Human security comes first

Traditional and non-traditional aspects of security are figuring increasingly in the debate now unfolding in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, whose third anniversary will be marked in the next few days.

Traditional concepts of security relate to the security of the state, which allocates sufficient resources to safeguard a country's security against external threats, as well as internal ones.

Non-traditional security concerns itself with the human dimension, and seeks to focus attention on basic human needs, as well as welfare. Since nuclear weapons were used in the concluding stage of the Second World War, the international community has sought to prevent wars and to resolve political disputes peacefully through the UN.

Its primary purpose was to banish the scourge of war from the world, by providing a forum, as well as a mechanism, to resolve disputes between states peacefully. Arms control and disarmament have also figured prominently in the agenda of the UN.

The other basic objective of the UN is to address the social and economic problems of mankind. Since its inception, the main successes of the UN have been in the social and economic fields.

The achievement of its goal to establish peace and security in the world has been patchy, and even questionable. The major powers, and the superpowers in particular, continued to build vast arsenals of weapons, and conflicts of all types went on, their number even growing as dissident movements emerged within states to claim autonomy, or a better share in governance.

National security, which is recognized as one of the main concerns of nation states, has continued to rely on military might, to safeguard their independence and sovereignty.

Most of the twentieth century, that witnessed the two world wars in the first half, was marked by multiple conflicts, some relating to the Cold War, and others to bilateral or factional disputers. As the Cold War ended in 1989, a certain expectation developed, about the attention of the world shifting from the security of states to human security.

This essentially meant that the attention of governments, and of the intellectual elite would shift from reliance on engines of war to addressing the social and economic problems of mankind, especially in the developing countries, where levels of human security had been deteriorating.

The last decade of the twentieth century had witnessed general optimism that the world was heading towards a new age of peace and prosperity, in the 21st century. Expenditure on defence fell in European countries, though it remained high in Asia where many political disputes continued to cause tension.

With globalization moving apace, there was an atmosphere of hope that the economic order in the world would be managed in a manner conducive to development, and to the elimination of poverty. Human security was expected to prevail over national security, at the conclusion of the bloodiest century in human history.

However, the transformation did not materialize. The US, now the sole superpower, saw an upsurge of national pride, based on the country's military and economic superiority, that made it an "indispensable power" for handling crisis situations in any part of the world.

As the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia disintegrated, the European powers failed to prevent massacres in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the US felt obliged to intervene. Major powers sought to bypass the UN, so that the anticipated increase in its role did not materialize.

Frustration rose in many regions where UN resolutions were violated with impunity, such as Palestine and Kashmir. The number of conflicts going on in the world in the 1990s exceeded 70.

The entry of George W. Bush as the President of the US from January 2001, saw the US adopt a unilateralist policy, whereby it expected to get its own way on regional and global issues by virtue of its un-challenge able power.

The Bush administration not only repudiated major accords the US had supported, such as the Kyoto Protocol on the environment, and the creation of the International Criminal Court but also launched its Ballistic Missile Defence Initiative without consulting allies and friends.

The terrorist attack of 9/11 initially prompted the creation of a global coalition against terror, but was later used to justify the creation of the Bush doctrine, empowering the US to launch pre-emptive attacks on countries suspected of endangering the security of the US.

Iraq was attacked in March 2003, on the basis of assumptions that proved to be false: that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and had links with terrorist organizations.

Though the attack on Iraq was militarily successful and Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in three weeks, the continuation of resistance by the Iraqi nationalists has caused high casualties to the US and allied troops, as well as immense loss to the Iraqi economy, and oil installations.

Indeed, the US experience with pre-emption is likely to discourage further ventures of this type, since the arrogance and hubris involved do not enhance the image of a country whose people want to be liked rather than feared.

The direct effect of the 9/11 attack has been a phenomenal rise in military expenditures, with the US defence budget likely to reach $480 billion. The total world spending on defence is expected to exceed $1 trillion during 2004.

This at a time when over a billion people live below the poverty line, and problems of water shortage and disease are affecting many parts of the developing world. Even in parts of the developed world, such as Europe, unemployment remains high.

Expectations and plans for greater attention to human security have not disappeared; they have simply been supplanted by the prevailing fear of terrorism. As the US experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has shown, peace and stability cannot be established unless human security problems are given priority.

Despite allocation of large sums for reconstruction in these countries by the US, the lot of the common people has not improved, and even American analysts point out that the principal beneficiaries have been major US companies, many of them linked to top men in the Bush administration.

Unfortunately, the neo-conservatives, who have so far determined foreign and security policy in the US, continue to remain focused on fighting terror through force. While there is general recognition that terrorist groups must be neutralized, the long-term solution of this problem can be sought only by addressing the root causes.

These lie in political injustice, most evident in Palestine and Kashmir, and an unfair economic order, in which the five billion people, who live in the developing countries, lack human security. Diseases like Aids and tuberculosis have caused enormous loss of life.

Unemployment is rife and poverty has been spreading. The place of these countries in the UN Human Development Index proves that their basic needs must be urgently met.

China has shown the way by making economic development its top priority. Its GDP has grown at the rate of nine per cent per year since 1978, and its foreign policy has been devoted largely to creating an environment conducive to development.

South Asian countries have also realized the need to give primacy to human security goals. Most scholars and a growing number of politicians in the US are realizing that the security of people deserves a higher priority, if the roots of terrorism are to be eliminated.

Blaming the women

"Cherchez la femme," says the French maxim widely used in English. Loosely translated it means that behind every ill, every odd happening, every trouble, you will find the hand of a woman. Somehow, in our country most of the ills of society also are placed at the door of the woman whereas, in reality, she may have very little to do with them.

I could not resist using the song made popular some thirty years ago by that sultry American black singer Eartha Kitt, "Put the blame on me, boys!" because it fits my topic of today.

Whenever and wherever the problems of our society are being discussed by men, and this is often going on, I can imagine the poor Pakistani woman, especially if she is wife or mother, crying out in despair, "Yes, go on blame me."

If the young generation is not behaving properly it is said that mothers are not bringing them up on good lines; that more than fathers and teachers it is they who suckle them at the breast who should be training them to be more obedient, more disciplined and more respectful of tradition.

If prices of commodities and articles of daily use keep rising women get the blame. If they were to stop being extravagant, if they restricted their shopping to bare essentials, if they didn't go in for luxury items, if they spent less on beautifying themselves, shopkeepers and traders would be obliged to reduce prices and this would help to bring down the general cost of living.

If bribery and corruption are rife in our social, economic and administrative systems, it is because of women. It is claimed that most men do not want to indulge in shady practices; it is ambitious wives who make them do so.

Their desire to have and possess more than they can afford, their obsession to be better than their neighbours and relatives, their fondness for a higher style of living - all these make them force their men to increase their incomes by underhand means and to accept expensive gifts to which they are not entitled in the ordinary course of service.

Thus if women were to remain within their financial bounds and refrained from greed and grab and copying the dirty rich, much of the corruption in our society would disappear, or rather, there would be no provocation for it. How simple and naive, and what an easy way to deal with corruption that has existed from time immemorial!

As most of these theses have been developed by men, in complete disregard of the realities and facts of everyday life, women (especially educated women) must take them with a pinch of salt.

But it is rather unfair of men to foist their own weaknesses and failings on women (who have their own weaknesses and failings too) and purposely try to wriggle out of their own liability for social evils and society's problems.

Over the years this way of thinking has gained such wide currency that poor women, even those who are educated and enlightened, have also come to believe in it. As a lady friend said to me, it seems that there is a regular conspiracy to make women the target for all blame regarding the ills of society and our haphazard way of life.

Come to think of it, in a social fabric where, despite so much advancement and progress (at least at the urban level), women are still considered as show-pieces and do not have a say in major decision-making, whether it is within the home or outside, it is hardly fair to hold them responsible for almost all the serious drawbacks in society.

The reality is that with us it is the man who chooses the family's lifestyle. It is he who decides what its standard of living will be, whom the family shall meet and who it will consort with and emulate. Woman has just to follow his dictates, whether she is daughter, wife, sister or mother, and whether she likes it or not.

Claiming all the time to be superior in spirit and intellect, most men, instead of stopping their women and showing them the sensible path, succumb and surrender on the excuse of domestic peace and let women do what they like, for it must be admitted that women are not entirely free of blame in many things. This too is man's own decision - letting them do what they like - but when it comes to analyzing the situation, it is women who are held guilty.

Why don't men interfere in the upbringing of their children so that they may grow up to be better citizens (a much used cliche), keep away from trouble and refrain from undisciplined behaviour? Way can't men keep a firm hold on their purse and restrain women from making fools of themselves in the bazaar and thus help in "maintaining the cost of living at a reasonable level?"

Why is it not possible for men to curb the fancies of their ostentation-loving women so that they (the men), as the bread- winners, may not have to resort to unfair means to bolster their incomes? Either they are incapable of doing so or they don't want to do it, or the entire thesis is misconceived that it is women who are mainly responsible for the rot in the social system. You may choose any one of the three reasons.

What is the percentage of really educated people in Pakistan? Very low. And what is the percentage of really educated women? Very, very low; hardly worth mentioning.

With so many insufficiently educated women around, is it wise to expect them to play a positive and constructive role in shaping young minds, influencing responsible adults in regard to moral values, and affecting the price structure which determines the cost of living in the country?

The truth is that, in so far as blame is concerned, men are failing in their duty and accepting their responsibility and find it easier and simpler to accuse women in this behalf.

It is my observation that whether educated or uneducated, enlightened or ignorant, women feel more secure when the man in the house is firm, decisive and principled.

One last word. I have a feeling that most of my male readers will not agree with the contents of this piece, but then, I think I can enjoy the satisfaction that women readers will!

But there is an alternative

For 50 years, nuclear power has been a solution in search of a problem. Now - oh, happy days! - two of them have arrived at once. Suddenly, climate change exists: George Bush says so.

After years of ridicule, the greens' jeremiads about declining oil production are now spilling from other people's mouths. Politicians and the press have at last picked up our arguments, and are using them as a stick with which to beat us. If we care about climate change, if we care about future energy supplies, then surely we should support the revival of nuclear power?

It is a question we have to answer. A few months ago, nuclear power was finished. The public hated it, the corporations wouldn't pay for it, the government wouldn't risk it. Its energy white paper established that there should be no new nuclear electricity without a full public consultation.

In May this began to change. James Lovelock, the environmentalist famous for his "Gaia hypothesis", made this plea in The Independent: "I am a green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrong-headed objection to nuclear energy." "Green guru goes nuclear!" the headlines said.

They weren't quite right. Lovelock has always been an enthusiast. It is, in both senses, a generational thing. Fifty years ago, Britain was promised that nuclear power would generate "electricity too cheap to meter". That dream lodged in the minds of his generation: almost all the technology's big fans are over 60.

In July, Tony Blair was asked by the parliamentary liaison committee to answer Love lock's points. "I have fought long and hard," he told the MPs, "both within my party and outside, to make sure that the nuclear option is not closed off... you cannot remove it from the agenda if you are serious about the issue of climate change."

Two weeks ago, Blair's former energy minister, Brian Wilson, bravely abandoning the convention that articles in the Observer should be written in English, assured us that "retrievability has been established as being deliverable.

In any case, waste is overwhelmingly a legacy issue. The waste produced by a new generation of nuclear stations would be incremental only at the margins." But there might be a clue in the title: "Face the facts. The future must be nuclear."

Last month, the directors of the Centre for Alternative Technology - which is supposed to be developing alternatives to nuclear power - argued that "the worst possible nuclear disasters are not as bad as the worst possible climate change disasters", and suggested "a modest revival of nuclear energy in sites where there are already nuclear installations... to sell the idea to the sceptics".

Their premise is surely correct. Let us use the cruel moral calculus with which we became familiar during the arguments over the Iraq war. The daily discharges from a plant like Sellafield probably kill several dozen people a year.

A meltdown could slaughter thousands, possibly tens of thousands. Climate change has already killed hundreds of thousands, will kill millions, and, if we don't do something pretty dramatic pretty soon, could kill billions.

Nuclear power isn't carbon-free. Mining uranium, and building and decommissioning power stations all use oil, and concrete releases carbon dioxide as it sets. But the total emissions, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, are tiny by comparison with the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels.

It certainly looks more expensive, when the costs of decommissioning and waste disposal are taken into account. But what about the full costs of burning coal and gas? These are, and should be, incalculable: how do you put a price on global starvation?

And it may no longer be true to say that there is no safe means of disposing of nuclear waste. I have just read a technical report produced by the Finnish nuclear authority Posiva which, to my untrained eye, looks pretty convincing.

The spent fuel is set in cast iron, which is then encased in copper and dropped down a bore hole. The borehole is filled with saturated bentonite, a kind of clay. Posiva's metallurgists suggest that under these conditions the copper barrier would be good for at least a million years.

Of course, what can be done is not the same as what will be done. There's a danger that Posiva's good example is used as a Potemkin village by the rest of the nuclear industry: a showcase project which creates the impression that the problem has been sorted out. We certainly can't expect Britain's nuclear generators to behave as responsibly as Finland's.

On Friday, for example, the European commission took the British government to court over Sellafield's refusal to let European inspectors examine one of its dumps. (Didn't we go to war over something like this?).

Some 1.3 tonnes of plutonium has been sitting around in ponds there for about 30 years. Last week, The Guardian revealed that British Nuclear Fuels has secretly buried 10,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste from other countries. This sort of thing goes on all the time.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority used to chuck its waste into two open holes in the cliffs beside its power station at Dounreay. One of the shafts exploded in 1977, scattering plutonium over the beaches, but the authority didn't bother to tell anyone for 18 years. The ministry of defence has dumped 17,000 tonnes of nuclear waste on the seabed off the coast of Alderney.

This, rather than Posiva's expensive method, is the kind of disposal we can expect from most of the world's nuclear generators. So it's probably fair to say that the nuclear industry will kill tens of thousands. If, as it seems ever more likely, terrorists get hold of some of this stuff, the deaths could run into millions.

So the moral calculus shifts a little, but still comes down on the side of nuclear power, if that is the only alternative to burning fossil fuel. But it's not. When Love lock claimed that "only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy", he was wrong on two counts. It is not the only one, and it is not immediately available.

A new generation of nuclear power stations can be built only with government money: the private sector won't carry the risk. It would take at least 10 years, and it would cost tens or possibly hundreds of billions of pounds. The government will not spend this money twice: it will either invest massively in nuclear generation or invest massively in energy-saving and alternative power.

The Rocky Mountain Institute has shown that you can save seven times as much carbon through electricity efficiencies as you can by investing in nuclear. And you kill no one. There'd be plenty of change too for a research programme to develop cheaper solar cells.

So the dilemma established by James Love lock and explored by Tony Blair and his incoherent ministers is a false one. There need be no choice between two kinds of mass death. We are still permitted to choose life. -Dawn-Guardian Service

Washington's latest spy scandal

The latest Israeli spy scandal has hit Washington, and it's not a pretty sight. Last week, a two-year FBI investigation of alleged Israeli efforts to have American supporters of PM Ariel Sharon manipulate US Mideast policy leaked to the media.

The story is potentially a huge scandal, and dramatic evidence of a furious power struggle between neoconservative supporters of Israel's far right Likud Party who dominated the Pentagon and National Security Council, and their opponents in CIA and the state department.

The FBI is focusing on the Pentagon's policy department, a mini state department within Defence that plays a key role in US Mideast and South Asian policy. It is headed by neocon activist, Defence Under Secretary, Douglas Feith, who has long-time links to Israel's extremist Likud and is an ardent Zionist.

The Pentagon's chief Iran analyst, Larry Franklin, who works for Feith's neocon deputy, William Luti, is under FBI investigation for passing top secret presidential policy papers on Iran to two senior members of the American-Israel public affairs committee (AIPAC), one of Washington's most powerful and feared lobbies. AIPAC officials allegedly passed the top secret papers to Israel's spy service, Mossad.

Israel is obsessed with Iran's nuclear developments and is likely planning to attack the Islamic republic. After Iran, the next nation on Israel's nuclear target list is Pakistan.

AIPAC and Israel deny spying. Israel insists it ceased espionage in the US after its agent, Jonathan Pollard, was jailed in 1987. Pollard's controller in the US government, known to FBI as 'Mr X,' has never been caught. This may be so, at least semantically.

Thanks to a host of joint intelligence agreements, and highly placed friends at all levels of government, Israeli has access to most secret US intelligence data. Sympathizers often informally provide the rest.

Meanwhile, other prominent neocons, including Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Harold Rhode, reportedly have also been targets of FBI inquiry.

The current investigations show growing concern that US national security and foreign policy have been gravely compromised, or even hijacked, by a small but powerful group of Bush administration neocons who seized power after 9/11 with the help of Vice-President Dick Cheney, and engineered the Iraq war to destroy an enemy of Israel.

These neocons' confused loyalties convinced them what's good for Sharon's Greater Israel is good for America, and are ardent champions of a worldwide crusade against Islamic resistance.

Connect the dots: Franklin works for Feith. Feith reports to Wolfowitz. Cheney and Wolfowitz were the prime architects of the Iraq war. In 1996, Feith and Perle wrote a policy plan, 'A Clean Break,' for Israel's then Likud prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for Greater Israel, destruction of Iraq and Syria, bitter opposition to political Islam, and ending peace talks with Palestinians.

Feith ran the Pentagon's notorious Office for Special Plans (OSP) that was set up by Wolfowitz. Its sole function: channel false information about Iraq concocted by Ahmad Chalabi and PM Sharon's office to the White House and US media.

Feith, Wolfowitz and Perle were key backers and financers of Chalabi, a convicted swindler with links to Mossad. The neocons planned to make Chalabi the new ruler of Iraq.

Chalabi's carefully crafted lies about Iraq provided the White House with pretext for war. Excited neocons talked about a pipeline from Mosul to Haifa to supply Iraq's oil to Israel.

The rock just turned over by FBI also reveals other familiar denizens. Welcome back Iranian con-man, arms dealer and old Mossad asset, Manucher Ghorbanifar, a key figure in the 1980's Iran-Contra scandal that nearly brought down the Reagan administration.

And neocon stalwart, Michael Ledeen. According to a 'Washington Monthy,' investigation, he and/or fellow neocon Harold Rhode met secretly in Europe with Ghorbanifar, the chief of Italy's military intelligence service, SISMI, and Lebanese rightists, to plan overthrowing the governments of Syria and Iran. SISMI and Ledeen were also involved in the Iraq-Niger uranium hoax that so embarrassed President George Bush.

Neocon attempts to blame the disaster they created in Iraq on CIA, to blame 9/11 on the FBI, and simmering anger over three decades of Israeli spying investigations that were squelched for political reasons, caused the security agencies to go after what a CIA veteran terms 'Washington's fifth column.

Furious attempts are under way by Israel's supporters to sweep this scandal under the carpet or downplay it as a 'low-level' misunderstanding. Just discussing such matters in the US media or politics is a certain one-way ticket to unemployment, but even so, this scandal may be too big to be contained, particularly in an election year. -Copyright Eric S. Margolis, 2004

Caucasian carnage: what next?

The grotesque and gruesome tragedy that unfolded in the North Ossetian town of Beslan last week qualifies as the worst terrorism-related incident of recent times, even in an era when atrocities by terrorists and their purported enemies are more or less an everyday occurrence.

Reading or hearing about a dozen Nepalese workers murdered in cold blood by one of the numerous shadowy groups that have emerged in Iraq, we turn away with a grimace and a sigh, and perhaps a curse or two hurled towards the perpetrators - as well as those who have gratuitously created the conditions whereby human life has so gravely been devalued.

A couple of Russian commercial airliners explode in midair within minutes of each other: that's a bit more unusual, aviation disasters have a slightly longer shelf-life than other comparable events.

Even so, although Chechnya may have made a brief appearance on the radar of the average headline consumer, there was no extraordinary wave of sympathy for the families of the 90 or so victims, who by and large remained nameless and faceless.

What, some of us may fleetingly have wondered, is the world coming to? The Russian authorities were remarkably reticent about admitting that the aircraft had been targeted by terrorists.

Suspicion, naturally enough, fell on Chechen militants. The passenger manifest of one of the airliners included the name of a woman whose brother had evidently been put to death by Russian forces in Chechnya.

The Russians reinforced security at nuclear sites, but the next blow was struck on the streets of Moscow. Thwarted by guards, a young woman wired with explosives blew herself up outside a metro station in the capital.

At least ten passers by perished alongside the suicide bomber. It wasn't a sensational toll by the increasingly depraved standards of the 21st century. Still, some analysts began to speak of a wave of terror, apparently timed to coincide with yet another farcical electoral exercise in Chechnya.

No one could possibly have imagined how grievous the next phase in that wave would be. Although a fair amount of confusion continued to surround the events in Beslan at the time of writing - and certain aspects of the occurrences may never become entirely clear - it is more or less certain that the terrorist assault on the town's School No.1 wasn't a random act of violence.

The attack appears to have been planned well in advance, with arms and ammunition concealed under the floorboards in the gymnasium during the school's renovation over the summer break.

It also seems pretty obvious that the first day of the new school year - a veritable family festival throughout Russia since Soviet times - was chosen because it offered the prospect of so many more hostages: not just pupils and teachers, but also the students' parents, grandparents and siblings.

Virtually all acts of terror are vile. Some are viler than others. The Beslan variant must figure among the vilest in living memory. No cause, faith or ideology can conceivably come to terms with an atrocity of this nature, and on this scale. And it is hard to see how the bloodbath could have been motivated by anything other than a base desire for vengeance.

Children are, of course, often victimized in conflicts. That is unconscionable, whether the context is Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia or Vietnam. It is hard to forget former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright's comment on UN statistics that suggested up to half a million children had perished as a consequence of sanctions against Iraq - that it was "a price worth paying".

Elsewhere in the Middle East, neither the Israeli security forces nor Palestinian militants appear to be particularly squeamish about harming children. But in all these cases, what's appalling is that children are not spared. Rarely, if ever, are they targeted because of their innocence. Which is what happened in Beslan.

Some of the survivors reportedly heard at least one of the terrorists say that they were out to kill children because Russian forces in Chechnya had murdered tens of thousands of children.

The absence of reliable statistics notwithstanding, there can be little question that children in Chechnya have suffered grievous harm over the past decade. But how could the unspeakably dreadful retaliation witnessed in Beslan possibly redress that wrong?

Seeking any sort of rationale for what seem to be acts of madness is often dismissed as a hopeless quest. This is an understandable reaction, but not necessarily a wise one.

Even the most cold-blooded killers are human beings; even barbarians have thought processes. It may not be possible to pierce the shell of fanaticism in which their minds are encased, but one can at least try to understand what made them this way.

Initial imputations of responsibility for the North Ossetian catastrophe have been based largely on conjecture. Reports at the start of this week suggested that 33 terrorists participated in the take over of Beslan's School No.1, of whom 30 were killed. Survivors say that the hostage-takers communicated with each other in Russian, most of them speaking with Chechen or Ingush accents.

No evidence has been offered in support of the early official contention that ten of the terrorists were Arabs. That, in all likelihood, was little more than a none-too-subtle attempt to shore up the Putin administration's line that Chechen militants operate in tandem with Al Qaeda.

Although Muslim radicalism in the region does indeed enjoy the support of certain elements in Saudi Arabia, and it is extremely likely that Arab volunteers have taken part in operations in Chechnya, the extent of foreign involvement has been exaggerated by Moscow in order to cast itself as a leading protagonist in the so-called war on terror. It's success in this department is reflected in the international carte blanche it has thus far enjoyed for fighting a dirty war in Chechnya.

Dirty the war may be, but Beslan is one of several reminders that a Russian victory is not a realistic prospect. The danger now is that a violent military response to the outrage in North Ossetia will serve only to fan the flames of Chechen - and perhaps Ingush - militancy. In fact, that may well be just the sort of reaction the terrorists hoped to elicit.

Chechens have been resisting their incorporation into the Russian empire for more than 150 years; their fierce determination for independence was chronicled in fiction by leading nineteenth-century Russian writers such as Alexei Tolstoy (Haji Murad) and Mikhail Lermontov (A Hero of Our Time).

During the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917, an attempt to set up an autonomous theocratic state floundered in the face of Bolshevik pressure.

During the Second World War, Chechens were deported en masse from their homeland, because Josef Stalin suspected them of being potential Nazi collaborators. Nikita Khrushchev allowed them to return, but the wound festered for decades.

Under the leadership of General Dzhokar Dudayev, Chechen nationalists saw the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 as an opportunity for a unilateral declaration of independence.

Moscow refused to recognize Chechnya as an independent entity and in 1994, against the counsel of his more liberal advisers, Boris Yeltsin sent 40,000 Russian troops to capture Grozny.

That first war lasted two years: by August 1996, Yeltsin's security adviser General Alexander Lebed had signed a peace treaty with rebel leader General Aslan Maskhadov, whereby consideration of the republic's political status was to be deferred until the end of 2001. However, Chechen nationalists more militant than Maskhadov, as well as elements in the Russian administration, were reluctant to accept the status quo.

Chechnya was once more a hot potato by the time Yeltsin elevated an obscure former KGB operative by the name of Vladimir Putin to the post of prime minister.

He was subsequently named Yeltsin's successor, and a key platform of Putin's first presidential campaign was the promise to provide security against terrorists. Conveniently, it coincided with mysterious bomb blasts in insignificant apartment blocks in Moscow, which caused dozens of fatalities.

The explosions were blamed on Chechen separatists, but it was suspected at the time that they may have been arranged by the KGB's successor, the FSB. No decisive proof has emerged to confirm this theory but, despite scores of subsequent attacks in which the identity of the Chechen perpetrators has not been disputed, the suspicions still linger.

The provocation enabled Putin to launch a second invasion of Chechnya in 1999. Only the terrorists and their associates are to blame for the carnage in Beslan. But what are the chances that anything of the sort would have taken place had Russia acquiesced to the republic's independence in 1991? Or if genuine autonomy within the Russian Federation had been implemented in 1996?

And if Chechnya hadn't become a byword for rape, extra judicial killings and a wide range of other human rights violations? In a post-Beslan address to the nation, a shaken and sombre Putin acknowledged some of Russia's post-Soviet weaknesses.

Unfortunately, he did not acknowledge - and perhaps he does not appreciate - one crucial point: that there can be no military solution to the conflict in Chechnya. Only a political solution can work. Most Russians would be unbothered by the "loss" of Chechnya.

The rest would consider it a small price to pay for an end to the meaningless and gratuitous bloodshed. The terrorists robbed Beslan of its tomorrows. The ideal response would be the rekindling of hope, not more of the same.

E-mail: mahirali2@netscape.net.