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The leader of the people known almost universally in the Western press as Chechen "independence fighters," Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris (Shamil Basayev), has issued an appraisal of the last year of jihad in Chechnya. His statement, "Nothing Can Stop This Jihad," can be found at the Muslim Kavkaz Center site (with thanks to Nicolei). Here are some excerpts that offer an insight into the motives and goals of jihadists around the world — motives and goals identical to those I explicated in Onward Muslim Soldiers: In the name of God, Most Benevolent, Most Merciful! (Bismillah Rahman Rahim!) Praise Allah, the Lord...

Make Comment View Comments Printable Article Email Article Font 6pt 7pt 8pt 9pt 10pt 11pt 12pt 13pt 14pt 15pt 16pt 17pt 18pt 19pt 20pt Jihad Declared in Chechnya By Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com | March 16, 2005 Stop the presses: Islamic forces in Chechnya have declared jihad! The cause, explains jihadist spokesman Movladi Udugov, was the killing last week of former Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov in a Russian raid. “By killing Maskhadov,” Udugov fulminated, “the Kremlin has killed the last illusion of those Chechens who, despite everything, still believed in so-called ‘international law’ and a civilized form of dealing with the...

Influential militant killed by Basayev's order, Chechen police say18.09.2005, 00.17 GROZNY, September 18 (Itar-Tass) - Chechnya's First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, who supervises law-enforcement bodies, said influential field commander Akhmed Avdorkhanov had been killed. Avdorkhanov was killed by the order of terrorist Shamil Basayev, Kadyrov said in a statement on Saturday, because they quarreled over "a 1.5-million-dollar fund that had come to militants from their foreign sponsors." "Basayev killed him because he wanted to take all the money," he added. Avdorkhanov was chief of guards of militants' leader Aslan Maskhadov, destroyed in an operation by federal forces in the...

GROZNY, March 24 (RIA Novosti) - Alvi Tosuyev, Maskhadov's closest assistant, has been killed in Chechnya, the joint press center of the Russian Interior Ministry reports. "Tosuyev was killed in Berdikel (Komsomolskoye), outside Grozny," the press center reports. Tosuyev was Maskhadov's personal bodyguard, and previously was the closest associate of Arab mercenary Abu Al-Walid who was also killed in Chechnya. "Tosuyev known as Assad masterminded the terrorist attack against Kadyrov, the first vice premier of Chechnya," the press center said.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Russia faces renewed attacks from Chechen rebels after its security forces killed moderate leader Aslan Maskhadov, guerrilla warlord Shamil Basayev has warned in an interview published by Swedish TT news agency. Basayev, blamed by Moscow for a series of bloody strikes against civilian targets including last September's Beslan school massacre, said he was no longer bound by a commitment to peace he had given former Chechen leader Maskhadov. Russian security forces killed Maskhadov on March 8. "Nobody can prevent me from responding to violence with violence," TT quoted Basayev as saying in written replies to questions...

The killing of Chechen spiritual and political leader Aslan Maskhadov by Russian forces has been presented to the West as a triumph in the Global War Against Terror. Foreigners who understand little of the Caucasian Muslims and their causes and struggles -- meaning just about everybody else in the world, including the majority of Russians -- may be taken in by such claims. Maskhadov was reported dead on Tuesday, March 8, following action by Russian agents in a Chechen town with the evocative name, as will become clear, of Tolstoy-Yurt. Although the full details of his death have yet to...

BALTIC STATES CONDEMN KILLING Deputies in the parliaments of Estonia and Lithuania condemned the killing of Aslan Maskhadov. Andres Herkel, a member of the Pro Patria Union party, said that in eliminating the rebel leader, "Russia lost the last hope for resolving the conflict in Chechnya by peaceful means," Rosbalt reported on March 9. Herkel, who is also heads the "For Human Rights in Chechnya" group in Estonia's parliament, which has called on Russia to negotiate with Maskhadov, said that the slain rebel leader was Chechnya's "national leader" and that his murder was on par with the assassinations of Chechen...

Stop the presses: Islamic forces in Chechnya have declared jihad! The cause, explains jihadist spokesman Movladi Udugov, was the killing last week of former Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov in a Russian raid. "By killing Maskhadov," Udugov fulminated, "the Kremlin has killed the last illusion of those Chechens who, despite everything, still believed in so-called 'international law' and a civilized form of dealing with the current terrorist regime in Moscow…We ask God to accept the holy war of...Aslan Maskhadov!" Western observers may be forgiven for finding this puzzling. Maskhadov was a mastermind of the Beslan school massacre, in which Chechen jihadists...

Soldiers’ Mothers Urge Russia to Give Maskhadov’s Body to Relatives Created: 16.03.2005 11:00 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:00 MSK, 14 hours 28 minutes ago MosNews A Russian human rights organization, the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees, has said the body of the killed Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov should be handed over to his relatives. The Russian authorities do not plan to hand over the body, saying Maskhadov was a terrorist. According to a recently approved law, the bodies of killed terrorists do not have to be handed over to their relatives. The organization’s executive secretary, Valentina Melnikova, was quoted...

One day after the death of Aslan Maskhadov, a little-known Chechen cleric from Argun, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, became the new leader of Ichkeria. Sadulayev openly condones terrorism and murder as legitimate methods in the conduct of jihad. Maskhadov's very existence was the last obstacle preventing the war for Chechen independence from turning into a Wahhabi revolution in the North Caucasus. Moscow has removed that obstacle.

Maskhadov to be bried in anonymous grave: [World News]: Moscow, Mar 9 : Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, the suspected mastermind of the Beslan school hostage crisis who was killed in a security operation by Russian commandoes, will be buried in an anonymous grave. "Maskhadov's body will not be handed over to his relatives, nor will they be notified about the place and date of his burial," Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel was quoted as saying by Interfax. "The (anti-terrorism) law does not provide for handing over the bodies of terrorists to their relatives," Shepel said. It would take...

Whatever Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov may have been in 1995 or 1997, he was a terrorist on the day he died. As compared to a monster like Chechen commander Shamil Basayev, Maskhadov might have been described as a "moderate" up to 1998. In January 1997, he became the first and last legitimately elected president of Chechnya. However, his incapacity to cope with pressures endemic to Chechen society led to his drift toward radicalism beginning in the latter part of that year. In 1999, he disbanded the Chechen parliament and abolished the same Chechen constitution that legitimized his presidency, replacing...

Whatever Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov may have been in 1995 or 1997, he was a terrorist on the day he died. As compared to a monster like Chechen commander Shamil Basayev, Maskhadov might have been described as a "moderate" up to 1998. In January 1997, he became the first and last legitimately elected president of Chechnya. However, his incapacity to cope with pressures endemic to Chechen society led to his drift toward radicalism beginning in the latter part of that year.

When I first heard that Aslan Maskhadov--the former president of the self-proclaimed separatist Republic of Chechnya and the nominal head of the separatist insurgency--was killed by the Russian Special Forces, my reaction was quite a mixed one. On the one hand, I agree that he was probably the last separatist with whom Moscow could have struck a deal acceptable to both Russia and Chechnya. With all his faults, he was a democratically elected leader of the breakaway Russian Republic. Also I have a deep anger at the Kremlin thugs for starting twice in the past decade despicably savage, barbaric and...

The Chechens' American friends The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own John Laughland Wednesday September 8, 2004 The Guardian An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as...

MOSCOW, March 11 (RIA Novosti) - Utterances by the press secretary of the Polish Foreign Ministry do not reflect the official position of Warsaw on the destruction of the leader of Chechen separatists, Aslan Maskhadov. Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld said this in the telephone conversation on Friday with his Russian analog Sergei Lavrov. "The Polish foreign minister expressed regret in connection with the utterances by the press secretary of the Foreign Ministry of Poland, which, he said, do not reflect the official position of Warsaw on this question", reads the communique of the Russian Foreign Ministry. The telephone conversation...

RUSSIA: Chechen Rebel Losses Increase March 10, 2005: In southern Russia, police in Dagestan arrested two aides to Chechen terrorist chief Shamil Basayev. The growing hostility of Chechens to the rebels and terrorists has forced many of the Chechen terrorists to move their bases to places like Dagestan, which border Chechnya, and contain Chechen populations which have not grown weary of supporting terrorism (and being caught in the middle of the subsequent battles.) The number of Chechen terrorists continues to shrink, as does the number of attacks they can make. But, like earlier outbreaks of Chechen violence (going back over...

Little-known Chechen cleric Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev will take over as interim rebel leader after Aslan Maskhadov's death earlier this week, rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev said Thursday. Analysts said, however, that the announcement was probably an attempt by radical warlord Shamil Basayev to buy time as he figures out his next move. The Federal Security Service announced Tuesday that Maskhadov had been killed that day in a bunker during an FSB sweep in Tolstoy-Yurt, a village near Grozny. Zakayev, who served as Maskhadov's representative and lives in exile in London, called on all rebels to line up behind Sadulayev, a Wahhabi born...

MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti political commentator Yury Filippov) "The international terrorist and bandit formation leader, Maskhadov, has been killed." This is how Nikolai Patrushev, the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), chose to phrase his report to President Putin on Aslan Maskhadov's death in Chechnya. Leading Russian politicians and the majority of media sources described Maskhadov in similar terms, such as "the terrorist leader," "a terrorist on an international scale" and "a source of evil." In the past three years, Maskhadov, the former president of the self-proclaimed republic of Ichkeria, compromised himself so much with his links to international terrorism...

MOSCOW, March 9 (RIA Novosti) - A set of special arrangements by Russian secret services in the North Caucasus preceded the elimination of Chechen terrorist leader Aslan Maskhadov, a source in Russian secret anti-terrorist structures informed RIA Novosti on Wednesday. "During the past few weeks a set of special operations was conducted in Chechnya and a number of constituent members of the Russian Federation to locate Chechen terrorist leaders and emissaries of the Al Qaeda international terrorist organization," the interlocutor said on condition of anonymity. According to the source, the final stage of the operations involved considerable special task forces...