Moscow - should they storm the theatre?

Great Debates
1

Details of this unbelievable story can be found here.

I can’t decide how I would deal with this situation myself, if I were the head of Moscow police. Storming the building with grenades and special forces would seem to be out because there’s about 20 or 30 armed hijackers, they have explosives strapped to their body and have planted explosives throughout the building.

Negotiation would seem to be out because the Chechen terrorists are really hardcore - they claim they are martyrs who came to Moscow not to live but to die. Also their demands are unrealistic - they are demanding that Russia pulls out of Chechnya, no way Russia is going to agree to this.

I can’t see how any peaceful outcome to this can be brought about. The leader of the hijackers is the nephew of a leading Chechen militant so they are a serious bunch.

Of all the worlds terrorists I think the Chechen boys must be the ones I would least like to be hijacked by. They combine Islamic fundamentalism with demands for an independent country - a nasty combination. I think I’d rather be hijacked by Palestinians than by Chechens.

(ps I’m not expressing any opinion on the justification or otherwise of the Chechen cause, the Russians have treated them very badly. I’m just considering this one isolated incident)

2

Just dropping in to say that storming the theater would only result in the militants blowing themselves up, along with the people in the theater, resulting in the phenomenon known as a “bloodbath”, so why on earth would anyone even suggest that as a solution?

Why not just lob a couple of missiles in there, be a lot quicker and cheaper than storming the place? :rolleyes:

3

They have nearly 800 people in there and will not object to killing them all - I relaly don’t think rushing to storm the place is all tht great an idea, (although I do see that the bombers are not going to be all that happy to negotiate). Nasty nasty situation.

Hell, to terrorise people in a theatre, all you really need to do is put on any ANdrew Lloyd Webber production.

4

Is the building modern, or Tsarist-era?

If the latter, even a small explosive charge might bring it down around everybody’s ears.

Yay I get you use the word “Tsarist”! :slight_smile:

5

Well, I suspect the Chechen rebels have been taking lessons from the Palestinians. Since apparently basically nobody outside Chechnya both a) gives a damn about what’s going on there, and b) seems inclined to do anything about it, they’ve decided to take their platform to somewhere to which the rest of the world pays at least a bit more attention.

Not that I agree with their tactics, of course, but I can certainly comprehend their immense frustration.

6

The radio this morning played a tape of one of the captives (probably at gun point) asking for no raid on the building. The poor woman said that they had A LOT of explosives.

The report also talked about some of the rebels being wives and sisters of dead rebels which just goes to show how terrorism is very hard to end. You kill one you make more extremists.

FUBAR :frowning:

7

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&ncid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20021024/ap_on_re_eu/russia_theater_raid_62

“Yuli Rybakov, another lawmaker, said the hostage-takers had automatic weapons, grenades, belts with explosives attached, mines and canisters with gasoline with them. One hostage told Echo of Moscow radio that the hostage-takers attached explosives to themselves, theater chairs, support columns and walls, and along aisles.

<snip>

Schools and kindergartens near the theater were closed Thursday and nearby hospitals prepared for casualties. The theater is a former Soviet-era House of Culture that belonged to a ball-bearing plant.

<snip>

Several hostages, speaking by cell phone to various Russian television stations and news agencies, pleaded with Russian authorities not to use force. Previous attempts by Russian authorities to resolve similar large-scale hostage incidents involving Chechens ended in bloodshed.

In 1995, Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev and his fighters briefly took more than 1,000 hostages in southern Russia and then escaped back into Chechnya. More than 100 civilians died. In a January 1996 raid on the southern Russian town of Kizlyar, rebels took hundreds of hostages at a local hospital. Some 78 people were killed.”

<snip>

But to me, the most heartbreaking is:

“Members of the Chechen community in Moscow volunteered to replace the hostages, especially children, police spokesman Gribakin said.”

To me, one especially sad aspect of the whole Chechen situation, much like the Palestinian situation, is that the Chechen people as a whole are consistently demonized, blamed by the majority of Russians for the actions of a few extremists in the Chechen conflict. Chechens in general are frequently portrayed in the Russian media as a bunch of murdering, militaristic, terrorist wackos who live by any kind of criminal enterprise that will net them a few bucks, and who are incapable of living according to modern social norms, and who should be glad the Russians marched into their lawless land and dragged them, kicking and screaming, into the 19th Century. The Chechens are frequently rounded up on trumped-up charges in Moscow and other large cities in the Russian heartland, and shipped out of town. (A residence permit is still required to live in Moscow, but the rule is selectively enforced.)

The whole thing literally makes me want to throw up. I just can’t see a happy ending to it.

8

You can also read some interesting dissenting opinions, etc. (in English) from inside the Russian Federation at:

(You guys can tell where my mind is today, huh? Possibly this is the only issue that could distract me from Iraq and immigration issues.)

9

And once more with feeling, for anyone who reads Russian: more blow-by-blow than anyone could want at:

www.regions.ru

10

This looks like a job for non-lethal weapons. The authorities need something that can immobilize or render unconsious everyone in the building quickly, so that no one has time to set off any explosives. Is there some kind of anaesthetic gas that can be used? Immobilizing foam? Ultrasound? I know there’s been lots of research in this area lately. Is there anything advanced enough to try operationally? Would we be willing to let the Russians use anything we have in the spirit of cooperation on the War on Terror (or whatever)? Would the ever prideful Russians ever even ask for help? Do they have anything along those lines?

so many questions…

11

Somehow I doubt there are any weapons that could instantly render a building full of several hundred people incapable of detonating explosives.

12

Storming by crack troops has worked before, notably at Entebbe and in the Iranian Embassy Siege in London. However, the presence of (potential) suicide bombers in the mix tends to mediate against it.

Also, the hostage-takers don’t seem to be panicked and desperate, in the manner of other situations like this - they are calm, and are allowing hostages to call home on their cellphones.

I like vibrotronica’s suggestion, but I doubt its practicality. Has a tactic like this ever been tried before?

What a nightmare.

Another thing - why do the women have Arabic script written on their headscarves? Surely that’s not the native script of Chechnya.

13

Children freed from Moscow siege

At least there is [sub]some[/sub] good news. Hopefully this kind of thing will continue.

14

This morning, they executed a woman.

15

Well, it’s hard to say what the native script of Chechnya is. Arabic script is the script of the Koran, of course; many languages of the North Caucasus didn’t have written forms at all until relatively recently, and throughout the non-Russian areas of former Soviet Union, there were many alphabet switches legislated during communist rule, from Arabic script, to Latin, to Cyrillic, and in some cases (notably Azerbaijan) back to Latin again.

I don’t know specifically why the Arabic script in this case, but would make a semi-educated guess at an Islamic connection. I’ll poke around and see if I can find anything for sure.

16

Is this the largest hostage crisis ever? 600 people is an awful lot.

17

One idea I had is secretly to enlist the assistance of the media, and manufacture fraudulent television broadcasts of Putin caving and the troops withdrawing, complete with celibrating peasants and the whole nine yards. The terrorists might see it and surrender in light of their “victory”. With today’s technology, would this be possible?

18

Lib, that is incredibly clever.

19

Another update Russian Security Chief Makes Offer

also

This could get even uglier very fast.

I repeat FUBAR

20

This would be great - except the terrorists have access to the outside world without using the media. It only needs one contact on the outside that they trust to ruin the whole thing (considering that they have total distrust of Russia.

Also, they know they are not coming out alive - even if their demands are met they will be treated very harshly. They are in a lose-lose situation as far as that’s concerned.

I don’t know the answer. I can’t see any possible solution that won’t end in mass murder, precisely because of my penultimate paragraph above.