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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Dark memories of Beslan |
| 2005-08-29 |
| The scene looks normal enough. A group of teachers sit talking quietly in an empty room in a brand-new, cavernous school. Drinking bad instant coffee, they chat about everything from a problem student—"God, I hope we're not going to get him next year"—to furniture for their staff room. One instructor, Elena Kasumova, leafs through a small questionnaire she gave some 11-year-olds 18 months ago. The first question was, "What do you fear most?" Spiders, answered one girl. Low grades, another. The loss of someone close to me, wrote a third. The children who answered the questionnaire are all dead. The record books the teachers are arranging on the shelves have bullet holes in them. And most of the teachers are survivors of the Beslan hostage siege last September, when more than 1,100 people—many of them children—were held by terrorists loyal to Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev. At least 331 people died, including 186 children, in a chaotic rescue operation during which Russian security forces hit the school with incendiary grenades and tank shells. The fire brigade waited two hours before putting out the blaze that engulfed the gymnasium in which the hostages were being held. The scene at the new school is about as close to normal as you get in Beslan. A year on, the small North Ossetian town remains deeply wounded—and bitterly divided. Survivors are still struggling with grief and anger, physical and psychological pain. Vitriolic disputes have broken out between survivors and the families of those who died, with allegations of cowardice sprayed on walls and lives ruined by whispering campaigns. Lidia Tsaliyeva, the school's 73-year-old principal, has been a main target. Fellow hostages say she played a heroic role during the ordeal, but others have made her into an accomplice of the terrorists; graffiti scrawled on a wall in the village calls her a "murderer." The shock waves from Beslan are still felt far beyond the town. Many Russians were profoundly shaken by the television footage of dead and terribly injured children. And the Kremlin's failure to protect its people was another blow to President Vladimir Putin's image as a tough, take-charge leader. For Stanislav Kesayev, deputy speaker of the North Ossetian regional parliament and a critic of the Kremlin's handling of Beslan, the chaos surrounding the school seizure and the botched rescue attempt is symptomatic of the way Russian officials treat ordinary people as "cattle." "I teach law," says Kesayev, who heads a local inquiry into the siege. "I tell my students: Try to work to make things better here for your grandchildren—because you won't be able to get this country out of the total mess it's in in time to help your children." This week the first anniversary of the crisis will be formally marked with speeches and ceremonies in the old school gymnasium. A monument, which locals say will include a gold-painted structure said to depict a tree of life, will be unveiled at the cemetery where most casualties are buried. Next week, two new schools will open, one with tennis courts and the other with a pool. After a year of near-total silence, Putin has said he will meet a vociferously critical group of mothers who lost children in the tragedy. The commemorations are unlikely to bring reconciliation or catharsis, just more pain. "We're all dreading them," says Kasumova. Families of those who lost children in the siege accuse survivors, especially teachers, of failing to save their loved ones. "If you survived, you have to be a coward," is how Kasumova sums up the prevailing logic. "When the explosions started, the person next to me was torn to pieces," she says. "I still don't know why I survived." Children with the lightest physical injuries went back to school last November. Others are still receiving treatment and will not start the new year on time. Most are wary of unusual sounds, their teachers and parents say. Some, as they enter a new classroom, check for ways to escape. One young girl recently burst into tears when she saw the old school from a distance. Many have lingering pain, both physical and psychological. Vika Kallagova, 14, still drops by the hospital occasionally for treatment of shrapnel wounds that have not fully healed. Like many children in Beslan, Vika—who escaped from the school with her 9-year-old sister, Olya—is introverted and reticent. "I never want to talk to a psychiatrist again," she says. Critics of the government investigations claim that officials—both from the Kremlin and Beslan—are saying as little as possible in the hope that the controversy over the botched rescue will fade away. A federal commission of inquiry, composed of members of both houses of the Russian parliament, said last September they would need six months to complete their work. The inquiry is still limping along, with little sign that it will be finished in the near future. Prosecutors investigating the case still have not been able to identify the bodies of 11 of the 31 terrorists who died. And local officials last week banned journalists from the new school that will house most of the teachers and students who survived the siege. Only Kesayev's commission of inquiry has broken new ground, forcing prosecutors and military officers to admit that rocket-launched incendiary grenades and tank shells had been used, details that had previously been denied. Russian officials say these weapons did not cause the fire in the school, and tanks were called in only after all the surviving hostages had been freed. Kesayev, who was in the Russian emergency command center in Beslan throughout the crisis, also claims that the Kremlin deliberately failed to respond to an offer by moderate Chechen guerrilla leader Aslan Maskhadov (killed by Russian special forces in March) to negotiate the hostages' release. That assertion is supported by a former Russian official who was also in the Beslan command center: "Someone higher up decided: 'Why make Maskhadov a hero?'" Russian officials reject the assertion, voicing doubts that Maskhadov's offer was genuine and claiming that fighting broke out anyway before they could act on it. Meanwhile, the war in Chechnya drags on, promising more horrors to come. Last week, a new underground government was announced with Basayev, widely believed to have planned Beslan, named first deputy premier. Asked recently if there could be more Beslan-style attacks, Basayev answered: "Of course." In Beslan itself, there's little mention of Basayev or the government inquiry. "We will never know who was behind the raid," says one of the teachers as she makes final preparations for the start of the new school year and, hopefully, the return of at least a semblance of normality. Life goes on, but everyone in this battered, brokenhearted town knows that nothing will ever really be normal again. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |