MOSCOW, August 30 (RIA Novosti) - After Beslan, Chechen terrorism came to the end of its resources, a senior researcher said Tuesday.
Nikolai Silayev, the senior researcher of the Center of Caucasus Studies of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), held a news conference Tuesday on the Political and Humanitarian Lessons of the Beslan Tragedy.
On September 1, 2004, gunmen took hostage local residents, schoolchildren, and teachers of a Beslan school in North Ossetia (a Russian republic in the North Caucasus). Federal forces stormed the building on September 3. A total of 330 hostages were killed, including 186 children, and 918 hostages were rescued.
"After Beslan, Russia was not hit by any large terrorist attacks of such a serious national scale," Silayev said. "After Beslan, Chechen terrorism began to sputter out. It crossed the line separating political struggle from mass murder. Separatists and terrorists realized it would be impossible to obtain any political concessions from authorities by criminal measures."
The researcher said Chechen terrorism "[was] in a deep crisis." He also pointed out that a new terrorist threat was emerging in Dagestan (a Russian republic in the North Caucasus), where the idea of terrorism was politically popular.
Silayev said the federal center should toughen its control and influence in the region. "If the federal policy stops focusing on the Caucasus, [the federal authorities] will be replaced by Islamic radicals, separatists, and terrorists."
