WE MADE IT:
A mother and daughter comfort one another after surviving the siege
The attack began on the first day of the new school year, a happy landmark in the Russian calendar, when parents pack snacks and children bring balloons and flowers to give to their teachers. On Sept. 1, parents and children had gathered in the pleasant courtyard of School No. 1, an imposing, century-old brick building set back from the road, to join the traditional festivities. Kasumova was looking forward to another year as the head of the department of moral education.
They were just lining up in the schoolyard when the terrorists, heavily armed and wearing black ski masks and camouflage, stormed in. "This is a seizure!" they shouted as terrified children tried to flee; a lucky few hid behind heating boilers and got away. The rest were herded into the gym; the rebels mounted a room-by-room search of the school and brought stragglers back.
There was utter panic in the gym. One of the parents tried to calm people down, Kasumova recalled, and a guerrilla put his assault rifle to the man's head and killed him. "His body was there a long while," she says. "Then the guerrillas told people to take it away, and had some girls clean up the blood."
Two of the rebel fighters were women, wearing explosive "martyr's belts." The terrorists assured the hostages that they wouldn't harm them. They said they wanted Chechnya's independence from Russia and an end to the war. Russian authorities later claimed some were Arabs, pointing to a possible al-Qaeda connection, but Kasumova never saw anyone who fit that description.
To avoid being overwhelmed by narcotic gas like their comrades in the October 2002 Moscow theater siege in which 41 Chechen terrorists and 129 hostages died the rebels quickly smashed the school's windows. Putin, apparently keen to avoid the carnage of the theater tragedy, said that protecting the hostages was the government's first priority. Nevertheless, special forces and other crack troops poured into the town of 30,000 and within hours began the planning for an operation to retake the school.
After reviewing the situation the school layout, the number of terrorists, what was known about the explosives they had deployed an officer from the Federal Security Service's Alpha antiterror unit told a senior Beslan legal figure that the Moscow theater siege "was a kindergarten compared to this."
On the first evening of the siege, the town was eerily silent. Large groups of people sat outside their houses on benches where they would ordinarily take the sun, often staring blankly ahead, occasionally bursting into tears. About a thousand relatives gathered inside the local Palace of Culture, which became their informal headquarters. A reporter asked one man if he had children in the school. He wordlessly pulled a camera cell phone from his pocket, showed the pictures he had snapped of his son and daughter that morning, and walked away.
At first, Russian forces strained to avoid provoking the gunmen. The captors regularly loosed gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in all directions to keep the city nervous and the Russian troops back, but the Russians didn't return fire.
Inside the packed gymnasium, conditions were grim beyond words. Children were faint from lack of food and water, and from the oppressive heat. The rebels were furious that North Ossetia's President Alexander Dzasokhov would not negotiate with them. "No one will have a single mouthful of water until he contacts us," one of the guerrillas declared. Finally they relented, and allowed a bucket of water to be brought in; people dunked boys' white shirts and girls' pinafores into the bucket and passed the wet clothes down the rows so each hostage could squeeze and suck a little water out of them. The guerrillas told the hostages that Russian television was reporting only 350 of them inside the school. "That means they're planning to storm" the building, Kasumova recalls one terrorist saying. "Dzasokhov doesn't need you." The news sent the hostages into shock.
The rebels were determined to keep the children quiet; like any good teacher, Kasumova knew that was impossible. "You animals! You sheep! Why won't you shut up," one of the fighters yelled. They pulled a male hostage up so everyone could see him. "If you don't shut up, we'll kill him. After that we will kill a woman, then a child."
Back to the Drawing Board [May 24, 2004]
After the assassination of Moscow's man in Grozny, Putin must devise a new exit strategy for Chechnya
No Way Out [Oct. 09, 2003]
After the election in Chechnya, Putin wants to declare victory and get out.
Profits of Doom [Oct. 09, 2003]
A Russian special ops commander says the Chechen war is really being fought for oil, arms and money
Awfully Familiar [July 21, 2003]
The war in Chechnya — now sending suicide bombers to Moscow — is becoming Russia's version of Palestine
No End In Sight [Jun. 30, 2003]
The war in Chechnya helped Putin win the Russian presidency. With a wave of new suicide bombings, could it now become his downfall?
Living on a Powder Keg [Feb. 07, 2003]
The forgotten link between Chechen terrorism and the war in Chechnya
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