Until a few days ago many of us had barely heard of North Ossetia, the Russian republic neighbouring Chechnya, let alone middle school No 1 in Beslan. Now it has joined a grim roll call that takes in the World Trade Center, Kuta Beach in Bali, the Madrid trains from Alcala de Henares and a growing list of other, less memorable, terrorist outrages. We did not need reminding that terrorism has made the world in the early 21st century so precarious. But at a time when we are in danger of becoming inured to the brutality of terrorism — the horror that greeted the first beheading in Iraq has sadly diminished — Beslan is an awful reminder of the seething, incomprehensible hatred at large in the world.
The premeditated bombing and shooting of children must surely mark a nadir in this global campaign fuelled by Islamic fundamentalism and nationalism. As the Archbishop of Canterbury rightly said yesterday, it was “the most evil kind of action we can imagine”. There have been school massacres before; Dunblane witnessed 16 primary school children and their teacher slaughtered by a crazed gunman. At least we could rationalise those deaths as the actions of a madman. In middle school No 1, children died as a result of callous and cold-blooded actions by a group of apparently rational people. The fact that some of the killers were women, the so-called Chechen “black widows”, made the abuse then murder of the children even more horrifying.
What we are seeing, according to Professor Paul Wilkinson, a terrorism expert at the University of St Andrews, is the inflation of terror. Each new act has to be worse, or at least different, to the last. That way the terrorists provoke the revulsion and worldwide media coverage they crave. Aeroplanes were targeted first with straightforward hijackings. Then planes were blown up in the desert without their passengers. Then fully laden aircraft over Scotland and Africa were blown out of the sky by remote-controlled bombs. Finally the suicide bombers arrived, and nothing seems beyond their imagination.
In the case of Chechnya, the terrorists started from a high base. As long ago as 1995, Chechen terrorists, on a raid into the nearby region of Stavropol, seized a hospital complex at the town of Budyonnovsk. Their 2,000 hostages included pregnant women and babies. When Russian forces moved in, a bloody four-hour battle ensued, resulting in a death toll of 100, including some of the women and children. Chechen terrorists, brutalised by Moscow’s decade-long repression, have little respect for Russian life.
It is easy to criticise the professionalism and tactics of the Russian special forces. The climax to the Moscow theatre siege two years ago, when 600 were rescued but 130 died, largely due to inadequate medical services, indicated that Beslan was unlikely to end without bloodshed. Something went badly wrong on Friday, turning negotiation into bloody confrontation, and resulting in a death toll that may yet climb to at least 400. This was a poorly handled operation, as was the planning for the medical care for the survivors. But we should be clear where the blame lies. The terrorists decided callously to endanger the lives of children and they alone have to be held to account.
No country can avoid the battle against terrorism. Until the school siege began, the big international story was about two French journalists captured by extremists in Iraq. The reaction in France was one of shock because of the country’s opposition to the war. “Why pick on us?” they cried. But as Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi interim prime minister, points out in an interview with this newspaper today, terrorists do not behave rationally. “No civilised country can draw back; the campaign against terrorism must be a global one, because the challenge is global,” he says. “The French, like all democratic countries, cannot let themselves be satisfied with adopting a passive position . . . Governments that decide to stay on the defensive will be the next terrorist targets.” He is right.
In the United States, where George Bush has benefited from an opinion poll bounce as a result of the Republicans’ successful convention, that is well understood. American voters may have their doubts about White House neo-conservatives and their Iraq strategy, and they are unsure about whether Mr Bush has been good or bad for the economy. But they know where their president stands on terrorism. The race is far from over, but unless his challenger John Kerry can convince the electorate that he is every bit as resolute, he will not win. Here, Tony Blair’s tough stance on terrorism serves him, and us, well.
The brutality displayed by the Chechens should cause us to reflect and to mourn. But it should not cause us to despair. Terrorists may ape one another in the methods they use but their objectives differ. Al-Qaeda is a terrorist movement without a target — the overthrow of the West being non-negotiable — and it will be the focus of a prolonged war which the West cannot avoid. In contrast the Chechen terrorists, however appalling their methods, have the genuine goal of independence from Moscow, offering the possibility of a solution.
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Chechens declared an independent state in 1991 and successfully took on the Russian army a few years later. But when Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, he determined to stamp his authority on Chechnya. That may have been popular with the Russian people but it provoked an ever-more violent response from the increasingly radicalised and Islamicised Chechen nationalists. In the past fortnight alone they have blown up two Russian aeroplanes in mid-flight and unleashed a suicide bomber outside a Moscow underground station.
This is not a time to be talking about opening negotiations over Chechen independence. Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russian prime minister at the time of the 1995 hospital siege, made the mistake of offering significant concessions to the terrorists. Once that bridge is crossed, terrorists all over the world believe they can hold governments to ransom. But Mr Putin’s war is clearly not working and he needs to consider a political solution. Most Chechens want peace and despise the actions of terrorists carrying out atrocities in their name. That was also the case in Northern Ireland, where out of the ashes of the bombings and kneecappings the men of violence were brought to the negotiating table and ultimately marginalised. History is full of such examples, and it has to be the way forward in Chechnya.
In the meantime the bereaved parents of Beslan will endure their grief and the surviving children a trauma that will last for years. The evil of terrorism has been exposed once more. As has the fact that we cannot shy away from confronting it.
