Once, while watching the events in Budennovsk on the television set, I thought, as many in Kazakhstan do now - that this was all far away and it would never touch me. But the three huge acts of terror in the world - the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York, the seizure of hostages at the Moscow theater at Dubrovka, and the seizure of hostages at the school in Beslan - each of them brought grief to families in Kazakhstan.

Many in Kazakhstan have relatives, children, friends, and loved ones who travel to Russia and to Moscow. At any moment one of them can find him or herself in the same situation that we, Svetlana Gubareva and Natasha Gutnova, did.

I could not save my family, and I lost that, which I held most dear in life. No amount of money can ever replace this. What I am now doing is an attempt to protect others, so that they might not be poisoned with gas, as was my daughter Alexandra Letyago in that Moscow theater, so that they might not be blasted by tanks, as was Zaur Gutnov in that Beslan school.