Town Braces for Revenge After School Tragedy

The narrow, dusty streets of this town, near the school where more than 330 people died in a September attack by extremists, were sparsely traveled Monday. This is because almost everyone here can do the arithmetic of grief.

At least eight of the 32 attackers who seized Middle School No. 1 in Beslan, including their purported leader, were ethnic Ingush. Almost everyone in this town, 18 miles south of Beslan, is also Ingush. And Wednesday, the 40 days of mourning prescribed by the Russian Orthodox Church -- the period when vengeful hearts are quieted by memories of the dead -- will have passed.

For many in this town of 5,000, these facts add up to danger. Dozens of families have left, taking their children with them, and many of those who remain are fearful that the dozen or so police officers patrolling Kartsa won’t be able to protect them.

“Of course we’re afraid. We have no weapons except kitchen knives,” said Zabura Kotiyeva, who stood talking nervously with several neighbors outside her home Monday morning. “I went out last night, and I didn’t see a single police officer.

“In the daytime, when we don’t need them, they’re here,” she said. “But those who want to slaughter us, they won’t come in the daytime.”

There is little reassurance to be had in Beslan. “There are only two questions we have. One question is, who should we take revenge on? And when?” Taimyraz Kasayev, 26, said Monday at the graveside of a recently identified young victim of the attack. “But as far as the idea of revenge goes, it will happen.”

President Vladimir V. Putin has been widely criticized for his handling of the separatist conflict in the nearby republic of Chechnya, but no one can understand Russia’s complex dilemma in the Caucasus without understanding the tension between these two small towns.

The real danger, analysts say, is the possibility of opening a violent door out of Chechnya, which has been immersed in war between Russian troops and Islamic separatists for much of the last 10 years. Numerous ethnic conflicts have simmered on the slopes of these jagged mountains, and few have as recent a history as that between the Christian Ossetians and their Muslim Ingush neighbors.

“The situation is extremely volatile. And I’m sure, practically 100% sure, that this terrorist act in Beslan was planned somewhere far away with the specific aim of igniting this interethnic warfare between Ossetians and Ingush, to broaden the forum of warfare out from Chechnya,” said Sergei Arutyunov, chairman of Caucasian studies at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology in Moscow.

“When the 40 days expires, we might expect an eruption of massive violence. Unless it is stopped by the authorities,” he added.

Already, Russia has closed the border between North Ossetia and the neighboring republic of Ingushetia. In the ethnic Ingush villages of North Ossetia, such as Kartsa, there are heightened police patrols and guard stations are on alert.

In seizing the estimated 1,200 hostages at the school in Beslan, the attackers called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the operation.

But Chechen fighters have formed alliances with fellow Islamic rebels in Ingushetia in recent years, and there are signs that Ingush fighters led the operation at Beslan.

Ingush insurgents allied with Chechens are believed to be responsible for a June 29 raid in Ingushetia that left 79 people dead, and there has long been evidence that Basayev’s strategy is to inflame the entire northern Caucasus as a prelude to establishing a regional Islamic state.

The Ingush and the Ossetians -- at odds through much of the last century -- would require little provocation to renew old hostilities.

They fought on different sides in Russia’s civil war after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. They were at loggerheads again during World War II, when Soviet leader Josef Stalin deported nearly the entire Ingush nation, along with the Chechens, to Central Asia, redrawing regional boundaries to allow Ossetians to move into many Ingush homes.

The situation erupted into open warfare in 1992. Five days of Ingush-Ossetian violence left 583 people dead and nearly 1,000 injured. More than a third of the houses in Kartsa were destroyed in the fighting, and Ossetian looters took cars, clothes and other possessions.

Shafiat Nadzhiyeva, 55, is only now rebuilding her house. Her daughter-in-law left a few days ago with Nadzhiyeva’s 2-year-old grandson, she said, fearful of what might happen after the mourning period expires.

“We hear these conversations that they are preparing to attack us, and how can we get ready?” Nadzhiyeva said. “It just hurts us to think we are the target. Why are we blamed? These were bandits that did this.”

Hundreds of Ingush and Chechen university students have left North Ossetia on the advice of the government, and many Ingush children have been sent away, residents said, because their parents fear they will be the first targets of Ossetian rage.

“By our tradition, we have to keep quiet for 40 days. And after 40 days, if the government doesn’t do anything, then people must take matters into their own hands,” said Beslan resident Taimyraz Dzantiyev, 43, whose niece was killed.

“It’s the Caucasian tradition, after all,” he said. “Vengeance is a sacred thing. Blood vengeance.”

Authorities have been appealing for calm. Proposals for a ceremony in Beslan to commemorate the victims on the 40th day were scrapped for fear of further inflaming emotions.

Dwelling on fears of revenge, said Mikhail Kharsigev, Kartsa’s deputy administrator, makes it harder to put to rest a conflict whose legacy is best forgotten.

“We need to come back to today,” he said. “We need our children to forget about it, so they don’t have this thing stuck in their souls.”