Beslan Tragedy, Five Years On

Today is the five-year anniversary of Russia's worst terrorist attack - the Chechen siege of an elementary school in Beslan, North Ossetia. September 1st is the traditional opening day of school across Russia, it's a day filled with ceremonies for the new and returning students, it's common for whole families to head off to their local school for the day. That's exactly what was happening in Beslan when two dozen heavily armed Chechen terrorists stormed School No.1, taking more than 1,000 people hostages in the process. The hostages were herded into the school's auditorium, which the terrorists had rigged with explosives, which they threatened to set off if their demands weren't met.

A tense standoff at the school went on for three days between the terrorists, Russian troops and armed local citizens - many of whom had family members trapped inside. Five years later, no one is still exactly sure what ignited the fighting, but soon the terrorists inside and people outside began shooting, prompting the Russian troops to storm the school. In the end, more than 300 people were killed, a majority of them children - in some cases, entire families were wiped out.

On today's BBC news, Oliver Bullough, the Caucasus Editor for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, asks "Could [the] Beslan Tragedy Happen Again?" He gives some interesting insights into the thinking of the Chechens at the time of the Beslan attack. Shamil Basayev, mastermind of the attack, apparently really believed that Russia would give in to his demands that Russia give Chechnya its independence and that President Putin resign, in an interview following Beslan, Basayev said he "did not expect this (Russia's assault on the school)." By 2006 Basayev would be dead - blown up by Russian special forces soldiers, Aslan Maskhadov, leader of the Chechen rebels, died the year before in 2005.

For awhile it seemed like the insurgency in the Caucasus was largely finished, Russia even ended its decade-long anti-terrorism operation in Chechnya earlier this year. But Bullough argues that the passing of leaders like Basayev and Maskhadov has only paved the way for more radical voices to emerge, namely a rebel named Doku Umarov.

For Russia, the rise of Umarov is especially disturbing. Chechen leaders like Basayev and Maskhadov were basically nationalists using terrorism to carve out an independent homeland. Umarov, meanwhile, declared himself the head of the 'Caucasus Emirate' that included not only Chechnya, but the rest of the Caucasus region as well, and declared he would use it as a base to spread sharia law to all other Muslim countries around the world - basically, Umarov was fully embracing the al-Qaeda theology of global jihad.

His movement has been attracting converts fed up with the poverty and lack of opportunities that plague the Caucasus region. Recent high-profile attacks in the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia that included a bombing of a police station last month and the attempted assassination-by-bomb of Ingushetia's president show that the terror threat is once again growing in Southern Russia, only this time it's based not on the fight for an independent homeland, but instead belief in a warped ideology.