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Gordievsky's Perspective on Beslan
EFL The truth is that he [Putin] is at least partially responsible for the fact that the siege ended in so horrible a blood-bath. The Russian siege negotiators and the Spetsnaz (there were several thousand of them) who had surrounded the school were totally unprepared for what happened. They knew that the terrorists had mined the school and had strapped bombs to themselves and its roof, but they had no contingency plans if one of those bombs went off. That was what actually happened: in the chaos which followed the explosion, there was a break-out by some of the children, followed by some of the terrorists. Yet the Spetsnaz had failed to seal off the school, with the result that some of the terrorists managed to get away. There weren't even any ambulances waiting to take the wounded hostages to hospital. Many of the children who died will have been shot by Spetsnaz officers because they were caught in the crossfire between the terrorists shooting at them, and the Spetsnaz shooting at the terrorists. It is distinctly possible that the roof which collapsed and buried many more of the captured children under a pile of rubble was destroyed by a rocket fired by one of the besieging Spetsnaz... Putin believes he can bludgeon the Chechens into submission. Hundreds of dead children from a school in North Ossetia won't be enough to persuade him to change that policy. He may never accept that it has failed. And yet Russia has very little reason to continue to be so intransigent on the issue of greater autonomy for Chechnya. Chechnya's oil reserves are almost spent; the country has few other natural resources; and its "strategic" importance to Russia is largely a myth. Most Chechens are not Islamic fundamentalists, or even seriously Islamic at all. Al-Qaeda is not welcome there, and I regard it as almost inconceivable that there was any serious al-Qaeda involvement in the hostage-taking in Ossetia, despite the claims from the Russians that they have identified 10 "Arabs" among the dead. Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-09-05 |
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