As many as 10 of the terrorists may have been Arabs, reports said.

As many as 10 of the terrorists may have been Arabs, reports said.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
BESLAN, RUSSIA -- Among the wilted flowers brought to celebrate the first day of classes in the now-blackened wreckage of Beslan's School No. 1 are the abundant signs of a sophisticated terror operation. That evidence is sparking a re-examination of the long-standing Chechen links to Al-Qaida.
"They were so well trained -- the highest level," says Oleg Tedeyev, deputy chief of a local police unit, who was involved in the battle Friday that freed more than 700 people, and officially left 338 dead, half of them children.
In recent months, radical Islamist Chechen leaders such as Shamil Basayev, along with Osama bin Laden, have been "clear" about wanting to "set Russia on fire," says Michael Radu, a terrorism expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. "This is not an Al-Qaida operation: These are autonomous groups," he says. "It's not like bin Laden wrote the checks. But they are synchronized ideologically and strategically."
Accidental explosion
Survivors say the 30-odd attackers were mostly Russian-speaking Chechens. But as families in this small town near Chechnya buried their dead Monday, they described the end of the saga as one in which both the hostage-takers and Russian special forces were caught off guard by an accidental explosion in the gymnasium, which sparked a lethal firefight and hostage escape.
Still, officials here say the evidence suggests a complex operation and the kind of preparation once given in the Al-Qaida training camps of Afghanistan.
When officials entered the school building after the battle, they found syringes. The hostage-takers weren't addicts, but they were taking drugs "to keep them awake," says Tedeyev, whose own two children escaped as the school was seized. "As a military man, I was surprised how they could position themselves so well. In minutes, in seconds, they understood [the place]. It wasn't the first time they were here."
In the smoldering school, though swept by Russian intelligence and security services, a single singed wire still hangs from a charred basketball hoop -- testifying to the web of explosives rigged from the ceiling and walls of the gymnasium, where more than 1,200 agonized hostages were held for three days.
A shredded black belt and bloodied camouflage utility vest lies in the hall next to the cafeteria, where a female suicide bomber detonated herself.
Hiding places
And in the library, chunks of the floor have been hacked away to reveal hiding spaces, where the Chechen separatists had stored ammunition and explosives, perhaps building the stockpile for several months, during summer renovation work.
Russian media reports that as many as 10 of the attackers were Arab have also raised questions about the link with Islamic militant groups.
"I think it's Al-Qaida. I think it's Saudi Arabia, Arabs and possibly Afghan terrorists -- and terrorists who are here in Russia as well," says Soslan Sikoyev, the deputy interior minister for North Ossetia, who has offered to resign for failing to prevent the crisis. He has been kidnapped twice himself by militants in past years.
But he adds tiredly, "It doesn't matter what nationalities they are ... because they have brought so much grief."
Jets terrorism
An Al-Qaida-connected group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades, which has been active in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for both the simultaneous downing of two passenger jets on Aug. 24, which left 90 dead, and a suicide bomb in Moscow on Aug. 31 that killed 10 more.
But while President Vladimir Putin -- under increasing pressure for the three attacks in 10 days that killed more than 435 Russians -- has connected the jet crashes to Al-Qaida, he has not made that link with the hostage drama.
"This is a challenge to all of Russia, to all our people," Putin said in an address to the nation Saturday. "We have to admit that we failed to recognize the complexity and danger of the processes going on in our country and the world as a whole. ... We demonstrated our weakness, and the weak are beaten."
Putin has made clear that he will not temper his hard-line Chechnya policy. Chechen separatists have wanted independence for more than a decade. But since the breakup of the Soviet Union 13 years ago, the Kremlin has taken a strong stance against losing any more territory.
Chechen war ties
Ties between Chechen radicals and Al-Qaida stretch back to the first Chechen war (1994-1996). A radical element -- spurred by would-be clerics who traveled to Saudi Arabia to learn about the Salafi fundamentalist strain of Islam -- began to develop in the late 1990s.
By 1999, when Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev invaded Russian territory in Dagestan -- prompting a second war -- it became clear that Islamic radicals dominated Chechen rebel groups.
"Chechnya began to attract [Al-Qaida] emissaries, adventurers, and finances," says Alexander Iskandaryan, head of the Center for Caucasian Studies in Yerevan, Armenia. "After 1999, the radical tendency grew strong, and became more internationalized."
This second war burns on, and has two parts: guerrilla warfare and terrorist acts, says Iskandarian. "Over the last month, we've seen a considerable growth of the second component, terrorism."
Islamization grows
"Russian policy in the Caucasus in the last 10 years helped a lot to separate the Caucasus from Russia," he says. "Ideology is being generated against Russia -- Islamization is growing. There are more calls for sharia law, not only by radicals, but by average Muslims."
North Ossetia, historically the only pro-Russian, Christian portion of the North Caucasus -- which has long-held grudges against Muslim Ingush and Chechens -- may have been seen as an ideal target to spark havoc here.
"A very sophisticated group stands behind this -- I don't want to single out Al-Qaida; there may be unexpected sources," says Vitaly Shlykov, an independent military analyst in Moscow. "There are some [Chechen] contacts with Al-Qaida, but to operate in real time? I'm doubtful [Chechens] receive orders and act on them. The guidance is more ideological."
Many of residents of Beslan say they are convinced that their Ingush and Chechen neighbors are to blame, and that foreign operatives would have had a hard time infiltrating in any numbers. "Of course, there was someone behind them -- they were speaking on mobile phones; they had their bosses," says Tamik Granikov, a local builder, referring to people outside Beslan but not foreigners.
Russian officials say they have arrested three men on suspicion of involvement, possibly by tracing phone calls. When the crisis began, Granikov says, "we were worried about whether the renovation work was used as a cover. They never could have brought so many grenades and bullets [on the day of the attack]."
Learned from mistakes
Tedeyev, the police officer -- whose house is so close to the school that two bullets came through his windows -- says he saw the body of a black foreigner. He also says that this group learned from past terrorist mistakes. They carried gas masks and broke windows to prevent being gassed like the Chechen separatists who took over the Dubrovka Theater while the play "Nord-Ost" was being performed in October 2002. "It seems they studied all the cases, from the Nord-Ost to those in the U.S.," says Tedeyev. "So it becomes more difficult for the state to fight terror. TV shows everything the Speznatz [special forces] does. We seem to teach [terrorists] ourselves, and then we suffer for it."