Russian citizens needed no confirmation of this, and some foreign governments had already come to the view that there were links between some of the Chechen rebels and al-Qaeda.
....For the Chechen rebels themselves - at least the more moderate elements, including the elected Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov - the incident is a public relations disaster.
For a long time, Western governments continued to urge Moscow to open negotiations with Mr Maskhadov, though less forcefully after 11 September 2001.
Already the US has ceased to recommend him as a suitable negotiating partner, and other countries are now increasingly likely to take the same view.
....Mr Maskhadov has long been weakened by the fact that the main financial backing for the rebel cause comes from the Muslim world supporting a jihad, or holy war. Yes, you read right, in the BBC the words "Chechen" "terrorists" and "jihad" all appeared in the same story if not the same sentence.
This backgrounder from Deutsche Welle makes the Chechen/terrorism/militant Islam connection explicit:
- The situation calmed somewhat after a kidnapping in January 1996 prompted the Yeltsin regime to make moves toward allowing the creation of a separate state. That never materialized, however, and Putin has made anti-separatism a main cause.
"When Putin came to power in 1999, his main message to the population was, 'there is a wounded place on the territory of the former Soviet Union and I will heal this wounded place. I will stop the separatists once and forever'", Gasan Gusejnov [an expert on ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union who has taught about Chechen history and politics at the Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf] said.
While this message was hugely popular among Russians, it was a tougher sell in the outside world. Until the attacks on September 11, 2001.
"Immediately after September 11, Putin decided he could get support for this position because it looks very similar (to terrorism) and it is very similar," said Gusejnov. "And no doubt there are contacts between Chechens and Arab groups or the Taliban or al Qaeda because it is a shadow world. And it is a world with huge amounts of weapons."
Andrew Jack of the Financial Times also makes the connection explicit:
- The siege in a Moscow theatre took a further dramatic turn on Thursday when the Arab Al Jazeera television network broadcast video tapes of people it claimed were involved in the hostage-taking drama in the Russian capital.
Article comments
1 - John Tobin
You may want to include what the Russians are saying about this. Check out http://english.pravda.ru/
Moscow: Chechen terrorists take theatre
Chechen kamikaze squad take theatre with 1,000 hostages in Moscow
A group of between 20 and 30 kamikaze Chechen terrorists stormed a packed Moscow theatre tonight, threatening to blow the building up unless their demands are met. It is feared that due to the fact that their demands are unrealistic, they will prefer to become martyrs, rather than prisoners. ....
2 - Eric Olsen
Excellent John, thanks. You kind of figured the Russians wouldn't hesitate to characterize the situation as such.
3 - Tom
So do the Russkies continue to oppose us on Iraq, or do we team up and get to work on removing this blight once and for all? And when we're done with the filthy French, we can go after the Islamofacists
4 - Michael Levy
The headline over at The Guardian is "Muslim Peace Activists Detain Russian Theatergoers in Mass Protest"
Okay, I made that up. But it's almost believable.
5 - RC
Why such an increase in activity (Bali, Moscow, Phillippines) when it would appear such terrorist activity would bring more allies to our side? These nutjobs need a course in game theory or marketing or something.
One thing though. Were any of us calling the Chechens 'terrorists' prior to 9/11? Probably not. I think most American right/left-wingers thought the Moscow apartment bombings were some sort of Russian conspiracy to allow Putin to re-invade Chechnya.
Actually, considering this country's isolationist bent at the time, most of us probably didn't really care.
6 - pj
It does cause me to rethink my view of Russian's war in Chechnya, particularly the second war. If I were the Russians, I'd pump the theater full of carbon monoxide, which is odorless and invisible, then drag out the hostages and try to revive them with oxygen. The "mining" activity described in news reports might make that impossible though, because you'd have to move very quickly after everyone passed out to save the hostages.
7 - David Gillies
I certainly thought of the Chechen separatists as terrorists long before 9/11. As far as I'm concerned we should give Russia a free hand to deal with the problem in as brutal a fashion as they see fit.
8 - Thomas Dent
Does anyone here know any Chechen/Russian history? Does it make no difference at all that Russia/USSR has treated the people there like shit since the Russian invasion and conquest of the land a century and a half ago? In this case, as in the case of Ireland post potato famine, "root causes" demonstrably exist and have little to do with religious fanaticism.
If you have a little time to read history, try
http://www.newsbee.net/moscow/chhistory.html
in which you will find the elegant solution of Stalin to the "Islamic fundamentalists" of his day (i.e. Muslims who resisted his authority): deport the whole population hundreds of miles away. Compared to the Russian war in 1995, that was pretty humane.
9 - Eric Olsen
Everyone has legitimate grievances - what counts most is how you deal with them.