Russians mark 5 years since Beslan school tragedy

[samanthajane13]

By MIKE ECKEL, Associated Press Writer Mike Eckel, Associated Press Writer – 28 mins ago

BESLAN, Russia – Wailing mothers and anguished relatives on Tuesday marked the fifth anniversary of Russia's worst terrorist attack, mourning the hundreds killed at Beslan's School No. 1 and haunted by questions over the botched rescue attempt.

Scores of people filed through the ravaged shell of the school's gymnasium, lighting candles, laying carnations and offering bottles of water to the victims of the 2004 attack, which saw 32 heavily armed militants hold more than 1,000 people hostage for nearly three days.

"I can't go on, I can't do it," cried one woman, who staggered about the gym wailing in Russian and the local Ossetian.

The ordeal ended on Sept. 3, 2004, in a disastrous rescue attempt that resulted in the deaths of 334 people, more than half of them children, in the North Caucasus town.

The Beslan attack shook Russia deeply and prompted then-President Vladimir Putin to push through sweeping changes to the country's electoral system, tightening the Kremlin's grip on power.

A recent upsurge in violence across Russia's North Caucasus, however has undermined the Kremlin's claims it is bringing stability to the region. Underscoring the problem authorities face, a passer-by was killed and 13 people injured Tuesday when a man detonated explosives in a car at a traffic police post in nearby Dagestan.

In the Beslan gymnasium, mothers and grandmothers grasped desperately at photographs of their lost children, which hung from walls below charred timbers and the remains of two basketball hoops. Many lit candles and whispered Orthodox prayers. Others placed bottled water at the base of the walls — a reference to the fact that the hostages went three days without food or water. Many were forced to drink their own urine during the siege.

Relatives and prominent human rights activists say the Sept. 3 rescue operation went horribly awry, with many victims dying from crossfire, accidental explosions and possibly even heavy weaponry such as flame-throwers wielded by federal forces.

Officials say the explosion that sparked the maelstrom on the third day were set off accidentally by the terrorists themselves. But relatives of the dead say government snipers may have killed one of the terrorists holding a bomb trigger, setting off a cascade of violence.

"Five years have passed and no one has been punished!" yelled Matras Tsallgov, whose brother and nephew died in the attack.

The only attacker known to have survived, Nur-Pashi Kulayev, was sentenced to life in prison in 2006.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090901/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_beslan_mourns

[samanthajane13]

Russia's Troubled Caucasus, Five Years After Beslan
By PETER SAVODNIK / MOSCOW Peter Savodnik / Moscow – 1 hr 22 mins ago

Five years ago this week, separatist rebels attacked a small school in Beslan in North Ossetia. On the third day of the attack, at least 330 people were killed, more than half of them children. The attack was said to have altered the whole arc of not only the horrific conflict in nearby Chechnya but also the presidency of Vladimir Putin. Beslan was supposed to have given Moscow resolve. North Ossetia - indeed, the whole of the North Caucasus, between the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east - was supposed to be tranquil, harmonious, subdued. But that's not what has happened.

The Russians invaded Chechnya in 1994 to try to keep it part of Russia. They failed. In 1999, three years after the end of the first Chechen war, they went back, at the prodding of then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In a move reminiscent of Tolstoy's hundred-year-old Hadji Murad - which was also set in a strife-ridden Caucasus - the chief separatist, Akhmad Kadyrov, like the title character in the prescient short novel, switched sides at the beginning of the second Chechen war and crushed the rebellion. Assassinated in May 2004, Kadyrov was replaced by his son.

Ramzan Kadyrov, now 32, has ruled the mostly Muslim Chechen Republic (pop. 1.1 million) ever since, and by 2008, his allies in the Kremlin were declaring victory. All the violence - the virtual razing of the capital, Grozny; the ferocious attacks by rebels - was supposed to be over. The horrible seige at Beslan and, later, the bloody assaults on a Moscow theater and a crowded underpass and the Chechen war exported into the rest of Russia were supposed to be things of the past.

But now the violence is flaring up again. And suddenly it's not just Chechnya. Neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia are hotbeds of instability, as are North Ossetia and, to the immediate northwest, Kabardino-Balkaria, with seemingly random shootings, bombings, kidnappings and armed conflicts among rebels, Islamic separatists, local militia and Russian troops.

Doku Umarov, a separatist leader, declared in April that Riyad-us Salihin, or Guardians of the Righteous, a band of suicide bombers organized in the earlier part of the 2000s by now deceased radical separatist Shamil Basayev, had been revived after several years of lying dormant. In late June, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the President of Ingushetia, was severely wounded when his motorcade was bombed. In mid-August, Islamic extremists in Buynaksk, in Dagestan, attacked police at a sauna that also served as a brothel, killing four officers and seven prostitutes. Three days later, in Nazran, in Ingushetia, a suicide bomber drove a car into a police building. The powerful explosion killed 21 and left 138 injured. Ten children were among the dead.

Alexey Malashenko, a North Caucasus specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center, portrayed the violence in the region as part of a nearly 20-year intermittent struggle inaugurated by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Malashenko and Gregory Shvedov, the editor-in-chief of Caucasian Knot, an Internet news site that has drawn unwanted attention from authorities, attributed the bloodshed to Islamic extremism and corrupt government officials in Grozny, the Chechen capital; Makhachkala, the Dagestani capital; and Magas, the Ingushetian capital. "There is no access to any freedoms, political and civil freedoms, including religious freedoms, which is fueling the situation," Shvedov said.

Other compounding factors include high unemployment - in Ingushetia, the worst off, unemployment has hit 70% - and a Kremlin that has placed too much faith in client-states to keep the peace. Exhibit A: Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov was hailed as a success by Putin, who has painted himself as a strongman who brought peace and prosperity to Russia. But Kadyrov is a thug whose militia are guilty of every human-rights abuse imaginable; when the Russians ended their 10-year counterterrorism operations in the region earlier this year, violence surged.

A recent poll conducted by the Levada Center, a Moscow-based NGO, found that Russians are increasingly pessimistic about their southern fringe. Denis Volkov, a researcher at the center, noted that the survey showed 46% of Russians have faith in the authorities to bring peace to the North Caucasus. Five years ago, that figure was above 60%. Malashenko says there is no end in sight: "We should be prepared for a continuation of this state of latent civil war."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090905/wl_time/08599192065000