Madam, - The 344 murdered children and women of Beslan deserved a better commemoration than the obfuscatory piece contributed by Dr Gerard Toal (September 4th). If it were not so horrifying to contemplate their fate, it would be almost amusing to view the contortions of the writer as he tries to wrap the issues involved in a fog of post-modernist and politically correct gibberish.
Apparently, we must identify neither the perpetrator, the victims nor the ideology involved, because that would be only one "narrative" among many. Thus, the Islamist jihadist and self-proclaimed author of the atrocity, Shamil Basayev, was merely "said to have planned" the attack, "press reports suggest" his motives etc.
It seems the victims, though overwhelmingly Christian, should not be commemorated with a cross because "both Orthodox and Muslim hostages died". Above all, it is "misleading" to describe the atrocity as part of anything global, since "geographical context" is critical.
In his Bush-obsessed blindness, Dr Toal fails to see the significance of the links forged between Basayev and the Saudi-born Amir al-Khattab, who arrived in Chechnya from Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Khattab, already famous for having himself filmed while beheading captured Russian prisoners, brought with him, as well as Arab fighters, the jihadist ideology and access to Opec finance.
Under his influence, Basayev transcended his Chechen nationalism and developed his vision of a North Caucasus Islamic emirate stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. In 1999 the two led the invasion of Dagestan in pursuance of that vision. (Dr Toal should read a few texts on the orthodox Islamic attitude towards nationalism.) They had already undermined the secular rule of President Maskhadov in Chechnya and forced him to implement sharia law, with chaotic results.
German Nazism, Italian fascism and Japanese militarism all had very different "immediate geographies", but had to be brought down together in a single global struggle. The current "war on terror" - admittedly a silly term, connoting a war on a tactic, like "war on Kalashnikovs" - is a response to a global campaign waged against Judaeo-Christian-based (as well as Hindu and Buddhist) civilisation.
The ideology driving that campaign is the only one in the 21st century capable of inspiring the cruelty, ruthlessness and utter indifference to human life shown at Beslan, as at Bali, Jerusalem, New York, Madrid and London. That ideology is Islamism.
- Yours, etc,
DERMOT MELEADY, Dublin 3.
Madam, - Tom Carew ties the appalling atrocity that occurred in Beslan (Letters, September 7th) to global terrorism by claiming that two of the "North London Finsbury Park Mosque Three" were killed there. This information comes from the Russian FSB, who are always looking for ways to associate Chechen rebels with global terror.
Mr Carew fails to mention that the two men that he is referring to, Osman Larussi and Yacine Benalia, were also reported killed by the FSB in an operation on March 8th of the same year, six months before Beslan.
Any information that comes from the Russian security services in relation to Chechnya simply cannot be trusted.
Can Mr Carew have let his desire to tie Chechnya neatly into the global war on terror slant his letter, to the omission of salient considerations?
- Yours, etc,
CORMAC O'BRIEN, Göteborg, Sweden.
Madam, - As a professor at Virginia Tech I would have assumed Dr Gerard Toal (Opinion, September 4th) might recognise the criminality of the killing of young people and empathise accordingly. Sadly, it seems that to call the mass murder at Beslan for what it was would ruin his rather undergraduate political polemic.
- Yours, etc,
ULTAN Ó BROIN, Sandycove, Co Dublin.