<font color=brown> Finally, the Russian people are starting to focus their attention on the Russian Bush.
Sound familiar:
""We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," Mr. Putin said. "We simply cannot, should not, live as carelessly as before. We need to create a much more efficient security system requiring actions from our security forces that rise to the challenges they face.""
Putin doesn't bring up the fact that the agency he headed just a few years ago screwed up the situation nor that he's been playing with the Chenchens since 1999.
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Russian shock gives way to anger
By MARK MacKINNON
From Monday's Globe and Mail
Moscow — When the first television pictures were beamed out showing bloodied children being carried on stretchers from Middle School No.1 in Beslan, Russians were stunned. Along with the rest of the world, they asked how anyone could turn their weapons on beings so young and so innocent.
Sunday, that shock slid naturally into grief as the first funerals were held.
But the national sentiment was turning quickly into anger — most of it directed at the hostage-takers who put the children of Beslan in harm's way.
Others aimed their ire at the special-forces troops who stormed the building so clumsily and with so much firepower, despite the young lives at stake inside.
Some of the blame also fell on President Vladimir Putin, who all but disappeared from public sight during the 53-hour standoff in North Ossetia and came across as unfeeling during a whirlwind predawn visit the day after the siege ended.
For the first time in Mr. Putin's four-plus years in power, many Russians are openly questioning their President, especially his hard-line, no-negotiations position toward the Chechen rebels.
But most threatening to the area's stability was the increasing talk of revenge.
Although the identity of the attackers remained uncertain — the government suggested that the attackers had been an international group comprising Caucasians, Kazakhs, Slavs, Arabs and even a black man — witnesses and former hostages said they believed their assailants were from Muslim areas surrounding predominantly Christian North Ossetia.
Residents, many of whom keep weapons in their homes, said retribution for the deaths of their children was already being planned.
"Fathers will bury their children, and after 40 days [the Orthodox mourning period] ..... they will take up weapons and seek revenge," Alan Kargiyev, a 20-year-old university student in Vladikavkaz, told Associated Press.
Experts have long warned that the 10-year-old Chechen conflict could provide the kindling for a wider war. Wedged between North Ossetia and Chechnya is the tiny republic of Ingushetia, whose mainly Muslim population was deported from parts of North Ossetia by Joseph Stalin in 1944. Many still long to return home.
"The aim of terrorists was to incite the ethnic conflict between the Ingush and the Ossetians. A conflict certainly is possible," said Dmitriy Rogozin, an influential deputy in the Russian state Duma, the lower house of parliament.
North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov called for calm yesterday, but violent sentiment will likely continue as the number of dead continues to rise. The death toll was reportedly nearing 350 last night, with nearly 200 still missing.
Although officials said earlier that all hostage-takers were killed, the Interfax news service reported that three suspects were detained in Beslan on Saturday. Channel One television showed footage of one alleged attacker in the hands of security services. The man, dressed in a dirty black shirt, said: "I swear by Allah I did not shoot. I swear by Allah I want to live."
Saturday, Mr. Putin gave a televised address in which he declared Monday and Tuesday national days of mourning and said the country faces "all-out war" with terrorists. A string of attacks have killed more than 470 people over the past two weeks, including the school tragedy, a Moscow suicide attack and the near-simultaneous bombing of two passenger planes.
Provincial Interior Minister Kazbek Dzantiyev attempted to submit his resignation last night amid unconfirmed reports that the hostage-taking may have been planned months in advance. Survivors told reporters that they were made to pull up floorboards in the gymnasium so the rebels could gain access to weapons and explosives that had been planted ahead of time.
"We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," Mr. Putin said. "We simply cannot, should not, live as carelessly as before. We need to create a much more efficient security system requiring actions from our security forces that rise to the challenges they face."
theglobeandmail.com |
