Terrorism Weekly: The Lessons of the Moscow Airport Attack

Monday's terrorist attack at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, which killed 35 peoplem, has already triggered considerable discussion about the security of airports in Russia and around the world.

Apparently a suicide bomber entered the arrivals terminal, where drivers and family members await travellers who have just collected their luggage, without going through any security checks. In a search for scapegoats --- and as a means of avoiding responsibility for Russian policy toward Chechnya and for wider counter-terrorism failures --- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev criticsed the heads of the airport for allowing the security breach.

Attacks on airports used to be a regular occurrence. In 1985, for example, simultaneous attacks at El Al check-in desks in Rome and Vienna killed 16 people. This is why some airports --- Beirut and Tehran come to mind --- require passengers to go through security even before the check-in desks.

Attacks against airports have also occurred in the United Kingdom. <As late as 1994, the Irish Republican Army fired mortars at the runways at Heathrow, disrupting flights in the process. In June 2007, two attackers rammed a jeep loaded with petrol into a terminal building at Glasgow’s airport, although the only death was that of one of the terrorists. Because of this attack, passengers in Britain can no longer be dropped off immediately adjacent to terminals.

This context for the Moscow attack highlights the point that media commentary has largely missed. All airports are insecure, whether they are in Russia or elsewhere. The focus, particularly after 9-11 but going back to the 1960s, has been to prevent --- not always successfully --- the hijacking and bombing of airplanes. Even the increased security around airplanes has not stopped terrorists from targeting them; it has led to more sophisticated plots on the part of terrorists, such as underwear bombs.

There is a chess-like dimension to this response and counter response, one I wrote about in the context of the attempted bombings of cargo planes in late 2010. The problem for governments arises if terrorists grow tired of ramming their heads against secured areas and pursue so-called “soft targets” that still offer a degree of the spectacular.

Airport terminals fit this category. Around the world, there is free access before passengers with tickets are checked by security. Anyone can enter lugging a suitcase or wearing a heavy jacket without generating suspicion. There are numerous areas where groups of people congregate, including check-in gates, the arrivals area, and parking lots, before reaching security checkpoint. Any attack in these areas will be easier than one near airplanes but it will still draw attention and have a substantive impact on air travel, even if casualties are lower than in the case of a bombing of an aircraft.

What options do governments have? It certainly would be possible to protect an entire airport by creating a perimeter around the airport and searching the thousands of vehicles and individuals who enter this. But imagine now the cost and resources this would involve and the impact that this would have on air travel. This is why it is impractical and why airports will remain vulnerable to those determined to take lives through terrorism.  

Steve Hewitt is Senior Lecturer in American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham and author of Snitch: A History of the Modern Intelligence Informer and The British War on Terror: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism on the Home Front since 9/11.