Analysis: Who Are The Hostage Takers In North Ossetia?

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
With no end to the hostage taking at a school in North Ossetia in sight, it is already clear that the incident is a landmark in Moscow's ongoing struggle to preserve its control over the North Caucasus using force under the guise of combatting "international terrorism." In hindsight, the hostage taking may in a few years be seen as a turning point that led to Moscow's defeat in that battle.

The modus operandi of the Beslan hostage takers is similar to that used in the Moscow theater hostage taking in October 2002. The hostage takers are masked, dressed in black, heavily armed, and include both men and a handful of women. The latter are reportedly wearing explosives strapped to their bodies in readiness to blow up the building. The hostage takers' initial demands, reportedly conveyed by a small girl who was allowed to leave the building, were twofold: the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya (which the Moscow hostage takers had also demanded), and the release of the 27-30 militants arrested in Ingushetia for their alleged participation in the 21-22 June multiple raids into that republic in which up to 90 people, primarily Ingushetian Interior Ministry personnel, were killed.

The Ingush raid in June was itself a milestone insofar as the attackers included not only Chechens but many young Ingush youths who, alienated by the abduction of close relatives by the Ingushetian security forces, had flocked to fight under radical Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev.The hostage takers' initial demands, reportedly, were twofold: the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and the release of the 27-30 militants arrested in Ingushetia after the 21-22 June multiple raids there.
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Just three days before the Beslan hostage taking, British Chechnya expert Thomas de Waal remarked in an editorial pegged to the 29 August ballot to elect a successor to slain pro-Moscow Chechen leader Akhmed-hadji Kadyrov that "Five years ago, when Moscow launched an 'antiterrorist operation' to recapture Chechnya, there was no real terrorism there. Now, thanks mainly to Moscow's policies, it is becoming a real threat." What is more, that threat is already no longer confined to Chechnya nor, apparently, is it coordinated by a single person or group. That escalation will make it all the more difficult to contain, let alone eradicate, using the methods that Russia has relied on to date.