The making of a tragedy

by A. C. Grayling

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.