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RUSSIA'S 9/11
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Russians got their first look yesterday at one of the butchers of Beslan — a captured fundamentalist Islamic ter rorist who claimed he felt "sorry" for the hundreds of children he and his collaborators held hostage.
And then callously murdered.
"By Allah, I did feel sorry for them," sniveled the unidentified man before a Russian TV camera.
Officials say he admitted being one of the 32 Chechen and 10 Arab terrorists who perpetrated the Beslan outrage last week, slaughtering hundreds with bombs and bullets in the back.
Such callousness no doubt explains why tens of thousands of Russians yesterday rallied in Moscow against terrorism — demanding that their government continue to take a hard line against Chechen terrorists.
Russia, it appears, has just experienced its own 9/11.
Until now, President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) has treated the problem of Chechen terrorism as a local annoyance, easy to be crushed. Now he knows better.
Not just that terrorism isn't easily defeated — but that it's an international threat, not a regional problem.
To that end, Russia yesterday agreed with NATO (news - web sites) officials to boost cooperation on fighting terrorism; specific details will be spelled out at a meeting scheduled for later this month.
Putin also agreed to an offer from Israel — which knows all too well the problems of unchecked terrorism — to provide counter-terror advisers and better intelligence coordination.
Meanwhile, the Russian president was understandably contemptuous of those — including the U.S. State Department — who regard the Chechen situation (if not terrorism in general) as one that can only be remedied with a political solution.
"Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?" he asked derisively at a press conference.
"Why should we talk to people who are child-killers?"
Why, indeed?
But, for domestic political reasons, Putin stubbornly continues to pretend his nation is a lone player in the War on Terror, abandoned to its devices by Western hypocrites.
Clearly, solving the Chechen problem requires a political component.
But there is also a growing realization that, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) said, the Beslan atrocity "has taken terrorism to a different, even more depraved level."
Chechen fanatics are now working hand-in-glove with al Qaeda terrorists whose Islamist aims have nothing to do with Chechen independence. That simple fact means that Russia — whether or not Putin accepts it — is now part of the global struggle against terrorism.
