Posted on 09/19/2004 1:04:02 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
When Shamil Basayev, a Chechen warlord waging Islamic "holy war" against Russia, first took up arms more than a decade ago, he also took up an unlikely role model: an Argentine atheist lionised by the Soviet Union. Along with his gun, Basayev carried a picture of Marxist rebel Che Guevara.
"He was his idol," recalls Musa Shanibov, a former KGB informant who helped turn Basayev into a warrior during the turmoil that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Like me, Basayev was a Communist Youth member and a romantic," says Shanibov. "I never saw him pray."
Today, Basayev, 39, prays five times a day, styles himself "Allah's slave", wears a green headband with Islamic verse and has admitted, according to a separatist website, responsibility for, among other atrocities, the brutal hostage-taking at Middle School No.1 in Beslan earlier this month.
The site says Basayev claimed responsibility for planning acts of terror that have killed more than 440 people since August and is threatening more attacks.
Basayev says his group, the Riyadus-Salakhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, has carried out a number of successful combat operations on the territory of Russia. The statement on the site then lists two bombs in Moscow, the in-flight destruction of two passenger jets and the Beslan school siege.
Russia has offered a $US10million ($14.3 million) reward for information leading to his arrest.
Basayev's journey from romantic rebellion to Islamist terrorism mirrors the evolution of the Chechen cause: it began as a nationalist struggle professing democracy and freedom as its goals, but is now soaked in the rhetoric and blood of global jihad.
Beneath the changing slogans is a broader shift set in motion by the end of the Cold War. Radical Islam has mutated into something akin to communism in the past - a convenient, off-the-shelf ideology that can clothe complex local conflicts that few would care about otherwise. These include separatist struggles in Aceh in Indonesia, Indian-controlled Kashmir and Russian-ruled Chechnya.
By donning Islamist garb, leaders of these widely different causes can open the door to foreign funds, particularly from wealthy Gulf states, and also to manpower from a pool of footloose militants looking for work. Many who have known Basayev over the years question his new-found religious zeal but acknowledge his skill at tapping the opportunities offered by global jihad.
Now Russia's most wanted criminal, Basayev originally wanted to study law.
After Soviet military service in the 1980s, he tried several times to get into the Moscow State University law department, had to settle for the less prestigious Land Survey Institute, neglected his studies and got kicked out in his second year.
Returning to his home region as the Soviet Union fell apart, Basayev hooked up with the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, a rag-tag outfit whose members ranged from intellectuals interested in folk songs to would-be warriors interested in guns.
Chechnya declared independence from Russia at the end of 1991.
Preoccupied with economic collapse and a host of other problems, Moscow initially did little to challenge Chechnya's "independence". But after a bungled coup attempt by pro-Russian Chechens in 1994, President Boris Yeltsin ordered the army to restore control over the renegade region. Led by Basayev and other veterans of the war in neighbouring Abkhazia, the Chechens put up fierce resistance, halting an all-out Russian assault on Grozny.
Thousands died. Chechens kept fighting.
Then, in 1995, came personal tragedy for Basayev: a Russian bombing raid killed several members of his extended family.
Two weeks after the bombing, Basayev led a guerilla assault on the Russian town of Budyonnovsk, killing dozens and then seizing a hospital, where he and his gang held some 1700 patients, doctors and others hostage.
Russian troops made several clumsy attempts to storm the hospital but Moscow then decided to negotiate.
Basayev, grinning triumphantly from behind sunglasses, later left the hospital in a caravan of buses provided by Russia, journeying back to Chechnya, followed by a refrigerated vehicle carrying the remains of dead comrades.
A year after the Budyonnovsk raid, Russia pulled out of Chechnya. Arab militants, though only marginally involved, claimed Russia's defeat as their victory, comparing it with Moscow's earlier rout in Afghanistan.
The ruthless calculation that made Basayev such a formidable warrior proved ill-suited to the politics of relative peace. Trounced by a more moderate commander, Aslan Maskhadov, in a presidential election, Basayev became prime minister but bridled at taking orders.
A big factor pushing Basayev towards radical Islam was the lure of money from the Middle East, which increased sharply from the mid-1990s.
In 1999 he invaded Dagestan; Russia, in turn, reinvaded Chechnya. A new war had begun. It rages on today, with most towns now under fragile Russian control In February 2000, Basayev led his men in a hasty retreat from Grozny under Russian fire and stepped on a land mine. It blew off his right foot.
Reported close to death and even dead several times, Basayev disappeared for many months. After a long recuperation, he re-emerged, announcing himself head of an Islamic Brigade of Martyrs and orchestrated a series of bloody attacks outside Chechnya. These included a 2002 raid on a Moscow theatre and a June assault in Ingushetia.
Andrei Babitsky, a prominent Russian journalist once labelled a traitor by President Vladimir Putin for his sympathetic coverage of Chechen suffering and contacts with Chechen rebels, says the Beslan attack had Basayev's "handwriting all over it." But the assault, says Babitsky, "was a fatal mistake. He had a chance to become the Islamic Che Guevara. With the blood of so many children on his hands, that's all over now".
Talk about blowback! The whole soviet socialist mythology that was created and promoted throughout the world is coming back to haunt the Russians as they struggle with their own internal rebels...
Makes sense, since Che shot twelve-year-olds as well...
Gal 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Babitskiy finally gets it. I wonder if Politkovskaya can be far behind.
Excellent informative article.
ping to fascinating background info
Dead Che
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