Dudayev's erratic and authoritarian behavior, the severe economic slump, and increasing crime, corruption, and clan rivalry led to political infighting, attempted coups, countercoups, and mounting opposition to his leadership. He finally dissolved the Chechen parliament and introduced direct presidential rule. On November 29, 1992, Yeltsin issued an ultimatum to all the warring factions in Chechnya ordering them to immediately disarm and surrender. When the government in Grozny refused, the Russian president ordered his army to restore constitutional order by force.
In December 1994, Russia began aerial bombardment of Chechnya, including the capital city of Grozny. Russian forces assumed that every Chechen was the enemy and no one was spared. Thousands of civilians died as a result of carpet bombings and rocket artillery barrages. As civilian losses mounted, the Chechen population—even those opposed to Dudayev—became increasingly hostile to the Russian forces. Highly mobile units of Chechen fighters caused severe losses to Russia's demoralized troops. By summer 1996, the Chechen rebels had managed to split the Russian forces into a dozen isolated pockets. Over a period of one week, the rebels were able to fend off the Russian forces and send them fleeing.
The First Chechen War culminated in the Battle of Grozny, also known as Operation Jihad, in August 1996, a bloody siege in which more than 27,000 Chechen civilians died in the first five weeks (some estimates suggest the number exceeded 35,000, including 5,000 children). The bloodbath shocked Russians and the outside world, resulting in severe criticism of the war and waning domestic support among Russians. The total number of civilian deaths in the war is estimated to have been between 30,000 and 100,000, with as many as 200,000 more injured and more than 500,000 people displaced by the fighting. Yeltsin finally called for a ceasefire in 1996 and signed a peace treaty, the Khasav-Yurt Accord, the following year.
The peace agreement was short-lived. In August 1999, Yeltsin nominated Vladimir Putin, a relatively unknown former security service agent, to head the government. Shortly thereafter a series of bomb attacks destroyed several apartment blocks in Moscow and other Russian cities, claiming hundreds of victims. Although the perpetrators were never properly identified and there were many indications that the FSB was responsible, Putin used the bombings as an excuse to once again undertake a full-scale military mobilization against Chechnya. Appealing to Russian chauvinism, Putin's Unity Party swept into office on a wave of nationalist rhetoric and hyperbole.
In the period between the peace treaty and the resumption of hostilities, Chechnya had become the new focal point of the global jihad. As the Taliban consolidated their control of Kabul, many mujahideen fighters migrated to Chechnya, bringing with them the same techniques that had succeeded against the Russians in Afghanistan. Arms and money flowed to Chechnya as Arab mercenaries were integrated into the separatist units. Secular nationalists embraced Islam as a means of exploiting the new allies and resources. Warlords like Salman Raduyev and Arbi Barayev emerged in a region increasingly characterized by its lawlessness. Those Chechen groups not taking money from the jihadis engaged in campaigns of kidnapping and hostage-taking; more than 1,300 people were kidnapped and held for ransom. In August and September 1999, Chechen leader Shamil Basayev (in association with an Arab jihadi, Ibn Al Khattab) led two armies of two thousand Chechen, Dagestani, Arab, and international mujahideen and Wahhabi militants from Chechnya into the neighboring Republic of Dagestan and so precipitated the Second Chechen War.
Putin responded with massive aerial bombardments intended to wipe out the militants and flatten Grozny. The air campaign was followed by a new ground war. In the notorious zachistka (mopping-up) operations, Russian units would cordon off a village and prevent anyone from entering or leaving. In Chechnya, it was normal for people to disappear. The disappearances would take place either during the mopping-up operations or at the police checkpoints, which were set up on the roads leading in and out of every city. Over the course of several days, the Russians would violently interrogate Chechen civilians. Often the men and boys were killed and dumped in open pits that were subsequently blown up to obliterate all trace of the bodies.12 The women who found themselves in police custody were vulnerable to sexual predation.13 Tens of thousands were arrested, tortured, or disappeared. According to the 2001 annual report by Amnesty International:
There were frequent reports that Russian forces indiscriminately bombed and shelled civilian areas. Chechen civilians, including medical personnel, continued to be the target of military attacks by Russian forces. Hundreds of Chechen civilians and prisoners of war were extra judicially executed. Journalists and independent monitors continued to be refused access to Chechnya. According to reports, Chechen fighters frequently threatened, and in some cases killed, members of the Russian-appointed civilian administration and executed Russian captured soldiers.14
The Chechens began to use suicide terrorism against government targets in 2000. Russian troops had been instructed to focus their attention on men between the ages of seventeen and forty, so Basayev opted to use female bombers. Two women, one aged twenty-two and the other sixteen, perpetrated the first attack, against Russian checkpoints. The twenty-two-year-old was Khava Barayeva, sister of the warlord Arbi Barayev, and soon to be a model for Chechen women and girls throughout the region. Basayev used women in several more operations, to great effect. At the outset his attacks were directed against Russian military and police but, as the conflict raged on, Basayev began to target civilians. In 1995 he took over a hospital in the Russian city of Budyonnovsk; in 2000 he attacked the Russian military base at Vedeno; and finally, he and his lieutenant, Arbi Barayev, began to hatch their most shocking plan to date: to target civilians in Moscow. The two men narrowed down possible targets: the Bolshoi Ballet, the Stage Theater, the Central House of Youth, and another theater, the Dubrovka House of Culture. They agreed that the Dubrovka was likely to have the most Russians (and fewest foreigners) in the audience, and so chose it as their target. Barayev did not get to put the plan into action, however; he was killed by Russian special forces in June 2001.
Notorious for his viciousness, Arbi Barayev was an inspiration to his twenty-five-year-old nephew, the rebel leader Movsar. Arbi boasted that he had personally killed more than 170 people while leading the Chechen Islamic Special Units and the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment (SPIR). He was infamous for shooting six members of the International Red Cross (ICRC) in 1996, and for beheading four foreign telecommunications workers—three British citizens and one New Zealander—in 1998. (Osama bin Laden allegedly paid Arbi thirty million dollars for the feat, outbidding by ten million the Russian police's offer for their safe return.)15 To honor Arbi's memory, Movsar adopted his name and joined with Shamil Basayev to commemorate the first anniversary of his uncle's assassination in fitting fashion.
DUBROVKA: THE HOUSE OF CULTURE
The lights in Moscow's House of Culture flickered on and off to signal the end of intermission and the beginning of the second act. Ladies decked out in jewels and furs and men in designer suits hurried back to their seats as the orchestra readied the audience for Georgy Vasilyev's sold-out performance of the hit musical The Two Captains. The Nord Ost players took their places on the darkened stage. More than 850 people16 eagerly awaited the play's conclusion. The musical was about love and intrigue during World War II. The elaborate set design and complicated staging had amazed critics: firecrackers and rockets boomed and a real aircraft landed onstage during every performance. It was a stereotypically Russian plot with singing bombers, dancing pilots, and folk music. There were few non-Russians and only a handful of foreigners in the audience.
Five minutes into the second act, an armed man appeared on the stage. This was the reborn Arbi Barayev, a.k.a. Movsar Suleimenov, and the AK-47 in his hands was no stage prop. He announced that he was taking the audience and the actors hostage. At first, many members of the audience assumed the armed man was part of the show. Their smiles faded as Barayev fired several shots into the air. A half-dozen terrorists had been seated in the orchestra; now they pulled black hoods and masks over their heads, drew machine guns from under the seats, and stood to join the other armed Chechen men and women—more than forty in total—who filtered into the crowd. The men wore fatigues and clutched automatic rifles in their hands. F-1 hand grenades dangled from their belts. The women switched out of their sweaters and jeans and covered