Massacre In Ossetia: How did it come to this?

Crying for justice

Veteran watchers of the conflict in Chechnya, with its scorched-earth attacks by Russia and subsequent terrorist attacks throughout Russia, were probably not surprised at the outcome of this week’s hostage killings in Beslan, Russia, where over 300 are confirmed dead (many of them school children) and 200 are still unaccounted for. Each time that Chechen separatists and Russian security forces make a move, they manage to up the ante in a war that sees no hope of ending anytime soon. The end result: a spiraling conflict that leaves nobody innocent and leaves many innocent dead. As for the massacre itself, it appears to have been a well-planned attempt to hold nearly 1,000 schoolchildren and teachers hostage (a new level of depravity even for this conflict) in exchange for a Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. This follows a pattern of attacks that date from the mid 1990’s, when Chechen separatist leader Shamil Basayev seized a Russian hospital to “make Russians suffer the way Chechens had suffered” (166 hostages died in that attack; Basayev escaped). And like so many times before, Russian authorities played down the incident, then responded with overwhelming force that accelerated the death (much like the Moscow theater siege in late 2002 which claimed over 200 lives when Russian troops used poison gas to subdue the kidnappers). Putin, whose power base is mainly a factor of his tough stand regarding Chechnya, is finding a Russian public increasingly uneasy about his Chechnya plan, especially since he once famously declared two years ago that the Chechen war was over, only to see attacks such as bombings and plane hijackings continue unabated. (Sound familiar?) While Putin’s government is coming clean (a little bit, anyway) about their miscalculations in the wake of the attack – some feel that Russian troops opened fire too soon and may have contributed to the death toll – the most likely reaction will be an “all out war” on the restive territory, with an even more deadly response (if one can imagine it) from its brutalized citizenry.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.