RUSSIA: Despite statements to the contrary by President Vladimir Putin, it is almost inevitable that force will be used to resolve the school hostage crisis in Beslan.
The exchanges of fire at the outset of the terrorist attack - resulting in the deaths of a number of civilians - ensured that the Russian response would be a military one. In effect, consistent with international standard procedures, once the shooting started in Beslan, the handling of the siege became a Special Forces operation.
Previous Russian Special Forces hostage relief operations give pause for thought. The Moscow theatre siege of 2002 resulted in the deaths of over 120 hostages plus the 40 terrorists. Many of the hostages died of gunshot wounds and blast injuries sustained in the all-out infantry assault mounted on the building at the climax of the siege.
Many more were poisoned by the toxic gas deployed by the Russians on that occasion in a desperate attempt to prevent the hostage-takers from detonating their belts of plastic explosives.
Because of the taking of children as hostages in the current situation, it is unlikely that the Russians will use gas. In such a scenario, children - with smaller lungs and higher respiratory rates - would most likely die before their terrorist captors in any gas or chemical attack.
Shamil Basayev, the Chechen leader believed to be behind the crisis, was the architect of similar operation in nearby Budennovsk in June 1995. In that operation, Chechen paramilitaries seized a hospital with over 1,000 patients including men, women and children. Using the same methods as adopted in Beslan this week, the Chechens on that occasion surrounded the building with anti-personnel mines and threatened to execute 20 hostages for every captor killed or injured. The stand-off with Russian forces lasted a week.
Eventually, after two abortive assaults by Special Forces using helicopters and infantry weapons - during which 120 hostages died - the rebels were allowed to leave for Chechnya in a hastily-organised convoy with 150 hostages as human shields.
The escape of Chechen separatists on that occasion was a severe embarrassment to Boris Yeltsin's administration. It also led to a copy-cat operation mounted by Chechen paramilitaries on a hospital in Kizlyar, Dagestan, in 1996.
Given Mr Putin's much-quoted hard line on Chechen terrorism, it will be difficult for the Russian authorities to yield to Chechen demands on this occasion - or to allow them to flee the scene.
This being the case, the only solution would appear to be a conventional Special Forces operation. This doomsday scenario would consist of the following. Having used thermal imaging equipment and electronic eavesdropping devices over the last 48 hours, Russian commandos will have attempted to pinpoint the whereabouts of the nucleus, or command and control element, of the terrorist force within the school building. During the hours of darkness, to exploit their night vision equipment - or as soon as the Chechens begin to shoot hostages or detonate explosives - Russian forces would then attempt to storm the building. Their plan of attack would involve simultaneous assaults on key entry points facilitating rapid access to a number of main objectives - the leadership of the terrorist group and the largest group or groups of hostages.
Unfortunately for the Russians, the Chechens are all too aware of the tactics employed by Special Forces in siege conditions. There is evidence that the Chechens have placed hostages around key entry points such as windows and doors as human shields.
There is also a suggestion that a large number of children have been assembled around a group of suicide bombers in the school gym - a part of the building that is partially underground.
Such a space, partially cellar-like and enclosed, would concentrate and maximise the blast effect of any plastic explosives detonated therein. Children - with their soft tissues and bones as yet not fully developed - would be particularly susceptible to such an explosion.
Russian Special Forces face an almost impossible task in Beslan. To act, or to fail to act, will likely result in massive loss of life.
• Dr Tom Clonan is a Fellow of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society based in Loyola University, Chicago
