Jeff Bossuyt

On the 26th of October, at 6 o’clock Russian special troops attacked the theatre DK in Moscow. According to the latest data approximately 800 people were taken into the hospital. According to VRT –news 67 hostages were killed during this operation. The troopers used sleeping gas and killed 34 hostage takers, among them their leader the Chechen fighter Movsar Baraev. The other hostage takers were detained. The vice-mayor of Moscow said that besides the Chechen also Afghan and Arabian hostage takers participated. In the city of Moscow also 33 accomplices were detained.

Wednesday evening 23^rd October the masked and armed terrorists interrupted the musical Nord-Ost. They took hostage hundreds of the spectators, one woman being killed. They carried explosives and announced that they would kill the hostages and blow up the theatre building in a suicide act. Their demand was that the Russian troops must withdraw from Chechnya.

Already 280 years ago, in 1722, the float of Peter the Great has landed in Dagestan. Since then Chechnya has been a part of Russia. The western superpowers have always considered this region as a crowbar to attack Russia from the South and to control it. In 1918, after the Bolshevik revolution, general Denikin occupied Chechnya. English and French warships arrived through the Black Sea in the harbour of Novorossisk in order to support him. In 1942 Nazi- Germany occupied a part of Chechnya, hoping to open a second front and attack Russia from her back. In 1989 the American media demanded disintegration of the Soviet Union and opening of this area to their multinationals. The United Sates are first of all interested in the control of the oil transportation routes from the Caspian Sea and from Baku, which lie on the Chechen territory. In 1991 president Yeltsin committed a coup assisted by a Chechen general Djokhar Dudaev. Yeltsin dismissed the Soviet Union and inspired a number of bloody nationalist civil wars. He called "to take as much independence as you can bear". Dudaev obeyed this summon and proclaimed the independence of Chechnya. Yeltsin left behind in Chechnya the Russian weapons. This resulted into the 1^st Chechen war (1994-1996), when Russia demanded control over the oil transports in the region. In 1997 Aslan Maskhadov was elected president, and he concluded a truce with Russian general Lebed. The republic was being ruined by kidnappings, robberies and battles for the oil line. In 1999 the fighters Shamil Basaev and Jordanian Khatab attacked the adjoining republic of Dagestan, and advanced on its capital Makhachkala. They had clear ties with the Al Quaida organization of Osama Ben Laden. They defended the following program: to tear off the South of Russia, and to form a great Islam republic from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. President Putin did not eliminate these terrorist bands. He started a bloody front war against the Chechen villages and cities. His ruthless bombardments of the citizens create a deep precipice between the Chechens and the Russians. His politics push the Chechens even further into the hands of rightist nationalists and foreign "saviours".

In 1995 the Chechen terrorist Shamil Basaev invaded Russia with two lorries of explosives and 150 armed men. His target was to commit a terrorist act, and to force the Russians to start negotiations. Nevertheless he was stopped in the town Budennovsk. Where he took hostage 1500 patients. More than hundred were killed during the assault.

The American major Raymond C. Finch gave the following evaluation to this action in the Military Review of June 1997: "We are moving to the 21^st century and the structure of the war game is changing. The war field is no more isolated and the battle is not limited to men wearing uniform. The methods used by Basaev are brutal and violate acknowledged rules of conducting a war. But if we see these actions in the light of the Chechen struggle for independence they seem to be brave and praiseworthy."

On the 7^th of October 1999, president Maskhadov called in his letter to the NATO’s general secretary George Robertson to "intervene in Chechnya within the frames of the establishing by the NATO of the new world order".

The hostage-taking in the DK theatre was apparently planned by the Chechen president Maskhadov himself. Earlier he resisted to the actions outside Chechnya. Nevertheless in his latest TV-address he predicted, that "soon some events will happen that will drastically change the developments in Chechnya". The leader of the terrorists, Movsar Barayev, had admitted to the correspondent of the Sunday Times, that he was in contact with Maskhadov. His telephone calls to Chechnya, Turkey and a number of Arabic countries were eavesdropped. President Maskhadov on his own has little influence among clans and fighters. His power comes from foreign sources, in the first place from Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former advisor of President Carter, described in his book "The big chess-board" the strategy of the USA towards Russia. He now wants to weaken, pre-dominate and dismantle Russia, what was done earlier to the Soviet Union. "A more open Russian confederation, consisting of a European Russia, a Siberian republic, and a republic in the Far East, would speed up its development." Recently, Brzezinski had been incredibly active as a chairman of the American "Committee for democracy in Chechnya". He demands from president Putin to start negotiations about a "political solution" in Chechnya, and anyway with… president Maskhadov. On 16 August they proceeded already with a meeting of the committee, which is also called "Committee Brzezinski-Haig", in the principality of Liechtenstein. Besides the American founders there were also present the Chechens Khasboelatov and Aslakhanov, and the representative of president Maskhadov, his "Minister of Culture", Akhmed Zakaev. The plan was discussed of "giving to Chechnya a special status under international supervision of the Organization for Safety and Cooperation in Europe"(2)

In an interview by phone, on the day of the assault, the chairman of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union, Nina Andreeva, gave her first analysis of the situation:

"This terrorist action has been conducted by the marionettes of the American secrete services. There purpose is to press president Putin. The regime of president Putin is pro-American. It consists of the former co-workers taken over by Yeltsin, e.g. Khakamada, Nemtsov and Tchubais, and the Union of Right Forces. But now the American president Bush wants to enforce obligness for the bombardments he is planning in Iraq, against Saddam Hoessein. The UNO Security Counsel resisted the war, because of three countries, China, France and Russia. Bush and the CIA are exerting pressure upon president Putin in order to have cart blanche to attack the "axis of the evil", first Iraq, then Korea and then the rest. The terrorists, and the United States, demand the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Chechnya. It would result into the collapse of Russia. In this vacuum the Americans could get their place. That is why they are establishing military and air bases in Central Asia.

The deeper cause is the crisis which imperialism is now going through. All the indexes of the economy are falling still and the international stock markets are shrinking. The capitalism is looking for a usual was out of the crisis: a war. That is why the US is trying to start wars."

(1) "Aslan Maskhadov, Mastermind of Moscow Terrorist Attack". Ria-Novosti, 25.10.02

(2) Sanobar Sjermatova in Moskovski Novosti van 27.8.