Arriving Somewhere

Wide Angle, a show on PBS hosted by Bill Moyers did an episode about the Beslan School tragedy last night. I was excited that anything related to the ongoing war in Chechnya would get any air time at all in the U.S. so I made some time in my evening to watch it.

The show consisted of a 45-minute documentary of the tragedy followed by a 15-minute interview with Washington Post journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. The documentary itself was mostly made up of live footage from the tragedy including film taken by the terrorists themselves. The interviews with hostages and others involved were engrossing. I was quite amazed that we were able to see so much footage from the siege. It was all quite real and very disturbing. The images of 1,200 hostages crammed inside the gymnasium for several days without food or water with the masked terrorists standing around them with guns and explosives wired all around were… indescribable.

The narration was well put together and didn’t draw any conclusions for the viewer. While it tried to maintain a neutrality there could be no question in the viewer’s mind that the terrorists committed an atrocious act. Although, who is to blame for the final outcome is unknown and will probably always be so. The documentary did well at reporting the known facts and left us we three possibilities for the explosion that began the final storm of the school:

1. The terrorists grew tired of waiting and started setting off explosives. Highly unlikely for many reasons.
2. A police sniper killed a terrorist, and the explosives he was responsible for went off when his foot came off of the pressure switch. Possible.
3. Angry locals stormed the building causing a terrorist to set off his explosives. Possible.

There is a fourth possibility that wasn’t mentioned. The building was stormed by the police, causing a terrorist to set off his explosives. While I believe this is unlikely, it should not be ruled out - especially following the behavior of the Russian security during the hostage situation at a theater several years ago. There Russian security gassed and killed around 150 civilians while storming the theater.

Following the documentary Bill Moyers conducted an interview with two Washington Post journalists. You can view it at the website. I was very pleased with the interview since the documentary gave absolutely no context for the school siege. While there is no question that those who held the school hostage were terrorists and had no excuse the journalists did a very good job of presenting the failings of the Russian government in the war with Chechnya and its abandonment of the “democracy experiment”. Kudos to Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. They even refused to be baited by Bill Moyers’ partisan-liberal questions, such as trying to compare Iraq to Vietnam to Chechnya.

In all, I would have simply been happy for the exposure that the Chechen conflict received and came away impressed with the balance and quality of reporting.

technorati tag: PBS, Russia, Beslan