Why Putin cannot escape his share of the blame

By Trevor Royle

For Vladimir Putin, the end of the school siege at Beslan in North Ossetia could prove to be a defining moment in his presidency. It will now be very difficult for him to wriggle free of the accusation that he has the blood of innocent children on his hands.

As the debriefings and investigations continue, the Russian president will argue that the violence was prompted by the Chechen terrorists who provided the trigger by shooting at escaping children, leaving the Russian security forces with no option but to respond. But the casualties are still his responsibility. There was clearly no formulated plan, and so much was wrong with the operation that questions are bound to be asked about the Russian government’s attitude to internal security in the face of a bitter separatist war that has been waged since 1994 and has cost more than 100,000 lives.

Already the European Union has asked Moscow for its explanation of the tragedy. Bernard Bot, foreign minister of the Netherlands, which holds the EU presidency, said: ‘‘All countries in the world need to work together to prevent tragedies like this. But we also would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened.’’

His statement earned a swift rebuke from Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who described it as “blas phemous’’ in a situation ‘‘when all the world knew, when the Russian authorities said, the highest priority was the children’s rescue and there was to be no assault’’.

But reaction around the world has been critical of Putin. Le Figaro news paper in France criticised Russia’s “tradition of force’’, saying that in the country’s recent history, ‘‘not a single hostage- taking has ended without dozens of civilian deaths”.

The International Herald Tribune warned in an editorial that Putin had no choice but to negotiate with Chechen separatist leaders. ‘‘Unless he now opens a serious negotiating channel with legitimate Chechen leaders, the situation can only get worse,’’ the paper said.

One thing is certain: Russia desperately needs to overhaul its approach to dealing with terrorist attacks. As the bloody end to the school siege showed, the security forces have little clear concept of anti- terrorist tactics. That much became clear in October 2002 when “Spetsnaz” and “Alpha” special forces stormed a besieged theatre in Moscow where hostages were being held by Chechen terrorists. In the resulting action, nerve gas was used to disable the hostage-takers but there was no antidote and 129 hostages were killed along with 41 terrorists.

The operation revealed a lack of realistic planning and an absence of contingency plans. Nobody doubts the courage and professionalism of the Russian special forces but they operate to a different military ethos in which the result is everything and casualties are simply a by-product of a bloody business.

Prevention is also negligible. Putin has made much of the need to stand united against Chechen terrorism but security is astonishingly lax all over Russia. At airports, luggage is never routinely examined and passenger lists are haphazard, one reason why the suicide bombers were able to board the two Russian air liners that were downed recently. Most public buildings are open targets where security is a joke, and it is all too easy to bribe police personnel at roadblocks.

After Putin came to power in 1999 promising to wield the mailed fist, a wave of Chechen attacks against Russian civilian targets prompted nationwide fear and dismay, and there were widespread calls for something to be done. Sensing the mood, the incoming president, a former head of the secret service, responded with a brutal military offensive which caused huge numbers of casualties and only exacerbated the Chechen sense of grievance. A bitter counter-insurgency war followed and although Russian tactics were regularly criticised in the West, the complaints were muted in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the US as Putin began claiming that Russia’s policy was part of the war against global terrorism.

It was, of course, nothing of the sort but it played well at home and abroad. The US reined back its condemnation and Putin was left with a free hand; he even found himself facing censure from liberals at home for not being tough enough. As the attacks mounted, with a succession of suicide-bomb attacks last year and a spate of outrages last month, not just in Chechnya but also in neighbouring Ingushetia, the demands for further action became more strident. Within the past fortnight the Chechens are thought to have been responsible for an attack on a Moscow underground station and the downing of the two airliners, incidents which claimed more than 100 lives.

Confronted with the growing criticism, Putin did what he always does when he feels under threat: he went on the offensive to prove that the military still held control in the North Caucasus. Heads began to roll in the high command. The first to go was the bullish chief of staff Major-General Anatoly Kvashnin, the commander of the Russian forces in Chechnya in 1995, whose bungled assault on the capital Grozny led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Kvashnin was also held responsible for the surprise move by Russian troops to take Prstina Airport in Kosovo after the US coalition bombing strikes against Serb forces in the former Yugoslavia, but even so his stock was high.

His sacking was followed by the dismissal of General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, commander of interior forces, and Colonel-General Vladimir Boldyrev, commander of the North Caucasus Military District. Putin’s message was clear: there had been a combined failure in the armed forces, the Federal Security Services and the Border Guard Service, and generals such as Kvashnin and Tikhomirov had to pay the price.

The move prompted positive headlines, but behind the spin nothing had changed. Far from showing that he was in control, Putin had simply shuffled the pack and punished Kvashnin for not achieving any tangible military success. For Professor Roger McDermott, a senior fellow in Eurasian military studies at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, the changes were “more a product of the dead-end nature of Russia’s military campaign in Chechnya and will do little to turn around the fortunes of the Russian armed forces in the North Caucasus”.

Kvashnin was replaced by Colonel- General Yuri Baluyevsky, who has been described as a safe pair of hands, but the problems facing the Russian security forces go well beyond sacking old favourites and bringing in new faces.

Leaving aside the need to begin a political dialogue with the various groups taking part in armed struggle, the Russian mindset still has not changed to meet the need for public vigilance which lies at the heart of any counter-insurgency campaign. None of this would have saved the children in Beslan, but the absence of any coherent government plan only gives comfort to the terrorists.

Until that problem is addressed, there will be other Beslans over the horizon and more grieving families.

http://www.sundayherald.com/44566