ABSTRACT
On September 1, 2004, a group of terrorists took more then 1,200 hostages on the first day of school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan. The deadliest hostage crisis and at the same time the third deadliest terrorist attack in history was about to unfold. After a fifty-two-hour stand-off, detonation of explosive devices inside the school triggered a chaotic rescue operation, in which 331 victims and thirty-one terrorists were killed, 176 of them children. The Beslan school hostage crisis was an unprecedented terrorist attack, both in its scale and targeting. Much more grand than the 1974 Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine attack in Ma’alot, Israel, or the 1977 take-over of a school in Bovensmilde in the Netherlands, this was the largest ever terrorist take-over of a school (Mickolus 1980, p. 494). In addition, following 9/11 and the 1978 torching of a movie theater in Iran (still unresolved), Beslan is the third deadliest terrorist attack in history (tied with the 1985 Air India flight 182). And finally, with the exception of the 1979 hostage crisis in Mecca and the 1996 Chechen take-over of a hospital in Kizlyar, Beslan involved the largest number of hostages in any similar crisis in history. Stemming from the above facts, it is clear that understanding the lessons of Beslan is one of the key prerequisites of designing counter terrorism strategies for the twenty-first century. Despite notoriety, the Beslan school tragedy still remains an incredibly misunderstood phenomenon. What really happened during the incident? Who were the attackers, and what was their goal? What was the treatment of hostages like? Was it possible to resolve the crisis via the process of negotiation? How did this incident reach such a tragic end? All of these questions are yet to be satisfactorily answered. Based on exhaustive open source research in three languages, examination of thousands of pages of witness testimonies and court transcripts, analysis of available video footage, and extensive field research in Beslan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, including the examination of evidence left behind in the school, visits to the perpetrators’ home villages, reconstruction of their trip from their training camp to Beslan, and dozens of interviews with hostages, witnesses, relatives, negotiators, and investigators, this chapter will analyze the myths and facts of the attack, with the clear purpose of identifying successes and failures. Particular attention will be devoted to an analysis of the events that took place in terms of negotiability, in an attempt to provide an
analytical perspective on the possible alternatives that were available to the Russian authorities as the incident progressed. A critical inquiry into the incident is especially important, as lessons learned from past hostage crises are an invaluable tool in developing future response frameworks. Further, there are concrete indications that similar hostage-takings are likely to take place in the future, and not just in Russia. The globalizing trends in terrorism as well as the publication of a very concrete and analytical terrorist training manual,1 which builds on the lessons learned and “best practice” of previous hostage incidents, present us with new challenges. From the first glance, it is obvious that we are not prepared. While there are many trained crisis negotiators around the world, almost none of them has ever had contact with a terrorist hostage-taking incident. Further, the entire training program of most hostage negotiators focuses on resolving crises that do not take into consideration issues such as ideology, religion, or the differing set of objectives and mindsets of ideological hostage-takers. This is especially true in regards to the terrorists of the “new” breed, who have become less discriminate, more lethal, and more well prepared. Further, many of the paradigms and presumptions upon which the contemporary practice of hostage negotiation is based on, do not reflect the reality of Beslan-type incidents. For example, here is a list of the characteristics of a negotiable incident, which are currently used by the FBI and other crisis negotiation bodies as the basic guideline to determining whether a given hostage incident has a chance of being resolved through the negotiation process:
1 The desire to live on the part of the hostage-taker. 2 The threat of force by the police. 3 The hostage-taker must present demands for release of hostages. 4 The negotiator must be viewed by the hostage-taker as someone who can
hurt but desires to help. 5 The negotiator needs time to develop trust with hostage-takers. 6 The location must be contained and stabilized to support negotiations. 7 The hostage-taker and negotiator must have a reliable means of communica-
tion, either by phone or face-to-face. 8 The negotiator must be able to “deal” with the hostage-taker, who controls
the hostages and makes the decisions.2
