The Beslan tragedy has prompted widespread public outcry over the Russian authorities' incompetence, writes Shohdy Naguib from Moscow On the afternoon of 3 September the world media transmitted live coverage of a bloody massacre in the provincial town of Beslan in the autonomous republic of North Ossetia in southern Russia. The tragic end to the hostage crisis that had started some 72 hours earlier on the first day of the school year epitomises the horror of the ten-year-old civil war still raging in the northern Caucasus region, which includes both the breakaway republic of Chechnya, and North Ossetia. Chechnya is at the heart of the crisis, but the violence has repeatedly spilled over into the neighbouring republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia and North Ossetia. The bereaved of Beslan are the latest victims of this protracted and cruel conflict between Moscow and the Chechen separatists. The vivid reports emerging from the scene of the tragedy unnerved not only Russia but the entire world, in much the same way as did the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 11 September, 2001. The sudden explosion of violence that terminated the siege at School Number One in Beslan will go down in history as one of the worst incidents of terrorist activity the world has ever witnessed. The sunny morning which had marked the first day of the new school year was transformed into a nightmare of brutality and malice. A feeling of helplessness and despair hung over Beslan like a gigantic dark cloud. Who were the perpetrators of this horrendous crime? This is the question everybody in Russia is asking these days. The mortal remains of some of the hostage-takers were briefly seen on state television in the immediate aftermath -- "ten Arabs and a black man", the presenter confidently proclaimed. Three days later officials could no longer confirm these numbers, but claimed that there were a Syrian and a Jordanian among the hostage-takers, while the black man was found to be someone whose body was blackened with soot. Meanwhile, new national origins were being mentioned -- Ukrainians and Koreans. The corpse of a bearded man of Middle-Eastern appearance was shown wearing a black strap with an Arabic inscription on it. It appears that only one of the 32 attackers survived. The survivor, a young man whose name and nationality were not revealed, was shown on TV feebly asserting in a strong Russian accent: "By Allah, I have not shot. By Allah, I have not killed." To date, the different accounts we have of what happened on that fateful day are contradictory. The official version holds that the orgy of violence erupted due to a fatal mistake, or else an internal disagreement within the group of attackers, led by a certain man known only as "The Colonel" -- his dead body has been identified by the surviving attacker, but his name is still being kept secret. The military command vehemently denies having planned or started an assault that day, and lays the blame for the chaos that surrounded attempts to release the hostages on the local militia, who had effectively mounted their own siege of the site, as well as various other circumstances that remain unaccounted for. The notoriously bad coordination between the different departments within Russia's branches of power manifested itself in full when things went wrong and the need for an immediate assault suddenly became clear. International experts on anti-terrorism and rescue operations unanimously agree that the release operation could not possibly have been handled worse. As the crisis was unfolding, the media, heavily restricted by the authorities, estimated the number of hostages inside the school to be around 350 children and adults. In the aftermath of the tragedy, this number soon rose to well over 1,200. The official death toll at the time of writing stands at 330, with some reports listing 200 people as missing and about 350 being treated in hospitals. The high number of casualties speaks volumes about the Russian authorities' lack of preparation and incompetence. The official version, which coincides with the reports of the security experts and the human rights watchdogs, lays the blame for the massacre on the lack of coordination among the Russian troops, and their failure to seal the area off, so as to deny access to the site to the trigger-happy paramilitary groups whose fire could not be controlled. But why were those groups there in the first place? To protect their children from being "sacrificed" by the politicians -- in other words, in order to defend both the hostages and the terrorists against the state. The basic lack of trust in the authorities that exists among the people could not have been demonstrated in a more dramatic manner. Hundreds of relatives and other citizens of Beslan thus found themselves keeping guard at a close distance from the besieged school, in order to prevent the Special Forces from carrying out a "release operation" similar to that which they mounted to end the November 2002 Moscow theatre siege, when a sophisticated gas was used to disable the terrorists, killing more than a hundred hostages in the process. In Beslan, the authorities repeatedly affirmed their intention to negotiate the freeing of the hostages. But despite their protestations, they still resorted to force in the end. On the second day, there had been a breakthrough in negotiations when former President of Ingushetia Ruslan Aushev volunteered to enter the school and talk to the terrorists. The result of this visit was the release of 26 women with babies, which was received with great enthusiasm by the public. Aushev gave no comments to the press, but it was he who informed Ahmed Zakaev, emissary of the exiled Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov in London, of the real number of hostages inside the school. As regards the Russian authorities themselves, it is still not quite clear who was negotiating with the terrorists, or indeed, whether there were negotiations at all. It is now known that Maskhadov and Zakaev offered to personally intervene as mediators if they were given guaranties for their personal safety. This proposal was unacceptable to the Russian authorities, however, since the Kremlin has systematically refused to engage in peace talks with the exiled government. Aushev, one of the few politicians with whom the terrorists were prepared to negotiate, was given a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin in which their demands were spelled out. In a telephone interview with Novaya Gazeta, Aushev shed light on what these were, saying that it was the "usual Budenovsk stuff" (a reference to a similar hostage crisis that had marked the end of the first Chechen campaign in 1996). The Beslan school hostage-takers were in effect demanding a complete Russian military withdrawal from Chechnya. General Aushev, a seasoned officer and veteran of the Afghan war, did not hesitate to give one more major reason for the disaster: "We've lost one and a half days trying to reach a decision on who's going in to talk to them," he said. Public fury over the incompetence of the Russian authorities during the Beslan crisis was further aggravated by the cover-up orchestrated by the Russian media, in accordance with new rules dealing with media coverage of terrorist acts. The survivors of Beslan are telling stories of despair at learning that their numbers were deliberately diminished in news reports, something which enraged their captors, thus provoking them to even greater cruelty. "Nobody needs you at all," they would yell at their prisoners, "they are going to sacrifice you all!" According to the survivors, it was then that their captors began to deny them water. Some of them eventually resorted to drinking their own urine. The agony was aggravated by the intensely hot weather that marked these days. Obviously, in such conditions, the first deaths among the hostages would not take long to come. The cold-blooded destruction of so many innocent lives has shaken Russia out of its slumbers. It has once again become clear that the promise of "bringing order" to the country by means of imposing stricter security measures -- the promise that brought Putin the presidency for both his first and second terms -- has never been further from being fulfilled. In his address to the nation on the day after the tragedy, Putin was forced to bow to this realisation, admitting the country's "weakness" in the face of such a formidable new threat as international terrorism. His speech abounded in grave overtones, with recollections of the fallout from the breakup of the USSR, and of the big hopes and hard times that Russia has been through since its independence. Putin also alluded to foreign threats aimed at accelerating the disintegration of what was once the core of a world superpower and now finds itself increasingly vulnerable to all sorts of attacks from both East and West. Following this preamble, the Russian President turned to the main point of his address: the attack on the country which, by lighting a fuse under the Caucasus, threatens to start a series of internal conflicts all over Russia. These words were not spoken lightly. Unprecedented security measures have been imposed to seal off the republic of North Ossetia from the neighbouring Georgia in order to prevent provocative interference from abroad, and from Ingushetia so as to avoid the renewal of the hostilities that opposed the two republics in 1992. It is feared that the Ossetians, who are predominantly Christian Orthodox, might seek to avenge themselves just across the border in Muslim Ingushetia. Addressing the people at Beslan, President Putin made it absolutely clear that any move which might destabilise the situation will be harshly rebuffed. "Among the aims pursued by the terrorists is that of sowing national strife and blowing up the North Caucasus region," said Putin. "Anyone who gives in to this sort of provocation will be considered as an accomplice of the terrorists". Indeed, the stability of the North Caucasus is already under serious threat following the escalation of tension around the self-proclaimed autonomy of Southern Ossetia, which is presently part of Georgia. The bold young Georgian leader Michael Saakashvili has been making thinly veiled threats at the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia, whose populations have pledged allegiance to Russia. The presence of US military troops in Georgia and the dispute that surrounds the ex-Soviet military bases in this country, which are still controlled by Russia, only serves to deepen the rift between the two neighbours. Add to these factors the rise of xenophobia, Islamophobia and chauvinistic attitudes within Russian society itself, coupled with an innate distrust for the West's intentions towards it, and it is easy to draw a picture of a country sliding into fundamentalist isolationism. This is the outcome which President Putin seems to be doing his best to avoid at any cost. The UN resolution condemning the Beslan hostage-taking may yet provide an acceptable way out of the stalemate in Chechnya, by allowing international peace-keepers into the region. If that fails, it will further strengthen the international anti-terrorist alliance of which Russia is a fully paid-up member. By locating Chechen separatism squarely within the context of the "global war against terrorism", Putin may be gaining allies abroad while preparing to tighten his grip yet further on the rebellious republic. Yet to achieve his goals, he may be obliged to give in to certain other demands that the Russian president would rather avoid. These might include agreeing to US demands to become actively involved in bringing order to Iraq, or adopting a harder line towards Iran and North Korea. Consolidation of the country in the face of a war waged against it by an invisible enemy is certainly the top priority in Kremlin propaganda these days. Huge government-sponsored rallies are planned to take place in major cities. One such rally was held on Tuesday in Moscow amidst unprecedented security measures, gathering 135,000 people in Red Square. Unfortunately, the orators had nothing of substance to declare to the people who had come to "voice their anger" at the terror attacks. Unceasing calls for a united response to terror have failed to provide any clear idea or political strategy to rally around. Still, it was always unlikely that such an important factor of national unity could be produced at such short notice, simply in order to encourage the citizens' participation in the upcoming witch hunt, an all- out war against the ghosts of death that are being bred in Russia's southern enclave. The latest series of attacks on Russia, which included the stunning simultaneous downing of two domestic flights attributed to suicide bombers, the suicide attack on a Moscow metro station, and finally the Beslan hostage crisis, are destined to lead to drastic changes in Russia's domestic policies. On 13 September, addressing an unprecedented joint meeting that brought together the members of his cabinet with all the regional governors, President Putin put forward a series of radical and far- reaching reforms. According to the announced plan, there will be major changes in the way the deputies of the state's lower house of parliament, the Duma, are elected. From now on, President Putin wishes to see them selected solely on a party-list basis. But the real punch of the presidential address was his intention to nominate regional governors rather than have them directly elected, which is tantamount to putting an end to federalism itself. Yet it is just such a mammoth structure of pure "vertical power" which the president believes to be necessary to mobilise all available resources in order to effectively counter the terrorist threats. Promptly dubbed by some commentators a as coup d'état, the revolutionary changes proposed by the Russian president in the aftermath of the terror attacks will further the "centralisation of power" which Putin has been firmly pursuing ever since he came to power. This policy is contrary to that adopted by his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who had opted instead for giving maximum independence to the regional governments within the Russian Federation. There is little doubt that such a shift will meet with much fierce opposition from the regional elites, who would happily strike a pact with the devil himself in order to hang on to their privileges and power. It is also obvious that such an arrangement is bound to make the president personally responsible in the eyes of the public for whatever is done by his subordinates at any point along the newly streamlined chain of command. According to some commentators, such an arrangement will likely further increase the already rampant corruption within the state apparatus. In an apparent attempt to counter this tendency, the president has come up with a totally new concept of a "Public Chamber" that will serve as a forum to debate government decisions and give constructive feedback, while serving as a catalyst for a much needed consolidation of civil society, which alone can provide a lasting and effective protection from such an elusive enemy as terrorism. "We are speaking here of a civil monitoring of the government apparatus, which includes the security and special services," President Putin said. It is in no way an exaggeration to draw parallels between the events that have taken place in Russia over the last few weeks and the aftermath of 9/11 for the United States. The highly amorphous entity which is post-Soviet Russia is in many ways more susceptible to cataclysms that the US. But equally, the Russian people are still unspoiled by consumerism, and are used to a much lower standard of living and welfare. They are thus much harder to mobilise on any sort of crusade against ill-defined forces of evil. Confirmation of this is provided by the lack of enthusiasm, or even interest, among both the people and the media which greeted the unspecified threats issued by the Russian defence minister, when he asserted the right of his country to hit terrorists' bases abroad. The repercussions of the Beslan massacre for Russia's stance on international affairs thus remain largely unclear. But what is clear is that it represents a seismic event of major proportions for the organisation of power within the country.
