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pic Leader of hostage-takers was killed by toxic
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By
Atef Moatamid, IOL Staff
MOSCOW,
October 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The world woke up
Saturday October 26 on the stunning news that Russian special forces
had stormed the Moscow theater, where about 50 Chechen fighters were
holding about one thousand people hostage, freed the hostages and
killed most of the fighters.
People
across the globe wondered how the crisis ended so suddenly and
without, according to official Russian reports, no fatalities among
the ranks of the Russian forces.
Reading
the accelerated events of the past two days, and judging from previous
and similar crises, the reasons behind the Russian success in defusing
the hostage-taking crisis can be outlined in the following main
points.
Aware
of the long history of Chechen resistance, which registered no attacks
on civilians, the Russian knew that the hostage-taking fighters had no
intention of killing any of their civil hostages.
They
were confident that the fighters' threat of blowing up the theater in
case of any storming attempt by Russian forces was unlikely to be
true.
In
their resistance to Russian troops in their country, Chechen fighters
always targeted Russian military interests and never civilian lives.
The
Russians' knowledge of the rather peaceful tendencies of the Chechen
fighters was further nourished by the release of several hostages over
the past two days.
This
also enabled Russian investigators to get a first-hand account on the
conditions of the hostage-takers, their positions, weaponry,
movements, treatment of the hostages and places they were controlling
inside the theater.
The
fighters had even allowed the hostages to make phone calls from their
personal mobiles until minutes before the Russian forces stormed the
building.
One
of the main reasons of the failure of the hostage-taking, was that the
Chechen fighters seemed to lack military experience.
They
do not seem to have coordinated the operation with experienced Chechen
resistance groups well versed in anti-Russian resistance operations.
A
top aide to Chechen separatist President Aslan Maskhadov said Friday
October 25, that Chechen leaders did know that Chechen fighters were
planning the attack and that they condemned it.
Maskhadov
"categorically condemns this terrorist act", his spokesman,
Akhmed Zakayev, said in a Radio Free Europe interview.
"The
official authority of Chechnya was not aware" the attack was
being prepared, Zakayev added.
"I
tell you officially that Chechnya's state committee of defense did not
decide to carry out military action on the territory of the
enemy," he said.
The
rebel leadership was "prepared to help the hostages if the
Russian government asks us", Zakayev went on.
“The
gunmen, holding hundreds of people in a Moscow theatre, are not
officially connected to us, but are desperate people who have lost
their families”, he added.
Maskhadov
has in the past urged separatists to restrict their struggle to
Chechen territory.
The
independence fighters in Chechnya have developed sky-high expertise
and competence in targeting Russian forces during the past three
years, with at least 2000 Russian troops killed in separate resistance
operations based on guerilla tactics.
The
lack of such experience was evident in the televised statement made by
the leader of the Chechen hostage-takers, Movsar Barayev.
Speaking
Russian, he sounded hesitant and unconfident of himself compared to
the well-known stereotype of daring Chechen fighters.
This,
undoubtedly, was spotted by Russian observers who rely on
psychological analysis of the hostage-takers as one of the main
criteria to build their assessment of the situation.
The
Chechen fighters' lack of experience was also self-evident in their
choice of a deadline to start executing their threat to kill hostages.
They
chose the early morning of the day, a period of lull media coverage in
Russia.
The
timing gave the Russian forces the chance to break into the theater
building amid a rather media "calm" and to clamp a sort of
black-out amid speculations that the fatality toll must have been in
the hundreds (between 150-200 people).
Even
the design of the building was to the disadvantage of the Chechen
fighters.
The
building is full of windows and exits and the Russian forces had a
detailed sketch of the theater before moving in.
This,
for sure, made the storming mission a lot easier for the Russians
compared to other situations, for example, of plane hijacking.
Russian
generals emphasized the ability of their special forces to sweep the
theater, guaranteeing minimal human loss, reported the
widely-circulated Russian paper Ivesti on Friday October 25.
Such
a scenario will be prepared for by stressing the fact of “a sure
amount of loss among hostages and forces alike”, it added.
The
generals argued, according to Ivesti, that in previous similar cases,
Russia’s giving in (to the demands of hostage takers) never yielded
anything good.
In
similar hostage crises, the Russian forces expressed regret over
resorting to dialogue with hostage takers.
The
media also played a major role in favoring the military solution of
the crisis by depicting the hostage-taking operation as a new act of
international terrorism such as the Bali explosions and the attack on
the French supertanker off the Yemeni coast.
This
helped muster international support and sympathy for Moscow,
encouraging Russia to take a military approach despite expected
fatalities.
