"Russian Colonel Sergei Goncharov was a member of the secret Alpha group, the KGB anti-terrorist arm created by Yuri Andropov back in the 1970s. Now president of the Alpha Veterans Association and an authority on anti-terrorism, Goncharov talked with TIME's Yuri Zarakhovich in Moscow.

TIME: Is the Russian counter-terrorist experience applicable against the current form of political terrorism? 

GONCHAROV: Deep in our Soviet past, a drunken collective farmer assaulting his boss qualified as a political terrorist. In the 1970s, dissidents who could not escape from behind the Iron Curtain any other way started hijacking planes — this was the beginning of air piracy. In post-Soviet Russia, many a murder has been construed as a political terror act but was purely criminal. The only real political terrorism we have known is tied to Chechnya.

TIME: So Russia does not have much to offer in this context? 

GONCHAROV: We do have experience, because we have taken part in many covert operations fighting undesirable regimes all over the globe. Let's be frank. When the Americans were fighting in Vietnam, we did all we could to have maximum losses inflicted on them by the Vietnamese. When we entered Afghanistan, the U.S. did the same to us. Whose creation is bin Laden? The terrorists we have trained now operate in Angola, Mozambique, Somalia. Both sides armed them, bred them to fight our cold war by proxy.

TIME: But the USSR always insisted that it supported freedom fighters. 

GONCHAROV: One side's freedom fighter was the other side's terrorist. We did not think then about what would happen in 20 years. We both thought we were doing the right thing — we let this genie out of the bottle together. Now, we don't know how to push him back. We must also correct our mistake together.

TIME: Is the situation different now? 

GONCHAROV: Sept. 11th changed the world. America has realized that no matter how great a nation it is, it can't go it alone. And we both share the guilt for what has happened — the West and us.

TIME: What's the solution? 

GONCHAROV: President Bush said after the tragedy that we all must unite our efforts. But before this, when we had been telling them about our problem in Chechnya — about the slave trade, murders, counterfeiting — they still saw freedom fighters rather than terrorists there. But it was this kind of freedom fighter that attacked the U.S.

TIME: How can this kind of terrorism be fought? 

GONCHAROV: First of all, economically.

TIME: How? 

GONCHAROV: There is no other country in the world like Russia, which has so much offshore business: this means enormous [amounts of] impersonal, untraceable money. There is no accounting, no tracing where this money is flowing or how it is used.

TIME: What must be done by means other than economic? 

GONCHAROV: Action is necessary. Like a coordinated and well-prepared strike on bin Laden's bases. But if the U.S. strikes what it calls rogue countries, Russia will have to think twice about that. To us, they are not rogues. We can't allow the U.S. to wield its club the way it wants. We are on good terms with Iran. We have tremendous economic investments in and expectations of Iraq. We can't afford to sever all these ties in one stroke. I foresee a major debate along these lines.

TIME: How can the U.S. and Russia unite their efforts, then? 

GONCHAROV: It's quite obvious: if there is proof that, say, Iraq harbors terrorists, then action is fair. But if they want to start carpet bombings, like in Yugoslavia, and then see what happens, it can't be allowed. Nor are we going to see eye to eye on what happens in Afghanistan after the Taliban. The Americans will want their people to run that country, but we won't let them. It's politics. We are together only up to a point. But beyond that point we'll pursue our own pragmatic interests. As was the case in World War II: we were together, and had our victory together. But we all know, what happened after that. Back to the Top    Next Article