Shamil Basayev

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (Russian: Шамиль Салманович Басаев)
1965 - 2006

Nickname	Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris
Place of birth	Dyshne-Vedeno, Chechnya
Place of death	Ekazhevo, Ingushetia
Allegiance	Caucasus Caliphate Jihad
Rank	Commander
Battles/wars	Georgian-Abkhazian conflict Nagorno-Karabakh War First Chechen War Dagestan War Second Chechen War

Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (Russian: Шамиль Салманович Басаев) (January 14, 1965 – July 10, 2006) was a militant Islamist and a leader of the Chechen separatist movement.

Frequently labelled as a terrorist by the mainstream media^[1], he led guerrilla campaigns against Russia for years as well as launching several mass-casualty attacks against Russian civilians with his goal being the withdrawal of Russian soldiers from Chechnya.^[2] Beginning in 2003, Basayev used the nom de guerre and title of Amir Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris.

Basayev was considered by some as the undisputed leader of the radical wing of the Chechen insurgency against the presence of Russian federal security forces, and the rule of Kremlin-backed local government in Grozny, considered a foreign occupation by the separatists. He was responsible for numerous guerrilla attacks on security forces in and around Chechnya as well as a terrorist attacks on Russian civilians, including the Moscow theater siege and the Beslan school siege. Basayev's power only increased after the Russian assassination of the more moderate, nationalist Chechen guerrilla leader, president of the separatist government Aslan Maskhadov.

Basayev was killed by an explosion on July 10, 2006. Controversy still surrounds who is responsible for his death, with the Russians claiming he was assassinated by the FSB, Chechens claiming he died in an accidental explosion, and other sources claiming a rival insurgent group assassinated him.

Shamil Basayev was born in the village of Dyshne-Vedeno, near Vedeno, in south-eastern Chechnya, to parents of Russian ancestry (Basayev is in fact a Russian surname, and the village of Dyshne-Vedeno where his ancestors resided was founded by Russian deserters during the Caucasian Wars of the 19th century). ^[3] He was named after Imam Shamil, the third imam of Dagestan and Chechnya and the last leader of anti-Russian Avar-Chechen forces in the Caucasian War.

His family is said to have had a long history of involvement in Chechen resistance to Russian rule, and suffered reprisals in the process.^{[citation needed]} His grandfather fought for the abortive attempt to create a breakaway North Caucasian Emirate after the Russian Revolution. The Basayevs, along with most of the rest of the Chechen population, were deported to Kazakhstan during World War II on the orders of Lavrenti Beria as a means of cutting off support to the insurgency and to prevent support of the Nazi invaders by the Chechen population. They were only allowed to return when the deportation order was lifted by Nikita Khrushchev in 1957.

Basayev, an avid football player, graduated from school in Dyshne-Vedeno in 1982, aged 17, and spent the next two years in the Soviet military serving as a firefighter. For the next four years, he worked at the Aksaiisky state farm in the Volgograd region of southern Russia before moving to Moscow.

He reportedly attempted to enroll in the law school of the Moscow State University but failed, and instead entered the Moscow Engineering Institute of Land Management in 1987. However, he was expelled for poor grades in 1988. He subsequently worked as a computer salesman in Moscow, in partnership with a local Chechen businessman, Supyan Taramov. Ironically, the two men ended up on opposite sides in the Chechen wars, during which Taramov sponsored a pro-Russian Chechen militia (Sobaka magazine's 2003/04 dossier on Basayev reported that Taramov apparently equipped or "outfitted" this group of pro-Russian Chechens; they were also known as "Shamil Hunters"). In later interviews, Taramov would claim he hired Basayev as a favor for a family friend, and that the latter was an ineffectual worker who would spend whole nights playing video games, sleep during the day, and had an obsession with Che Guevara.

When some members of Soviet government attempted to stage a coup in August 1991, Basayev allegedly joined supporters of Russian President Boris Yeltsin on the barricades around the Russian White House in central Moscow, armed with hand grenades. ^[4]

A few months later, in November 1991, the Chechen nationalist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev unilaterally declared independence from the Russian Federation. In response, Yeltsin announced a state of emergency and dispatched troops to the border of Chechnya. Dudayev's government claimed mobilising 60,000 volunteers to defend against a possible Russian intervention. It was then that Basayev began his long and notorious career as an insurgent — seeking to draw international attention to the crisis. Basayev, Lom-Ali Chachayev, and the group's leader, Said-Ali Satuyev, a former airline pilot suffering from schizophrenia^{[citation needed]}, hijacked an Aeroflot Tu-154 plane, en route from Mineralnye Vody in Russia to Ankara on November 9, 1991, and threatened to blow up the aircraft unless the state of emergency was lifted. The hijacking was resolved peacefully in Turkey, with the plane and passengers being allowed to return safely and the hijackers given safe passage back to Chechnya.

Main article: Georgian-Abkhaz conflict

See also: Battle of Gagra

The following year, 1992, Basayev traveled to Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia, to assist the local separatist movement against the Georgian government's attempts to regain control of the region -- a conflict in which, ultimately, a minority of 93,000 Abkhaz were successful in ethnically purging a majority of Georgians (numbering some 250,000) from the region. Basayev became the commander-in-chief of the forces of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (a volunteer unit of pan-Caucasian nationalists, composed mainly of Chechens and Cossacks), and eventually Abkhazia's deputy Defence Minister. Their involvement was crucial in the Abkhazian war and in October 1993 the Georgian government suffered a decisive military defeat, after which the entire ethnic Georgian population of the region was driven out by ethnic cleansing.^{[citation needed]}

It was rumored that the volunteers were trained and supplied by some part of the Russian army GRU military intelligence service, although no evidence to support these allegations was ever found. In any case, Russia did not provide any resistance to the volunteers, which would later prove a mistake, as Basayev's volunteer unit would go on to form the core of his experienced and battle-hardened Abkhaz Battalion in the First Chechen War. It was during the first Chechen war that he developed his now trademark affinity for a Kalashnikov assault rifles, and he made the note of posing with his firearms beside him in videos and public interviews. He was said to be a crack shot.

Few authoritative accounts of Basayev's life after Abkhazia exist. According to some sources, Basayev moved on to Azerbaijan, where he aided Azerbaijani forces in their unsuccessful war against Karabakhi-Armenian fighters in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. He was said to having led a battalion-strength Chechen contingent. According to Azeri Colonel Azer Rustamov, in 1992, "hundreds of Chechen volunteers rendered us invaluable help in these battles led by Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduev". Basayev was said to be one of the last fighters to leave Shusha (see Capture of Shusha). Basayev later said during his career, he and his battalion had only lost once, and that defeat came in Karabakh in fighting against the "Dashnak battalion". He later said he pulled his mujahideen out of the conflict when the war seemed to be more for nationalism than for jihad. During the conflict, Basayev was first introduced to Amir Ibn Khattab.^[5]

After Azerbaijan, by some accounts he reputedly travelled to Afghanistan, making contact with al-Qaeda and other pan-Islamic fundamentalist organizations, as well as the Wahabbism sect, to which he would later allegedly convert. Other sources claim that after Abkhazia, Basayev moved to Chechnya and became a successful entrepreneur in the Chechen mafia, organizing train-car theft and drug dealing networks. While pro-Chechen sources claim that such allegations about Basayev's criminal activity were disseminated by the Russian FSB and were untrue, no other explanation of Basayev's phenomenal personal wealth has been provided. According to Basayev, millions of dollars were donated to him by unnamed foreign businessmen from the Chechen diaspora.^[6]

The First Chechen War began when Russian forces invaded Chechnya on December 11, 1994 to depose the government of Dzhokhar Dudayev. With the outbreak of war, Dudayev made Shamil one of the front-line commanders. Basayev took an active role in the resistance, successfully commanding his "Abkhaz Battalion," now 2,000 strong.^{[citation needed]} The unit inflicted major losses on Russian forces in the battle of Grozny, Chechnya's capital, which lasted from December 1994 to February 1995, when Basayev's men were among the last rebels to abandon the city.

After capturing Grozny, the momentum changed in favor of the Russian forces, and by April Chechen forces had been pushed into the mountains with most of their equipment destroyed. Basayev's "Abkhaz Battalion" suffered many casualties, particularly during battles around Vedeno in May and their ranks sank to as low as 200 men. At this time, Basayev also suffered a personal tragedy. On June 3, 1995, during a Russian air raid on Basayev's hometown of Dyshne-Vedeno, two 6-ton bombs landed on the home of Basayev's uncle, 6 children aged five months to twelve years, 4 women, and the uncle were killed. During the remainder of the attack 12 members of Basayev's family were injured and his sister Zinaida, and a wife and child were killed.^[7]

Chechen forces resorted to a series of deadly terrorist attacks against civilians outside the area that they claimed, in an attempt to force a stop to the war. Basayev led the most famous such attack, the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis in June 1995. Shamil's large band seized the Budyonnovsk hospital and the 1,600 people inside for a period of several days; at least 129 civilians died and 415 were wounded in the fighting. Although he failed in his demand for the removal of Russian forces from Chechnya, he did successfully negotiate a stop to the Russian advance and an initiation of peace talks with the Russian government, saving the Chechen resistance by giving them time to regroup and recover. Basayev and his fighters were able to successfully retreat back to Chechnya under cover of the human shields.

The media coverage surrounding the hostage-taking and Basayev's safe retreat propelled the then mostly unknown Basayev into the international spotlight, and made him Chechnya's most famed national hero overnight. As a result of the raid, military actions on the territory of the Chechen republic largely stopped for several months.

By 1996 Basayev had been promoted to the rank of general and Commander of the Chechen Armed Forces. In July 1996 he was implicated in the death of Ruslan Labazanov.^{[citation needed]}

In August 1996, he led a successful operation to retake the Chechen capital Grozny.^[8] Yeltsin's government moved for peace, bringing in former Soviet-Afghan War General Aleksandr Lebed as a negotiator. A peace agreement was concluded between the Chechens and Russians, under which the Chechens acquired de facto independence from Russia.

Basayev stepped down from his military position in December 1996 to run for president in Chechnya's second (and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria's first and only ever internationally-monitored) presidential elections. Basayev came in second place to Aslan Maskhadov, obtaining 23.5% of the votes. Allegedly Basayev found the defeat very painful.

In early 1997 he was appointed vice-Prime Minister of Chechnya by Maskhadov. In January 1998 he became the acting head of the Chechen government for a six month term, after which he resigned. Basayev's appointment was symbolic because it took place on the eve of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of his renowned namesake. Basayev subsequently reduced the government's administrative departments and abolished several ministries. However, the collection of taxes and the Chechen National Bank's reserves shrunk, and theft of petroleum products increased seriously.

Maskhadov worked with Basayev until 1998, when Basayev established a network of military officers, who soon became rival warlords. As Chechnya collapsed into chaos, Basayev's reputation began to plummet as he and others were accused of corruption and involvement in kidnapping; his alliance with Arab jihadist Ibn al-Khattab also alienated many of the Chechens. By early 1998 Basayev emerged as the main political opponent of the Chechen president, who in his opinion was "pushing the republic back to the Russian Federation." On March 31, 1998 Basayev called for the termination of talks with Russia; on July 7, 1998, he sent a letter of resignation from the post of prime minister.

During these years he wrote Book of a Mujahiddeen.^{[citation needed]}

In December 1997, after Movladi Udugov's Islamic Nation party had called for Chechnya to annex territories in neighbouring Dagestan, Basayev promised to liberate neighbouring Dagestan from its status as a Russian colony.^[9]

In August 1999, Basayev and Khattab led a 1,400-strong army of Islamic fundamentalists in unsuccessful attempt to aid Dagestani Wahhabists to take over the neighboring Republic of Dagestan and establish a new Chechen-Dagestan Islamic republic. By the end of the month, Russian forces had managed to repel the invasion, but admitted suffering more than 1,100 casualties.

It was alleged that Alexander Voloshin, a key figure in the Yeltsin administration, paid Basayev to stage the Dagestan War.^[10] ^[11] and that Basayev was working for the Russian GRU at the time. ^[12] ^[13] ^[14]

In early September, a series of bombings of Russian apartment blocks took place, killing 293 people. The attacks were blamed on terrorists with Chechen links, although this attribution remains controversial. Robert Young Pelton, who was with the rebels in Grozny during the siege, interviewed a captured GRU agent named Aleksey Galkin. Galkin claimed that the government had sponsored the destruction of the apartments (he said that the bombing in Buynaksk was organized by GRU detachments under the general command of senior officers Valentin Korabelnikov and Kostechko).^[15] After escaping from his captors, Galkin retracted the story and claimed to have been tortured.^{[citation needed]}

Although Basayev and Khattab denied responsibility, the Russian government blamed the Chechen government for allowing Basayev to use Chechnya as a base. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov denied any involvement in the attacks, but at the same time took no actions to stop Basayev or Khattab. The Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, promised a harsh crackdown on Chechen terrorists: "We'll get them anywhere. If we find terrorists in the shithouse, then we'll waste them in the shithouse. That's all there is to it." By the end of September the Second Chechen War was underway.

Wounded Basayev on a stretchers near Grozny

During the rebel withdrawal from Grozny in January 2000 Basayev lost a foot after stepping on a landmine while leading his men through a minefield. The operation to amputate his foot was videotaped by Adam Tepsurgayev and later televised by Russia's NTV network and Reuters, showing his foot being removed by doctors using a local anaesthetic while the shaven-headed Basayev watched impassively.

Despite this injury, Basayev eluded Russian capture together with other rebels by hiding in forests and mountains. He welcomed assistance from foreign fighters from Afghanistan and other Islamic countries, encouraging them to join the Chechen cause. He also personally executed nine Russian OMON prisoners on April 4, 2000; the men were shot because the Russians had refused to swap them for Yuri Budanov, a recently arrested army officer accused of raping and killing an 18-year-old Chechen woman.^[16]

In May, the Russian side declared Basayev "dead".^[17] The Russian military has also made several claims about Basayev's alleged death in the past. On June 2, 2001 it was reported General Gennady Troshev, then-commander-in-chief of Russian forces in Chechnya, had offered a bounty of one million dollars to anyone who would bring him the head of Basayev.

In August, Basayev commanded a large-scale raid on the Vedensky District. A deputy commander of Russian forces in Chechnya claimed Basayev was wounded in a firefight.^[18]

In January 2002, Basayev's father, Salman, was reputedly killed by Russian forces.^[19] This has not been independently confirmed. Shamil's younger brother, Shirvani, was reported dead by the Russians in 2000, but is, according to numerous accounts, actually living in exile in Turkey where he is involved in coordination of the activities of the diaspora.^{[citation needed]}

Around November 2, 2002, Basayev said on a rebel website that he was responsible for the Moscow theatre siege in which 50 Chechen rebels held about 800 people hostage; Russian forces later stormed the building using gas, killing most of the rebels and more than 100 hostages. Basayev also tendered his resignation from all posts in Maskhadov's government apart from the reconnaissance and sabotage battalion. He defended the operation but asked Maskhadov for forgiveness for not informing him of it.^{[citation needed]}

Government House bombing

On December 27, 2002, Chechen suicide bombers rammed vehicles into the republic's government headquarters in Grozny, bringing down the four-story building and killing about 80 people. Basayev claimed responsibility, published the video of the attack, and said he personally triggered the bombs by remote control.

On May 12, 2003, suicide bombers rammed a truck loaded with explosives into a Russian government compound in Znamenskoye , northern Chechnya, killing 59 people. Two days later a woman got within six feet of Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration, and blew herself up killing herself and 14 people; Kadyrov was unhurt. Basayev claimed responsibility for both attacks; Maskhadov denounced them.

From June until August 2003 Basayev lived in the town of Baksan in nearby Kabardino-Balkaria. Eventually, a skirmish took place between the rebels and policemen from Baksan, who came to check what turned out to be Basayev's safehouse. Basayev escaped, killing a local police official.

On August 8, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell designated Shamil Basayev a threat to U.S. security and citizens.

In late 2003, Basayev claimed responsibility for terrorist bombings in both Moscow and Yessentuki. He said both attacks were carried out by the group operating under his command.^[20]

Shamil Basayev (left) and Aslan Maskhadov (right), during Ramadan 2004

On May 9, 2004 the pro-Russian Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov was killed in Grozny in a bomb attack for which Basayev later claimed responsibility. That explosion killed six people and wounded nearly 60, including the top Russian military commander in Chechnya, who lost his leg; Basayev called it a "small but important victory".

Basayev was accused of commanding the June 21 raid on Nazran in the Russian republic of Ingushetia. In fact, he was shown in a video made of the raid, in which he led a large group of militants. Around 90 people died in this attack, mostly local servicemen and officials of the Russian security forces including the republic's acting Interior Minister. The Ministry building was burned down.

In September 2004 Basayev claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege in which over 350 people, most of them children, were killed and hundreds more injured.^[21] The Russian government put up a bounty of 300m rubles ($10m) for information leading to his capture.^[22] Basayev himself did not participate in the seizure of the school, but claimed to have organized and financed the attack, boasting that the whole operation cost only 8,000 euros. Newspaper reports also linked his Ingush deputy, Magomet Yevloyev, to the Beslan attack. On September 17, 2004, Basayev issued a statement claiming responsibility for the school siege, saying his Riyadus-Salihiin "Martyr Battalion" had carried out this and other attacks. In his message, Basayev described the Beslan massacre as a "terrible tragedy" and blamed it on Russian President Vladimir Putin.^[23]^[24]

Basayev also claimed responsibility for the attacks against civilians during the previous week, in which a metro station in Moscow was bombed (killing 10 people), and two airliners were blown up by suicide bombers (killing 89 people).^[21] Basayev dubbed these attacks "Operation Boomerang". He also said that during the Beslan crisis he offered Putin "independence in exchange for security".^{[citation needed]}

On February 3, 2005, UK's Channel 4 announced that it would air Basayev's interview. In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the broadcast could aid terrorists in achieving their goals and demanded that the British Government call off the broadcast. The British Foreign Office replied that it could not intervene in the affairs of a private TV channel and the interview was aired as scheduled.^[25] The same day, Russian media reported that Shamil Basayev had been killed;^[26] it was the sixth such report about Basayev's demise since 1999.^[26]

Wikinews has related news:

Power crisis in Moscow and central Russia largest ever recorded

In May 2005, Basayev reportedly claimed responsibility for the power outage in Moscow.^[27] The BBC reported that the claim for responsibility was made on a web site connected to Basayev, but conflicted with official reports that sabotage was not involved.

Even though Basayev had a $10 million bounty on his head, he gave an interview to Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky in which he described himself as "a bad guy, a bandit, a terrorist ... but what would you call them?", referring to the Russians. Basayev stated each Russian had to feel war's impact before the Chechen war would stop. Basayev asked "Officially, over 40,000 of our children have been killed and tens of thousands mutilated. Is anyone saying anything about that? ... responsibility is with the whole Russian nation, which through its silent approval gives a 'yes'".^[28] This interview was broadcast on U.S. television network ABC's Nightline program, to the protest of the Russian Government; on August 2, 2005, Moscow banned journalists of the ABC network from working in Russia.^[29]

On August 23, 2005, Basayev rejoined the Chechen separatist government, taking the post of first deputy chairman.^[30] Later this year Basayev claimed responsibility for a raid on Nalchik, the capital of the Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria.^[31] The raid occurred on October 13, 2005; Basayev said that he and his "main units" were only in the city for two hours and then left. There were reports that he had died during the raid, but this was contradicted when the separatist website, Kavkaz Center, posted a letter from him.^[31]

In March 2006, Prime Minister of Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, claimed that upwards of 3,000 police officers were hunting for Basayev in the southern mountains.^[32] On June 15, 2006 Basayev repeated his claim of responsibility for the bombing that killed Akhmad Kadyrov, saying he had paid $50,000 to those who carried out the assassination. He also said he had put a $25,000 bounty on the head of Ramzan, mocking the young Kadyrov in offering the smaller bounty.

On June 27, 2006 Shamil Basayev was made Ichkeria's Vice-President. On July 10, 2006, at 1.06 pm Moscow time, Kavkaz Center quoted him as thanking the Iraqi Mujahideen for eliminating the captured Russian diplomats in Iraq and calling it "a worthy answer to the murder by Russian terrorists from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation of the Chechen diplomat, ex-president of CRI, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev".

On July 10, 2006, Shamil Basayev was killed in the village of Ekazhevo, in Ingushetia, a republic bordering Chechnya.^[33] According to Chechen sources Basayev was riding in one of the cars escorting a KamAZ truck filled with explosives in preparation for an attack when the truck, hitting a pothole, exploded, killing Basayev and three other rebels. Russian officials state that this explosion was the result of the planned special operation.

On December 29, 2006, forensic experts positively identified Basayev's remains.^[34]

According to the official version of Basayev's death, a detonator with a remote control hidden in one of the explosives was detonated by FSB agents, when they had spotted Basayev's car near the truck through UAV video surveillance. A Russian mole in Basayev's force reportedly planted the explosives and was reportedly paid £250,000 for his part in the assassination.^{[citation needed]} Interfax, quoting Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev, reported that the explosion was a result of a truck bomb detonated next to the convoy by Russian agents.^[35] In 2007, however, Moscow prosecutor's office wrote Basayev's death was caused by accidental "detonation of an explosive device while transporting it in an unidentified automobile".

According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant^[36] an autopsy of Shamil Basayev proved that he was killed by an improvised explosive device stuffed with barbed wire ("The medical assessors discovered some 15 similar pieces of wire rod, 10-30 millimeters long and 3-4 millimeters in diameter, in the body.") such bombs are signature products of the Dagestan Islamic extremist group Shariat. The newspaper speculated that the FSB would never use a primitive hand-made bomb when it has advanced high-tech weapons at its disposal; instead the newspaper suspects that Rappani Khalilov (aka Rabbani), a rival separatist leader and a former subordinate of Basayev, was responsible for the attack.

According to Russian Newsweek edition,^[37] Basayev's death was a result of an FSB operation, whose primary aim was to prevent a planned terrorist attack in the days before the G8 summit in St Petersburg; citing unnamed sources within FSB, the magazine claims that although the explosion was planned and executed by FSB agents, they were not aware that Basayev himself was transporting the explosives.

Separatist Chechen sources, however, continued to deny he was assassinated and claimed the truck exploded accidentally.^[38] On Channel 4 News interview, Akhmed Zakayev, the exiled separatist foreign minister, also denied Basayev was assassinated by Russian agents.