Oh, I agree, it is not like the Chechens are innocent by any means. They brutally slaughtered any who was against their cause...Russians, fellow Chechens, you name it...
There is a certain percentage (probably growing) who do in fact want to escalate the conflict. I mean the Chechen national anthem is "Death or Freedom", must speak somewhat to the national attitudes.
It seems foreign fighters were involved in this conflict from the very beginning, and yeah, who adopted who is probably irrelevant. My point, poorly stated, was that the cause of Chechen independence is not likely on the minds of the fighters who have rallied to the cause from other nations. I think some fight simply to fight a larger power.
There are so many factions who ae fighting in Checnya, you need a scorecard...there is the Chechen freedom fighters, Chechens loyal to the Russians, Russian military, Russian gangsters, Chechen gangsters, Foreign mercenaries, and I am sure there are smaller groups as well. The country is pretty much a mess...with the general populations getting caught in the cross fire.
Russia is trying to make a point with Chechnya, it started out as Yeltsin trying to prevent Chechen independence as a way to rally people to the flag and draw attention from his failings and it has truly become a quagmire for the Russians.
It is possible this school take-over was payback for when Inguish were kicked out of N. Osetia a few years ago.
There was a war and some Inguish were just kicked out to Chechnya I think. Many were radicalized by this.
Many accounts of this tragedy mentions that there were Inguish there.
Check www.rferl.org/ for the history of that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64187-2004Sep5.html
The Russians are finally admitting they lied--they weren't just wrong--about the numbers of people in the school. Lies just infuriate people and plays into the terrorists' hands. The terrorists are tryong to make the government look bad, and when the government lies, it looks bad.
http://www.rambler.ru/db/news/msg.html?s=260005085&mid=5004278
This Russian article quotes German publications like Build that claim the terrorists were foreign. It is claimed that some of the terrorists were Jordanian and Syrian. The source is supposedly the German intelligence agency. The German intelligence said they trained at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
I think the article makes some other points but I am not too sure what it all means.
Build is not always reliable.