Oct 25, 2002 4 min read

MOSCOW (AP) – As the war in Chechnya drags on, acts of desperation committed by Chechen rebels furious at the destruction of their homeland have grown even more brutal, pushing them closer to extremist Islam and creating a new generation ready to kill innocent civilians for their cause. Gone are the days when future rebel field commander Shamil Basayev pranced in a leather coat and brimmed hat around the Chechen capital, Grozny, just after Chechnya had declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, boasting of his success in hijacking a plane to Turkey.

A number of the Chechens who led efforts to create an independent country and have fought two brutal wars against Russia have adopted the language, methods and sometimes even the dress of extremist Islamic movements and taken to terrorism to draw attention to their cause.

“They are cold professionals, and they are very tough,” said Irina Khakamada, a liberal lawmaker who held talks Thursday with the Chechen rebels holding hundreds of hostages in a Moscow theater to press their demands for Russia to withdraw its troops from their homeland, a mountainous mainly Muslim region in the northern Caucasus.

“They have no problem between life and death,” Khakamada said, speaking on Russian television.

The Chechens are among the fiercely independence-minded ethnic groups in Russia, and battled the czars in the 19th century before being defeated. They suffered mass deportation during World War II and declared independence as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Russian forces invaded in 1994 to suppress their independence drive. The rebels carried out bloody hostage-takings in 1995-1996, which helped force Russia first to negotiate, then to withdraw it troops.

War broke out again in 1999 after rebels raided nearby Dagestan and Russian authorities blamed rebels for a series of bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people.

In the fighting, much of Chechnya has been destroyed, and tens of thousands of Chechens have been killed. Human rights organizations say the Russian forces’ brutality has contributed to driving young men into rebel groups, some of which have been funded by outside Arab sources.

A pro-rebel Web site, www.kavkaz.org, described the hostage takers as “smertniki,” a word that in Russian refers to fighters who die for a cause – and echoes the terminology used by suicide bombers in the Middle East, who call themselves “martyrs.”

The Web site said the group was led by Movsar Barayev, the 25-year-old nephew of warlord Arbi Barayev, who reportedly was killed last year. It said some of the women hostage-takers were the widows of Chechen rebels and that they attacked the theater to avenge their losses.

However, Dzhafar Zufarov, an influential mufti in southern Russia, said Barayev was paid to take over the theater, and the money could possibly have come from sources in Saudi Arabia.

Increasingly, Chechen rebels have found a bulwark in Islam and a source of funding and political support in Arab nations, which helps explain the growing influence of outside Islamic groups in Chechnya.

The Russians, meanwhile, have insisted on a military solution for Chechnya, saying they will never negotiate with the rebels, whom they say have links to international terrorism.

“Now the positions have hardened. With whom should Russia negotiate?” asked Alexander Rahr, one of Germany’s leading specialists on Russia in an interview on Germany’s n-tv channel.

Non-native Islamic influence was evident Thursday when the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television network broadcast the demands of the hostage-takers. The tape apparently was made before the hostage-taking began Wednesday night and delivered to the network Thursday morning.

In the footage, one of the rebels who carried out the attack had a laptop in front of him and a copy of the Quran at his right hand.

“We came to the Russian capital to stop the war or gain martyrdom … Each one of us is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of God and the independence of Chechnya,” one of the hostage-takers said.

Khakamada, the lawmaker, said she didn’t think the hostage-takers were acting of their own accord. “Someone is standing behind them. They are not free in their actions,” she said.