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 he's a liar...Arabs were among the dead terrorists. The libs are hysterical about this because...it means that the war on terror is global which in a sense justifies the Iraq war. They always scream...but they are not associated with Al Quada when some murderous scum kills, but the murderers are always associated with Islam..a woman was murderered in England yesterday by a man who was a religion of peace jihadist-stabbed to death.
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.
Looked like the proverbial Chinese fire drill.
Oleg, if Russian, is a traitor to his own people and filled with much brown liquid.
Putin is doing the world a favor by keeping one more islamic radical country from gaining strength at least. Thanks to Klintoon, Europe is filled with the debris from Bosnia, which was not kept from reaching it's full horror. These breeding grounds need to be stifled at least.
"Gordievsky was employed by the KGB from 1962 to 1985. After a year's training in 1962-63, he spent nine years at the Centre (1963-65 and 1970-72) and at the Copenhagen Residency (1965-70) organizing operations by KGB illegals. For the next 12 1/2 years he worked on Political Intelligence in Copenhagen (1973-78), the Centre (1976 [sic] - 82) and London (1982-85).... At the time of his escape from the Soviet Union in the summer of 1985 he held the rank of KGB Colonel and was Resident-designate in London." From "Editorial Announcement," Intelligence and National Security 5, no. 3 (Jul. 1990): 3.
Bungled the operation comprehensively, that's a keeper. Unfortunately, it can be applied to our own Bay of Pigs invasion.
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.
Calling Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine.
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.
This is accurate, and there was something really putrid about his whole demeanor during that fiasco.
You need to sober up binky.
Exactly. Not to mention that OBL paid the chechens several million a few years back to behead those British and New Zealand hostages. And the top chechen commander for some time was from Jordan and his replacement is a Saudi.
But they hate it when Bush is speaking the truth.
The smartest thing he could do is apologize to Bush, send a division of troops to Iraq, then quietly ask our help in counterterrorism training.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Remember Waco?
I agree...the Russian horror has upset the Dems...they can't admit they fear it will hurt their candidate because then they look just awful. I can't believe Kerry hasn't said anything.
No Putin needs to retrain military and go after Chechen's they can't afford to send troops anywhere. They are at war on their own soil...must protect the Motherland.
Right...you can't strike deals with Islamic filth. Putin has to bludgeon the Chechens into submission or kill them all. It helps us too...soon these animals who don't look Arab will be boarding our planes and creating havoc here. There is no excuse for shooting, bayonetting, raping babies. The guy you answered is sick. How could he attempt to excuse these miserable baby killers.
Hey Oleg, the terrorist were not providing food or water to the hostages. They had no intention of letting anyone go. The goal was to stretch it out as long as possible, then kill as many as possible. 100% of the blame goes to the terrorist, not the victims, not Putin, not the soldiers on the scene.
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