The imminent violent aftermath of the Beslan hostage-taking
Johanna Nichols
University of California, Berkeley
johanna@berkeley.edu
Oct. 8, 2004

        The brutal school siege and slaughter in Beslan, North Ossetia (Russia) in early September has left a heavy burden of grief and rage that will not dissipate soon.  A very likely consequence of the incident is large-scale violence by Ossetians against the Ingush people in mid October, followed by federal military action against Ingushetia. The likelihood of violence against Ingush living in North Ossetia has been noted by some Russian officials and several western commentators. [1]  Federal military action not only against those Ingush but also against all of Ingushetia is a more dire and also very likely prospect.  What happens now is under Russia's control and will demonstrate Russia's intentions in the Caucasus.  As I have seen no survey that mentions all the relevant factors, this piece attempts to bring together background information on Ossetian-Ingush ethnic conflicts and the expansion of the Russian-Chechen war that is essential to understanding the potential for violence.
        The hostage-takers are generally assumed to have been led by Chechens and to have included some Ingush and several other nationalities, and their demands to the Russian authorities included rapid full Russian military withdrawal from Chechnya.  The chance of gaining this end by means of a terrorist act was virtually nil, as any participant would have known; but it was a virtual certainty that the hostage-taking would lead to interethnic violence against the Ingush, Russian military action against the Ingush, further demonization of all Chechens, and escalation of Russian federal violence against Chechen civilians.  These are such predictable and obvious consequences of the Beslan school siege that they must be assumed to have been among the primary goals of the organizers.  

Background on the Ossetians and the Ingush

        The Ossetians speak a language of the Iranian branch of Indo-European, a descendant of one of the dialects of the Scythian rulers of the Iron Age steppe whose intermediate stage was the early medieval Alanic language.  The Alans ruled a state in the pre-Mongol north Caucasus, in which a variety of indigenous languages and ethnic identities obtained on the ground.  The original Alanic-speaking area lay to the north and west of present-day Ossetian territory, and the language spread as the state flourished.    
        The Ingush speak a language of the Nakh branch of the ancient Nakh-Daghestanian language family which is indigenous to the Caucasus.  Ingush is so closely related to Chechen as to be nearly mutually intelligible, though the national identities and political aspirations of the two peoples have always been very different.  The linguistic ancestors of the Ingush and Chechen were in the highlands of their present ranges as of some millennia ago, and the languages had spread to roughly their modern ranges at least by the middle ages.  Neither Chechen nor Ingush society had, in traditional times, any form of executive government, though like all societies of the Caucasus they were firmly ruled by a traditional code of law.
        In the middle ages all three of Chechen, Ingush, and Ossetian were also spoken on the southern slope of the Caucasus, in today's highland Georgia, but the expansion of Georgian in recent centuries replaced Chechen and Ingush there almost entirely, leaving a large Ossetic-speaking population in South Ossetia in Georgia and a small indigenous Chechen-speaking enclave in the Pankisi Gorge of northeastern Georgia.  On the north slope of the Caucasus, Alan, Mongol, Kabardian, and Russian powers ruled in turn in the lowlands without much impact on the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural picture in the foothills and slopes of the Caucasus until the 19th century, when Russia undertook to conquer the Caucasus by means of economic destruction, slaughter, and deportation.  The Circassians, the economic and cultural powerhouse of the western Caucasus, resisted and were crushed, losing well over half of their population and most of their land.  The Chechens took part in organized resistance and were crushed, losing nearly half of their population.  The Ingush aspired to political neutrality but were nonetheless similarly crushed (then as now, Russia did not accurately distinguish the linguistically similar but politically very distinct Chechen and Ingush).  The Ossetians gave cautious support to Russia and were largely spared, though they too had some of their best land expropriated for Cossack and Slavic settlers.
        Islam spread to the northern Caucasus from Azerbaijan via Daghestan in the east, reaching the Chechens in about the 17th century and the Ingush in the 18th, and from the Crimean khanate via Circassia in the west.  In the early middle ages there was Christian missionary activity by Georgian clerics in the central highlands, reaching Ossetians, Ingush, and some highland Chechens, all of whom added a nominally Christian overlayer to a polytheistic traditional religion.  Islam gained prestige as a unifying force in the resistance to Russian conquest and took root among all the indigenous peoples except for the Ossetians, who are now the only predominantly Christian indigenous group in the north Caucasus.

Ingush-Ossetian tensions

        Since the middle ages the ethnic boundary between Ossetians and Ingush has run along the upper Terek river.  Though there was some intersettlement in the immediate vicinity of the boundary, for the most part the right upper Terek drainage was compactly and monoethnically Ingush and the left side compactly and monoethnically Ossetian.  Until the Russian conquest there was much cultural and economic interaction, most of it friendly.  The city of Vladikavkaz was founded as a Russian fort on the Terek at the Ingush-Ossetian ethnic border, and until 1944 functioned jointly as capital of North Ossetia and Ingushetia.  In 1944 the Ingush and Chechen, along with a few other nationalities of the north Caucasus including the Muslim minority of the Ossetians, were deported en masse to Central Asia by the Soviet government, for reasons that are still not well understood.  At least one-third of the population died or was killed in transit; every family was financially ruined; all houses and property were looted and burned or given to new settlers; museums, libraries, schools, archives, and other repositories were destroyed; the deportees' republics were dissolved.  Most of the deportees were allowed to return beginning in 1957, and versions of their republics were restored.  Ingushetia (then part of a Chechen-Ingush ASSR) was greatly resized, with most of its central foothill portion -- the demographic, cultural, and economic heartland of Ingushetia, with nearly half of its original population, most of its resources, and its only urban center, the city of Vladikavkaz -- removed to North Ossetia.  Though Ingush were barred from legal residence in this area and discriminated against in employment and admission to education, many of them nonetheless managed to return and live there.  (Among other things, this meant sacrificing schooling in Ingush, a fact that has led to relatively rapid language shift to Russian among Ingush compared to Chechens.)  This land was close to one-quarter of the area of pre-1944 Ingushetia and added about 7% to North Ossetia.
        In 1991 the first post-Soviet step of the Ingush was to remove themselves from the Chechen-Ingush republic and petition to become a republic of Russia.  A federal law was passed calling for their "territorial rehabilitation," and restoration of the Ingush heartland was expected.
        By the fall of 1992 Ingushetia was a republic of Russia, Russia was seeking grounds for military action against Chechnya and means of sowing disunity in the newly formed Confederation of Peoples of the Caucasus, and there was tension in North Ossetia over the prospect of the return of Ingush lands and over difficulties in accommodating South Ossetian refugees from civil war in Georgia.  Local media spread rumors that Ingush were arming and preparing to take over the land by force, in response to which both Ossetians and Ingush did arm for self-defense against each other.  Local incidents triggered battles, and federal troops, brought in ostensibly as peacekeepers, aided Ossetian vigilantes in bringing about the almost complete ethnic cleansing of Ingush from the area followed by looting and destruction of most of their houses.  Approximately 64,000 Ingush fled to Ingushetia and were registered as refugees there.  The consensus of historians now seems to be that Russia hoped by this means to provoke Chechnya to attack in defense of the Ingush, thereby justifying a federal attack on Chechnya. [2]  In the last few years several thousand of the Ingush refugees have managed to return to rebuild in North Ossetia, despite hindrance from authorities and occasional violent opposition by vigilantes.
        The events of 1992 and the difficulties of the return have convinced both Ingush and Ossetians that Ossetians may attack Ingush with impunity and with the expectation of republic and federal support.  
        Beslan, where the school siege occurred, is not in the historically Ingush part of North Ossetia.  Nonetheless, a number of news reports have quoted Beslan residents and Ossetians from elsewhere in the republic to the effect that, at the end of the traditional 40-day mourning period (during which one is not supposed to take up arms), they will take reprisals against the Ingush living in North Ossetia.  Such statements make clear the deep lack of confidence among Ossetians in either the ability or the willingness of either the North Ossetian or federal authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice and guarantee future security, as well as the readiness of some of them to blame the atrocity on an entire ethnic group and to make that ethnic group the Ingush.  In part this attitude must have been reinforced by official statements about the hostage-taking.  While statements intended for an international audience generally ascribe it to international terrorism and link its organizers to Al Qaeda, those for domestic consumption have focused on the ethnic identity of the hostage-takers.  A changing set of ethnicities has been cited (beginning before there was evidence on the question), but always prominently including Ingush and Chechen.
        The scope of the intended violence appears to be greater than the half-dozen or so Ingush who may have been among the hostage-takers and greater than the approximately 400 Ossetians victims of the shootout after the hostage-taking.  None of the other ethnic groups who are believed to have been represented among the hostage-takers are being targeted for violent reprisals.
    In traditional Ossetian law, as in the law codes of all indigenous north Caucasian societies, a capital crime (such as murder) was punished by a death sentence carried out by the victim's family against the criminal or his closest surviving male relative. When done in accordance with law, this triggered no return vengeance.  Journalists reporting on ethnic tensions after Beslan sometimes mention the tradition of blood vengeance, but mass reprisal against an ethnic group is not part of the code of vengeance. The Beslan siege was a crime against humanity and not in the purview of traditional civil law.
        To summarize, Ossetian collective vengeance against Ingush for the Beslan hostage-taking is made likely by prior tensions over the return of Ingush land, official statements associating the hostage-taking with entire ethnic groups, the existence of vigilante or paramilitary groups, and -- probably most important -- the expectation of impunity for attacks on Ingush.  In part it is opportunistic, promoted by vigilantes who are not among the bereaved of Beslan. Importantly, there is no ancient hatred between Ingush and Ossetians; the enmity is recent, created by state policy both Soviet and Russian, and increased perhaps to the point of no return by the school siege.

Russian military designs on Ingushetia

        Recognizing the likelihood of Ossetian-Ingush violence, several Russian officials have said that it will not be tolerated, and Russian president Putin himself has said that anyone using the hostage-taking as grounds for violence will be regarded as an accomplice of the terrorists.[3]  Such language will not defuse violence where there is an expectation of impunity, but it could be used to justify military intervention in case of violence.  The 1992 history suggests that federal "peacekeepers" can be counted on to take the Ossetian side against the Ingush, and events of the last two years suggest that a military response to interethnic violence would affect not just the Ingush living in North Ossetia but Ingushetia itself.
        From time to time since the Russian-Chechen wars began in 1994, Russian forces have made attempts to extend the war to Ingushetia, frequently announcing that Chechen commanders are sheltering there and occasionally shelling or bombing Ingush towns near the Chechnya-Ingushetia border.  If the first Russian-Chechen war was fought over Chechnya's independence, the second one has had more the character of a turf war between local civilian organized crime and military organized crime for control of the hostage trade and the smuggling of oil, both of which had fallen into local hands at the end of the first war and are now firmly in the hands of the military and security services.  In addition, the war serves the military by generating promotions at a high rate and it serves organized crime and advocates of a return to a police state by training many Russian young men in the brutalities of murder, rape, and torture. [4]  Under the Russian military and security services the rate of abduction and disappearance of Chechen civilians has greatly increased over what obtained under local criminals in the interwar period, and now exceeds the execution rate during the peak of Stalin's purges;[5] the number of Russian servicemen who have gained experience at murder, rape, and torture and then returned to civilian society must be approaching two million;[6] the population of Chechnya is perhaps half what it was in 1994, the consequence of refugee flight, war deaths, and disappearances; and sources of ransom money in Chechnya have mostly been bled dry.  In the first years of the war Ruslan Aushev, then president of Ingushetia, was able to keep Russian military atrocities out of Ingushetia, but since he was forced out and replaced in 2002 abductions and disappearances of civilians at the hands of federal death squads have begun to occur in Ingushetia, starting with residents of refugee camps but soon extending to Ingush, and the rate now exceeds that in Chechnya.[7]  Federal authorities have forcibly closed down all camps for refugees from the war and curtailed the work of aid organizations serving them, and the danger posed by the death squads has forced some aid organizations to withdraw entirely, all of which reduces the number of independent and international observers present in Ingushetia.  Shortly before the Beslan hostage-taking, internet connections in Ingushetia were shut down, and they apparently remain shut down.  Since the hostage-taking, Russian forces have resumed shelling western Chechen towns (close to Ingushetia) and shelled a military academy in Ingushetia.  Taken together, these things seem to indicate preparation for military action.
        Expansion of Russia's war to Ingushetia would make little military sense, but is consistent with the non-military goals that appear to be driving the war. Large-scale movement of Russian troops into Ingushetia would ordinarily cause international concern, but interethnic violence in North Ossetia would enable them to move into Ingushetia ostensibly as peacekeepers and border guards.  Once there, they are unlikely to leave.  Several voices in the military and in the Kremlin have called for a forcible merger of Chechnya and Ingushetia.  Though this is opposed even by Moscow's hand-picked presidents of the two republics, many in the Caucasus fear that bringing it about is one of the goals of an expanded military presence.
        To summarize, a consequence of Ossetian-Ingush ethnic violence is likely to be a full extension of the Russian-Chechen war to Ingushetia.  The work of death squads has already begun there.  Extension of the war to Ingushetia is desirable to the military and organized crime and was among the foreseeably near-certain outcomes of the Beslan siege.

Conclusions

    The 40-day mourning period for the massacred innocents of Beslan ends on October 13.  At this point, the Russian authorities have little time and much work if they are to remove the expectation of impunity for Ossetian attacks on Ingush, counteract the tendency to lay the blame for an atrocity on an entire ethnic group, and defuse violent collective vengeance. What they do in the next days will tell us whether or not the Kremlin wishes to see peace among Russia's constituent ethnicities and whether it wishes to contain or to expand Russian-Chechen war.  To fail to prevent further violence will be to help make the Beslan atrocity a success on its own terms. 


Notes

[1]   See e.g. Charles Gurin, 'Aushev and others warn of possible Ossetian-Ingush conflict', Eurasian Daily Monitor 1:95 (Jamestown Foundation; <http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=401&issue_id=3088&article_id=2368604 >; Bryon MacWilliams, 'North Ossetian conflict began in the Kremlin,' Moscow Times, Oct. 6, 2004.

[2]  See e.g. John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 173-8 and Human Rights Watch, The Ingush-Ossetian Conflict in the Prigorodnyj Region (New York, 1996) for this event.  The latter source emphasizes that many North Ossetians risked their own lives to save the lives of their Ingush neighbors, and that fighting was disproportionately initiated and carried out by out-of-area paramilitaries.   

[3]  Quoted in Gurin, op. cit.

[4]  For more on the character of the war see Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya (University of Chicago Press, 2003), especially 161ff.; Rajan Menon, 'Russia's quagmire: On ending the standoff in Chechnya' (Boston Review, Aug. 21, 2004); the Jamestown Foundation's Chechnya Weekly <http://www.jamestown.org/publications_view.php?publication_id=1 >, e.g. 5:8 (February 25, 2004) and Zaindi Choltaev, 'Surkov and the search for enemies', Chechnya Weekly 5:36 (Oct. 6, 2004); Timur Aliev, 'Basayev eludes Russian capture', Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Oct. 6, 2004 < www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/cau/cau_200410_256_2_eng.txt >.  It is not a war between a Russian side and a Chechen "rebel" side.  The parties are:  the Russian military and security services; Islamist warlords who, while offering military resistance, cooperate with the Russian security services in organizing some aspects of hostage-taking and are spared Russian attack because they fulfill the important goal of justifying Russian military intervention; non-Islamist fighters, who generally do not prey on civilians but rarely come to their aid; Chechen organized criminals, who are involved in hostage-taking and in oil smuggling; and the civilian population, who do not fight but are victims of the Russian services and the Islamists, and some of whom buy reprieve by becoming informers.

[5]  S. A. Gannushkina, O polozhenii zhitelej Chechni v Rossijskoj Federacii ijun' 2003 - maj 2004. http://www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/caucas1/index.htm, June 26, 2004; Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and Memorial. The Situation in Chechnya and Ingushetia Deteriorates. New Evidence of Enforced Disappearances, Rape, Torture, and Extrajudicial Executions.  ibid., Apr. 8, 2004; Memorial, Poxischenija, ischeznovenija za god 2003 v chechenskoj respublike, ibid., Feb. 27, 2004; Aleksandr Cherkasov, Kniga chisel. Kniga utrat. Kniga strashnogo suda.  Demografija, poteri naselenija i migracionnye potoki v zone vooruzhennogo konflikta v Chechenskoj Respublike, ibid., Feb. 26, 2004 and also polit.ru, Feb. 19, 2004.

[6]  In late 2002 sociologist and former Kremlin advisor on nationalities Emil Payin estimated their numbers at 1.5 million.

[7]  See Nick Paton Walsh, 'A second Chechnya,' Guardian, June 18, 2004, and sources in note 5.