From the archive: Beslan atrocity, 7 September, 2004

THERE is a grotesque mathematical sequence to the dates: 9/11, 3/11, 9/3 ... and a heartbreaking randomness to the numbers of dead. On Saturday, we will remember the 2,814 who died in the al-Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington three years ago.

Next month will bring the anniversary of the 202 victims of the Bali bomb. In March, it will be the turn of the 191 who died in Madrid this year. In Beslan, they don’t even have the comfort of a final death-toll. As I write this, it is 338. By the time you read it, it will be more. If you are President Putin, desperately seeking all the international sympathy you can muster for a vicious and long-running war with Chechnya, the ability to classify the events in Middle School No 1 as an al-Qaeda-backed atrocity is of vital concern. So far, no hard evidence of a link has emerged. It is something which will continue to exercise those doomed to seek patterns in chaos and reasons in anarchy for some time to come.