Dolnik (2007) Negotiating the Impossible.
Dolnik, Adam, (2007) Negotiating the Impossible: The Beslan Hostage Crisis, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Whitehall Report 2-07, accessed on 14 July 2014 at https://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/WHR2-07.pdf.
Dolnik (2007): Describes Beslan as a “widely misunderstood phenomenon.” Draws on testimonies, court transcripts, video footage and field research.
Dolnik (2007:1-2): Argues that Beslan was a “nightmare scenario that would present an unprecedented challenge for any response team in any country in the world.”
Dolnik (2007:2): Cites FBI characteristics of a “negotiable” hostage situation and guidelines for crisis negotiation, most of which were not satisfied at Beslan. “Hence, following the current ‘cookbook’ of crisis negotiation teams, the Beslan situation could only be resolved through a tactical resolution.”
Dolnik (2007:3): Notes “most available accounts of the hostage crisis differ significantly in their description of virtually every aspect of the incident.”
Dolnik (2007:4): “The first part of this report will analyze the lessons of past incidents and apply them to the unfolding Beslan situation. The second part will provide a chronology of the crisis, with specific focus on the negotiation aspect. The third part will then analyze the negotiability of the incident, incorporating an analysis of the strategic calculus behind the attack, indicators of volatility and de-escalation, and the failures of the strategy employed in Beslan. The fourth part will highlight some of the other critical aspects of the incident, including the rescue operation, media management, discrepancies in the investigation, and events that occurred before Beslan, which in retrospect could have provided an intelligence picture concrete enough to pre- vent the attack in the first place. And finally, the conclusion will look at the lessons learnt and prospects for the future.”
Dolnik (2007): Examines Basayev’s involvement in terrorism, anticipation based on past experience that authorities would storm building at Beslan.
Dolnik (2007): Provides detailed event chronology.
Dolnik (2007:18): Views choice of target as “clearly designed to raise the stakes. In Dubrovka, the Russian leadership did not shy away from storming a theatre full of hostages in the middle of Moscow, killing 129 people in the process. Taking hundreds of schoolchildren hostage would introduce even greater decision-making dilemmas and greater public pressure not to storm the school, leaving the Kremlin with few options but to negotiate.” Moscow or St Petersburg considered as targets, Ossetia chosen because it did not face same operational and financial constraints, was viewed as Russia’s outpost in the region, and Ossetian elite sent their children to School No.1, the largest in the region.
Dolnik (2007:19): “The apparent suicidal tactic selected for the operation was also significant. First of all, the repeated expression of determination to die during the incident was aimed at denying the counterpart’s threat-making capacity: in essence, the proclamation of the desire to die weakens the deterrent value of threats by the Government to resolve the situation forcefully. Further, the seeming irrationality of suicidal operations is useful in attracting extensive media coverage.”
Dolnik (2007): Examines the difficulties facing attempts to negotiate, including the premeditated nature of the event; the presence of multiple negotiators among the hostage-takers who employed deferment to authority; well-armed and brutalized character of the hostage-takers; separation of the hostages, including of men who could be executed to pressure the authorities; non-changing nature of terrorists’ demands; absence of psychological barriers to killing hostages, with the leaders the most brutal; and the stated determination to die.
Dolnik (2007): Notes also several positive indicators, including lapsed deadlines without execution of the threats; release of some hostages.
Dolnik (2007): Notes that clear political demands contradicted official assertions that no negotiation was possible and no demands advanced. Criticizes focus on substance of main demands (end the war in Chechnya, Putin resigning) instead of expressive nature (why), which would have opened up channels of communication, helped build rapport, and given insights into terrorist mindset.
Dolnik (2007:27-28): “Beslan was, for all the reasons documented above, an extremely challenging situation. But it was not ‘immune’ to a negotiated settlement, as Moscow has so robustly asserted. For starters, that the terrorists’ demands were not divided into smaller, more manageable elements violated a cardinal principle of negotiation. Take, for example, the demand of the President to issue an edict that would end the war in Chechnya. The negotiators should have focused on asking about the language of the text. Would the Russian word ‘Chechnya’ or the Chechen separatist term, ‘Ichkeria’ be used? What else was to be included? Simply a commitment to a pull-out of troops, or apologies for the past? Does the pull-out of troops mean just the army or all Federal troops? Which district should be ‘freed’ first? Is there an understanding of the logistical issues involved in such a massive operation? What sort of guarantees are the terrorists prepared to propose, to prove that they will keep their promise and release the hostages once the pull-out is completed? What gestures of good faith were they ready to offer? Perhaps providing water to the children? Or even releasing children under seven years of age, the list of which had already been compiled? This is just an example of some of the issues that could have been raised and discussed in order to engage the terrorists.”
Dolnik (2007:29): “even if the incident was bound to end in bloodshed, maximum effort should have been made to get as many hostages out of the school as possible via the negotiation process before resorting to a violent solution. Not only did the Federal authorities fail in this task, they essentially failed to even try. Even more disturbingly, the official reactions and statements on television, such as the deliberate and clearly false downplaying of the number of hostages inside, exacerbated the crisis. As in past hostage crises in Russia, the Kremlin seems to have had only one goal in mind – to discredit the separatist leader- ship and to teach Basayev a lesson.”
Dolnik (2007): Examines apparent intelligence failures in the run-up to Beslan, operational failures in dealing with the situation and securing the site, claim of 354 hostages and media management.
Dolnik (2007:39): “Confidence in the authorities’ handling of the Beslan crisis was by no means strengthened in the aftermath of the attack nor during the subsequent investigation. Many questions still remain unanswered.”
Dolnik (2007:41?): Officially 32 hostage-takers, none of whom escaped: 31 killed, one captured. Hostages and Beslan residents claimed higher number, with most estimating 50-70. Notes that specific terrorists were not seen beyond day two, several whom eyewitnesses claimed were there were later killed elsewhere. “Overall, the botched official Beslan investigation has discredited nearly everyone involved in it. The school itself was never sealed off for a forensic examination of any kind. Many items that ended up being critical pieces of evidence only entered the investigation after they were collected directly by the people in Beslan and handed to the authorities. At the time of writing, the authorities continue to release controversial and contradictory pieces of ‘evidence’, the provenance of which is, invariably, disputed.”
Dolnik (2007:44): “When governments are caught covering up and manipulating evidence in the aftermath of a failed counter-terrorism effort, it only benefits the terrorists for whom the embarrassment of a government and the undermining of its authority is a critical component of their grand strategy.”
Dolnik (2007:45): Notes Torshin Commission report upholds official version of events, blames any mistakes on locals. “the Commission’s findings were so outrageous that even one of the Commission’s own members, Yuri Savelyev, felt the need to present his own report, in which he contradicted most of the official claims. The inability or unwillingness of the federal authorities to admit and identify the flaws in the response to Beslan does more than obstruct accountability of individuals responsible for these mistakes; it effectively inhibits the learning process, which means that Beslan is bound to repeat itself.”