Posted on 09/04/2004 5:23:14 PM PDT by blam
Mr Putin will not be moved by this tragedy
By Oleg Gordievsky
(Filed: 05/09/2004)
Negotiating the release of hostages is never less than appallingly difficult. But I do not believe the crisis in the school in Beslan was bound to end in the deaths of hundreds of children. The official toll already stands at 322, half of them children, and is likely to go higher. The Russian "Spetsnaz", or Special Forces, who surrounded the school and who were in charge of containing the hostage crisis and bringing it to an end, have a reputation for fearsome, if brutal, efficiency. That reputation helps to sustain the belief, at least in the West, that there was very little that could have been done to prevent this disastrous outcome.
This is simply not true. Only part of the Spetsnaz's reputation is justified. They are certainly brutal. But they are not efficient, and never have been - even in the old days of the Cold War, when they were well financed. The Spetsnaz were assigned to assassinate President Amin in Afghanistan in December 1979. They bungled the operation comprehensively. True, they killed the president - but only after shooting dozens of their own comrades, and shooting his children.
The operation was aimed to be "clinical" and to assassinate the president with a minimum of what the Americans would call "collateral damage". It quickly turned into a nightmare of confusion and incompetence: members of the Spetsnaz teams (several of them had been assigned to the task) attacked in the dark, and then failed to recognise who was firing at whom - with the result that they ended up shooting each other, inflicting horrendous casualties on their own side.
Vladimir Putin was beginning his career in the KGB when it organised that debacle. Now the president of Russia, Putin has sent messages of condolence and sympathy to officials in the North Ossetia region where the terrorists took the school hostage. Yet the truth is that he is at least partially responsible for the fact that the siege ended in so horrible a blood-bath. The Russian siege negotiators and the Spetsnaz (there were several thousand of them) who had surrounded the school were totally unprepared for what happened. They knew that the terrorists had mined the school and had strapped bombs to themselves and its roof, but they had no contingency plans if one of those bombs went off.
That was what actually happened: in the chaos which followed the explosion, there was a break-out by some of the children, followed by some of the terrorists. Yet the Spetsnaz had failed to seal off the school, with the result that some of the terrorists managed to get away. There weren't even any ambulances waiting to take the wounded hostages to hospital. Many of the children who died will have been shot by Spetsnaz officers because they were caught in the crossfire between the terrorists shooting at them, and the Spetsnaz shooting at the terrorists. It is distinctly possible that the roof which collapsed and buried many more of the captured children under a pile of rubble was destroyed by a rocket fired by one of the besieging Spetsnaz.
Despite the official denials, President Putin was certainly planning to storm the school before the sudden explosions derailed that plan. He had taken the precaution of persuading the UN to issue a condemnation of the hostage-takers - thereby ensuring that the international community gave him carte blanche to deal with the incident as he saw fit. Storming the building would also certainly have caused hundreds of casualties - but that would not have deterred Putin.
Despite all the caring, sympathetic noises he is now making, Putin has a fabulous indifference to human life. When the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk was stuck on the bottom of the Baltic, its 118 crew suffocating and freezing slowly to death, he didn't even bother to interrupt his holiday. When he was later interviewed on CNN about what had happened to the Kursk, he simply smiled and said: "It went to the bottom." About the 118 Russians who died he said not a word.
The thousands of deaths in the war in Chechnya don't move him in the least. He regards them as "normal wastage" - a hardly noticeable price which has to be paid for maintaining Russian control of Chechnya. That is the traditional KGB view, an attitude I remember all too well from my own days in the organisation.
Russia's army and its security forces aim to inculcate an attitude of total indifference to the loss of human life, and they certainly succeeded in the case of Vladimir Putin. For example, for at least as long as he has been president, the Russian press has published stories about the more than 1,000 Russian army conscripts - they are teenage boys - who are killed every year during training, often as a result of being viciously bullied by other soldiers. And what has been Putin's response? Nothing at all.
Putin believes he can bludgeon the Chechens into submission. Hundreds of dead children from a school in North Ossetia won't be enough to persuade him to change that policy. He may never accept that it has failed. And yet Russia has very little reason to continue to be so intransigent on the issue of greater autonomy for Chechnya. Chechnya's oil reserves are almost spent; the country has few other natural resources; and its "strategic" importance to Russia is largely a myth. Most Chechens are not Islamic fundamentalists, or even seriously Islamic at all. Al-Qaeda is not welcome there, and I regard it as almost inconceivable that there was any serious al-Qaeda involvement in the hostage-taking in Ossetia, despite the claims from the Russians that they have identified 10 "Arabs" among the dead.
Putin has been able to convince the world that his war in Chechnya is part of the global "war on terror". It is not. It is a totally avoidable civil war which has very little to do with Osama bin Laden or indeed any group of Islamic fanatics. But by persuading gullible Western leaders such as Tony Blair and George W Bush that, in Chechnya, he is dealing with the same sort of people who destroyed the World Trade Center, Putin has been applauded, even while he uses exceptional cruelty in prosecuting his unnecessary war. No civilised person can deny that the hostage-takers have taken barbarity and inhumanity to new depths. But in President Putin, they are up against a leader who has as little regard for human life as they do.
Oleg Gordievsky was the highest-ranking KGB officer to work for MI6
No civilised person can deny that the hostage-takers have taken barbarity and inhumanity to new depths. But in President Putin, they are up against a leader who has as little regard for human life as they do.
Oh,he doesn't deny it, he does excuse it though.
Perhaps Putin is the bitter pill needed to cure what ails
them.
Well, in this country they blame America first when terrorist attacks happen.
Sounds like they're blaming Putin and Russian forces rather than terrorists for the situation that went down in Russian.
That being said, while I was watching the whole thing unfold, I told my husband it didn't look like the troops handling the situation were trained to deal with situations like this (at least not by the standards that our police and soliers meet.)
Those KGB types are so warm and fuzzy.
It is to 'negotiate' with cancer.
Putin did the right thing. The author is right that the Russkies simply aren't as efficient or well trained as we are, but make no mistake: there was no other solution in this than the death of all or most of the terrorists. I hope Mr. Putin has finally figured out that Bush's "with us or against us" applied to him, too, and now knows which side of this war he's on.
300 maybe 400 dead out of 1200 people. thats awful , but then how many would have died if the negotiators had decided to blow the whole place? the situation is over with great loss of life , but there is no guarantee more wouldnt have died if the negotiations had failed. maybe they actually saved some lives this way. Does anyone think the the terrorists there wouldnt have killed every man woman and child in that building.
I think they would have if negotiations had failed.
Identities
The accuser of Putin doesn't bother to explain what his policy would be vis a vis Chechnya and why. Folks who don't offer and defend an alternative, and just kvetch, waste bandwidth.
So9
Why blame the rescuers on this? The negotiators were doing their thing, but the duct tape on one bomb failed, setting it off, and the terrorists freaked out and started killing. The rescuers weren't expecting that at that time, and had to scramble.
Putin did the right thing.
The only negotiation with terrorists should be "surrender or die."
Compromise with terrorists will only buy you more terrorism.
I think Putin ought to take the people that the terriorists were demanding be released and let the folks in Beslan have a go at them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.