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| Caucasus |
| Revenge takes root in the ashes |
| 2004-09-07 |
| On the charred planks of the gymnasium of School Number One, amid soot-covered children's sneakers and shell casings, Beslan's aggrieved citizens debated fighting back. At first, parents, relatives and friends of those who perished in Friday's bloody climax to the three-day siege gathered at the gutted redbrick building to see the destruction with their own eyes. But the afternoon soon turned into an impromptu town meeting, held in the blackened gym where many of the hostages died. A few voices in the crowd called for calm, but many insisted that the deaths of so many children be avenged. "Let's gather up all of the men in the villages and fight," shouted one man. "If we don't act now, when we calm down we'll end up not doing anything at all," yelled a middle-aged woman, shaking her fist in the air. Can you say Khatmandu x 1000? Nikolai Betiyev, 52, urged restraint. "Let's bury the bodies first before we think of doing anything. We need to calm down." Betiayev? Liberals over there too? "We won't ever forget this," shouted back Taimuraz Metsiyev, a broad-chested, 33-year-old Ossetian who lost several friends and relatives in the siege. "So don't say that in time we'll learn to accept this, and that we have to concentrate on burying our children. i.e. "Shut your ass you liberal weenie!" "The people who don't want to fight say 'So many innocent lives will suffer if we take up arms'," Mr Metsiyev continued. "Well, we've already suffered enough. It's time to fight." Liberals exists in every society. Even as the first funeral processions began wending their way through the streets of Beslan, many residents began openly talking of revenge. They directed their anger at the organisers and abetters of terrorism in the volatile Caucasus region, and said they could no longer rely on local or Russian law-enforcement for protection. Someone will pay for this! President Vladimir Putin's image as an iron-willed, no-nonsense leader, relying heavily on his KGB past, now counts for little in many people's eyes. They are furious with what they see as his inability to shield the nation from terrorism and from the fallout of the decade-long conflict in the northern Caucasus. Now, Mr Putin's calls for restraint appear to carry little weight with so many touched by the crisis. My mother-in-law, a Russian citizen, voted for Putin. Now she is not so sure. . In Beslan, Fatima Ganukova scoffed at the President's surprise visit to the town early on Saturday to meet survivors, saying he should have instead visited the morgue to view the scope of the tragedy. i.e. Vlad needs a dose of reality. "Of course, after the funerals our men will try to take matters into our hands," Ms Ganukova said. "And of course, this is the right thing to do." Again, remember what happened in Khatmandu? |
| Posted by:BigEd |
| #17 GWB better get over trying to run the war on the cheap. We're gonna need a lot more troops and sooner rather than later. Bingo. White man's burden, 21st-c style. Scrap the tax cuts and boost troop strength for forward deployment as close to Iran as we can possibly get. Better get serious about container-scanning for nukes, because they're coming to a port near you. Time for us to admit that Russia is a failing state that must not be allowed to fail and that NATO's finished. Forget about expecting (or caring about) any help from EUrabia. We need to secure that vast arc of jihadist and nuke-infested instability that runs from Syria to Kashmir, and to do so we have no choice but to make a full-court press with willing partners in Russia, India, Iraq, Turkey and Israel. And that won't come cheap. Need lots-o-carrots and lots-o-troops. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-07 10:17:30 PM |
| #16 Peggy has it wrong. This is yet more evidence of the failure of the criminalized, incompetent Russian state. Like the last humiliating skirmish won by the Japanese in 1905. Russia's failing, folks. It's another version of Pakistan, and it desperately needs our help to turn things around. Because if the Russian WMD candy-store collapses, we're screwed. And if the Russian FSB-mafiya state continues to slip nuke technology to the mullahs, we're screwed. Russia needs our help, now. Condi, get on that plane. XOM, ChevronTexaco: you guys can do business in Nigeria or Angola; you can and will resurrect Russia's rotting oil industry. Nonproliferation $$$$-- whatever it takes. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-07 10:10:41 PM |
| #15 looking at the bodies of children, I wonder why you worry about the term "innocent people"? Innocence has nothing to do with war. |
| Posted by: flash91 2004-09-07 10:03:35 PM |
| #14 #1 Personally I am moving away from expecting to be kept perfectly safe in the short term by my government. What is becoming more important to me is that we resist and fight back no matter what it might cost us. I am fully prepared to wait a long time for the final results. Really well said, peggy. I would advise those in Chechnya who wish Once the carnage is over, come back in and rebuild. Then turn over the newly unoccupied territory to those who actually want to live in peace. Any more monkeyshines ... rinse and repeat. All of the preceeding campaigns couldn't have cost any less (in lives lost and financial expenditure) than what I'm proposing. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-09-07 9:47:54 PM |
| #13 The Russian Army has failed before, like most. It gets ugly after it learns from its mistakes and the objectives are clarified. |
| Posted by: Deion Shipman 2004-09-07 8:39:21 PM |
| #12 Lotta leaps there, 6350. Somehow, I doubt we'll see non-SF U. S. troops in Chechnya till after the victory parade through Moscow. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-09-07 6:44:08 PM |
| #11 Points: (1) Putin doesn't have the options that GWB had. His military is shaky at best. (2) Chechnya was "free" from about 1993 to 1999 - and in that time it was taken over by gangs and islamofascists. Basically - independence didn't work because it was overwhelmed by local warlords and jihadis. What will work? - gotta get rid of the gangs first in order for Chechnya to stop being a breeding ground for maggots. How to do that? Russian military has failed.... guess who gets to help? GWB better get over trying to run the war on the cheap. We're gonna need a lot more troops and sooner rather than later. |
| Posted by: Anonymous6350 2004-09-07 6:41:37 PM |
| #10 Douglass...Yes, the Russians have been trying to obliterate Chechnya. No, they haven't pulled out the stops (e.g., Arc-light raids over major industrial sites or known, terrorist stongholds). I think that a lot (a LOT) of innocent Chechans are goint to die. |
| Posted by: anymouse 2004-09-07 5:02:15 PM |
| #9 RWV - The Russians have been trying to obliterate Chechnya for last 6 years. Either they are incompetent or have bad aim. It seems to me that the infusion of 150,000 Red Army and Special Security forces should have done the job. Considering the current outrage, Vlad and the boys might just opt to make whole place a parking lot. |
| Posted by: Douglas De Bono 2004-09-07 4:21:13 PM |
| #8 If you're an imam at a mosque in southern Russia, you should be digging through your filing cabinet trying to find your property insurance. If there's no Vengeful Mob rider attached to it, turn your ass towards Mecca and bend over, because you're about to get divinely screwed. |
| Posted by: Captain Pedantic 2004-09-07 3:48:56 PM |
| #7 I think that the next genocide that the UN and EUweenies will be wringing their hands about will be the obiteration of Chechnya. |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-09-07 3:11:50 PM |
| #6 Col. Albert Seaton, the brilliant chronicler of the Battle for Moscow once observed: (paraphrasing) The greater distance one is from the Russian, the greater the tendency is to underestimate him. Don't count our Russian friends out of the action. The minute you think they are finished, they will come rolling over you in incredibly hostile numbers. Once the Russians understand their strategic objectives, they will achieve it in short order, and they will make the other poor dumb f*ckers die for their cause. |
| Posted by: badanov 2004-09-07 3:05:04 PM |
| #5 President Vladimir Putin’s image as an iron-willed, no-nonsense leader, relying heavily on his KGB past, now counts for little in many people’s eyes. They are furious with what they see as his inability to shield the nation from terrorism and from the fallout of the decade-long conflict in the northern Caucasus. The Russians have a great capacity for love and for fighting, but also for resignation. Putin or no Putin, they will need stamina and the refusal to resign in their cause against jihadists. Russia, don't let your outrage dissipate. |
| Posted by: jules 187 2004-09-07 2:56:06 PM |
| #4 Chechens? What Chechens? Are they still there? I'm pretty sure I saw them commit mass suicide quite recently. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-09-07 2:39:25 PM |
| #3 There is actually a case to be made for an independent Chechnya as a matter of abstract justice. (Unlike the "case" for the Palestinian cause, or for whatever it is the Islamofascists want from us.) However, after Beslan, you can forget Chechen independence for at least a generation. With the exception of the Chomsky-Moore-Rall-Kerry campaign staff-U.N. axis, the world's sympathy meter is off-scale low with respect to the Chechens. |
| Posted by: Mike 2004-09-07 2:37:20 PM |
| #2 You have it right, Peggy. |
| Posted by: jules 187 2004-09-07 2:31:36 PM |
| #1 Big ed, I agree that Putin looks bad in all of this. But I'm not sure that its because people blame him as much as he just seems destoyed in his appearance, like he has been hit really really hard. Maybe its just me but he looks small now. If he's any kind of man at all, we'll soon see it. I hope that he responds to the shock of this attack the way that W did. Btw, I just can't blame Putin for what happened. I mean what more could he have done?? He laid waste to an entire region in retaliation for terrorist acts and it apparently did him no good to prevent this kind of thing. Does this attack mean that there is just no winning in this fight? Or does it mean that we are going to have to start re-evaluating what we think that victory in the short term should look like? Personally I am moving away from expecting to be kept perfectly safe in the short term by my government. What is becoming more important to me is that we resist and fight back no matter what it might cost us. I am fully prepared to wait a long time for the final results. The Russians are suffering for fighting back and I expect that we in the US and UK will too someday soon. I retain the right and priviledge to ask my government to be ever more vigilant and effecient in doing their duty to protect us but I'm not going to blame them when someone manages to slip through before we manage to win this thing. When that happens I just won't be surprised and then I'll expect the government to fix that hole. I won't blame them for not anticipating every move the terrorists might make. |
| Posted by: peggy 2004-09-07 2:20:25 PM |