Times Literary Supplement, 18 May 2006

The Kremlin cover

John B. Dunlop
THE 2002 DUBROVKA AND 2004
BESLAN HOSTAGE CRISES
A critique of Russian counter-terrorism
157pp. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag. €24.90.
3 89821 608 X
Review by AMY KNIGHT


John B. Dunlop's analysis of two of Russia's
most devastating terrorist episodes –
the October 2002 hostage-taking at Moscow's
Dubrovka Theatre and the September
2004 attack on School No 1 in Beslan, North
Ossetia – paints a disturbing picture of the
Kremlin's strategy towards terrorism. It is not
just that Russian authorities are ineffective
in dealing with the problem and unaccountable
to the public. Dunlop, a senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution, who has examined hundreds
of Russian documents, trial transcripts and
press reports, raises the disquieting possibility
that some elements in the Russian government,
in particular the security services, have actually
been complicit in the terrorism.

The issue of official complicity first arose
in September 1999, three years before the
Dubrovka hostage crisis, when a series of
apartment-house bombings killed over 300
Russian civilians. Russian authorities blamed
Chechen rebels for the explosions and used public
outrage as an excuse to launch the second
Chechen war. But the strange circumstances surrounding
a foiled bomb blast in a building in the
city of Ryazan caused considerable speculation
that the Russian Security Service, the FSB, was
linked to the three earlier bombings. (The FSB
admitted planting the Ryazan bomb, but
claimed that the bomb was fake and that they
were merely conducting a "training exercise".)
After the Russian government successfully
thwarted attempts for a parliamentary investigation
into the 1999 bombings, whose perpetrators
were never caught, the human rights
activist and Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev established
an unofficial committee to inquire into
the matter. But the murder of the committee cochairman
and Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov,
in April 2003, the suspicious death of another
member, and the arrest of the lawyer who was a
consultant to the committee brought the investigation
to a halt.

As Dunlop points out, the circumstances
surrounding the hostage-taking at Dubrovka
Theatre have important similarities with the
1999 terrorist episodes. In particular, there was
strong evidence of involvement by certain elements
of the Russian security services in plans
for the terrorist attack. First, Russian authorities
have never been able to explain how a considerable
number of known Chechen terrorists, some
of whom had actually been in police custody at
some point earlier, could gather in Moscow and
conduct "furtive activities" for several months
without being noticed. According to a former
lieutenant-colonel in the FSB, cited by Dunlop,
Russian authorities were well aware of the activities
of these Chechen terrorists but "chose to
take no action".

As was the case in 1999, the FSB had clear
motives for encouraging the attack on Dubrovka.
In the months leading up to the hostage-taking,
the Russian government had been under strong
pressure to reach a negotiated settlement with
the moderate wing of Chechen separatists, led
by the former President of Chechnya, Aslan
Maskhadov. Not only was the Russian public
showing signs of weariness with the Chechen
war. High-level discussions organized by the
American Committee for Peace in Chechnya,
between Chechen moderates and Russian politicians,
were showing signs of progress. According
to Dunlop, the silovki (officials from the
police and military) in Putin's government were
adamantly opposed to conducting peace negotiations
with the Chechen separatists and to "bringing
an end to a war that was serving as a source
of promotions in rank and of lucrative `financial
flows'". Their views were shared by extremist
Chechen rebels, whose leader was the
infamous Chechen field commander Shamil
Basaev. Basaev repeatedly expressed opposition
to any kind of agreement between Russian
authorities and Maskhadov.

Dunlop builds a convincing case that members
of the FSB entered into a kind of "joint
venture" with Chechen extremists to derail the
negotiations by means of violent acts, which
would portray the conflict in Chechnya as a
fight against al-Qaeda-linked terrorists and discredit
Maskhadov. The culmination of their venture
came at 9pm on October 23, 2002, when
forty terrorists burst into the Dubrovka Theatre
in Moscow and took 979 people captive.
The hostage-takers, apparently to attract support
from the Muslim world, sought to convey
the impression that some of them were Arabs,
though, with perhaps one exception, they were
all Chechens. They were brandishing signs in
Arabic and the women among them were veiled
and dressed in black. The Russian media
(controlled almost exclusively by the Kremlin)
picked up on the Arab and Islamic themes,
reporting on October 24 that President Putin
"sees the seizure of the hostages in Moscow as
one of the links in a chain of the manifestations
of international terrorism, in one row with the
[recent] terrorist acts in Indonesia and the Philippines".
As Dunlop puts it: "Putin and his
team, manifestly, now had an 11 September
2001 of their own . . . . The seizing of the theatre
building, it was heavy-handedly suggested,
constituted a link in a chain leading back to the
infamous Al-Qaeda".

There was little evidence tying Maskhadov
to the hostage-taking. Indeed, through his official
spokesman, Akhmed Zakaev, Maskhadov
immediately condemned the attack and urged
that a non-violent solution be reached. But the

Russian leadership launched an aggressive and
successful campaign to persuade the public that
Maskhadov had ordered the raid on the theatre
and that he could no longer be considered a
legitimate representative of the Chechen resistance.
With Maskhadov discredited, the Kremlin
had a justification for cutting off any negotiations
with him over Chechnya's future.

In discussions with Duma deputies and journalists,
the terrorists demanded that Russian
troops be withdrawn from Chechnya as a condition
for releasing the hostages. From the standpoint
of the Kremlin, of course, this condition
was unfeasible, but at least it marked a starting
point for negotiations, which the terrorists
seemed anxious to enter into. They reacted positively
when the Kremlin announced that a representative
of President Putin's would meet with
them on October 26, telling the hostages that
they had "good news" and that no harm would
come to them if they behaved peacefully.
As it turns out, the Kremlin had no intention
of sending a representative to Dubrovka Theatre.
By October 25, plans to storm the theatre
by force were already well underway. Although
Russian authorities would later claim that the
terrorists precipitated the storming of the building
by executing two hostages, eyewitnesses
reported that the terrorists had not shot anyone.
Nor, contrary to the official story, did the terrorists
have explosives capable of detonating, a
fact of which the FSB was well aware.

In the early hours of October 26, to pave the
way for the takeover, FSB special forces began
pumping a highly powerful poisonous gas into
the ventilation system of the theatre. Close to
200 hostages died from the effects of the gas,
along with many of the terrorists (the rest were
shot dead by the FSB). A good number of the
hostage deaths could have been prevented if
there had been adequate medical emergency
preparations in place. In fact, the medical teams
who treated the hostages were not even told
beforehand what the gas was. President Putin's
response to this terrible fiasco was to hold a
special Kremlin reception the next day for
the FSB commandos involved and praise
them for their bravery and professionalism.

The Beslan hostage crisis of September
2004, in which 330 people died, 186 of them
children, was an eerie replay of Dubrovka,
demonstrating yet again the Russian authorities'
callous disregard for individual life and
lack of accountability to the public. As before,
the authorities ignored important signs of an
impending terrorist act. Most of the terrorists,
between thirty and fifty in number, had been living
together in the woods in the neighbouring
republic of Ingushetia during the weeks before
the attack.

Despite the fact that Ingushetia had been on
high terrorist alert since a bloody June 2004
raid in that republic by Chechen rebels, Ingush
police mysteriously failed to notice this large
terrorist group. One of the terrorists, Vladimir
Khodov, was on the police wanted list for rape,
murder and terrorism, yet he spent the summer
of 2004 openly living in his native North Ossetian
village without being arrested. The leader
of the group, an Ingush native nicknamed "the
Colonel", was also well known to Russian
authorities as a deadly criminal, but he had successfully
avoided arrest for at least two years.
Several other members of the terrorist band, it
turns out, had been in jail for acts of criminal
violence, but ended up being released from custody.
As one Russian journalist expressed it:
"The beasts came [to Beslan] from their cages.
It was the judges, police and the FSB who
opened the cages for them".

According to Dunlop, the terrorists had managed
to conceal a number of weapons inside
School No 1 before the attack, which lends credence
to the theory of an inside job. In addition,
the two police officers who would normally
have guarded the school on its opening day
were sent away on what turned out to be a false
pretext. Dunlop, citing one of the terrorists who
boasted to the hostages that "your police sold
you out for $20,000", suggests that the police
were bribed.

A crucial question is whether or not the terrible
carnage that took place on September 3
could somehow have been avoided. There is no
doubt that the terrorists at Beslan were ruthless
murderers (the "Colonel" had twenty male hostages
shot on the first day), nor that they had
plenty of ammunition and explosives. Nonetheless,
they did have a list of demands, which
included the release from prison of twentyseven
rebels captured in the June raid on Ingushetia,
and were willing to negotiate. In fact,
the former President of Ingushetia, Ruslan
Aushev, managed to get into the school on his
own initiative and persuade the terrorists to
release twenty-six mothers and children on
September 2.

Unfortunately, negotiations for the remaining
hostages were thwarted at every stage by the
FSB. On September 1, after a meeting with the
FSB Chief Nikolai Patrushev and other police
officials, President Putin placed a telephone call
to Beslan and ordered that the local FSB take
command of the crisis, which was being managed
by Aleksandr Dzasokhov, President of
North Ossetia, and other leaders at the republic
level. Patrushev then flew down to the North
Caucasus with the Russian Minister of Internal
Affairs, Rashid Nurgaliev. But for some reason
(which has never been explained), the two did
not go to Beslan, but returned to Moscow.
Instead of Patrushev, the FSB official who
showed up in Beslan to take charge was the
very person, General Vladimir Pronichev, who
had commanded the terribly botched Dubrovka
rescue effort. Pronichev immediately began
making plans for a storming of the school building,
over the protests of North Ossetian politicians,
who still had hopes for a negotiated settlement.
The FSB dragged its feet in arranging for
the twenty-seven rebels to be released from jail,
which might have resulted in their being
exchanged for some of the hostages. And when
the Colonel transmitted his cell-phone number
to the authorities for the apparent purpose of
negotiations, they "blocked" his phone. There
were even more sinister attempts to prevent
negotiations with the terrorists. The respected
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who
planned to involve Aslan Maskhadov in discussions
with the hostage-takers, boarded a plane
in Moscow on September 2 with the intention
of travelling to Beslan. She never made it. The
cup of tea she drank in flight was laced with
poison, and she ended up in hospital.

In addition to making plans for attacking the
school building, General Pronichev and his colleagues
were preoccupied with public relations,
which in this case meant misrepresenting the
facts to suit their purposes. As Dunlop notes, in
terms almost identical to those he uses of the
Dubrovka episode, they "attempted heavy-handedly
to manufacture a symbolic link between
the terrorists who were at the school and the
notorious Al-Qaeda". As part of this effort, they
began circulating the rumour that Arab television
stations had offered to help in making contacts
with the terrorists. During the storming of
the school on September 3, one FSB general
went so far as to announce on Russian state television
that nine of the terrorists were Arabs and
that one was a Muslim "Negro".

The FSB also lied about the number of people
taken hostage at the school, claiming that during
the siege it was only 354, when in fact the real
figure, known to all those involved in the crisis,
was more than 1,200. When the terrorists heard
the lower figure cited repeatedly on television
they were furious and began to treat the hostages
even more cruelly. As one hostage later
reported: "They said, `We can do anything we
want with you since there are not 1,200 of you,
but only 354, and the authorities don't need
you'". The accounts of the actual storming of
School No 1 are still a matter of dispute, particularly
in regard to what caused the initial explosions
at around 1pm on September 3. According
to one version, FSB snipers shot, through a window,
the rebel whose foot was at the control of a
bomb. Two explosions then occurred, causing
mayhem in the school. Another possibility is
that the FSB themselves fired the explosives at
the walls of the school. Whatever the case,
thirty minutes later, FSB troops, positioned in
an adjacent building, began directing powerful
flame-throwers at the roof of the school's
gymnasium, which caught fire and collapsed,
killing large numbers of hostages. Meanwhile
tanks and armoured vehicles had moved into
the school yard and began shooting into the
building, causing more fatalities.

As was the case at the Dubrovka Theatre, the
emergency response at Beslan was shockingly
inadequate. Firemen did not appear at the
school to extinguish the blaze in the gymnasium
(where wounded hostages remained) until
almost two hours after the fire started, and then
did not have enough water to do the job. There
was also a shortage of ambulances.

The reaction of President Putin to the tragedy
was, typically, to connect the Beslan siege with
international terrorism and to persist with the
claim that moderate Chechen separatists,
Zakaev and Maskhadov, were involved in the
attack. (This claim justified the retaliatory murder
of Maskhadov by Russian special forces in
March 2005.) In fact, as the Russian president
must have known, local authorities in Beslan
had been in contact by telephone with Zakaev,
who was making arrangements for Maskhadov
to come to Beslan to negotiate with the
terrorists. According to several sources,
Maskhadov's arrival at Beslan on September 3
was imminent. As a recent report of the North
Ossetian Parliamentary Commission on Beslan
observed, "those who had the greatest
interest in [Maskhadov's participation] were of
course the hostages and their families and
Maskhadov himself. The possible success of his
mission would have allowed Maskhadov to
earn a reputation as a peacemaker and increased
his credibility as the legitimate leader of Chechnya
in a dialogue with the central government".
This outcome was the last thing that the FSB
and the Kremlin wanted. In making the decision
to proceed with the storming of School No 1,
FSB officials in Beslan knew they were placing
hundreds of innocent lives at grave risk, but
political considerations took precedence.

Whatever President Putin's role in these
tragic events – a subject that Dunlop does not
go into – he clearly bears major responsibility.
First of all, as an ex-KGB officer and former
chief of the FSB, Putin has an insider's understanding
of how his security services operate.
He is also very close to the current FSB Chief,
Nikolai Patrushev, who worked with him for
many years in the KGB and is his protégé. If
elements within these services were "encouraging"
Chechen extremists in any way, Mr Putin
would have known about it.

The fact that there were few repercussions
for those in charge of handling the crises raises
further questions about President Putin's
motives. Three policemen were put on trial in
Beslan for criminal negligence in not providing
more security to the school; and the local FSB
chief, Valerii Andreev, was sacked as a result
of the Beslan tragedy. But Andreev was later
awarded the plum post of deputy rector of the
FSB Academy, and the man in charge at both
Dubrovka and Beslan, Pronichev, was promoted
to the rank of army general (the highest
possible) in May 2005.

Even more damning is how the Kremlin has
gone out of its way to cover up the truth about
what happened in these hostage crises. The
official report of the Procurator-General that
appeared late last year persisted with the myth
that Beslan was the work of international terrorists
and that the authorities' response to the
crisis was adequate. The report also maintained
that there were only thirty-two hostage-takers,
one of whom survived to face trial, when eyewitnesses
insist that there were many more and
that some escaped.

In November 2005, the non-governmental
organization "Voice of Beslan", composed of
hostages who survived the terrible ordeal at
School No 1 and the families of those who perished
there, sent out an anguished appeal to
Western governments and journalists.
If we had realized what a terrible path lay in
prospect for us after the little town of Beslan
buried more than 300 people, we would have
asked you not to transfer money to us, nor to
send us medicine and other humanitarian assistance.
We would have asked you for nothing
except aid in the investigation of the terrorist
act . . . . We know nothing of who really
ordered the Beslan crime . . . . Why it was not
prevented. Who is to blame for this.

Judging from what happened recently to
Marina Litvinovich, the Russian woman who
runs the website, Pravdabeslana.ru, providing
valuable information on the school hostage
tragedy, it will probably be a long time before
Beslan families get satisfactory answers from
Russian authorities. Litvinovich was savagely
beaten by thugs on a Moscow street and warned
to "be careful". But John Dunlop's book will
help to draw Western attention to the plight of
those who have suffered by these terrorist acts,
and the importance, for all Russians, of uncovering
the truth about what happened.