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Beslan terrorists may get their wish
A little background: Wedged between Chechnya and North Ossetia is an even smaller territory called Ingushetia. Like the Chechens, the Ingush were accused of collaborating with the Nazis and were deported en masse to Central Asia and Siberia by Stalin in 1943. When the Ingush returned to their homeland, part of it (a patch of land called Prigorodny) had been transferred to neighboring North Ossetia. Ingush were allowed to settle in Prigorodny, but N. Ossetia retained sovereignty over the place.Fast forward to the Nineties and Soviet disunion. After an uprising in South Ossetia (part of neighboring Georgia), scores of thousands of Ossetian refugees fled into Russian North Ossetia. Most were settled in Ingush-majority Prigorodnya. The result, in October of '92, was a fast but fierce campaign of ethnic cleansing as most ethnic Ingush were expelled from N. Ossetia, especially Prigorodnye. I've been waiting for something like this since Beslan first unfolded... A mob of at least a thousand Ossetians enraged by the recent hostage drama in this south Russian republic gathered in the disputed Prigorodny region bordering the republic of Ingushetia Sunday, with plans to attack Ingush homes. Regional police managed to disperse the crowd and prevent an interracial conflict. Ingush and Chechens (close kin to each other) are both Muslim with a history of bad blood with Moscow. Ossetians (a Persian-descent people with no kin in their vicinity) have a Muslim minority, but most are Russian Orthodox Christians and remain faithful to Moscow. As you might expect, they loathed each other even before the Prigorodnye ethnic cleansing, which only made the hatred more intense. This is exactly what the Beslan butchers (at least some of whom were Ingush) wanted to accomplish. This is why they attacked a school specifically in North Ossetia instead of in Russia proper. A few reprisal attacks against Muslim ethnicities, and "fence-sitter" Muslims in the North Caucasus -- Kabardins, Cherkess, Karachays, and the dozen-odd Dagestani nationalities -- all get pushed off the fence and into the jihadi camp. Keep an eye open for incidents like this is days and weeks to come. They will determine whether the Beslan terrorists were evil geniuses, or merely evil. Posted by: Another Dan 2004-09-07 |
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