The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan Hostage Crises – A Critique of Russian Counter–Terrorism: (Soviet and Post–Soviet Politics and Society)

This volume contains by far the most complete reports available in English concerning two major terrorist incidents in Russia: the October 2002 seizure of a Moscow theatre at Dubrovka and the September 2004 taking of a large school in Beslan in southern Russia. The issues examined are as follows: the backgrounds of the Muslim extremists who carried out these acts including the de facto leaders of the terrorist assaults, ethnic Chechen Ruslan Elmurzaev and Ingush Ruslan Khuchbarov; the failure of Russian law-enforcement to prevent these two incidents, documenting both the massive corruption of the Russian security services and police and the absence of the rule of law; - the storming of the Moscow theater building and of the school at Beslan by Russian police, aided by the military, elucidating the reasons for the very large loss of life in both incidents;- the use by the Russian police of a special gas at Dubrovka and of tanks and flamethrowers at Beslan; the evident fixation of the Putin leadership with portraying these two assaults as incidents of international Islamic terrorism linked to the Al-Qaeda network; and the repeated attempts on the part of the Russian authorities at the time of these incidents to weaken the influence of moderate Chechen separatists headed by the late Aslan Maskhadov.

Table of Contents:
Permissions Abbreviations Foreword, by Donald N. Jensen 1. Beslan: Russia's 9/11? 2. The October 2002 Moscow Hostage-Taking Incident

About the Author :
Dr. John B. Dunlop is Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University. Among his books are The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism (Princeton UP 1983), The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Princeton UP 1995), Russia Confronts Chechnya (Cambridge UP 1998), The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan Hostage Crises (ibidem 2006), and The Moscow Bombings of September 1999 (ibidem 2014). His essays have appeared in, among other journals, Demokratizatsiya, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Journal of Democracy, Journal of Cold-War Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, and Survival. Andreas Umland is Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for European Security in the Institute of International Relations at Prague, Principal Researcher of the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation at Kyiv, and General Editor of the ibidem-Verlag book series Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society.

Review :
"The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan Hostage Crises: "Dunlop's analysis will help to draw Western attention to the plight of those who have suffered by these terrorist acts, and the importance, for all Russians, of uncovering the truth of about what happened." -- Amy Knight, Times Literary Supplement