It is hard to describe the emotions each of us living in Moscow experienced as the Chechen kamikazes held the hostages at the theater in Dubrovka. Days after the tragedy — have those days really passed? We still don’t know about all of the hostages — rereading commentaries carried by Western periodicals, I wonder at their reasonable impersonal approach, cool, measured assessments. Actually, it is my style also, but now I understand what the effect of personal presence is all about, when you see everything with your own eyes, rather than on television. Now I understand how different were the emotions in New York on September 11, 2001 from ours — and ours from those of the CNN viewers. At the time we thought we were with the Americans with all our hearts. How very different it is to feel sympathetic and be on the verge of insanity under the unbearable strain of an ongoing catastrophe.
And what next? A great many observers are busy analyzing just how justifiable and effective the Russian SWAT operation was. This is very important, of course, primarily because the operation is practically unprecedented in the history of struggle against terrorism. Also because — let’s face it — we don’t know all the truth about that operation, about the guerrillas’ actual capacities and the risks involved. However, what bothers me as much is whether to expect new acts of terrorism, new victims, new hostages. We must know answers to these questions, if not for the good of Russian society, then just to know what to expect.
It is important to understand that the act of terrorism in Dubrovka was not an ordinary criminal operation or a standard action on the part of world terrorism (a subject very actively discussed by Soviet authorities). It was an act of terrorism on behalf of the government and military machines of that allegedly nonexistent Ichkeria. Nonexistent? How about its victims being buried in Moscow just days ago? Barayev and his men were not just terrorists, they were soldiers of Ichkeria, acting on orders from their command. Yes, their command in Ichkeria. It can be condemned and cursed, but it cannot be shrugged off as a handful of badmen. It is part of a real criminal government machine, as is Russian policy in the Caucasus — during the first Chechen War and later, when Moscow divided and ruled, conniving at the petty abominable ambitions of field commanders that would become great men, and of course during the second Chechen War of carpet bombing and large scale “cleansing” operations — only helped that machine grow stronger and recruit fresh manpower, all those young and fanatical soldiers like Movsar Barayev.
The Ichkerian command has opened a new Russian front. It means the possibility of explosions in any Russian city, anywhere, be it a theater, hospital, block of apartments, the subway, or railroad... Moscow, of course, remains the center of this front. They saw the reverberations and now realize the difference between an act of terrorism in Moscow and one in Budionnovsk or Buinaksk. They won’t flee Moscow. On the contrary, they will send reinforcements.
What should we do? It is a question addressing Russian society rather than the Russian government. I wrote a lot a long time ago about the Israeli experience of the inevitability of a political solution to the problem of terrorism, and that Russia would surely partake of it. The Russians, however — as a society and body politic — must come to this understanding themselves, the way the Israelis did. President Putin is not a hawk leading his electorate astray; he is a politician and is keenly aware of his electorate’s interests and sentiments. As the public mood changes, so will the decisions made by the regime. After that combating terrorism will no longer consist in finding immediate solutions to immediate problems, it will be a strategy of national survival. However, all this will happen sometime in the future, meanwhile there is a road to travel through new cataclysms and losses. Sorry.
