Tom Parfitt: The Secret History of Beslan
[Tom Parfitt is a fellow of the London-based Royal Geographical Society and a former public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. His trip is supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.]
VLADIKAVKAZ and BESLAN, Russia — In these sleepy towns in the Russian republic of North Ossetia, it's no surprise that fury against the Islamist militants who plague the North Caucasus runs deep. Beslan is, of course, the infamous site of the most savage and terrifying militia attack in recent memory, the raid on School Number One that left hundreds of people dead on the third day of the fall semester in 2004. Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, has seen a series of suicide attacks in its crowded city center....
The Ossetians are a largely Orthodox Christian nation at the center of the Greater Caucasus mountain range. Vladikavkaz is just 15 miles from Nazran, the largest settlement in Ingushetia, which is predominantly Muslim.
Tension between the two nations goes back for hundreds of years. During the 19th century, the Ossetians were Russia's key regional allies in its battle to conquer the surrounding Muslim highlanders, including the Ingush, Chechens, and Circassians.
Then at the end of World War II, Joseph Stalin deported several North Caucasus nations en masse to Kazakhstan and Siberia for allegedly siding with the invading Germans (in fact, only a minority did so). Among them were 92,000 Ingush. When the Ingush were rehabilitated and allowed home in 1957, they returned to find that a chunk of their territory, the Prigorodny district, had been handed to North Ossetia.
Through the late Soviet period the Ingush lobbied for Prigorodny to be reattached to their joint republic with Chechnya. Then, after the USSR crumbled in 1991, the lid was off. A year later, fighting broke out in Prigorodny. The Russian army sided with the Ossetians. At least 600 people died in the hostilities, and between 30,000 and 60,000 Ingush fled their homes....
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VLADIKAVKAZ and BESLAN, Russia — In these sleepy towns in the Russian republic of North Ossetia, it's no surprise that fury against the Islamist militants who plague the North Caucasus runs deep. Beslan is, of course, the infamous site of the most savage and terrifying militia attack in recent memory, the raid on School Number One that left hundreds of people dead on the third day of the fall semester in 2004. Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, has seen a series of suicide attacks in its crowded city center....
The Ossetians are a largely Orthodox Christian nation at the center of the Greater Caucasus mountain range. Vladikavkaz is just 15 miles from Nazran, the largest settlement in Ingushetia, which is predominantly Muslim.
Tension between the two nations goes back for hundreds of years. During the 19th century, the Ossetians were Russia's key regional allies in its battle to conquer the surrounding Muslim highlanders, including the Ingush, Chechens, and Circassians.
Then at the end of World War II, Joseph Stalin deported several North Caucasus nations en masse to Kazakhstan and Siberia for allegedly siding with the invading Germans (in fact, only a minority did so). Among them were 92,000 Ingush. When the Ingush were rehabilitated and allowed home in 1957, they returned to find that a chunk of their territory, the Prigorodny district, had been handed to North Ossetia.
Through the late Soviet period the Ingush lobbied for Prigorodny to be reattached to their joint republic with Chechnya. Then, after the USSR crumbled in 1991, the lid was off. A year later, fighting broke out in Prigorodny. The Russian army sided with the Ossetians. At least 600 people died in the hostilities, and between 30,000 and 60,000 Ingush fled their homes....