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Command failure seen at fault in Beslan massacre
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-07 08:54 Moscow - Security forces bungled the handling of
Russia's worst hostage drama because nobody was in charge and special forces
were not ready when the shooting started, security analysts said on Monday.
"It's clear that it was a total mess," leading military analyst Alexander
Golts told Reuters. "They were not prepared."
Relatives mourn Sergei Dryukov, 29, a hostage
killed in Russia's school siege, after his funeral in the town of Beslan,
September 6, 2004. Flags flew at half-mast across Russia at the start of
national mourning for 338 people killed when Chechen rebels seized a
school, while questions mounted over President Vladimir Putin's
policies. [Reuters] |
As the death
toll from the battle that ended the siege in the North Ossetian town of Beslan
rose above 330, Russia's media asked how the vaunted special forces had allowed
a two-day standoff to turn into a bloodbath.
Authorities said they were forced to storm the school when the militants
fired on hostages who were fleeing in the confusion following two explosions.
With no security cordon to keep them back, armed local people pressed forward
and were among the first to return fire.
Friends cry over the coffin of killed hostage
15-year-old Alana Katsanova during the funeral in the town of Beslan,
September 6, 2004. The sound of weeping mothers who lost their children in
the bloody end to Russia's school siege drifted out of the houses of
Beslan on Sunday as relatives prepared to bury the first of 333 people
killed. [Reuters] |
Local troops --
unprepared and possibly short of ammunition -- suddenly found themselves
assaulting the school, while special forces moved in only half an hour after the
battle began, Golts said.
The newspaper Vremya Novostei said that when the fighting started, two
special forces squads from the FSB security service were still discussing
assault plans and had not even agreed on approach routes or where the defenders'
firing points were.
It said the two squads, Alfa and Vympel -- equivalent to Britain's Special
Air Service or the U.S. Delta Force -- suffered unprecedented casualties
totaling 10 dead and up to 31 wounded.
Local residents
look at the destroyed school gymnasum in Beslan, North
Ossetia. [AFP] |
Security expert Andrei Soldatov said on Ekho Moskvy radio that the
battle began so suddenly that many of the special forces fought without
bullet-proof vests.
But local troops were also too close to the school, keen to show the media
the scene and avoid the accusations of a cover-up that plagued the Russian
government in a previous hostage crisis, the capture of a Moscow theater in
2002, he said.
The disastrous handling of the siege earned a rebuke for the security forces
from Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself a former agent in the KGB, the
FSB's Soviet forerunner.
"We have to admit we showed no understanding of the danger of processes
occurring in our own country and in the world at large," he said in a televised
address on Saturday. "We failed to react appropriately to them and, instead,
showed weakness."
SPECIAL FORCES NOT PREPARED
But Golts said he believed that remarks by Putin earlier in the siege might
have added to the confusion.
"It's totally my theory, but as far as I understand, when Putin said the
school would not be stormed, the special forces stood down and were not prepared
for a crucial change in the situation."
Western analysts said a key weakness was the lack of coordination between
police, army, paramilitary and special forces each controlled by different
ministries or the FSB.
"In a typical area you will probably have interior forces and FSB forces and
there will be little coordination between them," said Petter Stalenheim of the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
"Something must happen right at the top, to coordinate these structures
better," said Alexander Rahr of the German Council on Foreign Relations. "There
are too many of them...and they react in an uncoordinated way."
Rahr described the FSB as a closed, infexible "club" of officials with Soviet
mindsets, struggling to adjust from Cold War espionage to fighting terrorism.
"The failings lie in the system, as Putin hinted, which has not been reformed
-- or has been badly reformed and built up -- since the fall of the Soviet
Union."
But any attempt by Putin to construct a "super-authority" would provoke
accusations at home and abroad that he was recreating the KGB, Rahr added.
Among other problems, he pointed to the Russians' inability to infiltrate
Chechen militant groups with informants, and the ability of militants to exploit
official corruption.
"The problem, as ever in Russia, is in the unbelievable corruption. You can
change the leadership of the FSB all you want, but these (insurgents) are
fighting not only with weapons. When they infiltrate Russia they have cases or
bags full of dollars and they 'buy' any policeman who stands in their way.
"As long as nothing is done on this level and those problems exist, Putin can
reform all he wants at the top but it won't work at the lower level."
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