Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a security overhaul sparked by the school hostage crisis, but experts are skeptical that authorities can
prevent more terrorism by Chechen separatists.
With a death toll of at least 340 in Russia's worst-ever hostage crisis, Putin went on television to admit official failings and vowed to bolster his shaken nation's security.
The region's top police official resigned after the three-day hostage siege in Beslan but analysts warned that the series of audacious militant attacks point to a widespread failure
of intelligence.
"The FSB [Federal Security Service, ex-KGB] is still operating according to the Soviet system. It is not capable of combating terrorism on this scale,"
said Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Chechnya at the Carnegie Moscow Center think-tank.
"They don't have the personnel or the experience. This has been obvious over the past few weeks, when one terrorist act has succeeded another," he said.
Israel, renowned for its experience in acquiring intelligence to pre-empt terrorist acts, immediately offered assistance to Russia.
Besides the hostage crisis in Beslan, scores were killed in the space of a week in the downing of two Russian passenger jets by suicide bombers
that killed 90 and a suicide blast at a Moscow subway station that left nine dead and 51 injured.
Since Putin launched the second Chechen war in 1999, militants from the breakaway republic have waged a series of terror attacks in the North Caucasus and the Russian capital, targeting the Moscow subway, a rock concert and a Moscow theater where they took 800 people hostage.
That three-day siege in October 2002 ended in the death of 132 hostages, all but two killed by a poison gas that the government pumped into the theater to knock out the hostage-takers.
With terrorist cells implanted in Russia among the large North Caucasus community and a ready stream of volunteers from the conflict-scarred region, including female suicide bombers, the Chechen rebels appear able to operate with virtual impunity.
"We are now facing a sustained terrorist campaign, four terrorist acts in two weeks, and our security services are not up to the task," independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said.
"The security forces and law enforcement agencies are corrupt and inefficient, and Putin acknowledged that. But unfortunately, the response is likely to be more repression, curtailing of independent media and civil liberties -- and the more you repress, the more public support the terrorists will enjoy," he said.
A former senior Russian intelligence officer, Stanislav Lekarev, says Moscow must form a new structure to coordinate security agencies like the US Department of Homeland Security.
But most critically, there is a need for intelligence-gathering to avert acts of terrorism, he told the Moskovskiye Novosti weekly.
"The most important thing in combating terrorism is intelligence breakthroughs. We won't win unless we set up a network of agents to gather information, and judging from the latest events, [this network] just doesn't exist in Russia."
Paul Beaver, a British defense expert, contrasts the Russian security failures with the professionalism of British police, who in August thwarted an alleged terrorist plot in Britain involving chemical materials, arresting eight men.
"A huge responsibility [for the events in Beslan] lies on the shoulders of the security services, who are totally unable to predict potential terrorist targets," he told Moskovskiye Novosti.
Even if anti-terrorist measures are beefed up, Putin's hardline refusal
to resolve the conflict in Chechnya through political means provides
fertile ground for the militants, warns Malashenko.
"The Chechen separatists have a large number of sympathizers in the North Caucasus," Malashenko said.
"Unless you manage to normalize the situation there, you cannot bring
an end to these acts of terrorism," he added.
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