Jihadistene har internasjonalisert konflikten i Tsjetsjenia. Vladimir Putin gjorde det samme da han gikk til Sikkerhetsrådet. Verdenssamfunnet står nå overfor et valg: enten støtte Putins lovløse krigsmaskin eller stille krav, skriver Simon Tisdall i Guardian.

Vår egen Julie Wilhelmsen prøver å si det samme, men har vansker med å slippe til.

Journalistene spør: Hvordan skal dette løses? og politikere og eksperter rister på hodet. Men hvis ikke Putin vil ta skjeen i en annen hånd får verdenssamfunnet gjøre det, skriver Tisdall.

They can give Putin what he wants, which is carte blanche to do whatever he deems necessary. Or they can find the courage to change the habit of the past decade. They can dispense with the sort of mealy-mouthed, turpitudinous shuffling-about indulged in by France’s Jacques Chirac and Germany’s Gerhard Schröder at their recent meeting with Putin. And they can insist instead that in return for active western support, Russia must finally accept the obvious: that Chechnya is a pressing, international problem requiring an agreed, collective, non-violent, international response.

Is it so absurd to suggest that EU troops, or even forces organised through Nato, be deployed under a UN peacekeeping mandate? Is it practically impossible to set in train some form of externally mediated peace dialogue, currently absent?

Parallellen til Bosnia er at også her vet vi hva som foregår, men politikerne vil ikke en gang protestere.

Ten long years of destructive, on-off conflict, egregious human rights abuses, massive refugee displacements and blatant flouting of international law have also rendered Chechnya a matter of undeniable international concern. Organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the OSCE have kept a brave and faithful tally of the human toll and political cost of Russia’s heedless policy. Again and again, campaigners have lobbied western governments to draw a diplomatic line, to sponsor a political process, to honestly recognise Chechnya for what it ever more evidently is – a threat to international peace and security, as defined by the UN. Again and again, those same governments, including Britain’s, have mostly preferred to look the other way.

Beslan vil få ringvirkninger. Det er nok konfliktstoff i regionen til å utløse en større konflikt. Tsjetsjenia er ikke lenger bare et åpent sår, det har vist at det smittter.

The risk of a spreading, regional conflagration grows with every outrage, every unanswered act of blood – and with every broken child. Since the time of the tsars, the mountain tribes of the Caucasus have fought for land, faith and just for the hell of it. In A Hero Of Our Time, novelist Mikhail Lermontov wrote admiringly in 1840 of the bravery of his opponents along Russia’s lawless southern flank.

But now Caucasian instability threatens ever more broadly. Neighbouring Georgia, home to last November’s «rose revolution», is no model of stability. And by coincidence, the Beslan siege has forced the postponement of a presidential visit to Turkey, Russia’s historic Ottoman rival. Putin wants to build up trade and other links. But primarily, he needs Turkey as a southern bulwark of stability and security in a region sliding dangerously beyond Moscow’s control.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | A terrible lesson from a classroom in Beslan