Russian hostage crisis - Plumbing the depths of barbarism

TERRORISM has entered a new and brutal era when school children, parents and teachers are taken hostage.

No cause in the name of nationalism can possibly justify yesterday’s seizure of a Russian school by Chechen rebels.

No political agenda can rationalise the threat to blow up hundreds of captives, including small babes in the arms of parents accompanying children on their first day at school.

What should have been a day of hope and happiness became a terrifying nightmare as the rebels laid mines and trip wires, threatening to blow up the school if stormed by the police.

Pupils were turned into human shields by masked men and women with explosives strapped to their bodies.

As unconfirmed reports from the scene suggested a number of people were killed, the hostage-takers demanded the withdrawal of troops from Chechnya.

As the ripple-effect of this attack spreads globally, people can be forgiven for thinking the world has gone mad. Everywhere there is strife, violence and mayhem.

The latest atrocity comes hot on the heels of the slaughter of Israeli citizens in the suicide bomb attack on two buses on the streets of Beersheba, the brutal murder of 12 Nepalese workers in Iraq, and the bombing of two Russian passenger planes.

As Irish people, north and south of the border, know to their cost, terrorism is an indiscriminate and virtually unstoppable weapon in the hands of ruthless fanatics.

The use of terror for political, religious or racial ends has escalated rapidly ever since President George W Bush declared war on terrorism in the aftermath of the September 11 atrocity.

In America and around the world, the strategy has driven deep wedges between pro- and anti-Bush camps. His unquestioning supporters brook no criticism of the President’s gung-ho policies. But, his critics accuse the Bush regime of becoming the recruiting sergeants of terrorism and of blowing its embers into a fire-storm.

There is a bitter sense of irony in this scenario. Arguably, the more brutal the actions of Chechen rebels, or the more shocking the TV executions by Iraqi insurgents, and the more vicious the bomb attacks by Palestinian terrorists, the more likely it becomes that Mr Bush will sweep back into the White House in the November presidential election.

In terms of US politics, the siege in southern Russia will give him ready-made ammunition for tonight’s keynote address at the Republican party convention in New York where the war against terrorism looms large.

As negotiations with the hostage-takers continued last night, Russia’s President Putin was acutely aware such atrocities will not go away as long as Muslim rebels are willing to die for Chechen independence.

With a major crisis on his hands, he is under pressure not to repeat the assault on the Moscow theatre in 2002 when 129 innocent people were gassed.

If troops storm the school, many children will die. The aim must be to bring the siege to a peaceful conclusion.