Is there no limit to senseless violence?
The massacre of scores of innocent children in Beslan, North Ossetia - a region in Southern Russia -has justifiably outraged and shocked the world. The Beslan calamity, which painfully came on the heels of the anniversary of Sept. 11, has revealed the ugliest face of fundamentalist terrorism.
For three days, Chechnya-linked terrorists took over an elementary school and held hundreds of boys and girls, and the adults caring for them, at gunpoint. In the sweltering late-summer heat, the terrorists packed the hostages in a small school gymnasium without food and water and with bombs hanging over their heads.
In the end, the terrorists demonstrated they had no compunction in detonating the bombs that killed the children. But while the responsibility of the terrorists in the Beslan tragedy is unequivocally clear, it seems as though Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn the wrong lessons from Beslan.
In the post-Beslan security policy shakeup (reminiscent of post-Sept. 11 America) the chief of staff of Russian army, General Yury Baluyevsky, is reported to have said that Moscow "will take steps to liquidate terror bases in any region."
General Baluyevsky later ambiguously clarified that by "region" he meant the Caucasus, Central Asia and some other areas close to Russia.
Putin promises retribution - but retribution has been visited upon Chechnya time and again for much of the 150 years since the oil-rich Muslim enclave was annexed by imperial Russia.
When the Soviet Union unraveled in 1991, Chechnya's hopes for an end to Russian rule soared, especially when neighboring Georgia won its independence. But Moscow feared a further splintering of the remnants of the former Soviet empire if Chechnya went its own way.
Yet Chechnya's people are a distinct ethnic and religious minority and have consistently resisted Moscow's authority. Chechens fought against tsarist Russia. In World War II, Stalin was so fearful the republic might seek to break away under the cover of Nazi invasion that he deported the entire population to Kazakhstan. The resulting death toll was horrific.
Such a collective memory casts a long shadow over the present conflict. Russia has fought two costly but inconclusive wars against Chechen rebels since 1994. Tens of thousands of Chechen combatants and civilians, as well as Russian soldiers, have died, with extreme brutality on both sides.
Perhaps Putin's primary mistake is his general assessment of the Chechnya situation. Although the Chechen insurgents are Muslims and are thought to have operational links with al-Qaeda, their primary cause is nationhood, not jihad.
The Chechen separatist movement, led by Aslan Maskhadov, who was democratically elected Chechnya's president in 1997, may not have authorized the action, as asserted by his envoy in the United Kingdom, but there is no doubt that the hostage takers are Chechens - perhaps a rogue operation by an independent group.
Ever since Putin came to power, he has talked about the need to improve the "vertical levers of power," as he calls them, and to make Russia stronger. He appears to believe that in the Yeltsin years, too much autonomy was given to regions, and this led to the chaos and anarchic tendencies that left the country's economy floundering. Putin's subsequent policy of crushing separatist rebels in Chechnya with military might while propping handpicked local leaders has utterly failed, analysts say.
Furthermore, by associating the rebel leader Maskhadov with the Beslan butchery and offering a $10 million reward for his capture, Putin is jeopardizing future negotiations with the most prominent and popular of Chechen leaders and condemning Russians and Chechens alike to more misery and bloodshed.
Perhaps Russia's rash actions are aimed to divert attention for military ineptitude. There are accusations that the Russian government deliberately downplayed the seriousness of the hostage situation. For the first two days of the Beslan standoff, officials said there were about 350 hostages. Only on the third day did they acknowledge what local residents were saying - that there were more than 1,000 people in the school. Locals feared it meant authorities would storm the building and then lie about how many people were killed, also possibly provoking the terrorists.
In a recent turn of events, NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, General Jones, whose visit to Russia is a first trip by a NATO commander to that country has been reported as saying that the Cold War adversaries are now allies fighting terrorism together.
The U.S general's apparent unilateral endorsement of Russian policy in the Caucasus is even more problematic, as it shows that Washington is prepared to give Putin a virtual carte blanche to go on doing exactly that which has already resulted in so much bloodshed. This is a recipe for disaster.
Arjun Iyengar '05 is a international relations and biology concentrator.
