Fears Mounting Over Revenge in Russia
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MOSCOW – On September 5, two days after the Beslan school hostage crisis descended into carnage, a young man with bloodshot eyes knelt beside the coffin of one of the victims, 35-year-old Timur Tsallagov, as it was lowered into the ground. Throwing dirt onto the coffin, the man made a vow: “I promise I will have my revenge on those who killed you.”
He was not alone. In the days after the massacre – in which more than 330 people, including scores of children, died – talk of vengeance was everywhere on the streets of Beslan, Russia. Many men were already cleaning their guns and promising that at the end of the traditional 40-day mourning period, those responsible would pay.
So as residents of Beslan yesterday marked the last day of official mourning by lighting candles and saying prayers inside the gutted gymnasium that was the center of the tragedy, fear was mounting of the possibility of revenge killings.
Russian TV showed images of the gym – its walls black and still open from a series of explosions – filled with flowers, toys, and photographs of the dead. Boxes of chocolates and bottles of water were left open on tables as a poignant reminder of how the more than 1,200 children, parents, and teachers held hostage were denied food and water during the 53-hour siege.
“My friends’ children died. My relatives’ children died. We are all dying from this,” one mourner, David Alexeyev, told the Associated Press. “Time will pass but that won’t heal our wounds. One hundred years, 500 years – it won’t help.”
As the mourners gathered, authorities were tightening security and dispatching hundreds of extra police officers and troops to the region in anticipation of a wave of violence.
Russian press outlets reported yesterday that residents of North Ossetia were coming together in informal groups to plan revenge attacks against the rival Ingush ethnic group. Many Ossetians blame the Ingush, a predominantly Muslim group closely related to the Chechens, for the attack on the school. At least nine Ingush were among the hostage-takers demanding an independent Chechnya who held out in the school until Russian forces stormed the building amid gunfire and explosions.
“I will find those who made this happen,” one Beslan resident, who lost his entire family in the hostage crisis, told the newspaper Gazeta. “If the state fails to punish these people, I will punish them myself.”
Another Beslan man who lost relatives in the school said letting the attack go unanswered was simply not an option.
“Jesus told us to forgive our enemies, but he lived in a different age. The world has gone crazy, there is no respect for the law, no respect for human life,” the man said. “The ones who came here were not human, they were animals and they have to pay for what they’ve done.”
A former top-ranking North Ossetian security official, who did not want to be identified, said authorities were worried about being able to contain a civilian militia. During the storming of the school, local men armed with their own weapons exacerbated the crisis by pushing past the police perimeter and opening fire on rebels holed up in the school.
“There will have to be some kind of [civilian] response to this,” the former official said. “And if this becomes a war, it is going to be very difficult for the authorities to control.”
The Ossetians, an overwhelmingly Christian group with strong historical ties to Russia, fought a 10-day war with the Ingush in 1992 over land rights along the border. Hundreds died in the fighting and the region remains awash in weapons. Almost every family has at least one gun in its home; in some cases, families are armed with machine guns and explosives.
A former Ingush president, Ruslan Aushev, who negotiated the release of some hostages early in the crisis, has repeatedly warned that the region could again descend into war if revenge attacks are not prevented. Revenge killings are not uncommon in the volatile North Caucasus, and in some cases family members will go to great lengths to avenge the deaths of loved ones. Earlier this year, Vitaly Kaloyev, an Ossetian whose wife and two children were killed when a Russian passenger jet went down over Germany, tracked down and killed the air traffic controller who may have caused the crash. He has been charged with murder and is awaiting trial in Switzerland.
Regional officials have tried to calm residents, saying that one of the attackers’ main goals was to further destabilize the North Caucasus, which also includes Chechnya, where Russians forces are in the midst of a brutal war with separatist rebels. President Putin has said anyone who commits revenge attacks would be siding with the Beslan terrorists.
The Ingush president, Murat Zyazikov, downplayed fears of war with North Ossetia.
“The people of the North Caucasus have become wiser and, moreover, they are tired of war,” he told reporters Monday. “The events of 1992 will not be repeated. The people themselves do not want to destabilize the region.”
Still, the more than 10,000 Ingush who live in squalid settlements and refugee camps on the Ossetian side of the border were bracing for attacks.
“The people living there, along the border, are afraid for their lives,” said a worker at the Russian human-rights group Memorial in the Ingush capital Nazran, Timur Agiyev.
Mr. Agiyev said the Ingush living in Nazran were not expecting imminent attacks, but were on edge about the future.
“God willing, nothing will happen,” he said. “Because if some people, some extremists, start attacking the Ingush, the whole region will explode.”