Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (34 page)

They invited me to join them, but I didn’t. The first reason was simply that, on principle, I avoid marching in columns and have never laid anything anywhere as a member of a crowd. The second reason was even simpler; I was still on the plane. There was, however, a third and most important reason, which I am sad about and unsure how to express, but which I think I need to explain.

Something wasn’t quite right about this wreath-laying ceremony. It wasn’t because, as so many people now believe, “the Chechens are to blame for everything.” Even less was it because I personally have anything against Chechens. Of course I haven’t.

But I really didn’t like the way most of the Chechens I know behaved during those 57 hours when everything was on a knife edge, when at any moment the
Nord-Ost
audience might have been blown sky high, when a message from influential Chechens addressed to those under Barayev Junior’s command would have carried far more weight than anything anybody else could say. That, at least, is how I felt. They said nothing. No statement came, and now their silence is a historical fact. That is the other reason I was so upset by those nauseating Frenchwomen.

Only Aslambek Aslakhanov, a Chechen and a Deputy of the Russian Duma, went in to talk to the terrorists, despite the fact that his act could have had extremely unpleasant consequences for him: he is, after
all, an Interior Ministry general, and unambiguously a “federal” in the minds of those who took the
Nord-Ost
audience hostage. But Aslakhanov went in, despite his own young children at home. He went in, and that too is a matter of record.

But where were all the others? Where was businessman and politician Malik Saidulayev? Where were the Umars? (I’ve forgotten their surnames too, and really can’t be bothered trying to rediscover them.) I mean that rich Umar somebody who owns a hotel near Kievsky Station in Moscow. And what about Bislan Gantamirov, sometime Mayor of Grozny? And Salambek Khadzhiev? And so on and so forth, ad infinitum?

None of them spoke out; not even Kadyrov, whom most of the Moscow Chechens are so busy buzzing around when he comes from Grozny that you start having dark suspicions about vested interests on both sides. In his old age, Kadyrov has covered himself with ineradicable shame by valuing his own life higher than the lives of 50 completely innocent spectators of the
Nord-Ost
musical. The terrorists invited him, as the Chief of Chechnya appointed by Putin, to visit them in exchange for 50 hostages but he didn’t go, subsequently claiming he “hadn’t heard about it.”

During these 57 hours, the Moscow Chechens were whispering in corners. That was completely inadequate. They didn’t even decry Kadyrov, or attempt to persuade him to go down in history as a man who saved the lives of 50 women and children. For 57 hours the so-called Chechen diaspora, almost to a man, went underground, some of them turning up only in Copenhagen.

My own feeling is that this leaves a bad taste. It just wasn’t the way these people ought to have behaved. Perhaps I am completely wrong and I will be told later that the Chechens were terrified of the consequences, and that their main priority is to survive in a society now bristling against them even more than before, and so on and so forth.

No doubt that is all true, but can you really rank fears? The diaspora seemed heedless of the fact that the hostages were even more terrified of what seemed like their imminent inevitable death; and that for more
than 100 of them (and we still don’t know how many more) those 57 hours facing death were the last hours of their lives. That is why today we are attending funeral after funeral where the priests lose their voices because even their highly trained vocal cords cannot cope with so many services.

So, should we sympathise with the fears of the Chechen diaspora? Absolutely not. You will have to excuse me, but I totally reject their fear. Everybody involved was scared, including those who mounted the assault and those on the receiving end of it. So let us come back to our initial question: why did the Chechens behave as they did during these 57 hours?

Because they are cowards. Faced with their own younger generation who have turned into uncompromising radicals the whole lot of them bottled out. They slunk away. And perhaps, too, they considered it all beneath them. They think they are so elevated, but now we can see how low they are.

That too is a fact of history. The myth of the incomparable fearlessness of the Chechen nation has been relegated to history, to the period before October 23, 2002.

In Chechnya security sweeps are proceeding incessantly. People are being tortured, suffering just as much as before. Villages have been blockaded. The zone behind the Chechnya barrier has once again been turned into a training ground for the Army. On this side of the barrier things are better, but not much.

ONE MEMBER OF THE
NORD-OST
TERRORIST GROUP SURVIVED: WE HAVE FOUND HIM

April 28, 2003

Six months ago there was a terrorist act at the
Nord-Ost
musical. Since then we have puzzled many times over how such a thing could have happened. How did they get into Moscow? Did someone allow it? Why? Now we find there is a witness, who was also a member of the terrorist group.

At first there was only the bare information that one of the group
of terrorists who took the audience hostage was still alive.

We checked the information out, repeatedly analysed the list of Barayev’s group published in the press, made enquiries, and tracked him down: a man whose name is indeed officially listed with those of the other terrorists.

Were you a member of the Barayev group who took the Nord-Ost audience hostage?

Yes, I was.

Did you go into the theatre with them?

Yes.

I read an ID document with “PRESS” on its cover in capital letters on a dark background: “Khanpash Nurdyevich Terkibayev.
Rossiyskaya gazeta
. Special Correspondent. Pass No. 1165.” Signed Gorbenko. Sure enough,
Rossiyskaya gazeta
does have a director of that name.

What topics do you write about? Chechnya?

No reply.

Do you go in to work at the newspaper? What department do you work in? Who is your editor?

Again, no reply. He pretends not to understand Russian very well, but how can you be a special correspondent of the country’s main government newspaper if you don’t speak Russian? Khanpash’s narrow, mongoloid eyes, not much like those of a Chechen, register incomprehension. He is not putting it on, he genuinely does not understand what I’m talking about. He is no Russian journalist.

Was this pass given to you by someone as cover?

He smiles slyly:

I would not mind writing. I just haven’t had time yet to think about it. I only received this pass on April 7. See the date? I don’t need to go into the office, I work in the President’s Information Service.

Under Porshnev? What job do you do?

(Igor Porshnev heads the Information Service of Putin’s Presidential Administration, which should make him Khanpash’s immediate superior.) Even Porshnev’s name produces incomprehension in
Rossiyskaya Gazeta’
s “special correspondent.” Khanpash has no idea who Porshnev is.

When necessary I meet [Presidential Aide] Yastrzhembsky. I work for him. Here is a photograph of me with him.

Sure enough, here is Khanpash photographed with Sergey Yastrzhembsky. Sergey is looking past the camera and appears displeased. Khanpash, on the other hand, now sitting in front of me in the Sputnik Hotel on Lenin Prospect in Moscow, is looking straight into the lens, as if to say, “There! That’s us.” You can tell from the photograph how palpably unwelcome it was to Yastrzhembsky, and deduce that it was insisted upon by the man now telling me his complicated life story, punctuating the narrative with numerous photographs which he pulls from his briefcase. “That’s me and Maskhadov, me and Yastreb, me and Maskhadov again, me and Arsanov, me in the Kremlin, me and Saidullayev, me and Gil-Robles (the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner).”

I look more closely, and quite a few seem to be rather inexpert photomontage. (They were subsequently checked by specialists and this was found to be the case.) “What’s the game?” I ask. Khanpash again looks uncomprehending, rummages in the briefcase and pulls out “me with Margaret Thatcher and Maskhadov,” to show how familiar he is with the London scene. It is 1998, Maskhadov is wearing a tall astrakhan hat, Thatcher is in the middle, and Khanpash is on the other side. Intriguingly, Maskhadov looks as he did before the war, while Khanpash looks as he does today. Odd. But he is already showing me another photograph of himself with Maskhadov during the present war. Maskhadov is wearing combat fatigues, his beard is very grey, and he looks terrible. Khanpash doesn’t look too chipper either. This one is genuine.

Aren’t you afraid of walking around Moscow with photographs like these? In Chechnya they would shoot you on the spot for the one with Maskhadov. Here they will plant firearms on you and put you in prison for years
. He replies, “I am in with Surkov.” Khanpash begins to sound boastful. “After
Nord-Ost
I visited Surkov. Twice.” (Vladislav Surkov is the influential Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Russia.)

Why?

I was helping him to work out a Chechen policy for Putin. After
Nord-Ost
.

And were you able to help?

Peace is needed.

That’s an original thought
.

I am currently working on peace negotiations for Yastrzhembsky and Surkov. The idea is to negotiate with the fighters hiding in the mountains.

Is that your idea or the Kremlin’s?

Mine, supported by the Kremlin.

Negotiations with Maskhadov?

No. The Kremlin will not agree to negotiate with him.

With whom, then?

With Vakha Arsanov [former Vice-President of Ichkeria, repudiated by Maskhadov]. I have just had a meeting with him.

Where?

There.

But what are you going to do about Maskhadov?

He needs to be persuaded to give up his powers until there is another presidential election in Chechnya.

Are you involved in that too?

Yes, but I haven’t been asked to do that, I’m just doing it on my own. Actually, there may not be an election.

But if we do, nevertheless, live to see an election, who would you put your own money on?

Khasbulatov or Saidullayev. They are a third force. Not on Maskhadov, not on Kadyrov. That’s what I think. After
Nord-Ost
it was me who organised negotiations between the Deputies of the Chechen Parliament and the Presidential Administration, with Yastrzhembsky.

Yes, that surprised a lot of people, when Isa Temirov together with other Chechen Deputies turned up openly in Moscow, spoke at the famous press conference in the Interfax news agency, and called on people to vote in the referendum. That was a blow against Maskhadov, although previously they had been for him. So you were behind that?

“I was,” he replies proudly.

And did you vote afterwards in the referendum yourself?

“Me? No.” He laughs. “I am from the Charto family
teip
. They call us Jews in Chechnya.”

Would it be accurate to say that the
Nord-Ost
tragedy was intended to have the role the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage-taking played
[in 1995, a turning point which eventually led to the ending of the First Chechen War],
only this time to end the Second Chechen War?

This is not an idle question. It is crucial. Khanpash has a finger in every pie of Russian politics. He knows everybody, he’s accepted everywhere. He’s capable of engineering all kind of twists and turns in the North Caucasus. If you need to bring Maskhadov into play, he will lead you to Maskhadov. You want to exclude Maskhadov? He can fix that too. So, at least, he tells me. But his profession, he says, is acting. He graduated from the Drama Faculty of Grozny University. Never mind that there never was any such faculty, and that he can’t remember the
name of his acting teacher, this enables him to claim he is friends with Akhmed Zakayev. “We worked together in the theatre.” In the First War he acquired a video camera and started working in television. He accompanied Basayev on the Budyonnovsk raid, but was not imprisoned for taking part in it. On the contrary, he was amnestied in April 2000.

Where did you get the papers for the amnesty?

In the Argun Office of the Chechen FSB.

This is an important detail. The Argun FSB section has been one of the most dreaded throughout this war. At precisely the time Khanpash was receiving an amnesty from them, almost everybody else who fell into their hands was being dispatched into another world. Khanpash is the first person I have met who survived being in their hands, and he was even given a certificate of amnesty for his Budyonnovsk involvement.

Between the two wars Khanpash, as a “hero of Budyonnovsk,” became a leading consultant to President Maskhadov’s Press Service. He had his own television program on Maskhadov’s channel,
The President’s Heart
, later renamed,
The President’s Path
. That said, he was obliged to leave Maskhadov’s entourage even before the Second War, but when military operations resumed he was back, and again became a furious jihadist. It is astonishing, but right under the noses of the federal troops and every imaginable Russian intelligence agency, in the midst of heavy fighting when everybody else was running for cover, Khanpash managed to make a television program whose title can be roughly translated from the Chechen as, “My Homeland Is Where Jihad Is.”

Admittedly, neither then nor now did I believe that.

What do you mean? Your homeland is not where jihad is?

That was just the name of the program.