I think people don't understand how complicated that part of the world is. You have 40 or so ethnic groups all living in close proximity to each other with a long history of doing each other in. If you go down from a mountain village in the Caucasus, the people at the top (Mountain Jews, say) will be speaking a different language from those (Avars or Chechens, say) on the slope, who then speak a completely different language from the people in the valley (Ossetes, maybe), and they all hate each other because somebody back in 1750 killed somebody else's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. It's very volatile.
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And now:
Ethnic Tensions Heat Up in Ossetia
By Nabi Abdullaev Staff Writer
Police and troops were out in full force Tuesday in North Ossetia and Ingushetia as the Beslan hostage tragedy inflamed old hatred between regional ethnic groups and raised the threat of war.
"All this was done by the Ingush and Chechens," Zalina Budayeva, 48, said Tuesday at a memorial in the burnt-out Beslan school gymnasium where more than 300 of some 1,000 hostages died.
"In general, Ossetians are good people, Christians, and they are friends of the Russians," Budayeva said. "The Ingush are taught to murder Ossetians since childhood."
President Vladimir Putin warned after the school was seized by a group of Chechen, Ingush, Ossetian and Arab attackers last Wednesday that the crisis could "explode" simmering tensions between the Ingush and Ossetians, who waged a 1992 war over a disputed district of North Ossetia.
Ingush families began fleeing the region as early as Wednesday, Ekho Moskvy radio reported, citing its listeners there.
They had good reason to flee. Ossetians' initial shock about the school tragedy quickly turned to rage -- at law enforcement agencies for failing to protect the people, at the government for lying about the number of hostages, and at their old rivals, the Ingush.
"We have fought the Ingush with weapons in our hands. Today, our men are ready to go after them once again," Beslan resident Irina Parfiyeva said.
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/09/08/003.html
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