[Excerpt] So, what does al-Qaida and international Islamic terrorism have to do with any of this? Probably very little. Chechens have plenty of reason to do what they do without outside inspiration. In addition, their tactics are very different from al-Qaida's. Osama Bin Laden's group generally aims for maximum casualties; the Chechens, at least when they have staged hostage-takings, have not seemed to have that goal.
Al-Qaida explicitly targets Westerners; the Chechens, on the other hand, explicitly exclude Westerners from their list of targets; they target Russians and Russia-sympathizers. Finally, the Chechens' demands, when they have made them, have always focused on the war in Chechnya to the exclusion of any religious or international agenda. They have consistently demanded a the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya-an unattainable goal in the current Russian political climate, but one that may look plausible to the Chechens because it worked after Budyonnovsk." snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An overview of the situation:
>From Slate:
What drives the separatists to commit such terrible outrages?
By Masha Gessen
Posted Saturday, Sept. 4, 2004, at 3:06 PM PT
http://slate.msn.com/id/2106287/ ======================
More from the Sydney Morning Herald:
Details are emerging as to what may have driven the school siege militants to commit such a horrifying act against children. Witnesses reported that the hostage-takers had attempted to justify their brutality by claiming it was an act of revenge for the killing of Chechen children by Russian forces.
Margarita Komoyeva, a physics teacher released the day before the terrible climax in Beslan, said: "One of them told me: 'Russian soldiers are killing our children in Chechnya, so we are here to kill yours."'
The words were amplified at the weekend on a website that is close to Shamil Basayev, the most extreme Chechen commander, whom Russian officials think was the mastermind behind the Beslan atrocity.
"However many children in that school were held hostage, however many of them will die ... it is incomparably less than the 42,000 Chechen children of school age who have been killed by Russian invaders," said a statement on the website. "Dead children, dead adults - brutal murder of more than 250,000 Chechen peaceful civilians by the invaders - all of it cries to heaven and demands retribution." snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://tinyurl.com/3jzxs [Perhaps tinyurl bybasses a short registration and multiple (required) cookies... or not.] ============================================
[Begin signature] "You think you can patch up the world. Cure the Great Sore of Colonialism with the 'penicillin of Independence.' " But what comes after? "What about all the crooks and thieves and just plain idiots who will come to power to steal and plunder the same as before..." -"A Raisin in the Sun", Lorraine Hansberry's (1959)
Leigh Meyers leighcmeyers at yahoo.com
----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Doss To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 6:05 AM Subject: [lbo-talk] Beslan events
I know this puts me overlimit, but since I've gotten a few letters offlist from people asking me if I have more knowledge about exactly what happened at the school, so here goes.
Here's what appears to have happened at the school, going by the latest reports I've read in the Russian media.
The storm of the building was unplanned. Spetsnaz and Alpha (the elite special forces groups) were rehearsing the siege in a building similar to the school 30 km from Beslan. What happened was that, in addition to the police, soldiers and special forces guys surrounding the school, it had also been surrounded by a mob of ouraged and armed Ossetians, probably half the town.
It appears that a group of men were approaching the school in order to remove the corpses from the lawn, as had been arranged with the hostage-takers. At that point, according to hostages, a bomb the terrorists had cleverly placed atop a basketball hoop in the gym fell and exploded. Some of the gunmen in the school heard the explosion and decided that the approaching men were part of an attempt to storm the school and began firing at them. At that point, a group of kids said "fuck this, we're getting out of here," jumped at the windows, and began to run away. Gunmen in the school then began firing at the fleeing children. In response, the crowd of townpeopls began firing over the children's heads at the school.
At this point the special forces guys rushed the school. Unfortunately, the outraged townspeople followed them to try to take justice into their own hands -- in the words of one SF guy, "What the fuck? I didn't know who was a terrorist and who wasn't!" Apparently the mob did seize two of the terrorists. One of them was rescued by the SF, and the other was ripped limb from limb.
They interviewed one of the two surviving terrorists on TV, who came across as a complete pussy ("don't kill me! I want to live! I didn't shoot anybody!" Jesus Christ.). He said he would tell them anything they wanted, as long as they didn't leave him alone with the relatives of the children. I suspect he and the other one will be interrogated and then die in prison of mysteriously acquired internal injuries.
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