Seven years ago on 23 October 2002, between forty and fifty terrorists stormed the Dubrovka theatre in Moscow with weapons and explosives and took some 900 people, cast and audience, hostage in the middle of the popular musical Nord-Ost.

The Chechen separatist field commander and self-proclaimed terrorist Shamil Basaev took responsibility, claiming his intention was to bring international attention to the Russian warfare and brutal suppression in Chechnya.

That was Basaev's claim, but let us pause for a moment to consider what other forces were at work and which other interests may have been served by the carrying out of this atrocity.

In 2002, unlike today, there was an international willingness to find a just solution to Chechnya's suffering following the terrible trauma of the second Russian invasion in eight years.

Chechen foreign minister Ylias Akhmadov was making progress with US politicians and President Maskadov's envoy Akhmed Zakaev was seeking a peace plan with prominent politicians in Lichtenstein. Further meetings between Zakaev and Russian delegates were scheduled for November that year. Prime Minister Primakov had launched a 6 point action plan. Former US security advisor Brzezinski and former Russian Duma speakers Khasbulatov and Rybkin were involved. The general mood was favourable for the Chechens and they had every interest to keep it that way.

However, this was also the year after the 9/11 attacks on the United States and Putin had conveniently redefined his war on Chechnya from "war on Chechen separatism" to "war on international terror." We must also remember that Putin had come to power on a wave of emotions stirred up prior to his new war on Chechnya which he embarked on in the autumn of 1999. While he maintained relatively high levels of support, it was now beginning to wane and an election was due the following year in 2003.

Peace and political stability in Chechnya may have been the dream of the Chechens and an honest motive of the international community. However, it was contrary to the interests of the Kremlin elite as it would further the cause of democracy in Russia and undermine the level of authoritarian control they had come to rely on for political survival. It was also against the interests of large parts of the military with huge economic personal gains to protect. And finally, the Chechen Islamists or "Wahhabists", who were increasingly fundamentalist in their approach, were opposed to such a peace process as political balance and stability would wipe them and their "raison d'etre" off the Chechen spectrum.

Continued conflict would feed all these factions - it was surely no wonder they found common ground.

John B. Dunlop is a senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and an expert on Russia's two wars on Chechnya. In his book on the Dubrovka hostage siege he gives an impressive and detailed account of the preparations leading up to the terrorist action. According to Dunlop, one of the instrumental leaders of the terror campaign was a Chechen, Ruslan Elmurzaev (known as Abubakar) who had obvious links to the Russian secret police, the FSB; an observation that has been further confirmed by Mikhail Trepashkin, a famous FSB defector, Putin critic and colleague of Alexander Litvinenko.

Anna Politkovskaya, the famous Russian journalist who was murdered in 2006 was a mediator for the hostage takers in the theatre and had first hand experience of the crisis. In April 2003 she published an astonishing interview with another Chechen FSB agent, Kanpash Terkibaev, and concluded that he had also entered the theatre with the terrorists as a member of their unit. He assisted them into the theatre but had left before the Russian commandoes stormed it three days later. He subsequently operated among high political circles without any difficulty and even travelled with the Duma's foreign policy committee to Strasbourg as a human rights advisor in March 2003 - a fact that screams for an explanation.

Several of the alleged female suicide bombers who were reported by the authorities to have been involved were, according to other sources, in prison at the time of the siege. Deputy Editor of the Novaya Gazeta, Yuri Shchekochikhin, wrote in January 2003: "Unexpectedly, last week I learned that one of the female terrorists in the Nord-Ost building was not just anyone but a woman who had been imprisoned for a long time in one of the Russian (penal) colonies. She was recognized on television by her mother, a resident of Shelkovskii Raion in Chechnya. She cannot understand how her daughter reached Moscow as a terrorist from a prison cell!"

Shchekochikhin was a Duma member and Deputy Chairman of the parliamentary security committee. He was a strong and outspoken critic of the Russian atrocities in Chechnya and took part in the Lichtenstein peace process where he met with Akhmed Zakaev. Six months after this article was published he died a terribly painful death, having been poisoned with some unknown substance.

Looking back at the siege itself, it was Vladimir Putin who brought events to a deadly crescendo, when he took the irrevocable decision to have the Russian special purpose troops Spetznatz storm the building on 26 October. Until that point no bomb had exploded and no one had been killed. Indeed, most of the bombs were empty or without batteries or detonators. Putin's decision showed no regard for the mediation of a peaceful solution, nor for the lives of the innocent hostages.

Immediately prior to the assault a psycho-chemical gas called "Kolokol" was diffused through the theatre via the ventilation system. It killed 130 of the hostages. A number of the surviving hostages have also died since then, and whilst it is a State secret that would lead to immediate court proceedings and long prison sentences, overall casualties are rumoured to have reached 300. All the terrorists were shot on the spot. With the exception, of course, of Terkibaev and Elmurzaev, the two Russian agents who escaped, no survivors were to be left to testify and explain the context.

As the theatre burned, Akhmed Zakaev unambiguously stated his position: "The Chechen leadership headed by President A. Maskadov categorically condemns all actions against the civilian population. We do not accept the terrorist method for the solution of any kind of problem.... We call on both sides, the armed people in the theatre, and the government of Russia to find an unbloody solution to this difficult situation."

However, Russia's intentions had been achieved. The international community found the situation intractable and was unable to untangle all of the facts and allegations. President Maskadov, his deputies and envoys were implicated as possible accomplices in what was successfully branded by the Russian authorities as a further battle in the Global War on Terror. The possibility of negotiations with Maskadov or some other moderate Chechen separatist appeared unthinkable.

At the same time, oil and gas prices went through the roof and Russia emerged as Europe's principal supplier of energy. Who would dare to challenge such a resourceful neighbour over a million souls in a distant dark corner of Europe?

Europe and the US turned away from the fate of the Chechen people. The Russians succeeded in sidelining peace and allowing war to prevail - with the blinkered and supine acceptance of the international community. Cowardice and complacency ruled the Realpolitik!

And what of Putin's reaction to it all? I quote John B. Dunlop from his report:

"On 27 October, President Putin invited the special forces commandoes from the ‘Alfa' and ‘Vympel' units who had taken back the theatre to a special reception at the Kremlin. In his remarks, Putin praised the professionalism of the two units of the FSB, and then joined with them in a silent standing toast.

In early January 2003, shortly after New Year's Eve, Putin signed a secret decree to award six people with Hero of Russia stars (Russia's highest decoration) including three FSB officials and two soldiers from the special units ‘Alfa' and ‘Vympel'.

The sixth ‘hero' is the chemist who gassed the theatre centre."

Ivar Amundsen
Director, Chechnya Peace Forum