Word: chechnya
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...waiting Spetsnaz commando troops in the elite Alfa and Vympel antiterror units of the Federal Security Service. The Chechen hostage takers, it seemed, were about to fulfill their death vow. They had sworn that if Russian President Vladimir Putin had not declared an end to the war in Chechnya by Saturday at dawn, they would start killing hostages. If they were assaulted, they made clear they were ready to blow up explosives plastered around the auditorium and strapped to their bodies...
Many Russians will cheer the success of the rescue. But the Chechen raid may also kindle fierce debate about Putin's war. He rose to the presidency of Russia in 2000 on a promise to restore Moscow's grip on the rebellious republic of Chechnya. For the past two years, he regularly claimed victory was all but won. As the champion of order and stability, Putin enjoyed strong public standing, while the government's harsh censorship of news from the war zone nearly a thousand miles from the capital has kept the grim realities of the stalemated conflict...
...year-old leader of the Chechen rebels who was killed last week after seizing more than 750 captives in a Moscow theater. Arbi Barayev, leader of the Chechen Islamic Special Units, famously oversaw the capture and beheading of four telecommunications workers--three from Britain, one from New Zealand--in Chechnya in 1998. Movsar also had an aunt in the rebel business. Khava Barayeva is revered by Chechen guerrillas for her suicide car-bomb attack on a Russian base in the family's home village of Alkhan-Yurt. She was 19 when she blew up herself and two soldiers in June...
...with the brush of international terrorism is not only incorrect; it's disastrous political mistake. Putin is not saying we have a problem in Chechnya that has to be resolved. He's saying simply these are international terrorists that have to be eliminated. But what he's ignoring is the frightening reality on the ground that many young Chechens have come to believe they have nothing to lose, that they're going to die by age 30 and that they want to go down fighting, hoping to kill as many Russians as they can. The 50 people who seized...
...life, the right to survival - that they've become totally amoral. They gave a lot of thought as to how to place their bombs in the theater so as to kill 700 innocent civilians, simply on the grounds that the Russian forces kill a lot of people in Chechnya. And those sentiments may well deepen the ties between Chechen separatists and al-Qaeda. We're not seeing any sign, right now, of the cycle being broken. Those who seized the theater in Moscow may have hoped to get the Russian army out of Chechnya, but they're more likely...