Dire Fallout of Chechen War

The dreadful images of parents waiting outside a Russian school where militants hold hundreds of small children and teachers put chilling faces on the war with terrorists. President Vladimir V. Putin’s initial willingness to negotiate with the hostage-takers rather than assault the school is smart; the terrible result of the storming of a Moscow theater in 2002, in which more than 100 died, undoubtedly has given Putin pause this time. But it is difficult to be optimistic about the outcome of this kind of incident, given examples like the Moscow theater seizure, the Munich Olympics of 1972 and the 1971 Attica prison riot in upstate New York.

The takeover of the school in Beslan on the first day of classes, assumed to be the work of separatists from nearby Chechnya, follows a devastating series of attacks, presumably by Chechen militants. Two female suicide bombers are thought to be the culprits in the Aug. 24 crashes of two Russian passenger jets, which killed all 90 people on board. On Tuesday, another female suicide bomber killed herself and nine others outside a Moscow subway station. The death toll would have been worse had the bomber not turned back when she saw police inside the station.

Even while the school standoff goes on, Putin should try to open negotiations with rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya’s elected president during the two years that the republic had de facto independence before the war resumed in 1999. Representatives of Maskhadov, who is in hiding, routinely condemn rebel attacks on civilians, though they also decry atrocities by Russian security forces in the republic of Chechnya. Putin should find out what it will take to get Maskhadov to urge Chechens to end the violence. It probably will require giving the republic more independence than Moscow has offered, as well as a withdrawal of many if not all of the Russian security forces.

Chechen anger at Russian rule is centuries old, though Moscow has updated its vocabulary in recent years to blame international Islamic terrorists for the violence; Putin has linked Chechen militants to Al Qaeda. Sunday’s election of a new president in Chechnya, Putin favorite Alu Alkhanov, did nothing to placate the separatists.

Alkhanov succeeds Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in May in another demonstration of insurgents’ ability to elude security. Before his election, Alkhanov promised that police would no longer be allowed to wear masks during operations. Masked and camouflaged men assumed to be Russian security forces are responsible for the disappearance of thousands of Chechens during the last four years. Alkhanov’s promise may have won him some votes, but he and Putin will need to do more to end years of violence that have killed thousands inside the republic and elsewhere in Russia.