Are we really prepared for the most outrageous attacks that Jihadists terrorists can offer?
The old principle of ‘train-hard, fight-easy’ has long been understood. The WWII Wehrmacht aphorism “sweat saves blood” would have been familiar to Flavius Josephus whose 1st Century AD history observed that the Legions of Rome made their “exercises unbloody battles, and their battles bloody exercises”. Some of the last Korean War combat vets in the Canadian Forces growled similar advice in the author’s ears as a young officer on training courses: “Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance … sir.” The lesson is endlessly repeated in most books of military history, because it has to be. We keep forgetting.
While intellectual laziness is common in our species, human beings often forget what they don’t understand. Frequently, we don’t understand because we simply find a particular thought too horrible to contemplate or linger over. This is one of the reasons why we keep being surprised; especially by terrorist attacks.
An Israeli friend whose brother was killed by terrorists, and who had been at the site of a suicide bombing, once gave a reminder of the fundamental truth of terrorism. He described seeing scraps of human flesh embedded in concrete in the aftermath of the detonation of a Shaheed’s bomb vest and used this to illustrate a point: The purpose of terror is terror. When the terrorist is at his most unholy, he seeks to instill inconceivable shock and horror by using the obscenity of his violence on a target that is chosen not merely for its intrinsic worth, but to perform an act of blasphemous sacrilege. Human flesh is not supposed to be embedded in concrete, nor are we supposed to be killed when sipping coffee and reading our newspapers at some sidewalk bistro on a bright sunny morning.
In the annals of terrorism, it is hard to think of a more vile attack than that undertaken by a team of Chechen terrorists on September 1st, 2004 in Beslan, a small town in North Ossetia within the Russian Federation. We were all shocked by the attack, but the lessons that were learned from the incident don’t seem to have been drilled home in North American and Western Europe. They should be. [1]
The attack occurred on the very first day of school, when in Russian tradition; children arriving in the junior grade bring flowers for those beginning their last year and in turn are escorted by the senior students to their first classes. Many parents were in attendance, as were some 900 students and at least 60 teachers and staff. At 9:30 in the morning, some 32 heavily armed Chechen terrorists began their attack – some having previously stashed weapons in the school itself before unleashing their assault. They quickly took 1,300 hostages.
Typically, the terrorists confiscated all the phones, promising that anyone who was found concealing one would be shot along with three other hostages. They also killed between 15 and 22 adult males among the hostages who looked like they might be capable of planning resistance or exercising some sort of leadership (one was calmly translating the terrorists demands into Ossetian for those who didn’t speak Russian).
Not all of the attackers (28 men and 4 women) were Chechens. Three were converts and two were British citizens from Algeria and habitués of the infamous Finsbury Mosque in London. The Russians insist some of the planning and financing for the attack came from Arab/al Qaeda sources. They shared their intelligence on this, and the evidence stands up.
There is some confusion over the ‘motives’ for the attack (terrorists can always manufacture an excuse for their violence), but one thing is clear. The only statement of a negotiating position by the attackers was for the total withdrawal of all Russian forces from Chechnya. While there were some discussions with Russian hostage negotiators about minor tactical issues such as offering food and water in return for the release of some hostages or permission to move bodies from the front of the school, these mostly went nowhere: Probably because the terrorists didn’t really want to talk. The one significant exception was that the President of nearby Ingushetia was allowed to enter the school on the second day of the siege and leave with a few mothers who had infants of breast-feeding age.
It is clear that the terrorists were busy right from the beginning of the incident in preparing for a murderous stand-off. They constructed fire positions on the roof of the building, undertook a limited reconnaissance outside the building (possibly with an eye to escape routes for some of the team, as fourteen of the 32 were not rigged with suicide devices); and placed bombs throughout the structure. These last were designed to murder as many of their hostages as possible should a rescue or escape attempt manifest itself, but also to defend the structure against an assault by encircling Russian security forces.
There is some debate over the terrorists’ conduct towards their older teenaged female hostages. Some survivors of the incident testified that several girls were gang-raped –an act that is fully consistent with Jihadist tradition and practice — but all of the children confined in an overcrowded gymnasium had stripped down to their underwear in an effort to cope with stifling heat, which lent confusion to the charges of sexual assault. However, in the Wahhabi/Deobandi interpretations of Islam that Jihadis follow, the onset of puberty is seen as the beginning of adult life… a 14 year old boy who elects to join the Jihad and fight is making an adult decision; a captive girl of the same age is a ‘prize’ of her captors and may be raped ‘legitimately’ according to some of the Fatwas that the Jihadists prefer to accept. One doubts that in a three day stand-off which the terrorists were largely sure would end in a bloody combat that they were likely to restrain themselves from sexual assault on minors, given that they didn’t recognize this as a crime and were contemplating murdering them all anyway.
If Jihadists ever mount a similar operation against young teenaged schoolchildren in North America or Western Europe, we can be sure about what will happen to 13 year old girls who catch their eyes. The concern is not an idle one, as there have been numerous indicators in the US of a hostile interest in school buses and junior high schools (where the students tend to be between 11 and 15 years of age). The idea of an attack on such children has been bruited about by al Qaeda for some years. Osama bin Laden himself has opined that Jihadists are entitled to take the lives of 2 million American children. Moreover, an attack as evil as that in Beslan is sure to be eventually emulated.
There are other lessons from Beslan to consider. First; every spare minute that the Beslan terrorists could use was spent preparing their defences and rigging devices to murder their hostages. All of our tactics for hostage negotiations presume that time is on our side; it isn’t. Soldiers recognize that giving an enemy time to ready his defences is an error. Police simply don’t think this way because they always hope to talk a barricaded gunman into surrendering. Emergency response team leaders should start learning about military style quick attacks and encounter battles, where you try to immediately develop the situation even as you are learning about it. Yes, these are messy situations and can easily go wrong, but there are times where a quick attack is the best response.
Admittedly, encounter-style tactics are now the recommended best solution for police when there is a gunman running amok in a school or shopping mall. Yet even higher standards of tactical proficiency would be necessary in a Beslan-style incident, and would still bring no guarantee of success except that it might allow more potential hostages to escape.
Secondly, part of the problem on the third and final day of the Beslan atrocity was the confusion that attended the security force assault on the school. Even after more than three years it still isn’t truly clear how the assault began and how the shooting started, but the best accounts suggest that a half-planned storming began after the main charge in the gymnasium detonated – whether accidentally or deliberately remains unknown.
While one can presume that the Russians didn’t have their most disciplined and capable security troops in the area of Beslan; one doubts that even their best (who are as good as any) would have behaved much differently. Police and soldiers alike, at their core, are ‘sheepdogs’, whose instinct is to protect ‘sheep’ from ‘wolves’. Moreover, the ultimate evolutionary basis of all human society is the protection of children; so naturally, the instinct of the Russian security forces was – as it would rightly be for anyone else – to act as quickly as they could once they perceived the murder of the children had begun.
In the case of Beslan, their preparations were not thorough, and the troops were not as expert as they might be elsewhere. One cannot blame them for acting as they did… but should remember that if a similar incident occurred in Manitoba or Mississippi, for example, local police might simply not wait for the best assets of regional or federal police or for military Special Forces to show up. They also might not have the choice. This is the second lesson: Every police tactical unit needs training for a Beslan-type scenario.
The other pressure, besides the compelling threat to an entire community’s children, on the security troops in Beslan were the parents of those children. Normally, when encountering a hostage situation, police cordon off the site to secure it from supporters of the hostage-takers, eager reporters, spectators, and the friends and families of the hostages. In Beslan, with over 1,300 hostages in the school (including 900 children), isolating the site was barely possible. Moreover, when shooting erupted, many civilians dashed forward with security troops into the gunfire of the Chechens – and who can blame them? What true human being wouldn’t do the same thing if confronted with a similar situation?
As an aside, remembering the footage from Beslan and reviewing much of it again, it was easy to be moved by the naked bravery of so many ordinary people rushing into an ongoing gunfight to rescue children. In the same way, the memories of the 911 attack now tend to revolve around the valiant sacrifice that so many rescuers (first responders and civilians alike) made, as well as by the passengers of Flight 93 who roused themselves and counter-attacked their hijackers. The purpose of terror might be terror, but courage can always nullify the purposes of the terrorists and invariably leaves a finer legacy.
There are some issues to resolve here; the normal instinct of first responders is to shoo away all ‘civilians’ (by which they mean everyone who is not a police officer, paramedic or fire-fighter) from a hostage incident. The onrush of parents and other citizens of Beslan certainly made the storming of the school a wild and chaotic affair; or more properly, a wilder and more chaotic affray that it might have otherwise been. Yet the ‘scorecard’ of the results of the storming of the school speaks for itself.
The official death toll stands (three years later) thusly:
- Hostages: 334 out of some 1300.
- Police, emergency workers and local civilians: 8.
- Security Forces: 11
- Terrorists: 31 out of 32, with one being captured.
Hundreds of hostages also had to be hospitalized, mostly due to the effects of the terrorist bombs placed among them and gun shot wounds. From the point of view of ending a hostage taking through an assault, this was a successful result. It should also be pointed out that the rush of civilians played a critical – if unorganized – role in evacuating hostages while under fire; in supporting the firefighting; and probably did much to prevent the escape of the terrorists.
The lesson here is that if (or rather, when) a Beslan-type of incident occurs; emergency responders should expect massive pressure from civilians with a desperate desire to help. It might be a good idea to plan to harness this in a number of constructive ways… for logistic and communication support, perhaps helping to establish an outer cordon, pooling an extra reserve of vehicles for casualty evacuation, etcetera. They will get involved anyway, and wise incident commanders might as well plan to make good use of them.
In Beslan, many local civilians turned up armed. This would certainly happen in much of the United States and not a few parts of Canada too. In a similar incident, police and emergency responders would already have enough on their plate without having to confront this group as well, so it would be therefore wise to consider ways of co-opting them instead. Given how fast some police armories and ammunition inventories have been drained in the past during several notable confrontations with well-armed and well-prepared criminals; the loan of a community’s scoped big-game rifles, deer guns and more shotguns could be most welcome.
Another part of the uproar over Beslan comes from the usual Russian habit of botched communications with the public. Official versions of details of the incident were adhered to long after it was clear that they were utterly incorrect, and the Russian addiction to unnecessary secrecy wrought its usual chaos on proceedings. As always, North American incident commanders would do well to communicate as clearly as they can both during and after the incident.
There is another vital point to consider, or perhaps rather a point to make about the vitals of terrorists. Increasingly, Coalition troops involved in house clearing combat against Jihadis in Iraq have often noticed that their opponents are much tougher than usual – largely because they had been injecting themselves with powerful stimulants like Atropine as soon as they start shooting. Medical examiners of the Chechen corpses from Beslan also noticed that their subjects had an unusual number of drugs in their systems including powerful stimulants and painkillers.
Small arms bullets seldom kill immediately, but the target is often ‘incapacitated’ within 30 seconds. People who have been shot often recount an impact like being hit by a sledgehammer and then stumbling on for some time. The pain usually comes much later. Somebody on powerful stimulants and pain killers might receive a fatal gunshot, or even several of them, but under the influence of the drugs can often ignore their wounds for several minutes. This is plenty of time to keep shooting and set off a few bombs. The only way to stop him is not so much to kill him with a few more shots, but to demolish him by literally shooting him to bits.
Additionally, from military experiences in Iraq, police who burst in on prepared Jihadis in a potential Beslan-type incident had better be prepared for:
- Bullet-resistant barricades constructed as mini-fortresses within the interior of buildings they are trying to clear. Contrary to the usual practice of defending the exterior of a building, the Jihadis would want police to enter.
- If there are many Jihadis present, these mini-fortresses might support each other, or ambushers could be waiting to emerge when an assault on a mini-fort begins.
- Incredible firepower at pointblank ranges. Targets might be firing fully automatic rifles with 100 round magazines at ranges of 5 metres or less.
- Opponents who simply won’t drop just because they’ve received a couple of hollow-point bullets in the torso, and who will continue to shoot as described above even when mortally wounded.
- Jihadis in urban settings in Iraq have also surrounded themselves with propane canisters and fuel-cans, in the hope of igniting a fireball as their last act.
- Targets that are also wearing night vision goggles and who may be almost as at home in the dark as their attackers are. Flash-bang grenades might not disorient them either. [2]
American troops in Iraq and Russian security forces have found that they need new and much tougher standards in close-quarters fighting inside buildings. Police special task units in the US and Canada should also train to meet those new standards because those new standards are coming to meet them, and this may well happen someday soon in a crowded school full of desperately wounded children. Train hard, train very hard…
