How an attempt by Islamic militants to pressure Moscow and ratchet up ethnic tensions in the Caucasus led to the seizure of a school and the taking of more than a thousand hostages
Russia has a long and painful history of terrorism. From political assassinations in the 19th century to lone-wolf attacks in the 1980s, it has encountered all manners of horror. However, the most brutal attacks were carried out in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Islamist militants. The Beslan school siege in September 2004 stands out as the worst terrorist outrage in Russian history.
RT presents a three-part story about a tragedy that continues to shock Russians even 20 years later.
Politics, Separatism, War and Jihad
As the Soviet Union was disbanding in 1991, Chechnya, a republic in southern Russia with a population of around one million people, unilaterally declared independence. What had begun as a quest for national sovereignty quickly turned into an ethnic cleansing of the local Russian population and political purges of Chechens who opposed the new regime. In 1994, Russia launched a military operation against militants in the region. This led to a war that lasted until 1996, when the two sides reached a ceasefire agreement and Russian troops withdrew. By this time, the conflict had become increasingly brutal. The turning point came when Chechen guerilla leader Shamil Basayev seized a hospital in the city of Budyonnovsk, taking many people hostage.
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However, the ceasefire didn’t last long. Whereas until 1996, the conflict revolved around Chechen nationalism and the republic’s right to self-determination, soon it attracted the attention of global terrorist networks, including Al-Qaeda. In 1999, the war resumed – this time under the banner of global jihad. Basayev, along with Arab jihadist fighter Khattab invaded the neighboring republic of Dagestan, where they faced fierce resistance from local militias and the Russian army. The incursion failed, and it led to Moscow’s forces re-entering Chechnya.
Starting in 1999, a grueling guerrilla war unfolded. Russian forces faced tactical setbacks but gradually wore down the Islamist detachments. Basayev became a prominent guerilla leader and reverted to the age-old tactic of terrorism. In 2002, a theater in Moscow was seized during a performance. Half of the 44 terrorists participating in the attack were female suicide bombers equipped with explosive belts. The hostage rescue operation was extremely challenging, and 129 out of the 916 hostages ended up dying. Unlike in Budyonnovsk, however, the attackers were neutralized.
The terrorists continued to target civilians in Russia, organizing terrorist and suicide attacks in public spaces, but they did not obtain the desired result of paralyzing Russian society. Instead, they galvanized support for decisive action. Soon, Basayev came to believe that he needed to carry out a large-scale attack to turn the tide of the war. It’s important to note that the actual president of Chechnya who represented the republic internationally was not Basayev but Aslan Maskhadov.