BESLAN- 1

A lie provoked the terrorists’ aggression….#11
Novaya Gazeta
No. 65
September 6, 2004
LIES PROVOKED TERRORISTS' AGGRESSION: BESLAN WAS TIGHTLY ENCIRCLED ONLY
AFTER STORM
Yelena MILASHINA
[from RIA Novosti's digest of the Russian press]

From the very first hours of the crisis in School No 1 of Beslan the authorities knew 1,200 people had been taken hostage. Russian presidential aide Aslambek Aslakhanov spilled the beans on September 3 night, after the main assault. Standing near the town's Assembly Hall, he tried to tell the truth but carefully avoided answers when asked, for example, what the death toll was. However, when asked why he had not come to talk with the terrorists at first, as they had demanded, Mr. Aslakhanov replied, "I called them and asked what they wanted, whether we have a topic to talk about. The topic is 1,200 hostages, most of whom are children, I was told."

We didn’t fully understand what Aslakhanov had meant by these words. We were trying to undeerstanbd how many had lived and how many had died. It was later that the hostages began talking of how the fighters that were holding them hostage went crazy when they heard the official figure of 354 hostages. According to one of the older girls who had been held hostage it was then that they started denying the hostages water. That was why the children had to urinate into glasses and drink their own urine.

The assault operation began exactly in two hours after North Ossetia's president Dzasokhov went to those who had voted him into power and said, "We will not let an assault happen." Surprisingly, everyone believed that, maybe because an assault was the most horrible scenario, hard to digest. To top it off, Ruslan Aushev on Thursday managed to take three women with babies out of the school, and then the terrorists released another twenty women and babies of eighteen months of age at most. No one expected that, and there was hope that on the next day, September 3, the terrorists will agree to receive food and water for the hostages and maybe to release children. Every hostage-taking implies that an assault is definitely an option. However, only afterwards would the Ossetian Interior Ministry acknowledge that the assault had been in fact the most probable scenario. The special forces were preparing exactly for an assault. According to Georgy, a major with the Interior Ministry, it was Mr. Dzasokhov who ordered to get ready for an assault operation.

The 2nd September saw the preparations for the assault operation. Most of the residents of the blocks of flats overlooking the school had been moved out, and Spetsnaz troops took positions on the roofs. One of the nearby college buildings was turned into a makeshift HQ for the special forces and soldiers from company 58. A field hospital was set up. All the technology was assembled: artillery, tanks…Almost every crack force was pulled to Baslan: Alfa, Vympel, Spetsnaz GRU, OMON, SOBR and others…

The Interior Ministry officials and special forces fighters say the assault was being prepared very actively. There was another evidence to the fact that it was being regarded as a basic option: in fact, there were no negotiations with the terrorists, and no one intended to fulfill, even formally, their demands. We all were explained that "it was not clear what they demanded."

However, the militants demanded from the very beginning that Messrs. Dzasokhov, Zyazikov, Dr. Leonid Roshal, and Mukharbek Aushev (a State Duma legislator) come to the school for negotiations.
Dzasokhov did not come to the school maybe he did not want to, maybe was ordered not to. Dr. Roshal went to Ossetia right on the spot but failed to get into the school. As to Mr. Zyazikov, there were reports that on September 1 he switched his mobile phone off while in the middle of talking to Dmitry Rogozin and was never available any more. On Thursday chief of the Ossetian parliament's information analysis department Fatima Khabalova said Mr. Zyazikov was in Spain. Mr. Aslakhanov, when asked where Mr. Zyazikov had disappeared, said, "I am not accountable for [his whereabouts]." Then it became clear that the latter had come to North Ossetia, but only after the assault.

Mukharbek Aushev, for all his great influence on the Ingush diaspora, was laid up with a flu on September 1 and 2. On September 3 he said, via a reporter, that he was ready to come for negotiations it was twenty minutes before the assault. Legislators Dmitry Rogozin and Mikhail Markelov who had
come to the town did not even try to get to the hostages, like, for example, the deputies of the previous parliament did during the Dubrovka hostage crisis. Throughout this time there was a serious lack of communication between the authorities and the people. Even the unexpected, almost secret 2hr visit be Vladimir Putin after the assault did little to reassure the worried residents of Beslan.

Ruslan Aushev was never wanted, he came to Beslan on his own accord. There were eyewitnesses' accounts of how he was entering the school. He did not give any comments as he came out and took some hostages with him. Only an Ossetian escort police officer heard him say, "the government has sold all [of them] down the river."

“The assault happened” That was how Aslambek Aslakhanov put it. Whatever the President of Russia and the many many special forces may say, what happened was the worst possible outcome. At least everyone in Beslan thinks so.

There are 2 points of view on the question as to whether the assault was planned or spontaneous. Specialists say that Dzasokhov’s announcement 2 hours before the assault and his last announcement that negotiations with the hostage takers were to be held at 5O clock to secure the release of another group of children and to ensure the supply of food and water to the hostages- was all a cover. Many foreign journalists have spoken as if with one voice on this- they do not believe the official account of an "accidental" assault. On the other hand, so many factors point to it being accidental: it was so badly organised, and the fighting that broke out in the school grounds was unexpected.