The making of a tragedy
BY A. C. Grayling

The Times (London)
September 11, 2004, Saturday

When the Soviet Union disintegrated amid the confusion of the
anti-Gorbachev coup in 1991, some territories in its southern
regions made successful bids for independence, among them Armenia and
Georgia in the Transcaucasus, and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in central
Asia. Most were latecomers to the Russian fold, being Tsarist conquests
of the 19th century. For the inheritors of the defunct Soviet empire
their independence was deeply unwelcome, because they are rich in
natural resources, chief among them that substance whose toxic pall,
paid for by so many human lives, lies dark across the world: oil.

Exactly seven years before this week of endless Beslan funerals -on
September 9, 1997 -an agreement was signed between Russia and Chechnya
allowing oil to flow to the Russian port of Novorossiisk on the Black
Sea. It officially ended the first Chechen war, and gave the key to
why the conflict had happened. Some commentators claimed at the time
that world thirst for oil had been instrumental in bringing relative
calm not just to Chechnya but also to the whole region. Into this
volatile terrain were pouring hordes of businessmen and criminals,
scarcely distinguishable from each other, eager to profit from Caspian
oil, Turkmenistan gas, Uzbekistan cotton and Kirgiz gold.

Peace had come, the commentators continued, because the region offered
such rich opportunities that war could no longer be tolerated.

To say that this uncontrolled dash for the region’s resources had
brought peace was like saying that a fire had been extinguished
by dousing it with petrol. As American and European interests in
the region burgeoned, Russia strove to maintain its grip on those
parts of the original Soviet possessions which had not escaped into
independence. In particular, the Chechen oil pipeline -the only one
taking Caspian oil to the Black Sea -was vital, so in December 1994
the Russian army responded to Grozny’s efforts at independence by
invading, to assert Moscow’s control over the pipeline and, therefore,
the region’s economy.

The frightful war that followed, its re-ignition in 1999, the
excoriating terrorism that has spiralled from it, might have been
predicted from a single fact alone: the maze of animosities that
history and religion have between them bred, from the old Ottoman
borders in the Transcaucasus to the pass of Jiayuguan at the western
end of China’s Great Wall. It would take an epic to do it justice,
embracing as it must the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians in 1915
-in which over a million and a half were murdered -and then, working
eastwards in space and back through time, to the destroyer Genghis
Khan, who put whole cities to the sword.

For a flavour -a mere taste -of the complexities, note this: the
Georgians are Caucasians and speak a South Caucasian language,
but the Ossetians are Indo-Europeans, descended from the Alans and
related to Persians. The Ossetians practise Islam, Christianity and
paganism, and are involved in territorial disputes with Georgians and
the Ingush. Ossetians are allied with Russia, Georgians are not. Most
Georgians are Orthodox Christians, although some minorities in Georgia
are Muslim.

And so on. This passage comes from an internet letter disputing
a version of Caucasian history in which the collaboration of
Chechens with Hitler against Stalin (Hobson’s choice!) is offered
as justification for Russian attitudes to Chechnya. According to
the letter writer, the author of the anti-Chechen history does not
understand the subtleties of ethnic and religious diversity in the
region. How many outsiders, on this evidence, can? Anyway, the point
is that such diversity, once released from the grip of an overarching
police state, inevitably causes friction and fragmentation. It would
happen without the evil allure of oil, but oil makes everything
vastly worse, because into the local quarrels come dollar-laden
foreigners, buying and bribing in their desperation for the Earth’s
black blood. Control of the pipelines, accordingly, becomes a reason
for mass murder. If oil did not matter, some other prompt for fighting
would be needed; but -just perhaps -none might be found.

All this partly explains the background to the Beslan tragedy. It
does not, for absolutely nothing can, excuse it.