Beslan School Disaster

by Joel Rookwood

Samaritan’s Purse is an organisation renowned, among other projects, for its ‘shoebox campaign’, which sees boxes of toys distributed annually to unfortunate children the world over. The organisation also provides aid to victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine; an ethos implemented principally through construction developments and football projects. I have worked on several of these football schemes, yet none have been so heart wrenching as our latest venture. For recently the Russian government issued a request for SP to visit Beslan, following the horrific terrorist attack at a middle school in the Vladikavkaz suburb in Russia’s North Ossetia region. So earlier this month I was part of a team of football coaches, doctors, counsellors and translators who travelled to this devastated community.

The Beslan school siege began on the first day of term, a special celebration throughout Russia, a day dedicated to knowledge. The carnival began in Beslan’s middle school number one, as it did in every school in the land. Children played in the warm sunshine, a tannoy system providing the music. Teachers wore their best clothes and parents came bearing flowers. Yet the festive atmosphere darkened, when thirty armed Chechen militants surrounded the school, and forced the vast majority of those stood on the playground into an adjacent gymnasium. It was there that pupils and staff were detained in cramped conditions, and with food and drink forbidden by the attackers, the hostages resorted to wringing out their clothes to drink sweat, and even drank urine in order to stay alive. Many died in a series of shoot-offs between the terrorists and rescuers during the three-day siege.

When we visited the school there were bloodstained walls, some displaying angry messages from relatives punctuating the vast rubble, the sound of crying mothers piercing the already distressing atmosphere. Scores of bras were hung in one room, painful evidence that the forms of abuse that some of the female pupils were subjected to during the ordeal weren’t exclusively explosive. Some of the detainees escaped, some survived. Yet too many fell under neither category, as more than 350 innocent souls paid the ultimate involuntary price for the promotion of a political agenda, one characterised by a devastating disregard for human life.

With human remains sprayed on the ceilings, bullets and remnants of shattered dreams strewn on the floor - and even an old Samaritan’s Purse box in one of the rooms, a bullet evidently having ripped through one of it’s corners – I craved an opportunity for escapism. So I took a moment to dissociate myself from my immediate surroundings, and explored the view at eye level, investigating the messages on the wall, which surely I could not be affected by, given that I could not interpret the various Russian declarations. As I paused for a moment, trying to comprehend a particular statement that had grabbed my attention, scrawled bluntly as it was, outside one of the ravaged classrooms, one of the translators, realised what I was trying in vain to make sense of. So she whispered softly in my ear the words “no forgiveness”, before melting into the abyss, leaving us both to reflect alone and dejected on the hopeless sentiment of the response, etched as it was in sheer intolerance.

Structurally the building was in ruin. A ghost of it’s former self, it stood, just… almost apologetically, weary and frail, as if awaiting the collapse that would signal the completion of its demise. But still the coffin awaited its final nail. For when we respectfully laid wreaths at the dedicated cemetery, the eight empty graves amongst the 353 who had been laid to rest there served to highlight that still some bodies remained uncovered. Somehow the unease, nay agonising discomfort, shared by every member of our group who trod the dusty floorboards of that school deepened, with the knowledge that some children had not been accounted for. For as if to compound their agony, some families had still not even been permitted the opportunity to bury their loved ones, and subsequently undergo the commencement of what one could only imagine would prove a protracted grieving process.

I interviewed several survivors, who described to me their own horrific experiences. “It was like hell” one boy told me, who witnessed such inconceivable brutality, including the murder of his own sister. The boy went by the name of Aslan, who’s youth, stolen in a seventy-hour siege, was only fifteen. His appearance concurred with the admittance regarding his age. Yet his brown eyes, conveying melancholic and sombre thoughtfulness, begged to differ. “We were all forced into the gym”, he continued. “We were not allowed anything to drink, we weren’t even allowed to go to the toilet. They told us to look at the floor. Anyone who looked up was shot.” Aslan talked of immediately recognising the attackers as terrorists whilst still in the playground, because of the recent attacks they had seen on TV. It was heartbreakingly evident that terrorist culture is a phenomenon few were strangers to in Beslan.

Whilst on the coach departing the now infamous school I spoke to another escapee named Boris. As I considered my own immediate memories of the building, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much more painful this young man’s were. As we sat together and conversed via a translator, the level of Boris’ head fell only just short of mine, his height belying his fourteen years. Clearly I was not alone in recognising his stature, disproportionate as it was to his age. Four times during the attack he was ordered to his feet by the terrorists to help carry weapons between rooms. And as he explained, every time he was ordered to attention, he thought he “was going to be shot”. Having survived those scares however, it was during a period of quiet when an explosion woke him from his slumber. Realising that the detonation had blown a hole in an external wall adjacent to him, he excitedly tried to wake his friend to escape. His companion however had “holes in him and blood… he was dead.” Dejected but no less determined, Aslan made his escape, which despite a tirade of gunshots mercifully proved successful.

One could not even begin to comprehend the almost superhuman inhumanities that occurred within the walls of this school, less so the motivation for such a horrific attack on these innocent children. For me, even in this, the aftermath, several devastating images were committed to memory, enough to interfere with my regular patterns of REM. Yet on reflection, what remains my most powerful cognitive illustration is the vast collection of bottles that had been laid in the school and around the graves in the cemetery. Flowers are often an appropriate ceremonial element in these situations, but their inevitable decay can at times serve to dampen the landscape a little. But here it was the copious amount of fluid containers, which stood in all shapes and sizes to brisk attention, which dominated the scene… defying the elements, representing a powerfully unified parental response. This overwhelming symbolism highlighted what is clearly a common belief amongst those who mourn in Beslan, and what serves as a strong source of comfort for us all… none of those helpless victims would thirst again.

The attack represented sheer devastation. Yet Beslan is still there. Her community, although hurting, will move on. She will never forget, and the memory of the siege will live on in the hearts of those who experienced it, with accounts of the disaster no doubt to pass through future generations. But the focus of the region is not on those lost to the implementation of brutal policies, but moreover the potential for social reconstruction. As the renowned Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, in reflecting on the crisis: “our child-future has not become a naked target.”

In what was an intensely sensitive mission, after paying our respects in Beslan our group spent the remainder of our time in North Ossetia visiting every school in the ill-fated town, as well as schools in towns around the Chechen border, coaching football to over 10,000 children. Meanwhile the health workers used the SP funded ultra-sound equipment to assess the well being of the survivors, many of whom had been subjected to rape and other forms of abuse. As well as coaching and playing matches we told and presents donated by Liverpool FC, as well as cards made by children of various Liverpool schools. We were also treated to a variety of impressive sporting, dance and musical performances by Beslan school children on our visits. The prospect of our arrival inadvertently appeared to give the pupils and staff something to look forward to and prepare for, a sense of direction and structure in what may have otherwise been a more dislocated timetable.

The game of football can appear quite a simple, even inconsequential sport. But it can also prove a powerful means of bringing people together and reaching out to a community. By spending time with the people of Beslan we were able to show them through football that people the world over who they have never met, in places they have never heard of care about them. It was without question the most difficult and distressing experience of my life, but every smiling face I encountered, every hand that reached out to shake mine, every child I heard laughing during our time there rendered it worthwhile.

It was indeed a privilege to be a part of what will no doubt prove a lengthy healing process, and in spite of such monstrosity, there is clear evidence of hope for the future. As the region’s Minister for sport said in addressing the group during our stay, “You brought us hope, you brought us joy, in the hope that we can now carry on.” But mercifully, it was clear that this related not just to the inward thinking and internalised hope, simply for the future of a singular community, with the simultaneous disregard for those surrounding it. For there has to be the hope of peace in not just Beslan but also in its adjoining republics. A hope of a life of tolerance and acceptance, where women accessorise with necklaces, not explosives. As the Russian poet continued, “God, save us from vengeance! If there are still some living children here let's not forget that sacred word ‘together’”.

More meaningful still than this passionate response though was a display at one of the schools we visited, which led with a different headline. For as we approached Beslan’s school number 6 at the start of a day’s coaching, the welcoming banner in bold six-foot high letters hanging from the second story of the building read ‘to peace among nations’. Now there’s a toast I would sink a shot of Russian vodka to. My only hope is that this proclamation remains long after the memory of our visit fades, its sentiment etched sincerely and resolutely on the hearts of all Ossetians.

Joel Rookwood

"The Onside In-Site" Copyright © From 2000. All rights reserved. Soccerphile Ltd.