No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

What happened at School No 1 in Southern Russia?

The Washington Post has an informative article on the terrorist attack at School No. 1 in the town of Beslan in Southern Russia. There are several very interesting elements in it.

The purpose of the raid seems reasonably clear.

"The puppet leaders who organized these fierce incursions, they are attempting to destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus and make one people go against another," said Aslakhanov, President Vladimir Putin's top Chechnya adviser. "They are inciting old grudges and unsolved problems."

The leader has been identified as a long time Chechnyan guerrilla leader.

Calling the shots, according to Russian investigators, was Basayev, the brutal guerrilla leader who has fought the Russians in two wars over the past 10 years and been designated a terrorist by the United States and United Nations.

Basayev stormed a Russian hospital in 1995 and took more than 1,000 patients and doctors hostage and sponsored the capture of a Moscow theater in 2002 that led to the deaths of 129 civilians.

[See the article from Slate giving the background of the Chechnyan war.]

There may have been some Arabs involved, but this was pretty clearly locally planned, initiated, and carried out.

Russian investigators are checking out reports from an unidentified Western intelligence service suggesting that some of the attackers came from Jordan and Syria, according to a source briefed on the government's investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. An Islamic group tied to al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Russian government has been trying to bomb the Chechyans into submission, and the main result has been to expand the war they are fighting to cover all of Russia. The use of military force by itself simply isn't going to solve their terrorist problem.