Russia: Russia remains utterly unprepared, and will continue to suffer terrorist attacks as long as it is run by a chaotic bureaucracy, writes Jonathan Eyal
"We have shown weakness, and the weak get beaten," said Russian President Mr Vladimir Putin in his weekend televised address to a nation still stunned by the loss of life in the hostage crisis.
From a man who made his political career by looking tough and inscrutable, this was a rare display of emotions and contrition.
Mr Putin duly promised an overhaul of his country's law and order and intelligence organisations to make sure that no such atrocity could be repeated.
But similar promises have been made for years, with no apparent results. For, as the Russian response to the vicious wave of terrorist attacks over the last two weeks indicates, the country remains utterly unprepared, and will continue to suffer as long as it is run by an incompetent, chaotic bureaucracy.
The failure is total, and at almost every level.
No government, however efficient, can be expected to protect every school, especially in a country of Russia's size. Yet the school in Beslan was in an area rife with ethnic tensions, adjacent to the Chechen war zone and, as such, already teeming with Russian intelligence agents.
Curiously, however, none of these agents detected the movement of relatively large numbers of heavily-armed terrorists.
Some of the explosives used in the attack may well have been pre-positioned inside or near the school for weeks previously. Yet again, nobody noticed a thing.
Nor is this intelligence failure just a local misfortune. A week before Chechen terrorists destroyed two Russian airliners by managing to fool security at one of Moscow's main airports.
And an underground station in the capital, another well-known, classic target of terrorists, was bombed with impunity.
Russia has one of the biggest internal security machines in the world. Yet most of its agents fail to concentrate on the real enemy.
For at least a decade, the Russian military has devoted large resources to the creation of crack units, designed to deal with hostage situations and terrorist attacks.
These units are legendary among Russians. Indeed, items of their uniforms and markings are regularly worn as a fashion statement by the country's youth.
And yet, every time they were pressed into service, these special units performed abysmally.
It is true that no crack military formation could have entirely avoided some bloodshed in Beslan; the terrorists were fanatics, and the number of hostages was too large to guarantee a bloodless outcome.
And it is equally true that the Russian military did not chose when to fight inside the school: the timing was decided by the terrorists who detonated some of their explosives for reasons which are yet unknown.
But this is only part of a much more complicated story.
As any anti-terrorism expert knows, not all such hostage crises are the same. If the number of hostages is relatively small, the situation can be fairly stable, and a government has some time to negotiate with the terrorists while preparing its response.
But, if the number of hostages is large - and it was huge in the Beslan school - the situation is inherently unstable from the start, and violence can erupt at any moment.
The reason for this is that the terrorists are unsure of their situation, and the chances are high that some of the hostages would rebel, thereby starting a shoot-out.
Either way, it should have been clear from the start that, even if the Russian government ruled out a military conclusion to the school stand-off, preparations to storm the building at a moment's notice should have been in hand.
Yet nothing of the kind appears to have been planned.
When the explosions and shooting started, it seems to have caught the military commanders completely by surprise. The result was no less than 10 hours of shooting, just about the worst outcome and the surest way of guaranteeing heavy casualties.
By all accounts, the Russian troops were brave. But they were poorly led, and did what Russian troops always do: shoot in all directions rather than execute the surgical strike which is required.
The result was that 40 per cent of all the hostages were killed, and another 40 per cent were injured, a tally which is much worse than in any other mass hostage crisis in living memory.
Yet probably the most spectacular failure was that of the humanitarian services.
From the moment the school crisis began, it should have been clear that the chances of bloodshed were very high.
Any other government would have cordoned off the area and removed the distraught parents of the children to a central location, where they could be provided with information and psychological support.
Meanwhile, medical supplies and staff would have been prepositioned. Indeed, given the numbers of hostages, a full field hospital should have been established nearby.
But what was the Russian method? Grieving parents were allowed to walk around in panic for days, interfering with the military operation.
Nobody bothered to compile a list of the hostages; their actual number was only known after the crisis was over, and came as a shock to everyone.
Meanwhile, even the too few ambulances were prevented from moving freely by parents who were insisting on checking whether their loved ones were inside.
Some of the wounded were carted off in private cars; parents simply took their children home, oblivious of the fact that they may need urgent attention.
And everyone rushed around in panic, in search of water, bandages, cars or stretchers.
It was a shocking sight of how a country, which only 10 years ago still claimed to be a superpower, was unable to deal efficiently with just one terrorist crisis.
Nothing whatsoever can justify the unspeakable cruelty of the terrorists, who remain solely responsible for this terrible tragedy. But the world will not help Russia if it does not point out that, if it is serious in continuing the fight against terrorism, its entire state organisation will need to be overhauled.
It is not merely a question of improving intelligence, but also a matter of changing the whole procedures of responding to a crisis, both by the military and the civilian services.
A great deal of knowledge and experience is available around the world, and this can be shared with Russia. For the sake of all the children butchered in the Beslan school, the Russian government should accept international assistance in handling such crises as quickly as possible.
The question is not one of national pride - which Russians have in abundance - but one of humanity.
• Jonathan Eyal is director of studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London