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Russian School calamity
 Part 1: Russian School calamitySeptember 3, 2004
Readers around the world will be horrified and saddened to learn that the siege of a Russian school in Beslan has ended in massive loss of life (Reuters, BBC [with diagram of school structure], ITAR-TASS). Initially, the siege took a hopeful turn when some hostages were released; then, according to a reporter, some children managed to escape, the captors began shooting at them, and then the school was stormed by FSB forces. Initial reports from Reuters are of 100 killed, 400 wounded. The BBC story estimated 150 killed, but expects numbers to go higher; estimates of the wounded exceed 600. It seems the commandos used explosives to blow a hole in the wall of the gymnasium where the children were being held. As of a few minutes ago, ITAR-TASS says there is continued shooting around the structure of the school.
Beslan is in an autonomous region of Russia, North Ossetia; it is next to Ingushetia, another tiny autonomous region that was formerly part of Chechnya. South Ossetia is an autonomous region of Georgia; traditionally, Ossets favor Russia and resist Georgia, so while N. Ossetia is a staging ground for Russian operations in Chechnya and elsewhere, S. Ossetia is a flashpoint between Georgians and Russians (ethno-linguistic map; hi-res map).
(Ossetic is the name of a language, one of many spoken in the Greater Caucasus Mountains; the speakers are descendants of ancient Iranian mounted tribes, known as the Alans [Digiron]. South Ossetia was designated an autonomous region of the Transcaucasian SFSR in 1922, and later became part of the Georgian SSR ['36]. After the collapse of the USSR, South Ossetia declared independence; initially, Georgian troops invaded the country and crushed the breakaway government, but then Georgia itself suffered a civil war and S. Ossetia became a de facto protectorate of Russia. The Georgian government has renewed efforts to push Russian troops out of the area and resume central control over the country [BBC]. North Ossetia remained part of Russia after the Civil War ended in '21, under various forms of federation. A majority of Ossets are Muslim; a minority are Eastern Orthodox; both tend to be pro-Moscow since the 19th century. See also BBC regional profile.)
Since I posted about the downing of the two jet airliners in s. Russia a few days ago, little information has emerged about that story. Some clarification about the airport of departure: Domodedovo is one of three major domestic airports serving the Moscow area; it is owned by private investors and is used by Swiss Airlines, AirMalta, British Airways, and most domestic airlines, except Aeroflot. Aeroflot and major foreign carriers use Sheremtyevo-2; Sheremtyevo-1 is exclusively domestic. Vnukovo is very far to the s.e. of Moscow and serves a few domestic airlines to Ukraine, Moldova, and Armenia. The main suspects in the case are two Chechen widows: Amanta Nagaeva (who boarded the Tu-134) and Satsia Jebirkhanova (on the Tu-154). Both lost family members in the Chechen fighting.
My own view is that the extremely tight Russian lid on information about terrorism—whose death toll since 2001 is around 700 since 11 Sept '01 (MSNBC)—is probably contributing to worsening safety for Russian citizens. The other place where terrorism has been massively deadly has been Iraq since June '03, where over 1,500 civilians have been killed by guerrilla action. Israel is another nation afflicted by endemic terrorism; so is Colombia. It is difficult to imagine a reader who is not weary of hearing that repression and secrecy always lead to administrative malfeasance, provocation, and more terror. Persons like Tariq Ramadan, who has something genuinely useful to say, is thwarted by constant demands to "prove" he has no sympathy with terrorists. The whole object of this calumny and innuendo against him and others is to ensure that the real perpetrators of terror—imperialists and tyrants—retain a monopoly on dialogue.
POLITICAL UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Alu Alkhanov was recently elected president of Chechnya (BBC); it was surprising as a sunset. Alkhanov was Moscow's candidate, and the voting was confined to areas under very heavy Russian supervision.
Part 2: More on BeslanSeptember 5, 2004
UPDATE: Death toll from Beslan School siege reportedly exceeds 340, overtaking 3/11 attacks as worst in Europe's postwar history (LA Times). The latest version of events is that the hostage takers wired the school with explosives that they had clandestinely brought in, while disguised as construction workers. The initial explosions are now reported to have been theirs, not the FSB's.
A couple of days ago I wrote a few cursory remarks about the hostage crisis in Beslan, N. Ossetia. Courtesy of Ms. Cramer, I am advised that nine-ten of the men who took the hostages were mercenaries (Sofia News Agency) from Arab countries. She also cites reports on the recruiting and use of mercenaries in guerilla movements. Oddly, the stereotype of mercenaries as exceptionally effective seems to have been assimilated by the terrorist movements.
UPDATE (5 Sep '04): Per BBC, this is now in doubt; however, there seems to be less, not more, consensus as to who the perpetrators were. The BBC story, if read carefully, does seem to give the nod to Chechens affiliated with Shamil Basayev.
My own view of this is that terrorists are exceptionally delusional people, delusional by virtue of having been seduced by the mystique of being the man with the gun. We who are anti-imperialist have often been tarred by the allegation of being sympathetic to the man with the gun; the allegation is abject rubbish. On the contrary, nothing could be further from the truth.
There is a type of university student-rebel wannabe whom I tended to loathe with spectacular, and misplaced, vitriol when I was a university student also. Readers know the type: Che Guevara poster, slogans of Black Panthers, and so forth. Of course they corresponded to a psychological type: the hero worshipper, with alpha-male tendencies, who hopes that he too will one day be a truculent cheroot-puffing rebel in a leather coat, wily and invariably victorious. Dreamy, yes? If the matter is resolved peacefully, by accords and hartels, it's a huge let-down and occasions great cynicism. At the time I suspected the bourgeois scions who professed to adore guerillas and terrorists and serial killers, dreaded social order, justice, and orderly resolution as a matter of violated taste. And I suspect that now, although it's true I may be guilty of deep-rooted prejudice.
Terrorism, however, is uniquely handy to the imperialist. It is in fact so handy that older, more self-aware leftists are liable to suspect the terrorist act was orchestrated by the prevailing imperial power. With the dissolution of the European empires (1946-1975), it became customary for intelligence agencies of those same countries to collude on replacing the colonial rulers with acquiescent local ones, and one common method was terrorist action against the new government (as in Malaysia, the Philippines, and so on). Likewise, in countries like Colombia and El Salvador it became routine for sovereign nations to drift under praetorian rule by a collaboration of local businessmen and the US government. In those cases, terrorism often served two functions: the proximate one of terrorizing the peasants or urban proletariats, and the collateral one of being misreported as "Communist" and validating US military assistance.
Needless to say, in the sense that inner cities of the USA are targets of internal imperialism, groups like the Black Panthers may have genuinely frightened the FBI and the John Birch Society, but they merely sated the cravings of some lads to rule by intimidation and gangsterism, win adoration, stiffen the spine of congenital cowards in the John Birchers' ranks, and usher in far more sophisticated police techniques. Sympathy for African Americans evaporated in the suburbs, even up the Baby Boomers—perhaps I ought to have said, amongst them most of all. The various assistance programs associated with the Black Panthers were carried out by groups using their name and ideological narrative, but they had little logistical or financial involvement. Eventually the Panthers receded, leaving in their wake numerous urban Black communities with no social organization at all.
Terrorists, therefore, are useful, if occasionally hazardous, accessories to imperialism. They themselves are typically driven into the business by some experience of humiliation and terror—for example, being captured and tortured sexually; and they become addicted to dishing out terror themselves. As they get older and shrewder, they become ideologues and later, employers of terrorists. The thrill of dishing out terror is absorbed in subtler forms than before; now, rather than the stark terror of the hated other groveling before a machine gun, it is more exquisitely pleasing to have high-ranking diplomats scrape and kow-tow. The thrill is, nonetheless, of paramount importance. The true anti-imperialist understands that there is absolutely no reason to imagine that the one who fights evil is himself pure of motive, or even of acceptable motive; such notions are the stuff of patriotic legends. Often guerilla leaders are merely disappointed goons, people who would have been happy to accept a post in the local government but who were passed over in favor of a personal enemy. Sometimes they take up terrorism because it is convenient.
For this reason, the use of mercenaries seems to have been an untold story of terrorism. It may come as a surprise to learn that mercenaries are often terrorists, although it is surely common knowledge that mercenaries are often guerillas. Terrorists and guerillas are different groups, of course, but the latter are often prone to turn to the former when faced with tactical defeat. One gets the impression this is what happened at Beslan.
UPDATE: Interesting comment thread at Fistful of Euros. A little savage towards Russia and Muslims towards the end, though.
Part 3: Still More on BeslanSeptember 6, 2004
Jeanne d'Arc posts on the crisis in Beslan. She is appalled by many aspects of the coverage of the disaster. First, she objects to the way in which the LA Times used an anecdotal happy ending to sell papers: the now-famous story of the woman trapped with two children, Alan and Alana, forced to choice which one she will leave the school with. After a ruse to escape with both children is thwarted by the terrorists, she leaves behind her daughter, whom she assumed was killed in the final hours of the crisis. The daughter is, however, alive; Jeanne points out that this obscures the fact that 360 other people, many children, were killed. Journalism is the art firstly of getting readers interested in subjects about which they would not naturally care; and that requires an appeal to fellow feeling:
The problem with the curmudgeon's approach to life is that it puts the indifferent in the same category as the morally tormented; Don't get all worked up, you blithering idiot, all your good intentions and human feeling are mere insipidness. Oh, you did accomplish something? You did reach out and afford solace to another? Ah, that's the problem with you do-gooders; you help one person and you feel better... Only someone perversely in love with remorse or inaction could approve of this.
Part 4: Evidently, many world leaders tell lies about terrorismSeptember 8, 2004
After 9/11, the Bush Administration lied to America about the connection between Saddam Hussein and the terror attacks (Australian Broadcasting Corp./WP), using the massive horror at that atrocity in order to galvanize anger towards Arab states. Of course, the real problem was never Arab states at all, but non-state actors—organizations that now find Iraq an attractive haven (SSI/WP). In a like manner, José María Aznar "undertook an intense campaign to convince the Spanish public and world opinion-makers that the Basque separatist group ETA had carried out the [3/11 Madrid] attacks, which killed 201 people" (WP/IHT); this lie emerged several days too soon, and of course wrecked Aznar's political career. And now the Russian government of Vladimir Putin acknowledges that it, too, lied about the Beslan terror crisis:
As the bereaved families of Beslan began to lay their loved ones to rest Sunday, the Kremlin-controlled Rossiya network aired gripping, gruesome footage it had withheld from the public for days and said government officials had deliberately deceived the world about the number of hostages inside School No. 1.
[...]
Sergei Markov, a political analyst with close ties to the Kremlin, said the deadly outcome of the school standoff had left Putin at a loss as to how to respond beyond the former KGB colonel's instinct to strengthen police powers and centralize control over government institutions. "They don't know what to do," he said. "Vladimir Putin didn't explain in detail what will be happening."
Speaking before the Sunday night broadcast of the state television news program "Vesti," Markov said it had been clear that the government had engaged in a clumsy coverup. "Everybody understands they are lying," he said. "Everybody can do the math and know there were more than 1,000 people inside the school." State actors dislike scrutiny and seek to thwart it at every opportunity. However, the reflex is to target critics of the government first; there is an understandable fear that, if the government is the "target" of any terrorist act, then the terrorists can hope to succeed only if public opinion responds by forcing concessions, as in fact occurred when as Philippine citizen was taken hostage in Iraq. If Pres. Macapagal-Arroyo had been invulnerable to public opinion after the seizure of Angelo dela Cruz by Iraqi terrorists, then she would have been able to act resolutely, thwarting efforts to blackmail the Philippine state. Unfortunately, this tenderness for the state's freedom of action invariably is hijacked to serve sectional interests. In most cases, this sectional interest is the personal ego of ambitious diplomats—Pres. Macapagal-Arroyo's desire for the Philippines to be a senior partner of the USA—thereby ensuring a continued stream of financial support and attention, or PM Aznar's desire to strike a blow for neo-liberalism within the EU.
Russia, however, is a peculiar case: Pres. Putin's popularity was quite high; opposition in the Duma was weak and divided, and the West was largely supportive. Putin was the first leader since '86 to escape the opprobrium of the USSR's collapse. The onset of endemic terrorism in Russia seems to polarized Russian society into those who believe Putin alone can provide the strong hand required to defeat "Wahhabism" in the Caucasus, versus those who believe Putin is merely using terror attacks to validate a liquidation of political freedom. This seems to reflect a trend in authoritarian societies where the head of state is not less, but more—much more—alarmed by any corner of public opinion that views him with mistrust. Putin's government may believe that, since he is now an effective autocrat of the country, he has a very short period of time in which he must prove he alone can provide ironclad security for Russia.
SOURCE: the link above referring to Iraq as an attractive haven for non-state [terrorist] actors "SSI" refers to a report by Jeffrey Record, p.5 [PDF-11]: "Bounding the Global War on Terrorism" (PDF) December 2003. The report was published within seven months of the "conclusion of hostilities" against Saddam Hussein's Ba'thist government. I was gratified to locate this subsequent publication, same author, "Iraq and Vietnam: Differences, Similarities, and Insights" (PDF) where Prof. Record and Prof. W. Andrew Terrill observe: ...Despite Saddam Hussein’s abysmal record on human rights, many Sunni Arabs regarded him as a strong protector of their community,...Moreover, high unemployment in the Sunni Arab areas, resentment over U.S. raids, the nature and scope of de-Ba’athification, and a lack of non-Ba’athist Sunni Arab leadership ...all contribute to potential Sunni Arab sympathy with the insurgents. If the Ba’athists still account for most insurgent fighters, the Islamists and foreign fighters may be the most threatening for Iraq’s future. Saddam Hussein’s overthrow brought foreign terrorists into Iraq and gave them a freedom of movement that was previously unthinkable. Under Saddam’s regime, a pervasive and effective internal security apparatus blocked any serious insurgent activity, and 8 years of war with the Islamic Republic of Iran eliminated any potential sympathy Saddam might have had for Islamic extremists no matter how anti-American they might be. Moreover, some of
Saddam’s most dedicated domestic enemies were Islamic radicals who engaged in anti-regime terrorism. Part 5: Kathryn Cramer on BeslanSeptember 10, 2004
(UPDATED FOR SUBSEQUENT POSTS BY Ms. CRAMER)
One of my favorite fellow anti-imperialists, Kathryn Cramer, has exceptional expertise on the use of mercenaries; reports of mercenaries in the assault on the school in Beslan prompted a spate of posts (and debate). This article by Ms. Cramer, Make-Up of the Beslan Terror Group a Political Football, points out that the Russian cabinet seems to be undecided about who they are saying the perpetrators are. "Beslan's Terrorists: Who They Were": Fascinating excerpts from the above-cited post: MORE FROM Ms. CRAMER: "Assigning Blame for Beslan," 12 September: And courtesy of Kathryn Cramer, we have this report from Ken MacLeod: UPDATE (11 Sept): Timothy Burke at Easily Distracted does make the best point I've read about the attacks yet: It’s hard to know what would stop such attacks. Not territorial concessions—Chechnya was effectively autonomous before the Russian invasion. Not negotiation: there’s no responsible, authoritative polity left to negotiate with. Not strong internal security and defense by the Russians: their nation is huge and almost necessarily porous, and their economic and material capacity to mount such a security regime is lacking in any event.
[...]
If the war we are now engaged in was a conventional war between two armies battling for the control of territory, and the opportunity to gain an important strategic victory through the use of heavy bombardment even at the cost of civilian lives and property destruction presented itself, I’d say that you go ahead and take the opportunity. That is not what this war is about; that is not the nature of this particular conflict.
You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight, and you don’t act like a clumsy occupier or New Crusader if what you really need to do is marginalize and contain terrorist groups in Islamic societies. But if the necessary approach happens to also look like the most conventionally moral one, then that’s just a fortunate coincidence. In this instance, Vietnam is less the appropriate historical sounding board than Hiroshima. (Not, I hasten to note, because the use of nuclear weapons is advisable in the here and now, merely because of the moral questions that Hiroshima raises about how to conduct warfare.) Hiroshima may not have been the right thing to do, but it was probably the necessary thing to do, or to put it differently, one kind of moral principle trumped another in that decision. Not so absolutely that we can be sure, even now, which was which: it remains, legitimately, a case to debate. But I know how I would want that equation solved myself, and should a similarly tough decision present itself, I know which way I want the painful calculus to go.
At least some critics of the war are more concerned with the promotion of national (or international) virtue, and from collective virtue, their own personal virtue. At least some critics of the war worry more about whether they’re personally good people than worry about what is good for the United States and the world. The more that Kerry appears to represent that approach, the more than those who believe that our government must do what is necessary in war will feel uneasy or be unable to support him, regardless of the demonstrated incompetence of the Bush Administration in the actual conduct of post-9/11 world affairs. Part 6: Meditations on the AtrocitiesSeptember 13, 2004
At first, I thought I would include a thoughtful retrospective about the 9/11 terror attacks, perhaps meditating on the implications of the follow-on waves of terrorism striking Russia's Severo Ossetia Oblast. In an initial draft, I wanted to mention the way I was jerked out of cultivated political indifference by wars and detentions, and at the same time, confronted with a torrent of profound malice from other developed countries. Then, I was going to talk about the alarming evidence that my own country was embarking on a new campaign of imperialism, and what imperialism was and what types of miseries it foreboded for different segments of the population. I saw myself as the chorus in a Greek play, perhaps Agamemnon or Antigone.
But why waste your time with that? Many people, and wiser, have written essays on the disaster, and will again. In a way, the structure that ultimately rises from the wreckage of the WTC site will be a compelling essay (will it be defiant? or will the plans be drastically revised, in the event of some massive political upheaval?) Three years ago a tiny number of people stole some technically astonishing machinery and used it to destroy technically astonishing buildings; neither the stolen equipment nor the buildings were artifacts of their world. Then followed a succession of very large terrorist acts, like the bombing in Bali, the bombing of a train station in Madrid, and finally, the last week of August when nearly 500 Russian nationals were murdered in signally atrocious fashion. During this time, suicide bombings in Israel formed a steady drumbeat, as did attacks in Sri Lanka (usually LTTE attacks on the government, then rival factions against each other; PBS), plus some 20 bombings against Awami League rallies in Bangladesh. Today, the war in Iraq is erupting at the seams (BBC), with no evidence of any emotional effect on the electorate. Terrorism, it seems, is now melding into mere horror, an empire of crime that includes national governments as perpetrators.
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