WOMEN AT HEART OF THE TERROR CELLS
By Viv Groskop

September 5, 2004 – (The Observer) When there is a bombing, Russians are no longer surprised to discover a girl is responsible.

From Aset to Zulikhan, exotic Chechen women's names are familiar from the Dubrovka theatre siege in 2002 and the rock concert suicide bombs at Tushino last summer.Within minutes of news breaking of the Beslan siege last week, it was apparent that women were among the terrorists.

Two Chechen women loaded with explosives were on the planes that crashed in southern Russia 11 days ago. A week later a woman suicide bomber killed 10 people at a Moscow metro station.

Almost all of the more than 12 attacks on Russia in the past year have involved women - 'black widows', avenging the deaths of family members in Russia's conflict in Chechnya. The survivors of the three-day Dubrovka theatre siege in October 2002, where 18 of the 50 terrorists were women, are among those who have suffered at the hands of the black widows.

One of the hostages, Irina Filipova, 29, a Moscow teacher, still has mixed feelings about her captors. Some seemed willing participants.
Others were teenagers who seemed too young to hold any opinions at all. Most told horrific stories of their lives in Chechnya.

Filipova said: 'They didn't talk politics. They said things which anyone could understand. They would say, "My whole family was killed. I have buried all my children. I live in the forest. I have nowhere to go and nothing to live for".

'Some cried. One of them told me her parents had sold her into it [terrorism] and she didn't want to blow herself up.'

She found the existence of women terrorists chilling. 'Men and war is one thing. But if there are women ... I realised that we might not get out alive. Most of the women were wearing black chador headscarves so I realised they must be extremists and it would be impossible to reason with them. Some of them even changed in the hall into their chadors in front of us. Before, they had been in disguise in the theatre, wearing sweaters and jeans. The women were left to guard us, with pistols and hand grenades while the men assembled the bombs.'

They had fixed tactics. The women and men had different roles: the men took care of the explosives and intimida tion, while the women distributed medical supplies, blankets, water, chewing gum and chocolate (unlike in the Beslan siege where all outside supplies were refused). Sometimes, though, the women toyed threateningly with their two-kilo bomb belts.

Like many of the survivors of Dubrovka, Filipova's recollections are confused. She still wonders if the women were there through revenge against Russian atrocities or because they had been sold into suicidal slavery by Chechen warlords.

This confusion has allowed one theory about the black widows to prevail in the Russian psyche. Until now many have had some sympathy for them. Svetlana Makunina, 27, a journalist at Moscow's tabloid newspaper Zhizn , echoes the common Russian view: 'It is all zombirovaniye ' - an expression meaning 'turned into zombies'.

'The women don't want to be involved in these attacks. They are drugged, raped, forced to do it. I understand they are not to blame, but with Beslan it has gone too far - to involve children in this is just beyond the pale. What was the reason behind the attacks on the school? We don't know, they haven't given a reason. The same way they didn't give a reason for 11 September,' said Makunina.

'The fact that Kofi Annan gave a statement supporting Russia and we have the United Nations on our side shows that this is about the war on terrorism, not about Russia's politics.'

But Beslan will change everything. Zombirovaniye allows the belief that the women have not been brutalised by Russians but by their own people, fanatics linked to Al Qaeda. It puts the blame on Chechnya, not Russia. The women are brainwashed by rebel groups who use drugs and blackmail techniques such as showing videotaped rapes to the women's families.

This ignores the stories about Russian soldiers laughing as they charge Chechen fathers 300 roubles (nearly £10) not to rape their daughters.

Nastya Kruglikova, 21, a student at Moscow's Institute of Foreign Languages, survived the Moscow theatre siege with her mother and aunt. Her 15-year-old cousin was killed. She was instinctively unsympathetic to the terrorists until she realised what the women must have gone through.

She said: 'There was a grenade laid by a woman between my cousin and my aunt. I asked, "what is going to happen, are you going to blow us up?" And she said, "no, it will be OK. And then she seemed to change her mind and said, "Well, maybe you will be blown up but at least you won't know anything about it. You won't regret it. You don't know what's happening in Chechnya. You can't know what your soldiers have done there to our people. You can't have any idea how terrible our lives are". She said she had a child she had left behind, that God would look after him. Some of them started crying. They looked around 16.'

Among the terrorists was Zura Barayeva, widow of Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev. Filipova said: 'She seemed very normal. She hid her feelings behind a mask of courtesy. She seemed to take pleasure that she was in this situation, that people were listening to her and wanting to talk to her, that she was in control. She would ask people if they had children. She would always say, "Everything will be fine. It will finish peacefully". She took off her bomb belt and carried it over her shoulder, all very relaxed.'

Nastya Kruglikova remembers another older woman: 'Her name was Asya. She told us about her life in Chechnya. She was the only one I wasn't afraid of. She hoped they would give up, that there would be a conversation with the government and it would end well. She said, "please don't worry". She tried not to frighten us.'

Filipova also felt a strange sympathy: 'I hated them too, although they let children out of the theatre, they didn't let teenagers and sick out. But if someone tells you these terrible things ... of course you understand their motivation. To hate them and think them evil ... I just couldn't.'

But after Beslan who will be able to say the same?

·Viv Groskop is a writer and expert on Soviet affairs

From: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1297658,00.html