ON THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM
D. M. Feldman
The effectiveness of the struggle against terrorism, which is not exclusively connected with the
performance of counter-terrorist operations precipitated by events in New York, Chechnya, Corsica
or wherever else presumes judicially precise and politically weighted definitions of the terrorism
phenomena. This task in the Russian Federation discovered a legislative decision ‘On the Fight
Against Terrorism’, which was adopted three years prior to the terrorist attack on the United States.
The Russian legislator had then already given a clear definition to such phenomena as terrorism
and terrorist activity. The political value of this goes far beyond the frames of the legal terminology
unification. For example, in compliance with the Law “an organization shall be admitted as a
terrorist organisation if at least one of its structural subdivisions exercises terrorist activity with the
consent of at least one governing body”. This wording gave a precise legal characteristic to the
Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party or the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which
sank into oblivion and to the modern terrorist organizations of nationalist, religious and other
character acting in Russia and abroad. It is more important that the Law creates a legal basis of
resistance to them within the National-State limits and on the international scale. Thus, the
counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya is almost the first one to be conducted in compliance with
the norms of this Law in the history of Russia.
The important social-political value of the Law qualifies as the civil duty of everybody to inform the
law-enforcement bodies on terrorist activity and any other circumstances that may promote
prevention, identification and suppression of terrorist activity. Unfortunately, the Law fails to
recognise security guarantees to persons who have fulfilled this ‘civil duty’. This certainly degrades
the efficiency of this legal norm.
The Law gives general regulation of the conduct of counter-terrorist operations, which creates a
legal basis of civil control over the counter-terrorist activity of State services and bodies. Many
provisions of this Section are, however, rather vague and, as demonstrated by the experience of
the counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya, insufficient for effective civil control. In the first place, it
refers to the procedure and regulations of informing the public about acts of terror and the progress
of counter-terrorist operations. The criterion is highly critical from the practical point of view with the
definition of the end of a counter-terrorist operation worded in a rather indistinct way.
During a counter-terrorist operation restrictions of civil rights and freedoms are inevitable. The Law
should have included measures on prevention of potential abusive practice related to the right to
freely enter (penetrate) into areas owned by citizens, transport vehicles, etc., including the
establishment of responsibility for exceeding commission at its application. The same refers to
“regulation” (to be read as “limitation”) of mass media activity on the part of the persons effecting
control of the counter-terrorist operation. Expansion (even if it is declared temporary) of the powers
of force departments and services, other executive authorities, does not lead to stable confidence
of citizens to the government of the State and does not promote growth of the effectiveness of their
participation in resistance to the forces, using terror as a means of achieving their goals.
These and several other defects of the Law require revision. It requires greater interaction of the
State and society. Greater efficiency of the fight against terrorism for the sake of citizens’ rights
and freedom, but not to the detriment of them is a necessary condition of its success.