RUSSIA: The difficulties for the Russian military and its political masters are only just beginning, writes Jonathan Eyal
At first sight, the operation to rescue the hostages in Moscow is a huge boost for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military. The sheer number of hostages and Chechen fighters made the task one of the most complex rescue attempts undertaken.
The operation was also ingenious, thereby dispelling the idea that the Russian military lacks imagination and discipline. Finally, although the casualty figures are high, President Putin is surely right to claim that he averted an even bigger disaster.
Yet, as the dust settles over the wrecked theatre building in Moscow, the image which emerges is of a military offensive which was good at its core mission but poorly organised at the edges and of an officially sponsored propaganda campaign which is designed to hide these failures.
The military has claimed it acted only when it became clear that the Chechen fighters started to execute their hostages. Furthermore, the military claims that President Putin did not explicitly authorise the operation; he was merely informed of the fact that it was in progress.
Both claims are outright lies: there can be little doubt that the military operation was planned in advance and would have happened regardless of what the hostage-takers did in the building. And it is unthinkable that Putin himself did not authorise the plan from the start. Such excuses were only designed to shield him from any criticism if the operation ended in a disaster.
For obvious reasons, such operations should take minutes, but the shooting in Moscow lasted a long hour and was often intense.
Although precise details remain patchy, it is obvious that the troops which stormed the theatre's entrance doors and those which blew their way in through a wall were either reinforcements or pure decoys; the bulk of the operation was executed by special troops which entered via the ducts and tunnels in the building.
This distinction is critical, for it provides essential clues to what actually happened. All the current evidence suggests that most of the Chechens were already knocked out by the gas pumped into the building and were either poisoned or executed by the storming troops.
Given the large quantity of explosives and booby-traps, the tactic may make sense, but the image which emerges is much more in tune with the old Russian military: an organisation which shoots first and which compensates for lack of precision by applying massive fire-power.
It is obvious that the use of gas - a novel strategy in this operation - was rehearsed by the Russian military long before, perhaps as far back as the mid- 1990s. Although we do not know its chemical composition, the gas obviously contains a hallucinogenic substance. The strength of the substance is a key question.
It has to be sufficiently potent to act quickly and more or less uniformly on people of various age groups and psychological dispositions, so that the terrorists are not alerted to what is happening, yet at the same time, it must not kill. Getting the balance right is never easy, but the evidence suggests that the Russians have clearly erred on the strength, with the consequent risk to the hostages: most of the civilians died as a result of shock or asphyxiation.
Yet again, hardly the carefully calibrated operation which the Kremlin touts. One can understand why the military refused to make public the chemical composition of the gas used, but nothing can excuse keeping hospitals in the dark about the required antidote or the absence of an emergency field hospital near the theatre, prepared to deal immediately with the casualties.
Precious lives were lost in the confusion. Therefore, as so often with Russia, the military was rehearsed exhaustively but the civilian back-up was almost entirely ignored. One area which was not ignored, however, was that of propaganda.
Apart from triumphant claims of victory, the Russian military has released chilling pictures of terrorists who died conveniently holding alcohol bottles or drug syringes, a predictable attempt to suggest that those who perpetrated the attack were mere dregs of society.
For the moment, this macabre propaganda may divert attention from a serious analysis of the operation - but not for long.
The reasons for the deaths of so many civilians after the fighting was over will require an explanation. Future Chechen terrorists - now realising that hostages do not produce results - will shift their tactics to pure suicide attacks; the same happened in Israel after a spate of unsuccessful hostage crises two decades ago. In short, the difficulties for the Russian military and their political masters are just beginning.
Jonathan Eyal is director of studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London