet that includes Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, the prime minister’s chief political rival.
While President Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu has frayed, the channel between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gallant remains strong. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the two defense chiefs have met several times and talked by phone about 40 times.
In Gallant’s closed-door meetings in Washington, a more pragmatic conversation began to emerge in which the discussions were on conducting a phased operation to reduce the potential harm to civilians while still ensuring that Israel dismantles Hamas’s four battalions in Rafah.
“I think there is an understanding we have to dismantle Hamas,” Gallant said, following his White House meetings.
At a Tuesday meeting at the Pentagon, Austin pressed his Israeli counterpart to ensure that effective arrangements were in place to protect civilians before an Israeli military operation is mounted to attack the Hamas fighters there.
“There is a sequence,” a U.S. defense official said. “The military aspect of the operation should not proceed until the humanitarian aspects have been fully addressed.”
Both sides also agreed that the Hamas battalions in Rafah must be dislodged so that the militants cannot attempt a comeback or continue to smuggle weapons into the enclave, which are prerequisites for ending the war and paving the way for a new political authority in Gaza. And that means trying to find ways to work with Israel on its Rafah strategy, for lack of better options.
After negotiations in Doha, Qatar, on a temporary cease-fire stalled last weekend, Israeli officials told mediators that it could launch an operation in Rafah as soon as Ramadan ends around mid-April if efforts to reach a deal fail, Egyptian officials said Wednesday. The talks may resume in person again in Cairo by the end of this week, the officials added.
A senior Israeli official familiar with the talks said Israel is still open to continuing negotiations, but would consider other options if there is no breakthrough, including launching its planned invasion of Rafah as soon as possible. “There’s no doubt that a military operation could help,” the official said.
While a military operation isn’t imminent, the challenges are monumental. Around 1.4 million Gazans are sheltering in Rafah, including many who have already fled from other areas in Gaza. The city is also a major entry point for humanitarian assistance and an Israeli military operation, if not carefully designed, could cut civilians off from critical assistance while uprooting them yet again.
While Gallant and U.S. officials exchanged broad concepts of how a Rafah operation might unfold, details of Israel’s planned military operation have yet to be spelled out, leaving potential points of disagreement over the scope and key elements of Israel’s eventual military plan.
A critical question is whether American officials will regard Israel’s preparations—including moving Rafah’s civilians out of harm’s way before an operation is launched and ensuring they receive humanitarian aid—as adequate.
Gazas Displaced Are Stuck in Rafah
The southern city has grown from about 280,000 residents before the war to 1.4 million people, according to the United Nations, some of whom have found shelter at local schools.
The two sides also discussed ways to address weapons smuggling across the Egypt-Gaza border, which Israel has cited as a concern, and precision targeting of Hamas leaders as U.S. officials continue to urge against the bombardment of densely populated areas.
Officials said that while there was some overlap between the U.S.’s and Israel’s thinking, the plans have a long way to go before they are formalized, and any cogent plan to relocate civilians in Rafah could take months.
“Our goal is to help Israel find an alternative to a full-scale and perhaps premature military operation,” the U.S. defense official said.
Further discussions between the U.S. and Israeli officials are planned to iron out the complex array of issues that remain.
Still, the talks in Washington this week were strikingly different from the exchange last week when Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Israeli leaders that a major ground operation risked “further isolating Israel around the world.”
Netanyahu, in turn, said that his military was prepared to enter Rafah without U.S. political support, if necessary.
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