Three years on, one lesson to be learned from the deaths of 334 school hostages is that the tragedy must be viewed against its local political context, writes Gerard Toal
Rubble and broken furniture fill the hallways and abandoned classrooms. All around, windows are destroyed. Large sections of the roof are missing. Only a few burnt rafters and the metallic frame of the roof above the gym remain.
To keep out the rain, a makeshift Plexiglas structure has been added. But water comes in, nevertheless, through the big gaping holes where windows and walls used to be. The basketball court is mostly intact but burnt and broken in places. Bare metal hoops on both ends are still standing - built for play, they were used to support explosives as terrified students, parents and teachers crowded beneath, all hostages in a school seized by terrorists.
Pictures adorn the walls of the gym: children in their Sunday best, adult fathers, mothers, teachers and men in military uniforms. And more pictures of children, surrounded by flowers and cuddly toys.
One is of a two-year-old baby, the youngest of the 334 hostages who died here between September 1st and 3rd, 2004. Today School Number One in Beslan looks like a raw wound.
"The first day of school is a holiday we cannot celebrate here anymore," a government official noted matter-of-factly. But his assignment of blame may be surprising to outsiders: "We cannot forgive the Ingush for Beslan."
At least five of the 32 terrorists at Beslan were from Ingushetia, the small impoverished republic between North Ossetia and Chechnya. Most were ethnic Chechens but there was also a Russian and an Ossetian too. The notorious Chechen fighter Shamil Basayev was said to have planned the attack and Saudi terrorists working in Ingushetia to have financed it. President Vladimir Putin blamed "international terrorism" while President George Bush incorporated Beslan into a list of terrorist outrages since September 11th to give meaning to his "global war on terror" and justify policies like warrantless wire taps against Americans. Why blame ethnic Ingush?
Encountering divergent local readings of terrorism opens up an important question. In a world where international media networks parachute in to cover spectacular terrorist actions, how are shocking events such as Beslan to be understood? In local terms or as part of a "global war on terror"? Their horror appears to overwhelm our capacity for comprehension.
Yet extreme terrorist events are usually processed quickly into already-established narratives tied to interests and identities defined against categorical otherness. Thus, this local official could easily process Beslan as part of a long-standing conflict between Ossetians and Ingush in the wake of Stalin's deportation of Ingush and Chechens in 1944 to Central Asia and the transfer of part of the territory of Ingushetia to North Ossetia.
The Ingush, like the Chechens, were eventually allowed to return but their villages were occupied by Ossetians. New villages were built but tensions remained and, as Soviet power disintegrated, some Ingush campaigned for a return of the disputed territory to Ingushetia. At that time, in the south Caucasus, ultra-nationalist Georgian militias violently drove ethnic Ossetians from their homes across Georgia.
An estimated 100,000 refugees sought safety in North Ossetia, placing greater pressure on housing and exacerbating Ossetian-Ingush tensions. In October 1992, a brief war broke out in the disputed territory and Ossetian militias drove an estimated 50,000 Ingush from North Ossetia. As this terror developed, some of the displaced Ingush were given temporary shelter in Beslan's School Number One.
Press reports of the testimony of the only terrorist captured alive suggest that Basayev sought to create such horror at Beslan that it would reignite the Ossetian-Ingush conflict and destabilise the whole North Caucasus. Although Ossetian guns soon appeared, Russian forces halted revenge attacks by Ossetian militias against returned local Ingush. Some skirmishes occurred and a number of Ingush men have been kidnapped over the last three years. Relations remain tense and could deteriorate as choices over commemorating Beslan are faced.
At present, an Orthodox cross stands in the middle of the gym, though both Orthodox and Muslim hostages died and are buried together in a cemetery for the victims. Was the Beslan terrorism directed against Orthodox Russia or is its local meaning more layered as victim families increasingly turn their wrath against the Kremlin?
For the Bush administration to describe Beslan as part of a "global war on terror" is superficial if not misleading. Terrorism needs to be understood in its geographic setting.
This is not to suggest that all terrorism is purely local or regional, for clearly there are transregional terrorist networks at work and global categories of identification - civilised/barbarian, Muslim/non-Muslim, imperialist/liberator - are mobilised by all parties. But the "global war on terror" is a misleading narrative because it misses the power of geographical context.
Evoking the global serves political interests, not understanding. It is time to remember Beslan's victims and terrorism's immediate geographies.
Dr Gerard Toal is professor and director of government and international affairs at Virginia Tech, Virginia, USA