Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 287 - The Beslan School Siege: Part 1

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

This is the story of how Chechen Terrorists and the Russian state joined forces to create the worst school attack of all time. SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys GET YOUR LIVE SHOW TICKETS RIGHT HERE: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/lions-led-by-donkeys-live-podcast/ Sources: Timothy Phillips. Beslan: Tragedy at school number 1 John Giduck. Terror at Beslan HBO. Children of Beslan

Hey, everybody. Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and locked with me in this digital content mine is, as always, Tom. Sup, buddy?

How you doing? I know what this episode's about, and I'm scared. Look, I'm trying to remember. Have you... So, we've done some depressing series together, yeah? Like, we've done... Your first series was the troubles which was yeah grim uh i i think you truly earned your uh lions led by donkeys uh merit badge for that one

um however in my opinion to become a true full-fledged and since you live in the uk licensed co-host you have to sit through some fucking atrocities. I mean, like we did Equatorial Guinea. That's true. That was bad, but this is worse? Undoubtedly. I'll leave it to the fans to decide if you've earned your co-host merit badge.

Obviously, we love you. And now I have to break your soul. We did a Q&A a little while back for our patrons. And I encourage you guys to go listen to it. Where they're like, is there anything you wouldn't cover? And I said, like, Nate was kind of like, yeah, there's certain things i don't want

to talk about you were kind of on the fence and i had a hardcore absolutely fucking not i don't shy away from anything um because to me maybe it's because i went to graduate school for genocide studies um one of the important things to learn when it comes to history is you kind of have to look it in the eye, because if you don't look at the worst things that's ever happened, you miss a lot because the history is awful. Yeah. It's a violent circle controlled by some of the worst people. circle controlled by some of the worst people uh very very few times is there like an errant history where it's like no this guy isn't awful well before before we get into the episode special announcement for anyone who doesn't follow us on any social media or isn't a patron uh we're doing a live show in l. The first one ever, baby.

It took us almost six years, but we're going to do it. Yeah, you know, the path of every good podcast is, you know, get listeners, make merch, do a live show. And in our defense, we plan to do a live show in Yerevan, Armenia,

several months ago. But, you know history continued to happen and we couldn't we are having our very first live show in January the exact date it's likely going to be the last weekend

in January I'm going to if you are listening to this and we have decided a date there will be a cut in point right now where Tom from the future is gonna say something Tom from the future hey everyone Tom from the future here you heard that right we are doing a live show we're actually doing two live shows due to the demand so it's the 26th that's Friday the 26th of's friday the 26th of january and saturday the 27th of january we are bringing lions led by donkeys live to london in big belly comedy in voxel tickets are available in the description of this episode night one is almost sold out and there's still some tickets available

for night two so if you're listening to this a little bit after release definitely check availability and look forward to seeing you there so yeah a link is in the description if you want to get tickets um for anyone who might be traveling we're announcing this nice and early because obviously the uk is hell island and you might need a visa or whatever if you're planning on traveling and sorting out accommodations that's why we're announcing this like a lot earlier um and yeah get on ryanair easyjet get your wet sandwiches um if you're traveling uh it's a good time of year if you need to get accommodation because there's lots of good deals uh sleep on a couch sleep on the floor if you have to i'm gonna sleep on a train we'll have you know gaffs japes we'll have merch you'll get to see joe in person and understand why he looks like a pixar dad um i have to grow

a mustache out for this just just it's gonna be three just to fit the fucking profile yeah so uh yeah links in the in the description of this episode for tickets to that. So, okay, Joe, make me fucking miserable. And it is my solemn promise that I am not going to cover any genocides during our live show. I'm going to have you locked inside. And anyway, here's our 16-hour long series on the Armenian Genocide. No, I've already planned what episode we're going to do is going to be the live show version

of one of our most popular episodes ever. Most people tell me it's the funniest thing we've ever done, so I thought it would be best to do it as our first live show. What, we're redoing Non-King? Oh, God. I don't even want to do that, and this shit doesn't affect me.

So, after all that good news, Tom, have you ever heard of the Beslan School Siege of 2004? Oh God, no. So before we get to telling poor Tom here about the Beslan School Siege of 2004, we have to acknowledge our sources on what's going to be a two-part series. The first is Beslan, Tragedy at School Number One by Timothy Phillips. There is also Terra Beslan by John Gieduk, and the HBO documentary Children of Beslan. Now, I also had assistance from very good friends of mine translating Russian language texts for this. So I will put those Russian language texts

in the bibliography. Maybe you're one of our Russian speaking listeners. But of all of these, obviously the easiest to consume, if you want to consider any of these easy to consume, is the HBO documentary. It's very well done. And also Tragedy at School number one

is very readable. Honestly, for all of this series that we've done, this is the first time in a long time I could recommend all three sources because none of them are super dry. However, it comes with a caveat. You are going to be reading about a school massacre. So, also, going forward from this, for both episodes, content warning for everything. Both episodes, content warning for everything. If you don't feel like reading about a military siege of a school full of children, I recommend you do not listen to these two episodes.

Now you can't say I didn't warn you. Tom, you don't have that option. You sit down. I am chained to this chair. I'm like the end of Hellraiser where the dude is like, you know, saying Jesus wept before he gets ripped apart. Now, people often like to look at tragic events in history in a vacuum, completely devoid of space and time

and the ripple effects that these other events cause. This is because this becomes even more common if you're unfamiliar with a place or a region quite like the North Caucasus region. Oh, God. Nothing good ever happens in the Caucasus. Look, we do our best, okay? And as someone who lived in the South Caucasus, the North Caucasus are also very foreign to me. Now, the North Caucasus is a complicated place. And I say

that in so far as there's a lot of different cultures, a lot of different languages, a lot of different ethnic and religious groups, not complicated in so far as you cannot possibly hope to understand it. I hate when people do that. Yes it is one of it is home to some of the oldest and most unique civilizations in the world and in my personal experience from meeting people from most of those places super nice um some of the nicest people i've ever met yeah so we're talking about like you know places like north ossetia chechnya dagestan we're in gushenia we're in a very very uh almost strict ramzan kadirov uh territory this is before ramzan kadirov um this is when ramzan's dad was in charge of chechnya that it that is a conversation for a completely different series when we

eventually get to that point now this piece of land defies simple explanations like it's in europe or it's asia it's kind of both but also neither of those things at the same time while playing a massively important historical role within both of those areas you could you you could describe it as what if you had a collection of peoples that were all obsessed with calling each other tur? Not quite yet. You're not describing the North Caucasus, you're explaining the Balkans. Now, this area played a huge role in the

spread of Christianity, as well as the first places where grapes were purposely grown to make wine. I'll let you argue over which one of those things is more important. It's the wine. Though, if you want to get into a fight with a caucasian person and i mean a caucasian person from the caucuses not caucasian insofar as dumb european racial science just to get that get their starbucks order wrong just ask a modern caucasian person from any of these societies how they're connected to these ancient people because woo boy is that an argument you do not want to start? And that goes for North or South Caucasus. Ethnotensions, a great start. For about as long as they've existed, these groups of people have been treated like absolute shit by

any and all outsiders who found their way into their mountains. The Greeks showed up in the region and they were scared of these very different mountain people they still traded with them though because of course they wrote about them comparing them to little more than barbarians and savages the greek scholar strabo consider them robbers thieves and kidnappers which is you know shitty um anyone who is uh familiar with the uh kind of apocryphal history written by the greeks all my homies hate strabo yeah yeah and for good reason he's kind of an asshole well dumb and racist strabo and other greeks did get one thing right for an outsider the caucuses were deeply confusing thankfully that doesn't happen anymore right am i right all of these people living very close together

all had their own cultures their own identities and own languages that had nothing in common with one another georgians armenians azaries abkhazians circassians balkars chechens dagestanis asherians the list goes on they're all completely different now there is some cultural touchstones between them, that's more of a modern invention as the two, three, four, five, six, seven cultures were all eventually unified by one empire or another. You're all mountain Balkans.

We're Caucasians. What if you put Albanians in the mountains? Okay, there's also Albanians there. Look, we can't get into this. Look, this is going to be so miserable. I'm trying to bring a little bit of levity to the show. Now, over the years, like I said, these various people were united

in one way or another, mostly every time against their will by the slow creep of Russian and sometimes Persian imperialism. Though, for the sake of this show, we're going to talk about the Russian Empire specifically. It gave them a common language for the first time russian as russia had and then eventually the soviet union and then once again russia did their best to stamp out all of these unique

individual indigenous cultures and languages in favor of russian chauvinism you know empire shit it doesn't matter if has a tricolor or a red flag. Beslan School number one, where this episode and the next episode will be taking place, is in North Oshetia. Now, some people who listen to our 2008 Invasion of Georgia episode might be kind of familiar with the area we're talking about. A place like many that we have just talked about, Oshetians are as native to the region today as anyone else in the region. And unlike a lot of their neighbors in the North Caucasus, there was no massive rebellion, no real unrest, and no hatred towards Russia during this imperial era. They were generally okay with being part of Russia, and there's a lot of caveats that come with that. But as far as empire is concerned, they're like, sure. And honestly, who could blame them within their context? Of the people of the North Caucuses,

they were one of the smallest minorities. They're nominally Christian, though a large percent of the population still adheres to a traditional pagan religion called usatin oftentimes these two things were mixed together so there'd be pagan traditions within their christianity which is very common not only in this corner of the world but also like the baltics they all kind of get weaved together yeah i mean like that like it happened in ireland as well when you like when you had kind of, this, Christianity obviously arrived in this region a lot earlier than it did in Ireland, but, say, in Ireland, you had, like, in the, like, 400 CE to 800 CE, you had, like, the co-mingling of, you know, pagan symbols with, uh, Christian symbols symbols so that's how you get like the birth of like stuff like the celtic cross like that sort of thing so it's kind of natural that like when christianity arrives in a region that it kind of it looks at the kind of built-in symbols

and iconography and beliefs and kind of like fixes them together it's like it's why christmas is on the 25th of december and not you know when jesus was born in easter yeah it's we've talked about this before about like armenian christmas on our history of armenia sub-series and patreon um like they a lot of these uh like the spread of christianity in these in this particular region was very successful because it absorbed the traditions and a lot of the inner wine pagan culture and simply adopted them into the greater rope of Christianity, which is why when you go to some of these very, very ancient churches, you'll see things that are very not Christian built into the walls, like pagan symbols, swastikas, things like that,

that were very normal pagan symbols at the time. And the church is just like, fine, you can keep them. And yeah, that's exactly what's happening here. Now around them, they have the pretty much constantly rebellious states of Chechnya and Ingushetia. And we talked about why those states were almost in a constant state of rebellion more during our first Chechen War series. So I'm not going to really get into it again. They were traditionally Muslim, but also deeply hostile towards their Russian overlords and anybody who sided with them. And this is why many of them considered Oshetians to be traitors.

This is because the spread of Orthodox Christianity was seen as an important mission for the conquering Russians in the 18th century, you know, through, you know, quote unquote, civilizing these people. Civilization is a wonderful thing. Yeah. Now, they did this through a combination of missionaries and, of course, invasions and violence. In most places, their missionaries were murdered, but not Nosheria, who saw the Russians as the lesser of two evils, compared to their previous imperial conquerors, the Persians. The Christian culture of Russia also had a lot in common with the Oshetian ancestors, the Alans. Again, we talked about these people a little bit more during our 2008 Invasion of Georgia

episode, who had converted to Christianity back in 910 AD before having it wiped out by Mongol invasions. The quick... Oh, Nam Ching has come. He's gonna do Mongol shit, man. And, you know, your experience with the Mongols, it may vary depending on what region you're in. This quick conversion to Christianity provoked a military response from Oshetia's neighbors,

who then, Oshetia being pressured by who they saw as outsiders, quickly reached out to Russia for protection. This is something super common within the spread of Christianity, where these small Christian minorities that are under threat turn towards their imperial neighbors for protection. They then give it and then swallow them whole. That's the whole point, right? Now, within a few years, they joined the Russian Empire by choice, kind of, whereas the Russian military conquests of their neighbors would take decades longer. After this, the region was fully enveloped by Russia, following it down

the historical path through things like the revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union. Now, during the revolution, many English and Chechens supported the Bolsheviks while the Oshetians did not. Though weirdly, the Bolsheviks supported the Oshetians in the war against the Menshevik Georgians, though this was South Oshetia, not North. Look at the Russian revolution as a fracturing point between some societies in this area. A fracturing point between some societies in this area. A lot of weird, very short-lived republics come out of it. It's a fucking revolution.

Come on. So at the end, the victorious Bolsheviks gave away a lot of their land to the revolutionary allies, solidifying it by changing borders with the establishment of different republics and a classic divide and rule type tactic that the Soviets would use in several different places throughout their sprawling and growing empire. Though many bands of Chechens and Ingush, none of this is a blanket statement. Not all of them support the Soviets and many supported the imperial whites. some supported their own nationalist forces. But for many people in Chechnya and Ingushetia, they saw the Bolsheviks as another form of Russian imperialism because it was, and they fought a war against them until the mid-1920s. The hatreds of the Bolsheviks towards their one-time alleys came to a head in the 1940s when Stalin began mass deportations of Chechens and English people. One English writer put it such as,

quote, normal service from the Russians was resumed. Just so people can understand this constant cycle of violence between them. And I say constant cycle of violence, not to say that the Chechens and the English were as equally guilty as the Russians, because of course they weren't. But from the English standpoint, there was a break of normal Russian violence towards these mass deportations. And we talked about this again during our first Chechen War series. Virtually the entire population was removed. It was repopulated by people from the South Caucasus, other people from the North Caucasus,

like a ton of Armenians, a ton of Georgians, a lot of North Oshetians, a lot of Balkars, Tatars, all these things were moved in. And also a fuckload of Russians, because it was literally settler colonialism, were moved in to replace these indigenous populations. It directly led to the first Chechen War. Now, the town of Beslan started life as a small village of a few dozen people, which grew to a few hundred when a railroad was finally built through it by the Russian Empire. a few hundred when a railroad was finally built through it by the Russian Empire. However, by the 1930s,

this population exploded into the thousands with the Soviet society to industrialize it, becoming weirdly one of the key hubs of the molasses industry for the entire Soviet Union. Rolling the molasses dollars, baby! We make

molasses! Black gold! No, not that kind, kind the other kind i'm shooting up that good of shetty and uh molasses yeah i mean i look i don't plan to be i don't claim to be some kind of culinary historians i don't know fuck all about molasses other than the time that it drowned a whole bunch of people in boston during a flood of it I think it was Boston. I don't know. But yeah, molasses powerhouse, Beslan. This turned them into a favored people for the Soviet government, and thus, they are moved into lands previously lived on by the Chechens and the English who had been deported, mostly to Central Asia. This was not a choice that the Oshetians made, but it was

forced on them by the government. A few decades a choice that the Oshetians made, but it was forced on them by the government. A few decades later, when the previous deported populations were allowed to move back, violence and anger was had by both sides, pressed into the situation that neither of them had a say and was forced into. As the 1970s rolled around, these surges of ethnic violence spiraled out of control and soon more than once the Soviets had to send in soldiers from their interior ministry in order to keep two sides from killing one another

also the soldiers from the interior ministry killed both sides this is one of the reasons why when everybody says this or that region was so much more peaceful under the Soviet Union it wasn't you just didn't hear about it. Like, word about this did not get out.

Like, we talked about this before, but there's massacres and various different Caucasian republics into the 1980s, and only then did the outside world ever fucking hear about that because of glasnost and the like, which, yeah, one thing leads to another, right? Hey, listen, I am 400 pages

into that book on perestroika uh at the time of recording um that i talked about a couple episodes ago yeah uh thank you mr gorbachev yeah good stuff all around almost like empire bad now this also served a purpose for moscow each time they did this they would fire the local communist party officials and And by local, I mean like actual locals, like Chechen, English, Oshetian communist officials, because they said that they were not running the republics or the oblasts correctly. So they'd wipe them all out, fire them all, and replace small ethnic Russians. As the 70s turned into 80s, it was clear that the Soviet Union was dying, and soon the North Caucuses, especially Chechnya and Ingushetia, were lighting up once again. By the 80s, crippling poverty had combined with years of ethnic strife turned the area into a boiling pot that was about to overflow. Now, I'm not saying that freedom of speech, media, and the press are bad, obviously, but they can be bad if you happen to be a half-dead empire with a

horrible past of deportation and settler colonialism, trying badly to restructure yourself, but doesn't want to look into the mirror too hard. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I got you. So when Gorbachev loosened the general repression of Soviet censorship, soon the people of the North Caucasus could talk about their dark history with not only the Soviet authorities, but one another, and how they were used as weapons against one another for Soviet authorities in Moscow. Talks of independence from Russia, which always existed in back rooms and mountain meetings, came to the front. in back rooms and mountain meetings, came to the front. Chechens and Ingush rejected Russian domination and demanded their land back from the Oshetians, which again had been gifted to them. So of course, eventually the Chechens declared their independence on September 6th, 1991.

A week later, the Ingush declared their own republic, which had long been attached to Chechnya. And while they didn't want to separate from Russia, they did claim ownership over much of Oshetia, including their capital, Vladikavkaz. Most people are familiar with the First Chechen War, especially listeners of this show, but a much smaller, irregular war erupted between the Ingush and the Oshetians, many of whom were literally neighbors. Yeah, you know, like claiming someone else's capital, probably not the best idea for peace. Well, it comes down to, and I'm not saying one side is more guilty of this than the other, unless that side happens to be the Soviet Union. But, you know, the Oshetian, all these people, all these different people are along for the ride.

They don't, they're being used against one another by the people in charge of them. Like the Oshetians are moved into this territory and like treated as a gift while the Chechens and the English are forcibly deported. And then when that whole power structure of constantly pitting one person against another collapses after decades and decades and decades, like the borders no longer make sense i mean borders effectively are no longer real because they've been fucked with so many times as have the the populations within them yeah and for anyone who's uh listening at home borders aren't real that's all it it's all just lines as you tell, these have been moved how many times as have the populations.

Yeah, this show is decidedly anti-map. You know, maps are lies. Countries aren't real. And throughout the Soviet Union, this happened even within the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic to their minorities that were not russian um like the ball cars the tartars all these people like constantly had their oblast redrawn their populations moved around because they knew if they constantly fucked with them it would keep nationalism at bay or at least the form of nationalism as is like self-rule independence etc for so long you know eventually this is going you can't do this forever yeah we need to bring up a word called perestroika now english fighters crossed over from ingushetia into oshetia burning

villages to the ground while the oshetians receiving help from moscow formed their own bands of militia who quickly returned the favor. There was a sizable Ingush minority on the right bank of the Terek River, and soon the government-backed Lushetian militias were laying waste to it. Tens of thousands of Ingush, possibly between 10,000 and 40,000, were forced to flee from this area into Ingushetia, and by 1993, when the fighting ended, at least 1,000 people were dead. Then Russia invaded Chechnya in 1994, got their teeth kicked in. Like we said, we did a series about it.

Go listen to it. And while the Chechens did win the war, kind of, the Republic was completely and utterly destroyed. Anyone who could flee did, into the surrounding republics, and the Chechen Republic of Inchikaria turned into one of the most lawless, dangerous places on the entire earth and a breeding ground for extremists, as President Aslan Mashkadov attempted to compromise and eventually lost ground to foreign Islamic fundamentalists. The Chechens had kind of sort of won independence, but they didn't win stability or safety. And that was by design. They were cut off from the entire world by russia

after russia got its like nuts kicked into the stratosphere at most the new government controlled the capital of grozny but even then it was like neighborhood by neighborhood it was tenuous at best yeah the heroes of the first chechen war turned into warlords bandits or worse the entire country had been churned into a wasteland by the fighting. And since no formal recognition of independence came at the end, nobody was coming to help. The Russians fell into a tactic of containment. There was no restructuring, no rebuilding. The economy simply didn't exist. And suddenly there was tens of thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened armed men without jobs

and a copious amount of weapons floating around freely. Hmm, it's almost like the Soviets did this in another country. Whoops. While Mashkadov attempted to control the republic, kidnapping turned into the main source of money for pretty much everyone, while outsiders became targets for Islamic extremists that also fought the local government for control. And most of these

first Islamic extremists were not Chechen. They came from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. But that rapidly spiraled out of control. We'll get to that point when we eventually cover the second Chechen war. I'm just imagining the meme from I Think You Should Leave, the hot dog suit.

We're all trying to find the guy who's behind this. Various groups from Chechnya, both connected and not connected to the government, this is kind of a gray zone for many of them, quickly spilled the war over the borders of the republic. Pretty much as soon as the war ended, bombs started going off in North Oshetia. public. Pretty much as soon as the war ended, bombs started going off in North Oshetia. On March 19th, 1999, a massive bomb tore through the central market of Vladikavkaz, killing 52 people. Another attack on the village of Sputnik killed another 60. Another attack on the train station killed 20. Soon, terrorist attacks in North Oshetia were commonplace.

A few months later, a strange alliance of Chechen government and Islamic international militants calling themselves the Islamic Peacekeeping Brigade straight up invaded Dagestan and Ugas Shadia. That's a bit of an ironic name, not gonna lie. Love when peacekeepers

invade something, right? Yeah, terrorism, very famously a peaceful industry. Now, despite one of the most horrific videos that have ever graced the internet coming from this conflict, this and the apartment bombing spanning three Russian cities eventually led to the Second Chechnyan War, which we will talk about at some point.

I'm not going to do much of it here. Long story short, the Second Chechen War was largely over by August of 2000. The major formations of what you could call the Chechen army were destroyed, but the remnants of its various militia factions fled into the mountains to continue the war in Chechnya and abroad for decades to come. One of these factions was the Riyad-Uz Saladin Brigade of Martyrs, led by a man named Shamil Basayev. Now, listeners of this show are familiar with Shamil Basayev. Basayev is a guy with one hell of a history, touring the world of post-Soviet wars and showing himself to be the most bloodthirsty lunatic that has ever graced any of those battlefields along the way. He fought in the Georgian Civil War, decapitating Georgian civilians before moving on to fight

for Azerbaijan during the first Artsakh War, the entire time being a known operative of the Soviet and then Russian GRU, or Military Intelligence, and also while being an internationally wanted terrorist. He's got a good CV, I'm not going to lie. I

appreciate the dedication to terrorism you know like if you're gonna do it if you're you know you're gonna be an international businessman on international business sometimes you gotta cross borders you gotta get it done and it shows that you know he knew what he wanted to do he found his vocation and uh he also worked for the pakistani isi training and equipping muujahideen from Afghanistan for fighting on the Azeri side during the first Artsakh War. It was during the Georgian and Artsakh Wars that

he came up with a form of execution that was so brutal for the area that it became known as being shamiled and that was slitting someone's throat and pulling their tongue through the wound. Yeah. I thought the Italians came up with that i mean there's also that uh you've i've heard of drug cartels doing it and called the columbian necktie things like that but for this region

it's his yeah like you know when you usually when something's named after someone that isn't you know like a building or an institution it It's something like, you know, here's a sandwich in this restaurant that Shamil liked to order that, like, you know, has banana peppers and... I was gonna say ham, but obviously this dude does not eat pork.

He did drink a lot, to be fair, for an Islamic fundamentalist. Yeah, he wasn't, like, fully on his dean, you know um but yeah there's better things to be named after you i know i don't want that named after me i'll settle for the sandwich sure yeah the joe is when you shouldn't puke at the same time i'm honored thank you um make sure to give me the joe salute at the live show make sure to give me the joe salute at the live show i am the once again i am the only member of this show who has not had dysentery

yet during the wars in chechnya shamil basev became one of the most famed battlefield commanders and eventually ran for president after earning a reputation for being a guy who developed the tactic of strategic kidnapping to further the Chechen cause. We talked about the hospital siege during our first Chechen War series. He's that guy. Yeah, he's a bit of a Noema, like he killed my pa, he killed my ma, but I'll vote for him.

Ah, that was Charles Taylor. Oh, yeah, Charles Taylor. Now, he believed that taking the pain of war home to regular Russian civilians could influence the government's policy towards Chechnya and what has to be the biggest misunderstanding of the Russian government in human history. But there was also, of course, vengeance, just pure, unadulterated vengeance, both personal and societal. vengeance, both personal and societal. Chechnya had been rendered into little more than a pile of

rubble and graveyards after the Russian military had gone through it. Even though after the first war they won and the second war the Russians won, but Chechnya was, I think Grozny was called the most destroyed capital on earth at the time.

Shamil Basayev puts a lot of this in political and religious uh ideology however most of it is just pure unadulterated vengeance he was responsible for a wave of bombings throughout russia carried out by woman suicide bombers known as the shahidka because he knew security services wouldn't be looking at women as hard as they were looking at men. It was this group that came together to carry out Basayev's plan attack on Beslan on September 1st,

2004. What's with terrorists and their obsession with carrying out attacks in September? We'll talk about this specific date in a second. It's actually very important in the post-Soviet world when it comes to schools yeah yeah so like i i thought they were just like big earth wind and fire fans

he may have been uh he's he's more of a uh of a skrillex guy now the group of at least 32 people and here's the interesting part we actually aren't sure exactly how many terrorists made their way into the woods in Ingushetia to plan this attack. Just a few dozen miles northeast of Beslan. Some of them have been camped out there for weeks. Others had trickled in a few days or even a couple hours before the operation was set to begin. The team was put together for the coming suicide attack was a strange and, I guess, interesting one. They're often framed as little more than extremists or fundamentalists, and sure, I guess that's true, but it's also very reductive.

These men and women came from a lot of different backgrounds, both political and societal, and none of them fit into this nice neat package that people like to think that they are yeah you had like your traditional terrorists and then there was just like one guy called craig craig stevens god damn like who invited craig on this operation you know he's all like he always overcooks the food you know he smells kind of bad he's always talking as well when we're like rocking rook marching like he's the guy that like did a summer to russia to learn the russian language but now he thinks he understands the russian soul or something yeah it's like you know look i

understand his uncle is a commander but like could they not just like i don't know get him to shovel out horse shit or something why does he have to come with us? I'm tired of babysitting these, like, nepo baby terrorists. I mean, I think that's like Osama Bin Laden's daughter has kind of turned into, like, something like that. Now, this group's leader, Ruslan Kuchberov, prior to his life in the Chechen militant world was just a street criminal um which is very fucking common in the world of terrorism no matter what section of terror they fight for um it could be christian fundamentalist terror it could be islamic fundamentalist terror it could be political terror most foot soldiers in terror groups come from a background of petty crime.

Yeah. Now, I'm not going to say Kuchiparov was a petty criminal. He was a fucking murderer. In 1998, he murdered two Armenian men in a bar fight over a woman. Now, he never did time in prison. He fled and found the word of God in the worst way possible, channeling his rage into the ongoing war in the region. Once there, he

made a connection with Arby Barayev, who was kind of pretty much the leader of the fundamentalist faction of the Chechnyan resistance movement. Famously known for the fast food chain Arby's. Yeah. It's very interesting that he split his time between the $5

Arby melt and uh car bombs you know hurrayev had previously attempted to kill the chechen president aslan mashkadov to be fair most of these guys had tried to kill mashkadov at this point to include the russians i mean like yeah that's it that's how you get a a membership to these sort of groups like yeah you know like you gotta get your you know your, your hiking badge, your sewing badge, your attempted assassination of the president badge. Did you do your prerequisites for this course as in attempting to murder the president? Now, he attempted to kill Mascotoff actually twice and led what could be considered a civil war over the fate of the once free independent Chechnya.

He did this so often that the kind of secular Chechen government called him an agent of the FSB because he was trying so hard to undermine the Chechen government. Like, there's no way this guy is just doing this on his own. And it's because he was. He actually was an FSB agent. Well, I was about to say, nobody is that dedicated to killing the president.

Honestly, you try and kill the president once. If you attempt it, and you do it, then you're Lee Harvey Oswald, whatever, you're the guy who shot franz ferdinand you know you get what it's like eminem said you get your one shot do not miss

your chance to blow and like this dude i always thought this meant something else personally so like you know this guy was like you know might have missed you know like never back down never what um never give up so he you know he he had that high school musical wildcats mentality you know always keep going always try again and that's when arby barayev walked into the local fsb uh office with mom's spaghetti all over his sweater after the fall of Chechnya in the Second War, he freely traveled through Russian checkpoints with FSB paperwork and with the Russian Military Intelligence Agency, the GRU. The GRU once leaked documents

to prove that he was, in fact, an FSB agent. And by the time of the Beslan attacks, Baryev was dead, killed during a Russian military raid after his FSB cover agent had died. And most people believe that his cover agent was killed by the GRU for the sole fact that so the GRU could kill

Baryev. After Ruslan, there was his deputy, Vladimir Khodov, who, unlike most people in the group, wasn't Chechen or English. He was actually half Ukrainian and half Ossetian. He was also a convicted rapist. He was born a Christian and he and his brother converted to Islam

after they'd taken part in multiple bombings targeting civilians inside Oshetia. There was Isa Torshkiav, who was a bank robber, while Marabek Cherkobanov was a seasoned soldier having fought in the Second Chechen War and the resulting insurgency. However, we don't know much about the rest of the people involved. The Russians aren't telling people. They never released any of their identities, only a few of them, for reasons that will eventually become clear. There were two women involved as well, Rosa Nageyeva and Mariam Toborova. Both were Chechen in their mid-20s. Seemingly, all the way up until the actual operation itself, they had worked a stall in Grozny's

central market selling children's clothing. Nobody had any idea they were involved in anything. But by 2004, both Rosa and Miriam, as well as their two roommates, had become radicalized. They told their friends that they were going to Baku to buy wholesale clothing to sell at their stall, but it was a lie. Rosa and Miriam joined with the Beslan team in the woods while their two roommates strapped bombs to themselves and blew up two different civilian planes that had flown out of Moscow on August 24th. Just a regular room share, I suppose. Yeah, like,

yeah, I don't have any jokes. This is about to get real fucking dark. And one of the interesting things is absolutely nobody in any of their lives thought that they were in on this. For most of the guys involved, there was a saying like they went to the woods or they went to

the mountains or they went to the forest, which meant they're in the insurgency. The women, not so much. They're selling children clothes literally the day before the operation. Though not everybody was camped out in the woods by choice. Nerpashi Kaliev

was leaving a shop in his village where he lived in Ingushetia when a car pulled up alongside him, driven up by Issa, who was demanding to see his brother, Kanpasha. Now, Kanpasha had previously fought with the Chechen rebels and allegedly even served as a bodyguard personally for Shamil Basayev, though there's no evidence to suggest that Nurpasi had any prior militant activity other than simply knowing about it, which is very, very common in villages and cities in this region. People's cousins, quote unquote, went to the forests. People knew about people involved in it, but he wasn't personally involved. Now, Issa was accusing him and his entire family being spies for the FSB.

What happened next is pretty confusing, but Issa and other militants met with Nir Pasha and his brother, as well as their friend, insisting that they all were now working for the government and forced them to dig their own graves. Obviously, we all know what was going to happen next, right? During this, they all refused to confess to being spies, which seemed to convince the militants enough that they were still loyal to the quote-unquote cause. They then drove them into their camp in the forest. At this point, Nirpasha's brother, Kanpasha, told him, Well, you can never go back home now. You know too much. well you can never go back home now you know too much the next day all three of them were loaded into a truck and brought to the staging area outside of beslan as the newest recruits they

were effectively shanghaied the team woke up just before sunrise checked over their weapons suicide vests an array of bombs that they were bringing with them. And then they had a short breakfast break. Because, sure. I mean, it's an important way to start the day. It's the most important meal of the day. You know, you're going to work at the office or you're going to commit a horrific terror attack. I mean, like, if your vest is filled

with Semtex, you don't really have, like, space to, like, keep a Nature Valley bar on you. Connecting the debt cord? Oh cord oh sorry that's my sandwich you try and open it and it just like immediately disintegrates all over your equipment you're there like picking bits of like a nature valley bar out of your semtex i got crummies all over my vest oh we joke but it's not funny now uh i mean that's all of my jokes none of them are funny um now after this they load up into two different trucks and they begin to make their way towards beslan school number one according to the only survivor of this entire operation nerpashi

nobody was told where they were going or what they would be doing prior to leaving. Though he was the last addition to the team, there was a very good chance overall that some kind of knew what they were doing. There is a lot of debate to be had here. The leaders certainly did. Obviously, they chose the target. However, there is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the vast majority of the terrorists had no idea what they would be doing ruslan picked a route towards the school that avoided most major roads in order to avoid all the traffic police and you know anybody who's been to that corner of the world knows that there's cops everywhere not that they're doing anything it's like a government jobs program there's just a lot of cops um however it turned out that the roads that they chose weren't actually legal or open for

public travel because soon as they started they were pulled over by a local traffic policeman who just had to like be imagine how disappointed like i'm gonna pull these guys over and give them a ticket and walked up and it's like six heavily armed Chechen terrorists. Like, I'll let you guys off with a warning. You can go. Yeah, just like very suspiciously bulging overcoats. Like, you must be eating good. You know, you got some good weight on for the winter.

You know, like you kids go along. That mask sure is angular. No need to look into that. Uh, now, yeah, Ruslan saw this as an opportunity. They pulled their guns on the cop,

taking him hostage while another terrorist stole his patrol car, which they then used to give the other two trucks an unofficial police escort. Now, sure that nobody else would bother them. They turned onto the main roads and stopped a short distance from the school. The terrorists in the cop car pulled directly up to the school itself and piled out their vehicles, running inside the schools, and began firing their weapons into the air. Somehow, despite the fact they came here to literally kidnap and threaten to murder children,

of course, assuming that their mission goals were completed nobody actually thought to kill the police officer he was just left in the backseat of the patrol car completely abandoned and he got out and ran back towards his police station with his gun and badge being stolen by the terrorists he was doing like a Forrest Gump run

a pretty eventful day at work for a guy who only made $50 a month I'll say probably the most eventful thing that would ever happen in his career. Oh, God, yeah. He's also, I think, the only person charged in connection within the Russian state, but that's for part two. So before we go on, we have to explain just what kind of day September 1st is in Russia and throughout most of the former Soviet Union. September 1st is the first day of school. It's known as Knowledge Day. And for people who've never experienced it, it's a pretty

big deal. My first experience was I was surprised and had no idea what was going on when I was living in Armenia. The kids dress in all white. They all walk to school hand in hand with their parents. Everybody goes to the school. It had been something of an unofficial celebration since the 60s when the all-union Leninist Communist Union of Youth, or Kamosol, encouraged the day to be celebrated as championing the importance of an education.

Oh, that's kind of cute. I like that. Sure. The special day is especially huge for first-year students. Students will come to school dressed in mostly white, their shirts pressed and ironed. Parades, dances, and ceremonies are all very common. Principals and teachers give speeches to the students' parents,

and their entire family are invited to take part in the ceremony of the first bell to start the school year. Oh, that's really sweet. On any normal day, Beslan School No. 1 would house around 800 students and 60 teachers, assuming everybody came to school or work that day. However, nobody missed Knowledge Day, and the school's population ballooned as parents and family members all showed up to take part in the celebrations. That is why on that fateful day on September 1st, 2004,

when the terrorists burst into the school's courtyard, dressed in Russian military camouflage and ski masks, firing guns into the air, they had captured 1,128 people. Oh, God. At first, people believed that the terrorists were members of special forces or police undergoing some kind of training, and they remained calm. But by the time the shooting started, the terrorists who had broken into groups had effectively surrounded the largest body of hostages in the school's courtyard,

as they had just finished with a pre-planned Knowledge Day parade. By the time they realized that they were actually under attack, most of their escape routes had been cut off, though about 50 people not in that immediate area were able to get away. However, the terrorist's main path into the school wasn't clear. The first responders on the scene were not the local police, but random civilians who heard gunshots and came running while armed with hunting rifles, shotguns, and pistols. I should point out that those pistols were all illegal. As you do.

Russia has very restrictive gun laws, but they're personal weapons. They managed to catch the terrorists before they got behind the walls of the school and a shootout in the open erupted. One of the terrorists was killed outright by a civilian with a hunting rifle on the spot while two others were wounded. Unfortunately, the terrorists were armed with automatic weapons and belt-fed machine guns and quickly drove the civilians away, killing two of them, and the crossfire killed several hostages and wounded many more. Then armed police finally showed up to the scene and joined with the civilians who stuck around, and the fire that they were putting out pushed the terrorists into the school itself,

looking for cover. Now, according to one of the eyewitnesses who was one of those armed civilians, the armed police did actually nothing because when they showed up their rifles were armed with blinks what? that is actually pretty common in Russian police crowd control emergency situations they put blinks

in their weapons to fire to scare people and like chase them off so when they first showed up that was how they were armed thinking that this was i don't know what they thought it was some crowd control issue kind of just normal disturbance so they did nothing oh this is so depressing and then when the police officers when the civilian is like why the fuck are you only armed with these the policeman told the civilian the police armorer, the guy in control of their arms room,

fled the fucking city as soon as he started hearing shooting and took the keys with him. So the cops couldn't get their actual rifles. Oh my god. This is the point where I start to get really depressed

during this series there's no more jokes people joe is very pensively taking a hit of his vape while he prepares for the next bit i don't want to know what this is people began to run bullets flying both ways but they only had one place to go by design directly into the school where other groups of terrorists had already made entry going room to room looking for hiding places where people might be taking cover. When they found doors that were locked, mainly bathrooms, they kicked them down, pushed terrified children out into the hallways. When some kids, frozen by fear, simply could not move, they were beaten savagely with AK-47s.

At this point, there had been several people, mostly adults, who had already been shot. From firsthand accounts, these early shootings seemed to be a mix of parents resisting, as well as terrorists accidentally or on purpose shooting through the walls and doors of the school to scare people, as well as them just being jumpy. The terrorist's orders at the moment were simple. Go to the gymnasium. As thousands of people were packed into the school's gym, it rapidly became overcrowded to the point of a crush. The terrorist said, quote,

You've done nothing wrong. We aren't going to kill you. And with that, the first day of the Beslan school siege had begun. And that is where we'll pick up next time. Oh fuck, I am not looking forward to the next episode. Jesus. You shouldn't. I'm gonna be honest with you, you absolutely shouldn't.

This is not good, Joe. This is not good. The next episode is going to be... I already gave everybody a content warning. It goes double for the next episode um but it's also there's a lot of conspiracy theories behind the school siege i'm going to go into a few of them um because conspiracy theories in my opinion breed from a lack of transparency right um and that is as because like in this episode, we don't know how many terrorists entered the school.

Russia will not tell anybody. Um, they like, we only know a few of their names. it's, it's real bad. Um, and it was a perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

Um, because most of like, we only know today how many people were actually in that school. Because Oshetian townspeople did their own count. The Russian government's telling of the story, which is, as you will discover, much different. For very obvious reasons. And those obvious reasons are bad. But that is the Beslan School Siege Part 1

Tom, I'm so sorry It's not necessarily that this episode was difficult, it's more so that I by the tone of the end of this episode, I can kind of expect what's coming and I am going to be so depressed. If you are listening to this

and you want to send us an animal fact for it. Actually, hold that thought. We can end this with some wholesome animal facts to lift people up at the end of this episode. How about that? Okay. Oh god, that one's about elephants

dying. Fuck's sake joe of course the first one you picked is miserable so this is from a reddit thread um because we've actually we've done so many awful episodes we've burned through all the buzzfeed listicles about cute animal facts um i saw a video a long time ago some researchers gave ravens a small toy to play with when the researchers came to collect those toys weeks later the ravens hid the toys and tried to trick the researchers

into looking to fake hiding spots so they wouldn't find and take the toys away because they liked them that's kind of adorable yeah that's really cute when they hear running water beavers will automatically start building a dam we know this because people put speakers up playing the sound of rushing water

next to beavers and then they cover the whole damn thing with wood um how do how do beavers you know react to avicii only one way to find out baby and then someone wrote underword under this beaver hears running water sounds absolutely fucking not yeah see look if you listen to our previous episode are the beavers unionized is this like them hearing the international like they running water is their call to arms. Unionize them beavers. Vampire bats will share food with other vampire bats who haven't fed in the last day or two because their metabolism means that they won't live if they don't eat roughly every three days.

This helps support members of the colony, though it puts the sharer at risk. It's considered one of the few forms of animal altruism observed by non-humans. And they also adopt orphaned vampire bats. Vampire bats are enacting the anarchist ideal. I love to see it. They've read Kropotkin. Kropotkin. Tom, that is a podcast.

Thank you so much for joining me here on part one. Everybody, thank you so much for listening to our show. Tom, plug your show. Listen to Beneath the Skin, show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. It is decidedly less depressing than this episode. It's because I haven't been on it yet.

Well, no, by the time this comes out, you will have been on it. Ooh, future. Yeah, future Joe. We're coming for you from the future. Yeah. We talk about like

cool history stuff and how it connects to tattooing and how tattooing connects to history. If you, I don't know the, if you enjoyed my little bits on the recent

Captain Cook episode, we have an episode more extensively talking about his relationship with tattooing and the connection between like colonialism and imperialism, stuff like that. We also have, you know, interesting stuff where we talk about, you know, the history of pinups and like cool tattoo artists from history that you should know. So if that sounds like your bag, check it out. Listen to his show. This is the only show that I do. So if that sounds like your bag, check it out. Listen to his show. This is the only show that I do.

If you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon. You get episodes like this early. You get five plus years of bonus content, Discord access, stickers, e-books, audio books. You get a whole bunch of stuff. We have multiple different whole series on our Patreon, where we watch HBO's Rome. We watch the made for TV movie series, sharp Tom and I watch Gundam and robot related media, all sorts of fun stuff on there for you. If you choose to support us.

And also it always helps for you to leave us a review on wherever it is. You listen to podcasts and maybe leave out the fact how depressing the show is sometimes. And until next time, there's no good way to end this see you in part two