Putin’s iron fist is a tragic failure

THE images of children being carried naked and covered in blood from Middle School 1 in Beslan, beamed live on the main TV networks in Russia, are traumatising the nation.

Russians had become used to terrorist attacks as they entrusted their president, Vladimir Putin, with a carte blanche in his military response. But it is the nature of this particular attack - the focus on tiny babies in one of the poorest parts of the country - that makes this different. This truly is Russia’s 9/11.

But after the shock, after the anger and the grieving for those who have died, what then? The immediate response is despondency and despair. Putin’s iron fist has got nowhere.

This was a man who promised to restore order, including in Chechnya, after what his supporters call the “chaos” of the Yeltsin years. After two military invasions, thousands dead, rigged elections and countless bomb attacks he appears further away than ever from victory in his war on terror.

Putin previously insisted that Chechnya was a purely domestic issue. Now he appears to be changing tack, talking of the international nature of the threat.

Beslan is now officially listed as part of the same Islamist assault on “civilised” values that led to the attacks on New York and Madrid.

The pro-Putin political class (it is quite hard nowadays to find many people who publicly express differing views) is also expressing increasing anger at what it regards as the west’s double standards. Russia gave the US unequivocal support in September 2001, so why is the west not doing the same in September 2004?

“It is time to put an end to this ambiguity in western minds, which makes the devil of terrorism turn into a rough, but generally nice guy, as soon as he steps from the outside world into Chechnya,” writes Russian political commentator Vladimir Simonov.

In the midst of the crisis, Putin received what he needed from the UN - a blanket condemnation of the terrorists, without any link to Russian human rights abuses in Chechnya.

The likes of George Bush, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac also have an opportunity now to impress upon Putin the need not just to improve security, but also to find political interlocutors, not puppets, in Chechnya.

Given the public mood here that will not be easy. And even if talks began, there is no guarantee that the terror would abate. There is no shortage of Chechens who are willing to blow themselves up, and take many Russians with them, to avenge what they see as more than a decade of Kremlin brutalism.

After the simultaneous plane destructions and the bomb outside the metro station, the “normalisation” that Putin likes to profess is in tatters. Politicians I have spoken to here are preparing for more attacks to follow Beslan. Their worst predictions are for a strike on a nuclear plant.

Military and police reinforcements have been ordered, partly to deter, partly to reassure, although they are unlikely to do much of either. Questions are raised about Putin’s future, only to dissipate with the realisation that for the foreseeable future there is no alternative.

The more immediate question in the minds of ordinary people is whether they and their children can get through the next day without bloodshed.

John Kampfner is political editor of the New Statesman and a former Moscow correspondent. www.jkampfner.net