CommentaryThe causes and consequences of Beslan: A commentary on Gerard Toal's placing blame: Making sense of Beslan
Section snippets
The political context of Beslan
The first key theme that emerges from this article is the need to place the terrorist acts committed in Beslan in a political context. The initial rhetoric employed by President Putin and his administration sought to place Beslan outside of politics in much the same way the President Bush placed the 9/11 attacks outside of politics. The idea that Beslan was yet another in a series of terrorist attacks by Chechen rebels that began well after the Russian invasion of Chechnya was strongly resisted
Parallels to international reaction to terrorism
The second theme that emerges from this article is that Russian reaction to terrorism in general and to Beslan in particular is not unique. Many aspects of both Russian leaders' rhetoric and their actions in the aftermath of Beslan were borrowed, either consciously or unconsciously, from U.S. policies enacted after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Both countries ruled out efforts to negotiate with the leaders of organizations that stood behind the terrorist
Causes of Beslan
While Gerard Toal's article provides a rich analysis of the discourse used to justify actions taken both during Beslan and in its aftermath, it does not address one key issue: Why did Beslan happen? The explanations used by the various actors are, if anything diametrically opposed. The perpetrators and their allies claimed that the attack on innocent schoolchildren had its roots in the Chechen war and was justified as a response to similarly barbaric Russian attacks on innocent Chechen
Responding to terrorism
The Putin administration's initial response to Beslan was almost identical to its response to previous terrorist attacks and natural and man-made disasters. Government officials gave misleading information to the media, most significantly by underestimating the number of hostages by a factor of three. The editor of the newspaper Izvestia, which had been critical of the government's initial response, was pressured to resign for “excessively emotional coverage” of the attack. Government officials
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