World View: Memories of the Slaughter at Beslan, North Ossetia

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Memories of the slaughter at Beslan, North Ossetia
• Ukraine’s sale of weapons to Syria’s rebels backfires
• Troubled Afghanistan counter-insurgency projects are costly and ineffective

Memories of the slaughter at Beslan, North Ossetia

A man touches a wall with pictures of children who died in the Beslan massacre (Reuters)

One of the saddest stories I covered in the last decade was theterrorist attack on September 1, 2004, on a school in Beslan, a smallcity in the Russian province of North Ossetia. The attack took placeover three days. Islamist terrorists took control of a largeelementary school, and all the children were held as hostages in thegymnasium. Finally, Russian security forces stormed the building, andwhat was left afterwards were the charred remains of 341 bodies, halfof them children. The perpetrator was terrorist leader ShamilBasayev.

Almost as shocking as the attack itself, was what happened afterwards.(From 2005: “Russia infuriated over ABC ‘Nightline’ interview of Shamil Basayev”)

In July, 2005, ABC News Nightline, willing to exploit violence forpolitics, aired a lengthy interview with Shamil Basayev himself,allowing him to explain on worldwide television why the Beslanmassacre was justified:

“It’s not the children [of Beslan] who areresponsible. Responsibility is with the whole Russiannation… If the war doesn’t come to each of them individually, itwill never stop in Chechnya.” Asked if a Beslan-type attack couldoccur again, Basayev said: “Of course … As long as the genocideof the Chechen nation continues, as long as this mess continues,anything can happen.”

Russia was infuriated by this interview. An envoy of Vladimir Putinsaid that America “is encouraging terrorism by employing ‘dualstandards.'” President Alu Alkhanov of Chechnya said:

“I was startled by how they allowed this person, whoopenly claimed responsibility for dozens of terrorist attacks inRussia, which claimed hundreds of human lives, to voice newthreats against Russia and the Russian people. My opinion is thatthose who gave the floor to Basayev, have not fully realized whatthreat this person and other terrorists like him pose to the wholeworld. We will never succeed in the fight against terrorism ifsuch an approach is adopted toward terrorists. Virtually nopeaceful place remains on the planet. The world should present aunited front against terrorism and refrain from dividingterrorists into good ones and bad ones.”

Shamil Basayev died a year laterin a huge explosion. There was evidence that he died in the midst ofpreparing for a new terrorist attack to coincide with the upcoming G-8summit in St. Petersburg. Vladimir Putin said, “For the bandits, thisis just retribution for our children in Beslan … and for all theterrorist attacks they carried out in Moscow and other regions ofRussia.”

Ukraine’s sale of weapons to Syria’s rebels backfires

In spite of opposition by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Ukraine has beenshipping arms to Syrian opposition forces through Arab proxies,including Saudi Arabian proxies. Weapons crates found in the Syriancity of aleppo show the arms, including AK-47 semi-automatic rifles,were shipped from Ukraine. However, Syrian rebels have been confusingUkraine with Russia, and assume that Ukraine is supplying weapons tothe Bashar al-Assad regime as well as to the rebels. Therefore,Syrian rebels have retaliated by kidnapping Ukrainian and Russianjournalists and threatening to attack both countries’ diplomaticmissions in Syria. Jamestown

Troubled Afghanistan counter-insurgency projects are costly and ineffective

A study by McClatchy shows that numerous humanitarian projects inAfghanistan are extremely costly, and either ineffective orcounterproductive. In the rush to rebuild Afghanistan, theU.S. government has charged ahead with ever-expanding developmentprograms despite questions about their impact, cost and value toAmerica’s multi-billion-dollar campaign to shore up the pro-WesternAfghan president and prevent Taliban insurgents from seizing control.Many of these projects were begun in the Bush administration, and werefailures at the time. The Obama administration said the failures werecaused because the Bush administration was distracted by the Iraq war.So the Obama administration revamped the programs, and tripled thecosts from $1 billion to $3 billion. But now the failures arecontinuing, despite the increased costs. McClatchy

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