The Crime at Beslan

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by Anwaar Hussain

Is it possible that a people who have lost everything may think they have nothing more to live for, that a parent, who sees his children blown to smithereens, loses love for others’ too? That it is blood revenge, however unpardonable, that governs this mindless violence rather than any thing else? Is it possible?

Let us state the obvious from the start without mincing any words. The horrifying and tragic death of hundreds of blameless human beings in the Beslan school tragedy, most of whom were innocent children, is barbaric, unparalleled, inhuman and unpardonable. It is a crime of heinous proportions and defies religion as equally as it does logic and rationality.

Nothing, repeat nothing, justifies this despicable act of certain individuals whatever their validation. Nor does it advance whatever cause the militants are fighting for. Like the senseless killings in Iraq, where innocent people - Muslim and non-Muslim - are being murdered without a qualm, the crime at Beslan, too, will be viewed with utter revulsion by the rest of the world. Any man, with even a modicum of humanity, must condemn this horrendous act unconditionally, categorically and unreservedly.

One does wonder though, as any thinking mind should, as to what propelled the perpetrators to inflict a pain such as this? What led them to take this horrendous leave from reason to commit an offence that is as unpardonable as it is unthinkable? Could it be that they themselves have been victims of similar atrocities? Or is it just a one-time malfunction of their thinking faculties? Is it their religion that exhorts them to indulge in some satanic rituals offering human sacrifices to satiate the blood lust of their deity? Or more unbelievably still, killing children is a pleasure pursuit in which the Chechens indulge from time to time? I do not know.

What I do know is that the story of Chechen suffering is a long one. In the early 19th century, independent Chechnya was conquered by Russia after a long and bloody war. The heroic struggle of the Chechen religious leader Imam Shamil and the inhuman conduct of the Russian forces compelled the young Leo Tolstoy, who served in the Russian Imperial Army in Chechnya in the 1840s, to resign in disgust and write stories praising the Chechen leader.

What I do know is that in the 20th century Josef Stalin, the “Great Father of the Nation” sought to purge the scourge in one go with the religious and ethnic cleansing of the Northern Caucasus. He ordered the deportation of an entire people on Feb. 23, 1944. This event is to Chechens what the Holocaust is to the Jews or the genocide is to the Armenians.

What I do know is that on that day, when Stalin packed the Chechen population of 1 million into cattle cars and shipped them to the wastes of Siberia and Central Asia, an indelible mark was forever engraved on the collective memory of the Chechens.

What I do know is that blood-curdling stories of people crowded into cattle cars without food, water, or bathrooms; corpses traveling with children; the killing of protesters at the railway stations by KGB guards, haunt the Chechens to this day. One-third of the population died on the journey. Many others perished under the ruthless conditions of exile.

What I do know is that more recently Chechnya was devastated by the war in 1994-6, which left more than 80,000 dead. It watched in horror as its basic infrastructures were again systematically destroyed. Since September 1999, more than a third of the local population - around 200,000 people - have been forced to flee the fighting and seek a humiliating refuge in neighboring Ingushetia.

What I do know is that the world’s conscience was collectively hibernating when a 12-year-old Chechen girl died of internal injuries after being raped repeatedly by vodka guzzling Russian soldiers; when a young pregnant woman had her body split open by machine gun fire simply to check the effectiveness of that weapon from a certain range, when an 84-year-old man had his throat slashed and was left to die by the roadside, when a one-year old Chechen baby was impaled with an AK-47’s bayonet as his mother was forced to watch on.

What I do know is that Chechnya has been reduced to a wasteland of death and destruction. That the Chechen capital of Grozny does not have a single building left intact after heavy bombing in a campaign Russia dubbed as “the liberation of Grozny.” That human rights violation are tremendous, as evidenced by many television broadcasts that showed grisly footage of Russian soldiers piling mutilated Chechen bodies into mass graves and that this is only the tip of the iceberg.

What I do know is that countless villages in southern Chechnya have been completely razed to the ground and the economy of Chechnya is non-existent, that the Russian army is intent upon ridding Chechnya of all its civilians and completely taking over the land once and for all.

What I do know is that when a people declare its independence, a central state can either let them go or beat them into submission. But in the case of Chechnya, and adjacent Ingushetia, we have seen some of both.

What I do know is that the Kremlin has done a brilliant job of convincing the world that Chechens are bandits and terrorists despite the fact that Putin’s own predecessors have gone down in history as the biggest mass murderers of their own citizens. Stalin and Lenin together caused the death of more than 30 million Russian citizens in the first half of the 20th century alone.

What I do know is that with the misery it visited upon humanity, the political creed of his forefathers is known as the most dreadful thing ever to have hit the human race, without exception, even worse than both world wars, the slave trade and bubonic plague all put together.

What I do know, and with a sense of ominous foreboding, is that the recent threats that Putin is hurling all around are bringing back ghastly images from the past when horrific concentration camps had been built in Russia aimed at imprisoning all Chechen males between 15-60 years of ages.

What I do know is that an international correspondent Eric Margolis did once write, “We begin the 21st century watching silently as a brutish Russia, which knows neither shame nor mercy crushes the life out of a tiny but heroic people who refuse to bend their knees to Moscow’s tyranny.”

Is it possible that a people who have lost everything may think they have nothing more to live for, that a parent, who sees his children blown to smithereens, loses love for others’ too? That it is blood revenge, however unpardonable, that governs this mindless violence rather than any thing else? Is it possible?

I do not know but I wonder.



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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


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