Moscow Subway Bombings March 2010
The Moscow Subway Bombings on March 29, 2010, involved two female suicide bombers who detonated explosives during the morning rush hour at Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations, resulting in the deaths of 35 people and injuring over 100. The attacks were claimed by Doku Umarov, a prominent figure associated with the separatist movement in the North Caucasus, who stated that the bombings were retribution for an incident involving Russian security forces and civilians in February 2010. One of the bombers, identified as Dzhanet Abdullayeva, was a 17-year-old widow of a militant killed by Russian forces, and the attacks were seen as part of a broader resurgence of violence linked to the ongoing conflict in the region.
The context of the bombings is rooted in a long history of tension between Russia and the North Caucasus, particularly concerning regions like Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia. This historical struggle dates back to the 19th century when the Russian Empire sought to expand into the Caucasus. The aftermath of the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 further exacerbated conflicts over independence and regional governance. The bombings marked a troubling re-emergence of suicide attacks in Moscow, reminiscent of earlier incidents involving "Black Widow" bombers, who are often widows of militants involved in the separatist struggle. The attacks not only highlighted the persistent instability in the North Caucasus but also raised concerns about security and the potential for further violence in urban areas.
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Moscow Subway Bombings March 2010
Summary: Two female suicide bombers linked to separatists from the North Caucasus region attacked the Moscow subway system on March 29, 2010, marking an apparent resumption of suicide attacks in the Russian capital. The self-proclaimed leader of the "Caucasus Emirate," Doku Umarov, a veteran militant of the Chechen separatist movement, claimed responsibility for the Moscow attacks, which he said were in retaliation for an incident involving the FSB (Russian national security force) and civilians picking wild garlic shoots near the Ingush village of Arshty on February 12, 2010. Umarov, in a statement posed on YouTube, vowed his forces would continue to bring the war in the North Caucasus region to Russia.
Date: March 29, 2010.
Place: Moscow subway stations: Lubyanka station, 7:57 A.M., and Park Kultury station, 8:40 A.M.
Incident: Two female suicide bombers detonated (or had detonated by remote control) bombs worn beneath their clothes. In the first explosion, 23 people died; in the second, 12 people died immediately and at least two others died later. More than 100 people were injured in the explosions during the morning rush hour in one of the world's busiest and most extensive subways.
Other attacks linked to Chechen rebels followed the Moscow subway bombings. Two days after the subway bombing, two suicide bombings in Kizlyar, a town in Dagestan, killed 12 people, including nine policemen. On April 4, 2010, a freight train was derailed by two bombs in Dagestan.
Known or presumed perpetrator: Two days after the bombings, Doku Umarov, a leading militant of Chechen separatists and self-proclaimed emir of the "Caucasus Emirate" claimed responsibility for the bombings. He described them as revenge for attacks by Russian security forces on February 11, 2010, near the border separating two North Caucasus regions, Chechnya and Ingushetia--both of which are nominally included in the Caucasus Emirate (as is a third region, Dagestan). Umarov had issued a threat in February to take revenge for an attack he blamed on the FSB--Russia's national security police--that he said had resulted in the deaths of civilians foraging for wild garlic shoots on February 11, 2010, outside the village of Arshty, near the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia.
Umarov, once prominent in the separatist battle for Chechen independence from Russia, declared in 2007 that the war in the North Caucasus was now a religious struggle to establish an Islamist emirate.
One of the two female bombers in the March 2010 subway attack was identified as Dzhanet Abdullayeva from Dagestan. She was the 17-year-old widow of Umalat Magomedov, killed in December 2009 by Russian security forces in the North Caucasus.
The second suicide bomber was not immediately identified.
Authorities said a bus driver had told them that both women had traveled from the Caucasus region to Moscow, arriving in Moscow about six hours before the attacks.
Abdullayeva appeared to fit the description of a "Black Widow"--the name given to a string of female suicide bombers, active both in Moscow and in the North Caucasus region, who are widows of slain terrorist/guerrillas fighting for independence from Russia (see separate Background Information Summary in this database).
Context: The March 2010 bombing appeared to represent a resumption of suicide attacks in the Russian capital after a prolonged hiatus, and possibly a resumption of terrorist attacks conducted inside Russia and linked to the ongoing struggle over the status of the North Caucasus region.
That struggle, involving the separate but adjacent states of Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia in the volatile North Caucasus region, dates from the early 19th century, when an expanding Russian empire began a conquest of the North Caucasus that lasted from about 1818 until 1917. After a brief period of independence following the overthrow of Tsar Alexander, Chechnya was reconquered by the Bolshevik government in Moscow.
In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, some former member republics of the USSR in the region gained independence--notably Georgia and Abkhazia--others did not. Ingushetia voted to separate itself from Chechnya and became an autonomous republic within the Russian federation in 1992. In Chechnya, General Dzhokhar Dudayev seized power in Grozny and declared independence; the government of Russian President Boris Yeltsin refused to recognize the declaration and sent troops in 1994 to put down the revolution, but withdrew two years later in the face of armed Chechen opposition.
The situation was further complicated by the rise of fundamentalist Islamist movements elsewhere in the 1990s, such as the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan backed by Al Qaeda. Dudayev's successor, Aslan Maskhadov, elected president of Chechnya in 1997, declared that Sharia (Islamic law) would be phased in over a period of three years. This pronouncement caused some Chechen guerrilla commanders to declare their own secular republic. In 1999 Moscow accused the leadership of Chechnya of supporting Islamist guerrillas in neighboring Dagestan (denied by the government of Maskhadov), while around the same time some former members of the Chechen legislature established a "State Council for the Republic of Chechnya," based in Moscow, which the government in Moscow then recognized as the only legitimate authority in Chechnya.
In 2000 Vladimir Putin was elected president of the Russian Federation succeeding Yeltsin. Putin took a hard line towards Chechnya, blaming rebels there for the bombing of an apartment complex in Moscow in September 1999. He sent Russian troops to Chechnya to quash the rebellion in a move that caused numerous allegations of heavy-handed actions and violations of human rights. Chechens responded, in part, by sending a string of suicide bombers--including the "black widows"--to carry out attacks in Moscow, as well as against other targets in the Caucasus region.
When Putin stepped down after two terms in 2008, he was succeeded by Dmitri Medvedev, who appeared to take a different approach, symbolized by his appointment of businessman Yunus-Bek Yevkurov to head the government in Ingushetia. Yevkurov emphasized economic development as the best way to combat guerrillas and bring peace to the region.