The horrors of Beslan confirm for us, if we needed confirmation, of the utter evil of the enemy in the War on Terror. Stratfor, which I generally find to be reliable, had an report on the slaughter (subscription only, I'm afraid), in which their analyst suggested that the Russians believed that the crisis would follow the contours of the 1995 Budyonnovsk incident:
In June 1995 the Chechens resorted to a hostage-taking raid under the leadership of Shamil Basayev, one of Chechnya's most lethal men. A group of 150 heavily-armed Chechens on busses slipped through the Russian lines and drove 100 miles into Russia to the town of Budyonnovsk. Once there, they drove quietly in then suddenly attacked the town hall, taking the building in a matter of minutes. Russian helicopter reinforcements arrived and a large gun battle followed for several hours. At one point the Chechens escaped out the back and into a residential neighborhood where they rounded up several hundred Russian civilians. With this group they marched to the town hospital trading shots with incredulous Russian soldiers the entire way. Once ensconced in the hospital, the Chechens issued their demands - that Russia withdraw its troops from Chechnya and begin direct negotiations with Dudayev.
It was the largest hostage-taking incident in the twentieth century. There were over 1000 people in the hospital and the negotiations dragged on for days. The Russians tried everything, from threatening to execute 2000 Chechen civilians to using Basayev's brother to talk him out of it. In response, the Chechens executed five Russian helicopter pilots who had suffered wounds in the battle the first day. There clearly was no negotiating with Basayev. The Russians stormed the hospital at dawn on the fourth day of the standoff but were beaten back with casualties. More civilians were killed in the fighting, unable to avoid the grenades the Russians were throwing in through the shot-out windows. A similar attack was repulsed later in the day.
Finally, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was patched through directly to Basayev. After another day of negotiations he agreed to let the Chechens go free back home. The Chechens were allowed to leave Budyonnovsk with 150 hostages on busses and made it safely back home, much more than any of them were expecting. The episode highlighted the fact that the war in Chechnya was far from over and that the Chechens were willing to take it onto Russian soil.
According to Stratfor, however, those who stormed Beslan's school No. 1 had no intention of negotiating:
The militant group's leaders divided the fighters into three groups: One group was meant to escape; the second group was meant to cover the first's escape by firefight; and the final group of militants was meant to die in achieving its ultimate goal of killing as many hostages as possible.
The hostage-takers took their chances while government forces reclaimed the corpses of those killed earlier in the crisis, according to security sources. The militants detonated two bombs within the school in an attempt to collapse the roof upon the hostages -- which it did. The hostages who survived immediately panicked and fled under direct fire from a number of militants. Other militants mixed in with the fleeing hostages, and later with the hostages' relatives -- showing that Russian forces allowing relatives near the scene was another mistake. Several of the militants are believed to have escaped.
Simultaneously, other militants began detonating MON-100 and MON-200 anti-infantry mines within the gymnasium, and at least one female suicide bomber detonated her explosive charge among some adult male hostages. One militant tactical group was primarily responsible for engaging Russian forces, which fired upon the militants after realizing that the fleeing hostages were taking fire.
Sources said a gunfight ensued in which Russian special forces commanders ordered a breach operation; at least two holes were blown in the walls to allow hostages to escape. There was no coordinated plan in place to tactically assault the building, but some special forces units entered the building while others began to rescue the hostages; two Russian security agents were killed while shielding a group of first-graders from machine gun fire. It was not a coordinated action, and no contingency plan for what to do if the militants began executing hostages had been agreed upon. Sources reported that time was lost at this point, as confusion and lack of coordination hindered rescue and interdiction efforts.
In an essay published in 1940, Jorge Luis Borges noted a peculiar trait among the Argentinian Germanophiles with whom he futilely tried to reason. They cited the cruel provisions of the Versailles Treaty -- a legitimate complaint, with which Borges, Wells and Bernard Shaw all would have sympathized -- to justify Germany's attempt to destroy England and France. Yet any legitimate grievance Germany might have had was not enough for the Germanophile; he went on not to deny or excuse the responsive crimes and cruelties of the Nazis which were already evident, but to revel in them. "He is cheered by wickedness and atrocity," Borges wrote.
And so it is with the terrorphile: some do not recoil from the horror, but rather relish it. Writing on IslamOnline, one sick soul wrote, in response to the barbarity:
Muslims shoudl; fight back more and more and more, and where ever we are. [...]
the worlds fuse has been lit[.]
I do not mean to suggest that these are representative opinions of Muslims -- one need not go far to find opposite opinions. At the same time, that sentiment -- that the "fuse of the world has been lit" -- was echoed, somewhat, but a writer whose insights I increasingly respect, Gerard Van der Leun of American Digest. He wrote,
"Rodina" -- the massing of Russians behind the nearly holy cause of protecting and defending "the motherland," is not a term any Russian politician would use today. It carries too many memories of Stalin and the Soviets. But the emotion behind it remains. And the echo of what the United States discovered about terrorism three years ago and what Russia has concluded yesterday is distinct. What it portends is even clearer. The Alliance is back.
The old Alliance of World War II's drive to destroy fascism is rising along with Rodina. The United States, Britain and its coalition. Now Russia. Others will come in their time and as they discover the terrible truth about this enemy on their own soil.
The enemy and those that harbor and support him would do well to look carefully at what is coming for them. The careful and caring Wilsonian policies of America are one thing. Russia is never quite so delicate or patient.
The last time the Alliance rose and moved as one to destroy not only the enemy, but the centers of the enemy's mass, the butcher's bill was terrible. The masters of terror now face a deadly dilemma -- how to achieve their goals and sustain their power without unleashing on themselves and their captive populations the one war the west does best: total war.
The tragedy of the West is that the terror masters will not stop unless, magically, they can be removed from the men, women, and children they hide among, and be killed as individuals. But men such as these do not care about the slaughter of the innocents. Tribal and brutal they care only about the survival of themselves, their primitive creeds and religions, and their clans.
At the present moment, the West still cares, and cares deeply, about the innocents in which the Terrorists conceal themselves, but this will not and can not last.
No doubt there is some emotional satisfaction in writing this way, and there is little doubt in my mind that, if indeed the fuse of the world has been lit, it is Islamofascists who are lighting it while they (and ordinary Muslims) are sitting on kegs of gunpowder. Yet I can't quite envision what form the total war Mr. Van der Leun calls for would look like. Certainly, the Russian portion wouldn't especially differ from what they've tried in Chechnya before, and I doubt the capacity of the Russians to provide much of value in the Middle East. The United States is not prepared to abandon its low casualty strategy or weapons -- and I think this is wise. One component of total war -- destroying the economic capacity of one's enemies -- seems totally unsuited to the terror war. It would be childsplay to destroy the oil producting capability of the Middle East, but counterproductive as well. To sieze oil fields, draining away the petrodollars that flood the region, might be an alternative expedient, but I'm not sure it would be altogether wise. To begin with, absent that money, much of the Arab world would simply starve -- what would their GDPs be without it? It seems a bit like using a bulldozer to find a china cup. Then there are questions, in my mind at least, as to who we would fight. Certainly some in Saudi Arabia have a great deal to answer for, and the world would be well rid of the Iranian and Syrian regimes, but what of Pakistan, which has both hot and cold running taps in the terror war (and nuclear weapons, as well)?
It is difficult to fit this war into patterns of the past. The enemy is not strong, but pathetically weak -- their principle assets are their utter lack of morality, their ability to hide, and the support of rotten governments that survive in power solely through oppression. I would much rather see them hunted down, made to feel, for perhaps a few moments, the terror that those children felt, as a cruise missile makes its way toward them, or a group of special ops unleashes their deadly fire, Just as I would much prefer to see the West harness, say, the desire of the Iranian people to be rid of their kamikaze kleptoclerics than bomb the country into the stone age.
Posted by Ideofact at September 7, 2004 10:43 PM