by the medical teams. Among the dead were several children and 18 members of the cast. Moscow's health committee chairman, Doctor Andrei Seltsovsky, contradicted official reports and admitted that all but three of the hostages who had been killed in the raid had died of the effects of the unknown gas rather than from gunshot wounds. None of the three people killed by the terrorists were hostages. They were individuals who had entered the siege after it started and were assumed to be FSB agents. It is worth noting that the terrorists took extra care to make sure that the hostages did not die at their hands.
THE BLACK WIDOWS OF DUBROVKA
Al Jazeera satellite television aired a prerecorded video that had been dropped off at their Moscow office a day before the Dubrovka hostage-taking. It showed the Chechen rebels and female Black Widows clad in black abayas with their faces covered in hijabs. The women claimed that they were waiting for a just and humanitarian solution in Chechnya, but that obviously no one cared about the death of Chechen innocents. Old men and children were killed daily and their children's blood flooded the land because of the Russian occupation.32 One of the women spoke defiantly to the camera: “We might as well die here as in Chechnya however we will die taking hundreds of nonbelievers with us.”33 The terrorists in the video all swore by Allah that they desired death more than the Russians wanted life. Each one of them was willing to sacrifice himself or herself for the sake of God and the independence of Chechnya.34
In most Chechen towns, the Russians had completely destroyed all infrastructure, including the systems for water, electricity, and gas, making it impossible for people to live a normal existence and causing a massive refugee flow out of Chechnya into neighboring republics. Now the Chechens would bring the fight to the heart of Russia, a few miles from the Kremlin itself. A female shahida (martyr) summed up the reasons for their willingness to sacrifice themselves:
People are unaware of the innocents who are dying in Chechnya: the sheikhs, the women, the children and the weak ones. And therefore, we have chosen this approach. This approach is for the freedom of the Chechen people and At least three pairs of sisters werethere is no difference where we die, and therefore we have decided to die here, in Moscow. And we will take with us the lives of hundreds of sinners. If we die, others will come and follow us—our brothers and sisters who are willing to sacrifice their lives, in Allah's way, to liberate the nation.35
Despite such statements, some of the men at Dubrovka may have hoped to get out of the theater alive. Only the women wore suicide vests, not the men. Movsar Barayev had several forged passports in his possession along with a large amount of foreign currency.36 Like Basayev when he attacked the Budyonnovsk Hospital seven years earlier, Barayev might have expected to survive to fight another day. Several of the male terrorists had return bus tickets to Khasavyurt. According to his father, Bukhari, Movsar had not made the usual Islamic preparations for his death prior to the attack. He had unpaid debts and there were other indications that some of the men at Dubrovka did not assume that this was their final operation. However, several of the women had settled their affairs. Rajman Kurbanova returned her wedding presents and said good-bye to her friends in the weeks before the operation.
There appeared to be a double standard for the men and the women at the theater. While the men secured the perimeter, the women circulated throughout the crowd. They were tasked to make sure that the audience did not panic and to see to their needs and make them a bit more comfortable. They distributed water, blankets, and chewing gum. The women ate dried dates and shared them with the hostages. They found chocolates and candies in one of the theater's backrooms, which they distributed. There were a few children attending the performance that night and the female terrorists visited the mothers and asked if their children needed anything. One hostage reported that the women acted more like nuns ministering to the sick than terrorists. They allowed people to go to the toilet without queuing in line. Despite these efforts, after the first few hours, the whole orchestra pit became one giant outhouse.
As the female terrorists mingled with the audience, several hostages got to know their captors a little better. It is from those hostages that we have the most information about the female terrorists' state of mind and motivation. Many of the female hostages showed signs of Stockholm syndrome: they identified with the hostage-takers and empathized with their plight. Tamara Starkova, a forty-two-year-old pediatrician who lost her husband and daughter at Dubrovka, recalled watching the Chechen men running around shouting and screaming at the hostages, but the women were different. The women said “please” and “thank you.” They were surprisingly polite under the circumstances. The women did not discuss politics. Tamara listened to the women's stories of Russian atrocities and understood what had led them to Dubrovka. One woman explained that her whole family had been killed by the Russians. She had buried all her children and was now forced to live in the forest. She had nowhere to go and nothing to live for. Another of the shahidat confided to Tamara that she had lost her husband and child, and Tamara thought to herself that any mother would be capable of terrible acts under similar provocation.37
The hostages were struck by one of the terrorists, named Asya, most likely Aset Gishnurkayeva from Achkoy-Martan, who reassured them that the terrorists' motives were actually peaceful. Asya hoped that there would be a negotiation with the government and that the crisis would end well. She was involved in this mission so that her children could grow up in peace. Asya was particularly helpful during tense moments when the men onstage started shooting their weapons into the air.38 She tried not to frighten the hostages and begged them not to worry. She explained that it was their war, not the hostages'. Asya's friend, Madina Dugayeva, also helped her calm the hostages. Madina had studied to be an actress at Chechen State University and was exceptionally pretty. Another terrorist, Sekilat Aliyeva, was a teaching assistant in the university's history department. Hostage Irina Filipova, found herself sympathizing with the female terrorists and concluded that the women must all have different motives: for some true believers it might have been a divine mission; some of the others might have been drugged; she wondered whether the younger girls had been forced.39
While some of the hostage-takers made repeated references to Islam and Allah during the fifty-seven-hour ordeal and the men placed a banner with the words “Allahu Akbar' (God is great) over the stage, many of the women were not well versed in Islam. Several mispronounced their prayers in Arabic and could not answer the most basic questions about the tenets of the faith. When asked questions about Islamic doctrine or practice, the women had no idea how to respond. Most of the terrorists just talked about the persecution that they suffered at the hands of the Russian forces in Chechnya. Their ignorance suggested that they had only recently been taught about Islam. Several wore their Islamic garb incorrectly. In one case, a female terrorist had tied her headscarf improperly and had to get help from one of the hostages to fix it.
More important, several of the women would have been disqualified as shahidat according to the strictest interpretation of Islam: one, Koku Khadjiyeva, was mentally ill and another, Medna Baraykova, was sick with tuberculosis and constantly coughing up blood. Russian survivors said some of the women in the group had talked of their eagerness to get home to Chechnya because they were pregnant. In May, four months after the attack, the official autopsies were completed and the Russian weekly Moskovsky Novisti revealed that three of the women—Amnat Isueva and two sisters, Raina and Ayman Kurbanova—were indeed pregnant. According to Islamic law, these women would not have been permitted to go on a martyrdom operation.
It's hard to know if these stories are true. It is likely that the Russian security apparatus disseminated disinformation to make the terrorists seem even more monstrous than the events suggested. According to her cousin Usman, Ayman Kurbanova (known as Rajman within her family) could not possibly have been pregnant. Usman reported that her first husband had left her after only a few months of marriage because she was infertile. Usman explained how Rajman's first husband had dishonored her; he literally shoved her out of the house and, in the process, broke her heart. The experience devastated her and left her forever changed. Like so many other Chechen women, in her despair she connected with
