Category Archives: Russia

Dagestan’s Politics of Murder: The Unsurprising Death of Nadirshaykh Kachilayev

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Andrew McGregor

Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, John Hopkins University

November 19, 2003

BACKGROUND:

Nadirskhaykh Khachilayev’s car was approaching his home in Makhachkala when a passing Lada motorcar opened fire with machine-guns, killing the 44-year-old leader of the Lak community. Police claimed their investigation led to three unidentified Chechen suspects after finding a burnt-out Lada on the outskirts of Makhachkala. While it is possible the Lak leader was the victim of a political assassination, he may have been the victim of a blood feud, arising after the deaths of several ethnic Dargin policemen in the 1998 Islamist assault on Parliament.

Lak 1Nadirshaykh Kachilayev

The Khachilayev brothers seized on ethnic politics to build their political base during the years of uncertainty following the demise of the Soviet Union, providing the muscle for the Lak community’s Tsubarz movement. Using the revenues of their criminal activities, the Khachilayevs armed and equipped the Lak national movement during the Novalakskii dispute. The land belonging to Akkin Chechens, deported from Dagestan’s Aukhovskii rayon in 1944 had been given to Laks and Avars, and the area renamed Novolakskii rayon. The resettled Laks became the victims of a 1991 Russian policy to resettle internally exiled peoples, including the Akkin Chechens. Following a brief armed confrontation, the Khachilayevs proposed a compromise that was accepted by all parties. The settlement served to propel the Khachilayevs to the leadership of the Lak movement.

The Laks are an indigenous Caucasus group, believing themselves to be descended from an eighth century Syrian Arab governor of Dagestan. They were the first group in the area to convert to Islam after the conquest of Abu Maslama in 733. This early conversion may be only legendary, but by the 15th century the Laks were spreading Islam throughout Dagestan, becoming known as Ghazi-Ghumuqs, “warriors for Islam.” The Lak are one of 14 ethnic groups receiving equal representation in the Daghestan State Council.

Lak 2Lak Regions of Russia (Joshua Project)

In 1994 the Dargin group succeeded in having their nominee, Magomedali Magomedov, appointed to the post of Chairman of the State Council. Charges of corruption and ethnic favoritism began almost immediately. Ironically, some of the strongest charges came from the leaders of Dagestan’s powerful ethnic mafias, including the Khachilayev brothers. Publicly, Khachilayev posed as a corruption-fighter, and had embarrassed the government in recent years by collecting incriminating documents. When nothing came of his campaign, he declared himself retired from politics. After his acquittal on charges of illegal arms possession in March 2002, Khachilayev re-entered politics, alleging government responsibility for 35 unsolved political murders.

Despite having only scant knowledge of Islam, Nadirshaykh took the leadership of the Union of Muslims of Russia (SMR) in 1996 and embarked on an ambitious program to promote himself as the leader of Russia’s Muslim community. In the same year he became a member of the Russian Duma. Dagestan’s religious community, deeply divided by schisms between various tariqas (Sufi orders) and Salafist reformers, has failed to generate any widely accepted leaders, allowing populist politicians such as Khachilayev to assume roles as ‘Islamic’ leaders. As the Khachilayevs and other Laks gained prominence in Dagestan’s political system, Nadirshaykh began to dabble in separatism. In May 1998 Magomed and Nadirshaykh joined forces with the Avar national movement and others to seize the Daghestan Parliament building in Makhachkala in the name of Islam. The leaders described the event as a protest against Daghestan’s corruption and feudalism rather than a coup d’état. These few hours under arms led to the dissolution of the SMR and criminal charges for the Khachilayevs. Though found guilty, the brothers were given suspended sentences and later amnestied. Magomed was murdered by one of his bodyguards in 2000.

IMPLICATIONS:

After 1991, Lak resentment of Avar and Dargin domination of official Islamic structures increased. Khachilayev was instrumental in arranging the 1996 peace negotiations that ended the first Chechen conflict, one of many times in which the Khachilayevs were used as mediators by Moscow. Following the war, Khachilayev established contacts with figures like Muammar Khadafi, Saddam Hussein and Louis Farrakhan while calling for an Islamic state in Dagestan.

Beginning in 1998, there were attempts to establish autonomous ‘Wahhabi’ enclaves governed by shari’a . Dagestan relies overwhelmingly on federal subsidies from Moscow that would be endangered by any local separatist movement. The radicals of the Jama’at al-Islamiyun al-Daghestani led by Bagauddin Kebedov were opposed not only by traditional Sufis, but also by elements of the Dagestani mafia, who had suffered from local Wahhabi anti-crime campaigns. The jama’at declared jihad against Daghestani authorities in 1998. Though there were reports Khachilayev was actively involved in fighting on the Wahhabi side during the 1999 incursion by al-Khattab and Shamyl Basayev, he vigorously denied them. Criminal charges of armed insurrection were eventually dropped for lack of evidence, but there were reports that Basayev sentenced Khachilayev to death for failing to rally Daghestani Muslims to their cause. It is unlikely, however, that Basayev now has the time to indulge himself in assassinations that have no effect on the Chechen conflict.

CONCLUSIONS:

In an interview done shortly before his death, Khachilayev was in a pessimistic mood regarding the future of Islam in Dagestan: “The people are not ready yet to accept a Shari’a state, they are afraid of the word ‘Shari’a’, they think that it is something very harsh and scary.”

Though Khachilayev’s political influence had waned greatly, he was reported to be contemplating another run at the State Duma despite warnings not to do so. Khachilayev himself often said that Russian security forces were preparing to kill him. Chechen rebel sources report that the Russian-backed Chechen National Guard leader Sulim Yamadayev fulfilled a four year old contract on Khachilayev’s life, in an attempt to instigate fighting between Laks and Chechens in the still volatile Novalak rayon. Lak leaders have already promised revenge for Khachilayev’s death, ensuring Dagestan’s cycle of political murder will continue.

From Russia to Cuba: The Journey of the Russian Taliban

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Andrew McGregor

Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, John Hopkins University

July 16, 2003

BACKGROUND:

The reaction from the Tatar leaders of official Russian Islam to the American campaign in Afghanistan was mixed. Mufti Talgat Tadjuddin referred to the ‘aggressive, half-learned, maniacally ambitious rabble forming the core of the Taliban’. Siberian Mufti Nafigulla Ashirov condemned the American ‘crusade’ against Islam and warned of the threat posed to Russia by a permanent US military presence in Central Asia. Ashirov added that every Muslim had the right to fight on behalf of the Taliban. The powerful Muslim Duma member Abdul-Wahid Niyazov declared that it was clear that the U.S. was ‘pursuing goals far-flung from the struggle against terrorism’. None went so far as to encourage Muslim volunteers to join the Taliban.

Russian Taliban 1Mufti Nafigulla Ashirov (RFE/RL)

The eight Russian citizens in Guantanamo Bay are members of the Tatar and Balkar ethnic communities. Despite American claims that they were involved in heavy fighting with elite Chechen units in Afghanistan, none of the prisoners are Chechen. The Russian citizens were incorporated into the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a guerrilla group led by Tahir Yuldash and Juma Namangani (the latter believed killed in last year’s fighting in Afghanistan). Under pressure in their operational theatre of Central Asia, the IMU had moved to Afghanistan to rebuild, and was already involved in the fighting against the Northern Alliance before 9/11.

In an unusual step, the U.S. allowed representatives of the Russian Prosecutor General’s office (supported by FSB and Defence Ministry officials) access to the prisoners in March 2002. The team was led by Igor Tkachev, Russia’s most experienced investigator in cases involving radical Islam. Tkachev reported that several of the prisoners were seeking extradition, believing they faced the death penalty in the U.S. Criminal charges of illegal border crossing and membership in illegal armed formations were laid in Russia after the Prosecutor’s team returned, representing a possibility of 8 years in prison.

IMPLICATIONS:

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 left Russian Muslims cut off from their traditional ties with the Islamic communities of the newly independent Central Asian nations. Due to the absence of Islamic educational institutions in Russia, most of Russia’s Muslim clerics had been trained in Tashkent and Bukhara. Much of the slack was picked up by a massive Saudi-financed campaign to spread Saudi-style Salafist Islam (‘Wahhabism’) in Russia.

The backgrounds of the Russian Taliban reflect the grass-roots dissatisfaction with official Islam. The first three were captured at the siege of Kunduz by the Uzbek forces of Rashid Dostum, and were only discovered to be Russian citizens after their arrival in Cuba. They included Rasul Kudayev of Kabardino-Balkaria, Ravil Gumarov and Shamil Khaziev (alias Almaz Sharipov), the latter two natives of Bashkortostan. 32-year old Khaziev is a former policeman who left his work in 1997 to move to Chelyabinsk, where he developed an interest in Islam. According to Russian sources, Khaziev joined the Chechen mujahidin in 1998 before leaving for Afghanistan in 2000. 38-year old Gumarov is reported to have known Kudayev from a ‘Wahhabist’ madrassa (Islamic school) in Naberezhnye Chelny, but found his own way to the Taliban through Uzbekistan in early 2001. Both Khaziev and Gumarov told Tkachev that they were looking for a ‘real Islamic state’. Russian prosecutors are especially interested in questioning these suspects at length about their association at the Yoldyz madrassa with Deniz Saitakov, a Balkar radical accused of taking part in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. Saitakov was reported killed in Chechnya, but his body has never been recovered.

Kudayev, only 20 when taken prisoner, was already known to the FSB and is alleged to have been closely associated with the jama’at members tried last year for attempting to overthrow the Kabardino-Balkaria government. Kudayev, like many of the others, claims to have been an Islamic student compelled to join the armed units of the IMU. The remaining detainees include a Balkar and four Tatars including a Siberian Tatar from the far northern Tyumen region. There is considerable friction in the Tatar community between Arabian educated or influenced Muslims (‘Wahhabis’ in Russian parlance) and official Islam, which follows the traditional Hanafi madhab (judicial school of Islam).

russian Taliban 2Guantanamo Bay

Tatarstan official Islam works within the non-threatening framework of ‘Euro-Islam’, a rejuvenation of Tatar reformist Islam, Jadidism, which first developed in the 1880s. The ‘young Imams’ of the community favor a full Islam-based participation in the political process, unlike many of the older leaders who prefer separation of mosque and state. Jadidism has failed to penetrate far from the Tatar region and is opposed even there by the more conservative Qadimist faction. Muslims not wishing to become part of officially registered congregations are often drawn to radical ‘unofficial’ communities that encourage confrontational responses to White House and Kremlin policies in the Islamic world. The isolation of popular Islam during the Soviet period encouraged the return and growth of native customs alongside Islamic practices. The rapid expansion of post-Soviet Islam has led to a proliferation of spiritual leaders with no religious training. A recent Russian decision to bar Islamic teachers of Arab background has only exacerbated this problem. Exposure to the outside world of Islam has encouraged some young Muslims in the belief they have gained access to ‘Pure Islam’. The many accretions and innovations (bid’a) in Russian Islamic practice tend to be brutally exposed under the harsh light of Salafist teachings.

CONCLUSIONS:

The existence of radical Islam provides a divisive force in the Russian Muslim community that is both constant and elusive. The number of militant Islamists in Russia remains extremely small, yet according to the leaders of official Islam everyone is practicing Wahhabism except their own faction. There have been attempts by Tadjuddin’s rival, Mufti Ravil Gainutdin, to link Tajuddin with Bin Laden, using the flimsiest of evidence. For his part, Tadjuddin recently warned of tens of thousands of ‘extremist zombies’ returning to Russia from Islamic training centers abroad.

While their leaders brawl in public, moderate and secular Tatars grow increasingly frustrated with the portrayal of their community in the popular Russian press as a nest of potential terrorists. It is uncertain how many Russian citizens fought on the side of the Taliban. What appears to be certain is that the Russians held in Cuba represent the flotsam of war rather than threats to American security. No links to al-Qaeda have been established or even suggested. The prisoners’ value to Russian investigators is likely far greater than to the U.S.

Muftis to the Front in a Russian Jihad: Official Islam Goes to War

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Andrew McGregor

CACI Analyst, May 21, 2003

BACKGROUND:

On April 3, 2003, the man who claims the leadership of Russia’s twenty million Muslims brandished a sword at a rally of 4,000 people in Ufa, Bashkortostan, and declared a jihad against U.S. forces and U.S. President George Bush, ‘the Anti-Christ of the world’. The man was Mufti Talgat Tadjuddin, the ethnic Tatar leader of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Russia and the CIS (TSDUMR). Tadjuddin suggested that the jihad would take the form of a fund to buy weapons and food for the Iraqis. The Mufti emphasized that the declaration of jihad was only the second in modern Russian history, the first having been made against Germany at Stalin’s instigation in 1941.

Mufti 1Talgat Tadjuddin

On April 15, a huge rally was organized by Duma deputy Ghadzhi Makhachaev in the Daghestan capital of Makhachkala. Numerous politicians and religious figures declared that 8,000 Daghestanis were ready to defend Iraq from an American invasion, a figure confirmed at the time by the Iraqi Embassy, which claimed to have the names and signatures of all 8,000. Just before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, Tadjuddin visited Baghdad at the head of an interfaith Muslim and Orthodox peace mission. While there, Tadjuddin postured grandly, calling President Bush a ‘drunken cowboy’ and vowed to remain in Iraq throughout any American invasion.

In the end, Tadjuddin returned to Russia with the rest of the mission before bombing began. On his return, Tadjuddin accused the UK of both inventing and supporting ‘Wahhabism’. With reference to the Americans, the Mufti announced that ‘every inch of land will burn beneath the feet of the warmongers’. In Daghestan, early enthusiasm translated into the departure of only two Siberian Tatar volunteers for the front and a reversal a month later by Makhachaev, who declared the efforts of the Foreign Ministry on Iraq to be sufficient. Makhachaev is a major player in the often brutal world of Daghestani politics, and participated in the May 1998 Islamist assault on the Daghestan Parliament led by the Khachilaev brothers. On March 26 Makhachaev survived an assassination attempt by an unknown assailant when he answered his cell phone just in time to have it block an otherwise fatal shot to the head. It remains unclear whether the attempt was related to Makhachaev’s political role or his control of the Daghestan oil industry.

IMPLICATIONS:

Soviet official Islam was rigidly controlled with a central administration and four geographically based muftiyats. Since perestroika, Russian official Islam has broken into two major muftiyats (led by Tadjuddin and his main rival Ravil Gaynutdin) and dozens of lesser groups, all with overlapping spheres of influence. Nearly all the half-dozen major Islamic leaders in Russia are Tatar, with the exception of the powerful Duma deputy, Abdul-Wahid Niyazov, a half-Tatar convert to Islam. While most are related by marriage into a spiritually powerful Tatar clan, the Muslim leaders spend an inordinate amount of time accusing each other of promoting ‘Wahhabism’ or various obscure heresies.

In contrast to the silence that met the Daghestani declaration of jihad, there was a furor throughout Russia at Tadjuddin’s statements. Movladi Udagov, a Qatar-based leader of Islamic-minded Chechen separatist groups, accused Tadjuddin of being an agent of the FSB (Federal Security Service), and proclaimed the imam to be an apostate, the most serious charge in Islam. Siberian-based Mufti Nafigulla Ashirov initially spoke of ‘tens of thousands’ of Russian Muslims ready to fight in Iraq, but later said that no Russian Muslim took Tadjuddin’s declaration seriously. Despite being a frequent visitor to Iraq himself, Chechnya’s Kremlin-appointed governor Akhmad Khadyrov, a former Mufti of Chechnya, called Tadjuddin’s declaration ‘mindless self-promotion’. Even the chief Mufti of his own power base in Bashkortostan failed to support Tadjuddin.

Mufti 2Ravil Gaynutdin (Asia News)

Tadjuddin’s most serious challenger for President Putin’s favor is a former protégé, Mufti Ravil Gaynutdin, leader of the Council of Muftiis of Russia (SMR). In recent years, Gaynutdin has attempted to make Moscow the capital of Russian Islam, with the financial and political aid of Russian Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Gaynutdin was scathing in his response to Tadjuddin’s jihad, calling the Mufti a ‘false prophet’, whose call for jihad carried ‘neither clerical nor legal nor moral force’. The Russian Justice Ministry warned that any military aid or intervention in Iraq by Russian citizens would be subject to criminal investigation and there were threats from the Prosecutor-General’s office that the TSDUMR could be disbanded for inciting religious hatred. In their attempts to garner the Kremlin’s support, Gainutdin, Tadjuddin and other leading Muftis all proclaimed the legitimacy of the recent referendum on Chechnya’s future in the Russian Federation. Tadjuddin made sure to note that his organization was the first to support the referendum, calling it ‘a necessary measure against terrorists’. The referendum campaign was accompanied by several gestures from Russian authorities to reach out to the Russian Islamic community at a time when Muslims are alarmed at the growing patronage of Russian Orthodoxy by the Kremlin.

CONCLUSIONS:

Lacking popular support, the Daghestan jihad amounted only to a war of words. The demonstrations of anti-American militancy in Ufa and Makhachkala appear to be unrelated. There is little contact between the leaders of the North Caucasus muftiyats and those in the Volga/Urals region. Islamic revival in the latter area is closely tied to Tatar and Bashkir nationalism. Tadjuddin’s declaration followed a fractious meeting in late March of all Russia’s Islamic leaders, a failed attempt by the Kremlin to unify official Islam as in Soviet times. Tadjuddin was one of the ‘young Imams’ who emerged from Central Asian religious schools in the 1980s. These individuals opposed the passive pro-Soviet conduct of the older spiritual leaders and actually succeeded in gaining a number of concessions from the government before religious laws were relaxed in 1990, permitting the modern Russian Islamic revival. By the early 90’s, Tadjuddin was himself being challenged by a new generation of ‘young Imams’ on nearly identical charges, with the addition of schizophrenia. Tadjuddin’s jihad may thus be regarded as a desperate attempt to exploit public opinion to outmaneuver his rivals in official structures and the young Tatar radicals. There remains the possibility that the ever-pliant Tadjuddin was encouraged by the Kremlin to adopt a militant pose, a discrete means of communicating Moscow’s displeasure with Washington’s campaign in Iraq.

This article first appeared in the May 21, 2003 issue of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute’s CACI Analyst.

Amir Abu al-Walid and the Islamic Component of the Chechen War

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Andrew McGregor

Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, John Hopkins University

February 26, 2003

BACKGROUND:

A native of southern Saudi Arabia, al-Walid’s real name is ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Ghamidi. In 1987, al-Walid left for Peshawar, the transit point for Arab volunteers heading into Afghanistan. There, he would have received training and support from the Mukhtab al-Khidmat, an organization run by Dr. ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam and funded by Osama bin Laden. As the Afghan war wound down, al-Walid made a short trip home before volunteering for new jihad operations in Bosnia in 1993.

al-Walid 1Amir Abu al-Walid (al-Jazeera)

In June of 2002, the London-based Saudi newspaper al-Majallah published an interview with al-Walid’s family in Saudi Arabia. His family revealed that he was pious but religiously moderate, one of eleven sons, and once had a taste for acting, but had little to say about his days in Afghanistan. In Bosnia, al-Walid may have served alongside some 300 veterans of the Afghanistan war. While they proved effective fighters, they were joined by hundreds of other foreign Muslims whose military skills were questionable, and whose religious Puritanism antagonized tolerant Bosnian Muslims.

Many of the ‘Afghans’ were organized as part of the regular Bosnian Army’s 7th Battalion under the command of Abu ‘Abd al-Aziz ‘Barbaros’, an Indian Muslim with experience in Afghanistan and Kashmir. When the Dayton Accords made the mujahidin presence in Bosnia politically uncomfortable, several hundred of the ‘Afghans’ began transferring to Chechnya in late 1995. Al-Walid may have served with Khattab in Chechnya as early as March 1995, planning and participating in some of the war’s most successful actions against Russian convoys. In the role of Khattab’s naib (deputy), he joined the 1999 attack on Dagestan that contributed to sparking the current war. In April 2000 he led a successful attack on the Russian 51st Paratroop regiment.

In May 2002 came reports that al-Walid was holding the captured crew of a Mi-24 helicopter hostage, threatening to kill them if the Russians did not release 20 jailed Chechens. There are allegations that al-Walid is variously an agent of Saudi intelligence, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Bin-Laden’s al-Qaeda. The FSB claims that al-Walid organized the 1999 Russian apartment-block bombings, planned bacteriological attacks on Russia, and was behind the May 2002 Kaspiysk bombing in Daghestan.

IMPLICATIONS:

In September 2002, questions were raised as to al-Walid’s actual existence. The Director of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya claimed that Akhmed Zakayev and other representatives of the Maskhadov government had told him there was no such person as Abu al-Walid. Russian journalist Anna Politkoyskaya (one of the few outsiders to report from behind Chechen lines) was quoted as saying none of the fighters she knew had ever seen al-Walid. Further complicating the picture were numerous reports that al-Walid had drowned in June 2002 while crossing the Khul-Kulao River by horse. The first known pictures of al-Walid appeared on Movladi Udagov’s Kavkaz (Caucasus) website. The site showed a youthful looking al-Walid posing with Basayev, Maskhadov and other leaders of the Chechen rebellion.

al-Walid 2Abu al-Walid with Chechen Field Commander Shamyl Basayev

Al-Walid affects the long hair and beard popular with the late al-Khattab and other Arab mujahidin in Chechnya. Russia blames Abu al-Walid and Shamil Basayev for the devastating December 27 truck-bombing of the Chechen administration building in Grozny, allegedly carried out with funding from the Muslim Brotherhood. Russian officials claimed that the ‘Arab methods’ used in the suicide-bombing pointed to ‘Arab militants trained in Afghanistan’. The Muslim Brotherhood has vigorously denied any responsibility for the Grozny bombing or other violent acts, though they are likely involved in fund-raising for the Chechen mujhadin as well as their acknowledged funding of humanitarian organizations active in Chechnya.

Al-Walid appears to be serving as deputy to Basayev, the Amir of the Majlis al-Shura. Basayev has resigned his command, however, since admitting responsibility for the disastrous events in Moscow. Officially, Basayev is now nothing more than the commander of the Riyadus- Salakhin Suicide Battallion, a newly formed unit of radical Islamists. Al-Walid continues as Commander of Eastern Front operations. The mujahidin under al-Walid are multi-ethnic in origin. Besides Arabs from the Gulf region and North Africa, there have at times been volunteers from Turkey, other parts of the Russian North Caucasus, Central Asia, Western Europe and even Japan. The composition of the group is fluid but is hard pressed at present to insert new members. A group of about 80 Arabs may have entered Chechnya last Fall.

There are also claims that many Saudi-sponsored Arabs active in Chechnya have recently relocated to the Middle East due to the failure of the Salafists to gain popular support in the Caucasus. Khattab understood the importance of public relations, realizing that in order to keep funds coming, the Chechen jihad had to be visible. A videotape team always accompanied Khattab’s operations, and the Amir frequently made himself available for interviews (by satellite phone or other means) to the Muslim media. Al-Walid’s more secretive style may jeopardize the mujahidin’s financial links.

CONCLUSIONS:

Russian allegations of al-Qaeda control of al-Walid and the Arab fighters (and lately, the entire Chechen rebellion) make for useful propaganda, intended to draw American support. These charges rest on the belief that Bin Laden controls the thoughts and actions of every militant in the Islamic world. Since his death, Khattab’s military career has been compared favorably to Bin Laden’s by some of the most radical shaykhs in Saudi Arabia. While Khattab was a constant presence on the battlefield and never pretended to be a scholar of Islam, Bin Laden has pretensions of religious leadership and has brought destruction upon Muslim lands. Khattab strongly denied any al-Qaeda connections to his command.

The importance of the Arab fighters in the Chechen war may actually be diminishing at the same time as Russian authorities are trying to emphasize it. While their numbers are too small to affect the fight one way or another, they remain important in command roles and as conduits to those in the Islamic world willing to support the struggle. Unlike the Russians, the Chechens have a very limited pool of manpower to draw upon, making it nearly impossible to refuse the help of any trained volunteer. Veterans of Afghanistan were initially important in training Chechen rebels, but such training is no longer needed, as Chechens have mastered their own tactics and weaponry. Shrinking financial support from the Gulf States may further reduce the influence of the Arab mujahidin in Chechnya.

The Two Faces of Salman Raduyev: The strange odyssey of a Chechen terrorist

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Aberfoyle International Security Analysis

Monograph Series no. 1

Andrew McGregor

December 2002

Salman Raduyev before his disappearance

Salman Raduyev after extensive facial reconstruction

One of Russia’s most wanted men was sentenced to life in prison in December 2001 after a sensational and controversial trial. Field Commander Salman Raduyev, one of the strangest characters to hit international headlines in recent years, was convicted of a host of violent crimes, including terrorism, pre-meditated murder, hostage-taking, banditry, leading an armed group, and ‘organizing explosions’.  Raduyev was described during the trial by Russia’s Prosecutor-General as ‘the Chechen Bin Laden’. There remain many unanswered questions about Raduyev’s sudden death in prison after his conviction. Many Chechens as well as Russians are glad to be rid of the erratic field commander, who has in the past threatened to strike Russia with chemical weapons. Raduyev, who underwent radical plastic surgery in 1996, was captured in early March of 2001 in a house well behind Russian lines. The operation was carried out by a special anti-terrorist strike-force of the FSB, the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB.

The ever-slippery Raduyev had already pulled the trick of returning from the dead, but after his conviction he faced the living death of a life sentence in a Russian penitentiary. Raduyev often presented the world two faces: Chechen patriot or Russian provocateur?  Or was Raduyev just a charismatic if ‘creepy’ madman who manipulated the political chaos and clan ties of Chechnya to rise far above his capabilities? Many who knew him well would agree to the latter, noting that he was unknown before he became son-in-law to the late Dzhokar Dudayev, the first Chechen president.  Russian prosecutors simply say that Raduyev was a clever and cold-blooded terrorist. All that is certain is that at some point Raduyev decided he was going to become famous, and he succeeded, as Russia’s most wanted man.

The mysteries behind Salman Raduyev’s career are a reflection of the bizarre world of shadows in which Chechens live. Since the tiny Muslim nation of under a million people attempted to secede from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, it has endured economic blockades and two brutal wars with Russia, the latest still ongoing. After the failure of the Federal Army to subdue the Chechens in 1996 (following the first Chechen war), responsibility for Chechnya passed into the hands of Russia’s alphabet soup of security services, each conducting covert operations reporting to a different ministry.  With unemployment reaching 90% in post-war Chechnya, young men sought any means of supporting themselves and their families. Options were few; kidnapping gangs were particularly lucrative, as was oil theft. ‘Oil moonshiners’ turned their backyards into cottage industry oil-wells, causing so much damage that the capital Grozny now floats on a layer of oil and is environmentally unstable, though tens of thousands still dwell in the ruins of the battered city. Russian money was always there for the taking, in return for certain services, of course. Most of these services involved the continued destabilization of the upstart nation. Many of the most notorious kidnappers seemed to have Moscow connections, and Chechnya became a kind of clearing-house for kidnapping victims who were often seized far from Chechnya before being delivered there to await ransom. Money also began to flow from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Persian Gulf Emirates. Most of these funds were also given conditionally, intended to further the spread of Saudi-style reform Islam in the Northern Caucasus. This was the era of the ‘Field-Commander’, veteran leaders of the first Chechen war who acted as semi-official warlords while moonlighting as bandit chiefs. Most of the money in Chechnya passed through their hands at some point, giving them immediate power in a desperate land ruled by a penniless government.

In this atmosphere many strange and ruthless characters flourished. One such was ‘Khalifa’ Adam Deniyev, leader of a cult-like religious movement who demanded that the sacred Ka’aba shrine in Mecca be moved to Chechnya. Deniyev was also a self-confessed leader of a murderous kidnapping gang, and seems to have been on the payroll of at least two Russian intelligence agencies. After being promoted by the Russians as the new puppet leader of Chechnya in spring 2001, Deniyev was blown up in the middle of making a live television broadcast. Arbi Barayev was another killer who found his calling in the Chechen conflicts. Leader of a major gang after the first Chechen war, Barayev established himself as the most militant of the Islamists, while feuding almost continuously with the Chechen government and other field-commanders. The efficient use of urban bombings and assassination squads were Barayev’s specialty, skills which made Barayev’s services appealing to friend and foe alike. Strangely enough, Barayev lived through most of the current war in his own house, just down the road from a Russian police station. Before his death in the Spring of 2001, there was growing evidence that Barayev was working for both the Russians and the Gulf State Islamists.

Surely, however, the strangest of the Chechen field-commanders was Salman Raduyev, a once-powerful warlord with thousands of men under his command. Although Raduyev was said to be in poor health and played only a small role in the present war, his capture was announced personally by a triumphant Vladimir Putin. The arrest of the man Putin called ‘an animal’ came only days before Putin’s election as Russia’s new president, and provided a lone success for Putin in his efforts to subdue the stubborn Chechen mujahidin before the election. Russian intelligence agents and assassination squads have resolutely pursued the military and political leadership of the Chechen rebellion since 1999, but the 34 year old Raduyev was the first figure of any significance to be taken alive. Like the other Chechen warlords, Raduyev was frequently but prematurely declared dead by Kremlin spokesmen. At one point Russian television even showed a grave alleged to be his.

Raduyev was once widely accused of being behind the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow that killed over 300 people, though a number of other suspects (all non-Chechen residents of the North Caucasus) were committed to trial by Russian authorities for indirect involvement. [1] These trials were held in secret, with all security for prosecutors and defendants alike carried out by the FSB, despite the FSB itself being a major suspect in the bombings in the minds of many Russians. State prosecutors initially declared that Raduyev’s trial would also be held in secret, no doubt because of the possibility for government embarrassment, but a decision to allow press coverage was made at the last minute. Circumstances had changed since September 11, and the Russian government was now eager to have maximum publicity for the trial of a Chechen ‘terrorist’ as part of their campaign for Western acceptance of Russian methods in Chechnya.

Rebellion and Deportation

In a world that has seen countless small ethnic groups disappear or become fully assimilated over the last two centuries, the tiny Chechen nation has simply refused to be destroyed.  Since the reign of Peter the Great nearly three hundred years ago, generation after generation of Chechens have risen up against the occupation forces of mighty Russia.  As each rebellion inevitably fell before the military weight of Russia, the remaining Chechens set about re-arming and building large families to replace the terrible civilian losses and create a new generation of fighters. The Chechen symbol is the She-Wolf that legend tells gave birth to their nation, and Chechen fighters have been known to terrify their enemies with wolf howls before launching an attack.

In the midst of yet another Russo-Chechen war, it is now hard to believe that in 1944 there were virtually no Chechens living in Chechnya. Incensed by yet another uprising in Chechnya in the early 1940s (the Israilov insurrection), Stalin angrily denounced the Chechens as German collaborators on slim evidence (the German offensive had barely touched Chechen territory), and ordered the entire nation deported to Central Asia. In a massive but highly efficient operation undertaken by Beria’s NKVD, the Soviets loaded all the Chechens, Ingush (a related people) and many neighbouring Muslim groups into boxcars and cattle-cars without food, and only the possessions they could carry. [2] Ironically, the operation was carried out with some ease because most young Chechen men were at the front fighting the Germans (when the war was over the Chechen veterans were decorated and deported to Central Asia). Those that survived the one month journey to Kazakhstan were offloaded onto the barren Central Asian steppe, without food or shelter. Some survived by eating grass, while others went mad.  Instead of giving up, the Chechens reunited, and began organizing to preserve the Chechen nation in exile. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn met many Chechens during his own exile in the Soviet Gulags, and was astonished by the Chechen refusal to submit. [3] The exiled Chechens maintained an open and constant hostility to their supposed Soviet masters, who soon came to fear the Chechen exiles. [4]

While the Chechens struggled in Central Asia, Stalin’s men began to eradicate every trace of the Chechen nation. Books and mosques were burned, references to Chechens removed from history texts, and ethnic Russians were imported to fill the Chechens’ empty homes. In their zeal the Russians even removed all the tombstones from the graveyards. The Chechens began filtering back into their homeland after Krushchev’s reforms of 1956, and began to gradually buy or pressure the Russians out of Chechnya. By the end of the Russo-Chechen war of 1994-96, nearly the only Russians left in Chechnya were ancient pensioners in Grozny who could not afford to leave the devastated Chechen capital. The period of the deportations formed a watershed event in the lives of most Chechens.  Many senior Chechen leaders, such as President Maskhadov, were born into the Central Asian exile.  The betrayal of their people by the Russian authorities can never be forgotten by the Chechens, and the event forms the poisonous bottom-line for all political arguments within Chechnya – ‘No matter what Moscow offers, how can we trust them? If we surrender our weapons, who will prevent the next deportation?’ Revenge and retribution are important concepts in the honour-conscious Caucasus Mountains and can be used to justify a wide variety of violent acts. One man’s terrorism is another man’s blood-revenge.

Little has changed in the present war; beyond making little distinction between civil and military targets, the Russians now regularly destroy the centuries-old feudal towers and Sufi shrines that dot the Chechen landscape. Oddly enough, they are now supported in this by the new wave of Saudi-influenced Islamists who seek to destroy the Sufi orders and rituals that dominate Chechen life. [5]

The Emergence of an “Arch-Terrorist”

Salman Raduyev burst into the headlines of the international press with an audacious strike in January 1996 on the Russian military base at Kizlyar in Dagestan, far behind the Russian front line.  At first the strike appeared to emulate Field Commander Shamyl Basayev’s 1995 raid on Budennovsk, but the operation quickly fell apart and was ultimately nearly as disastrous for the Chechens as for the Russians. The raid, initially intended to eliminate a Russian helicopter base in Kizlyar, may have represented an attempt by the late Chechen President Dudayev to reassert his pre-eminence among the rising stars of Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov, his two chief military commanders. American security advisor Yossef Bodansky has claimed that the operation was planned by an expert Pakistani ‘Afghan’ (a veteran of the international Islamist volunteer force in the Afghan war of the 1980’s), but in execution the operation displayed all the traits of impetuosity and inexperience that characterized Raduyev at the time. The former Communist Youth leader’s only other leadership role was in a four-day seizure of Gudermes in December 1995, but the whole operation had been planned by Maskhadov.

Colonel Khunkar-Pasha Israpilov

It appears that when the attack on Kizlyar began to fall apart, Raduyev was forced to acknowledge his shortcomings, and effective command of the rebels passed temporarily to a more capable commander, Colonel Khunkar-Pasha Israpilov. A veteran of the Abkhazian campaign and Basayev’s raid on Buddenovsk, a reluctant Israpilov had only joined the raid after all the men in his command signed up.  Now he took a page from Basayev’s tactics at Buddenovsk and seized a hospital, taking thousands of hostages. Within hours the Russians attacked, causing many casualties amongst the hostages. The situation was spiraling out of control.  Israpilov used a policeman’s walkie-talkie to demand that the Russian attack cease or he would begin shooting hostages. The policeman found Israpilov’s efforts amusing. According to Israpilov, ‘I kept telling him I would shoot him. He was not paying attention, he was smiling, I could see he did not believe me. I shot him in the forehead. I was demanding that they hold their fire. After that they did’. [6]

The situation now in hand, Raduyev re-took command, and negotiated a withdrawal to the Chechen border with Daghestani politicians. The rebel column would consist of 128 hostages in 11 buses and 2 trucks, including seven Daghestani government ministers who volunteered to go as hostages. The Russians, however, decided to destroy the column the moment it crossed the Chechen border (thus sidestepping commitments given by the Daghestani government that the column would not be attacked). The Russian attack was poorly coordinated, and the Chechens hastily reversed their column, heading back to the tiny village of Pervomaiskoye, across the Daghestani border. On arrival, the rebels took 37 militiamen captive, as well as a stockpile of arms and munitions. Negotiations began anew, but the Russians were moving in a force twenty times the size of the rebel group. Five days passed before the Chechens, believing an attack to be imminent, released the women, children and politicians.

When the Russian attack did begin, it became clear that the planners had no interest in trying to rescue the hostages, who were initially positioned as a shield for the rebels. Field artillery and enormous Grad rockets pounded the village, while helicopters worked in close with missiles and machine gun fire. As the three -day attack began, the FSB was reporting that the Chechens had already killed all the hostages. The intensity of the barrage suggested that the Russians were not concerned about contradictory accounts emerging from the ruins of Pervomaiskoye. Repeated ground attacks by elite Russian soldiers and anti-terrorist units were repelled with heavy losses, as the Chechens constantly shifted their heavy machine-guns. The Chechens also succeeded in listening to Russian radio communications, giving them a chance to take shelter before artillery barrages began. Surrender was no longer an option, and the besieged Chechens fought to the death.  Russian troops fell by the score as their own artillery and missiles crashed into their positions. Ahead of them was a withering fire from the entrenched Chechens.

Amir Ibn al-Khattab (left) and Shamyl Basayev (right)

Despite Russian losses, they, unlike the Chechens, had recourse to unlimited manpower and munitions. Chechen losses were building, and it was difficult to replace Chechen fighters.  The Chechens repulsed twenty-two attacks over an eighty-two hour period. By January 17, it became apparent that only a desperate breakout could save any of the fighters and their hostages. The latter were no longer guarded, as the Russians were shooting at anything that moved. Maskhadov and Basayev launched hundreds of fighters on diversionary attacks in Daghestan to draw Russian forces away. The Chechen fighters and hostages began to move out of Pervomaiskoye in groups. Many were lost to mines and Russian fire. Some fighters volunteered to stay behind to cover the retreat until they were killed. It appears that these men continued resistance into the next day. Some hostages carried out wounded fighters, while others carried rifles to defend themselves from their supposed rescuers. Over sixty fighters were lost in the withdrawal.

Raduyev’s raid had international reverberations. In Trabazon, Turkey, a commando force led by Mohammed Tokçan seized a Turkish ferry carrying several hundred people, mostly Russians. Tokçan was a former comrade-in-arms with Shamyl Basayev in the North Caucasian volunteer force that fought for the separation of Muslim Abkhazia from Georgia in 1992-93. He demanded the Russians allow Raduyev’s force to leave Pervomaiskoye or the ship would be destroyed. The Turkish security forces resolved the hijacking peacefully, but Salman Raduyev had finally made it. He didn’t realize it at the time – under continuous Russian fire, his world had become very small – but Salman Raduyev was now an international figure. His name was on the front page of all the international press, and Raduyev later discovered he liked the way it looked. Though Kizlyar made his reputation, it was the last operation of any importance that Raduyev would carry out. In the violent world of the North Caucasus, Raduyev found that there were plenty of unclaimed yet spectacular crimes that he could attach his name to in order to stay in the headlines.

ChRI President Aslan Maskhadov

Maskhadov and Basayev were both furious that Raduyev had carried out an unapproved operation (at least as far as they knew), and that they had further been required to commit considerable manpower and resources to bail him out. Though the Russian army had been badly embarrassed, Raduyev had lost ninety-six valuable fighters on a raid with no tangible results.  Raduyev had also made many dangerous enemies with his raid, both in Daghestan and Russia.

Three other fighters from the raid on Kizlyar, Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev, Aslanbek Alkhazurov and Khuseyn Gaysumov stood trial alongside Raduyev. Atgeriyev became State Security Minister in the post-war Chechen government and was later one of President Maskhadov’s closest allies, responsible for his personal security. As a result of his responsibilities as State Security Minister Atgeriyev had many contacts with the FSB, and was a joint author of an agreement with Russia concerning the common fight against kidnapping and terrorism. As the second Chechen war began, there were inevitable rumours that Atgeriyev was working with the Russians and had lost the confidence of President Maskhadov. Atgeriyev was eventually lured by two diaspora Chechen businessmen to a meeting in Daghestan with an FSB official (possibly Herman Ugryumov) to discuss a peace proposal ostensibly from Moscow. Atgeriyev was seized and transported to Lefertovo Prison in Moscow.

The temporary commander of the Kizlyar operation, Khunkar-Pasha Israpilov, was one of a number of Chechen leaders who fell leading the Chechen evacuation column through a horrific Russian ambush when the rebels abandoned Grozny in January 2000.

The Death and Resurrection of Salman Raduyev

In March 1996 Raduyev was widely reported as killed in an ambush. Some claimed it was the work of Russian assassins, while others believed Raduyev’s Chechen enemies had eliminated this loose cannon. At the time Raduyev was probably being hunted by both. The claims seemed verified when Raduyev vanished from sight, leaving behind only reports of his death in the Urus-Martan hospital.  It had already been reported in the press that President Dudayev had given his son-in-law 1.5 million dollars to distribute amongst his men. After the ambush it was claimed that Raduyev was killed by his former followers after withholding the money from them. A complicated plot was also attributed to the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence), seeking revenge for losses at Pervomaiskoye.

After Raduyev’s death was reported, 101 Estonian parliamentarians signed a letter mourning ‘the atrocious murder of an outstanding freedom fighter’. The letter infuriated the Russian government, which regards the Baltic nations as active collaborators in the Chechen insurrection. Russian field troops active in Chechnya circulate the myth that a squadron of female Estonian snipers on skis has been active in both Chechen wars on the rebel side. Needless to say, none of the ‘White Tights’, as they are known, have ever been killed or captured.

Months after his disappearance Raduyev turned up on Russian television. The man claiming to be Raduyev was unrecognizable. Once Raduyev had had a predatory look, emphasized by a strong nose, a long red beard and gold teeth.  The new Raduyev perched dark sunglasses atop an artificial nose. The glasses covered an empty eye socket and damage to the skull caused by the sniper’s bullet. The belief that Raduyev’s skull had been reconstructed using titanium plates earned Raduyev a new nickname among his detractors, “Titanic.” According to one bizarre rumour, Raduyev’s plastic surgeon was the same doctor who treated Michael Jackson.

Where was Raduyev all this time? Russian daily Komsomolskaja pravda claimed to have the answers. After the attack, Raduyev was spirited through Daghestan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, on into Germany, where he was placed under the care of German Intelligence. Radical surgery was performed at an American hospital near Munich. On recovery, Raduyev was then transferred into the hands of two high-ranking Russian officers. These agents took Raduyev on a circuitous route to Moscow, involving several passport changes. Russian intelligence then re-inserted Raduyev into Chechnya, to continue his work as a provocateur. It was impossible to verify this story, but one thing was clear; the rescue, transfer, medical treatment, concealment, and re-insertion of Raduyev could only have been achieved with resources beyond those of a slightly unhinged Chechen warlord.

On his return Raduyev, just to keep in shape, claimed responsibility for several recent trolley bombings in Moscow, probably the work of local Mafia factions.  Raduyev’s big news, however, was that Chechnya’s late president, Dzhokar Dudayev, was still alive. Dudayev, a former Russian air force general, was reported to have been killed on April 21, 1996, when the Russians zeroed in on his satellite phone when he stopped his two-car convoy to make a call.  A missile struck Dudayev’s position, killing him instantly. The body was never recovered, though Dudayev’s small entourage may have buried it secretly. The entourage, which included Dudayev’s wife, provided the only witnesses to his death. Raduyev was accustomed to drawing his authority through Dudayev, his father-in-law, and was an interested party in keeping alive rumours of Dudayev’s survival. The late president’s family also claimed Dudayev was alive. Lechi Dudayev, a close ally of Rudayev and later mayor of Grozny, made several such claims (Lechi Dudayev would fall crossing a minefield in the evacuation of Grozny).

There were, in fact, questions about the Dudayev assassination from the beginning. It was unusually precise and efficient for the fumbling Russian army. The necessary technology was not believed to be held by the Russians. Several years ago, Wayne Madsen, a US security analyst, published a little-noticed article in Covert Action Quarterly suggesting that Dudayev’s coordinates were passed along from the US National Security Agency to President Clinton, who was then visiting Moscow in an attempt to shore up Boris Yeltsin’s presidential campaign. [7] Clinton is said to have passed these to Yeltsin, who badly needed a success in his faltering Chechen campaign. Strangely, this story does not seem to have been noticed in the Caucasus region until a major Turkish newspaper revived the story in June 2001. Since then, rumours of Dudayev’s existence have returned, culminating in a suggestion by Akhmed Khadyrov in late August 2001 that Dudayev may still be alive, and ‘having a nice time somewhere’. Khadyrov is no less than Moscow’s appointed governor of the puppet Chechen administration, and a former rebel leader in the first Chechen war. Khadyrov’s remarks must have come as a shock to the Russians. Dudayev’s wife, Alla Dudayeva, has never directly answered the question of Dudayev’s death. When asked to comment on Khadyrov’s remarks, she would only enigmatically quote the Koran; ‘‘Those whom I come for who go in the path of Allah are not dead, they are living’. And he is fighting with the Chechen army, his soul is fighting.’

Following the first Chechen war Raduyev refused to recognize the peace accords, and promised to lead his ‘Army of General Dudayev’ in an ‘eternal war’ against Russia. He issued bold statements, declaring that, ‘If (the Russians) want to fight with me, let them come and we see who wins.’ Political pressure led to the promotion of Raduyev to general, and the rising warlord was publicly decorated for his useless raid on Kizlyar. Sebastien Smith, who knew Raduyev before and after his disappearance, described him in this period as ‘an eerie character’:

The assassination attempt and the surgery have made him even freakier. His face is messy, but not his clothes. Before, he wore ordinary combat gear; now he dresses up in special tailored uniforms with medals, like something from Versace, and travels with a bodyguard of some 40 of the toughest-looking people you’ve seen. He’s too weird for most people. But there are some who always will believe what he says. He’ll always be Raduyev, the man who came back from the dead, the man who says he knows about Dzhokar (Dudayev). [8]

The adulation went to Raduyev’s head, and he was soon needlessly provoking every power structure in the area. In December 1996 Raduyev led a band of armed men to the border with Daghestan and demanded entry. When the 21 Russian and one Daghestani policemen resisted, Raduyev disarmed them and took the group hostage into Chechnya. Engaged in a crucial stage of the peace negotiations, the Chechen government vowed to force Raduyev to release the hostages unconditionally. Raduyev publicly defied Maskhadov for four days, demanding that Russia apologize to him. Eventually Russian envoy Boris Berezovsky arrived to negotiate the release of the hostages.

Raduyev Stands Alone

By 1997 Raduyev began to make a series of threats against Russia, promising a wave of bombings to mark the April 21 anniversary of Dudayev’s death, ‘a day of national revenge’. Though their relations continued to be fractious, the leading Chechen separatists were at the time trying to present a united front in their quest to establish the legitimacy of the fledgling Chechen state. Raduyev’s provocations were even more unwanted in Grozny than in Moscow, and it was not surprising when Raduyev was badly wounded by a bomb planted in his car in early April 1997. Chechen security may have passed information regarding Mr. Raduyev’s intentions to their FSB counterparts. Elements of the Chechen government accused Raduyev of being on the payroll of a Russian ‘Party of War’, politicians and members of the security services opposed to a peace settlement in Chechnya. Raduyev’s intended campaign of revenge appears to have been limited to the blasts in Armavir and Pyatigorsk in April and May of 1997, which Raduyev described as a new phase in the war against Russia.

As with anything connected to Raduyev, the Armivar and Pyatigorsk bombings set off a bizarre series of accusations and counter-accusations. The morning after the bombings, Anatoly Kulikov, then Russian Deputy Prime Minister, called a press conference to announce the arrest of the perpetrators. The alleged terrorists were identified as two Chechen women, Fatima Taymaskanova, then 34, and Ayset Dadasheva, then 24. Confessions and fingerprints had already been obtained, and the terrorists were safely locked up in Lefertovo Prison. The Chechen government responded that one of the two identified women was already dead, and that the photographs of the women shown by Kulikov were of entirely different people. The photos were further alleged to have been lifted from a book by former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.

At this point, Raduyev announced his responsibility for the bombings, threatening to attack Russia with chemical weapons if the detained women suffered in any way. President Maskhadov, still in crucial negotiations with the Russian government, more pragmatically found the women legal counsel, and declared Raduyev to be ‘a complete idiot’. Yet others within the Russian government saw the hand of foreign intelligence services behind the bombings, allegedly with the purpose of sabotaging Russian-Chechen negotiations.

By June 1997 President Maskhadov decreed the abolition of all private armies in Chechnya, an edict that the President admitted was aimed primarily at Raduyev’s forces. In July 1997 a van filled with explosives blew up in Grozny as Raduyev’s car passed by. Again Raduyev survived, but three others were killed. The Chechen government was attempting at the time to negotiate with Moscow to replace the pipeline carrying Caspian oil to Russian refineries, but Raduyev now promised to destroy the pipeline unless the Russian government conceded Chechen independence. In January of 1998 Raduyev led an anti-Wahhabist demonstration in Grozny, during which he threatened the militarily powerful Islamist faction with violence. Raduyev then seized the opportunity to offend the government as well, demanding that they take an oath against the anti-Sufist Wahhabites, or be declared ‘enemies of Allah and Islam.’ According to Maskhadov, ‘With this commander, we don’t have a political problem, but we have a psychiatric one.’

By now, Raduyev was styling himself the ‘Commander of the Army of Dudayev’, but still smarting from the closure of his television station by the President for broadcasting ‘anti-state propaganda’.  On June 21 1998 Raduyev was in the square in front of the Grozny television station with a number of his armed men. They were reportedly gathered for an attempt to seize the state television station. A confrontation developed with Lecha Khultygov, chief of the National Security Service, and his own armed force. There was a firefight in broad daylight, and when the smoke cleared, Khultygov, his bodyguard (a relative of Shamyl Basayev) and Raduyev’s chief-of-staff lay dead in the square. Raduyev was now challenging the young Chechen state while continuing to accumulate enemies bound by the code of blood revenge followed in the highlands. Raduyev was claiming the mantle of Dudayev, but such actions were causing him to lose the support of Dudayev’s clan.

For the moment, though, Maskhadov did not have time to deal with Raduyev. The President had finally become fed up with the constant challenges to his authority from the radical Islamists and the Arab mujahidin who had stayed in Chechnya following the first war. An expulsion order was issued in July 1998 for all foreign Islamists and mujahidin, but Maskhadov had insufficient power to enforce it. The power balance was so delicate at the time that Maskhadov reportedly even considered enlisting Raduyev against the Islamists.

By September 1998 Raduyev was part of a strange alliance with Shamyl Basayev (who had once promised to ‘sort out’ Raduyev personally) and Raduyev’s old comrade from Kizlyar, Khunkar-Pasha Israpilov. The three had found common cause in opposing Maskhadov’s continued negotiations with the Russians, and demanded that Parliament impeach him. Parliament refused, and the three field commanders had their demands referred to the Shari’a court. Maskhadov struck back, singling out Raduyev for arrest. The Supreme Shari’a Court sentenced Raduyev to four years imprisonment for ‘insubordination’, but after one failed arrest attempt, Raduyev was left alone by the Chechen security forces. Maskhadov, well aware of the fragility of the Chechen state, habitually preferred compromise to confrontation with his unruly field commanders, and offered a conciliatory gesture to Raduyev. The four-year sentence would be dropped if a medical examination determined that the warlord was ill. Raduyev’s response was to fortify his Grozny compound and surround it with armed guards.

Raduyev in Chains

In March 1999 Raduyev claimed responsibility for the brazen kidnapping of Russian General Gennady Shpigun from a helicopter at Grozny airport. The warlord’s almost compulsive confessions were no longer bought by everyone.  Raduyev’s ambitious habit of claiming responsibility for all types of outrages in order to cultivate a fearsome reputation led to a joke in Grozny that Raduyev would claim responsibility for Kennedy’s assassination, had he been alive then.  Other suspects (among many) in the Shpigun abduction included Baudi Bukayev, notorious kidnappers the Akhmadov brothers, the ruthless Islamist (and possible Russian agent) Arbi Barayev, or Abdul-Malek Mezhidov, a follower of warlord Ruslan Gelayev. Where else in the world but Chechnya could one find literally dozens of individuals capable of orchestrating such an outrageous act – and from a population of less than a million people?  (Shpigun was later found dead from exposure and other causes, having apparently escaped from his captors but failing in his attempt to reach Russian lines).

The Kennedy joke was not far off the mark, as it turned out.  Raduyev bizarrely claimed responsibility for the 1998 assassination attempt on President Eduard Schevardnadze of Georgia. The claim puzzled everyone, not least the Georgians, who saw Russian hands behind the attack. Later, Raduyev would deny his responsibility, claiming his remarks were ‘taken out of context.’ After his arrest, Raduyev again confessed to the assassination attempt.

Raduyev began the latest war in a belligerent mood, announcing at huge rallies that he would lead his personal army against the Russians. Large-scale operations by the ‘Army of Dudayev’ did not materialize, and by February 2000 the Russian General Staff were again reporting the death of Raduyev. The story this time was that Raduyev had attempted to sell the whereabouts of warlord Ibn al-Khattab to the Russians for a million dollars. Al-Khattab was the Saudi-born leader of the foreign mujahidin, a veteran of several Islamic insurgencies, survivor of numerous assassination attempts, and a very nasty character to antagonize (Khattab was killed in March 2002, reputedly the victim of a letter laced with poison by the FSB). The Khattab-Raduyev story was, however, yet another Russian invention.

Even the basic details of Raduyev’s arrest are in doubt. One version held that Raduyev was arrested while attempting to betray Shamyl Basayev for a million dollars, no doubt a variation of the al-Khattab story. Kommersant Daily of Moscow reported that Raduyev had himself been betrayed by Basayev.  According to other sources, Raduyev had received shrapnel wounds to the head, and was traveling out of Chechnya in disguise with two associates to seek medical treatment. When he reached the Chechen-Ingushetian border, Raduyev was recognized by two Chechen arms-dealers who informed the Russians for the price on his head. Unarmed, Raduyev was arrested without a struggle, but FSB reports soon began to claim that a complex FSB operation had found Raduyev and arrested him under the noses of over one hundred heavily armed bodyguards (all apparently happily camped behind Russian lines). After his arrest, Raduyev confessed so quickly that investigators began to doubt they had the right man. Was this ill and damaged creature truly the demon Raduyev, one of Great Russia’s most dangerous enemies? Medical examination revealed that the individual in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison had no titanium plates in his head, as Raduyev was so often said to have. The FSB did report, reassuringly, that Raduyev was ‘physically healthy, his hands do not tremble, and no signs of narcotic dependence were discovered.’ Chechen rebels are typically depicted by the Russians as narcotics addicts and/or dealers. Sometimes it is claimed that dead Chechen fighters are found with large packets of heroin in their pockets, though why anyone would stuff his pockets with heroin before going into action is never quite explained.

Andrei Babitsky, a noted journalist with American-sponsored Radio Liberty, provided a further version of Raduyev’s arrest. Babitsky maintains that Raduyev’s arrest was designed by Putin to weaken oligarch Boris Berezovsky, once a leading supporter of Putin. Berezovsky, who has since fled Russia, was accused of funding Raduyev’s operations. Berezovsky was already widely rumoured in Moscow to have financed Basayev and al-Khattab’s summer 1999 invasion of west Daghestan that sparked the current war.

Raduyev found the odds stacked against him once he reached the courtroom. Russian authorities decreed the trial would take place in Daghestan, the most hostile possible site in the world’s largest nation for Raduyev. Hundreds of Daghestanis were believed to have taken blood-oaths of revenge on Raduyev in retaliation for the deaths of Daghestanis in the raid on Kizlyar. The prosecution was led by the Prosecutor General of Russia himself, Vladimir Ustinov. Such a remarkable step had not been taken since the 1960s, when the Prosecutor General of the USSR led the case against US spy plane pilot Gary Powers. Court-room duties are not part of the job description of the normally busy Prosecutor General, and serious questions were raised as to how Ustinov intended to try a huge case far from Moscow and fulfill his other duties. The investigation produced over 130 volumes of evidence, and more than 3,000 witnesses were identified. Cross-examinations alone were projected to take at least a year, but the trial was instead wrapped up in a relatively swift five weeks.  Part of Ustinov’s inspiration for taking the case himself may have been the acquittal of two Chechen suspects accused of a second bombing of the Pyatigorsk rail station in October 2000. Russian prosecutors could not afford such a failure in a case of Raduyev’s profile. Ustinov began by taking an aggressive approach, with his office spreading the word that Ustinov might seek ‘exceptional measures of punishment’ for Raduyev. This referred to a possible breach of the moratorium on capital punishment declared by Russia as a condition for membership in the Council of Europe. Ustinov seemed to have forgotten the strident objections of Russian legal authorities to executions carried out by Shari’a courts in Chechnya after the conclusion of the first war. At the time they were condemned as violations of the moratorium, endangering Russia’s international position.

Raduyev’s appointed lawyer, Pavel Nechipurenko, said before the trial that the warlord’s defence would be that he was involved in a war situation, and simply followed orders like any other soldier. Nechipurenko also asserted that Raduyev is ‘an absolutely normal person,’ seemingly in accordance with the view of Russian prosecutors that there was no need for a defence based on insanity, or diminished capabilities. Nechipurenko was eventually replaced by a less cooperative lawyer, Salman Arsanukayev.

Ustinov used the trial to paint a vivid picture of life in the warlords’ Chechnya: ‘Bandit formations robbed passing trains. The economy was ruined, there were robberies, arms deals, money schemes, and slave labour.’ Initially shorn of his beard and hair when arrested, Raduyev looked more familiar during the trial with his characteristic long beard and mirrored aviator sunglasses. Raduyev and his fellow defendants observed the trial from within a steel cage. The warlord visibly infuriated the Prosecutor-General by maintaining that Federal security forces were responsible for the huge number of hostages killed at Pervomaiskoye. Raduyev’s lawyer was more conciliatory, attempting to pin the blame for the deaths on the late Colonel Israpilov. Raduyev disclaimed personal responsibility for the raid, claiming that he and Israpilov were personally entrusted with the mission by President Dudayev. With Israpilov and Dudayev both dead, there was no way to confirm Raduyev’s defence, though Ustinov still had trouble proving the raid was Raduyev’s idea. The two men responsible for the attack on the rebels at Pervomaiskoye, former Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov, and former FSB chief Mikhail Barsukov both refused to testify against Raduyev.  Attempts were made by the prosecution to implicate current President Maskhadov in the operation, but the allegations were hotly refuted by Raduyev and Atgeriyev. Though extremely frail at the time of his arrest, Raduyev mounted a spirited if unendearing defence, frequently interjecting with sarcastic remarks or political statements.

Raduyev was simultaneously tried for the 1997 Pyatigorsk railway station bombing. The young women initially charged with the crime testified that they had been promised rewards such as cash and apartments for their role, but were unable to implicate Raduyev directly. News agency Chechenpress claimed to have letters from the two women describing confessions made under torture and suggested that the women had been promised early release for testifying against Raduyev.  At one point in their confessions, the women had asserted that they were both mistresses to Raduyev. The low point in the trial undoubtedly came when the prosecution invited Natalya Rybasova, a survivor of the blast, to testify about her experience. Rybasova had lost a 3 year old grand-daughter in the explosion, and angrily called Raduyev ‘scum’. Raduyev responded with curses, and it was some time before the judge was able to restore order.

The final verdict was 700 pages and took several hours to read. Raduyev was sentenced to life imprisonment, Atgeriyev to fifteen years, Alkhazurov to eight years, and Gaysumov to five years. Lida Raduyeva, the warlord’s wife, mounted an aggressive defence of her husband in an interview with Azerbaijani newspaper, Ulus: ‘Many (of Raduyev’s friends) betrayed him. In essence it was impoverished people who supported him. Salman does not love to share his agitations. He suffered from the treachery of friends and indicated that it was necessary to suffer. He said, ‘God will judge’. Those people in whom he trusted… were all killed. Salman, even knowing (the identities of) those responsible for the attempts on his life, did not hurry to blame them.’

Atgeriyev had barely started his fifteen year sentence at Penitentiary Colony no.2 (Sverdlovsk Region) when he was declared dead of natural causes on August 18, 2002. Those who knew Atgeriyev best testified that he was in good health when he entered the Russian prison system; the Justice Ministry claimed his ‘natural death’ was the result of ‘leucosis (and) spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage’. The statement asserted that ‘no signs of violent death have been detected’. In an interview to Associated Press, Chechen Presidential envoy Akhmed Zakayev said he believed that Atgeriyev was working with the Russians, but had eventually been murdered by them. ‘This should be a lesson for anyone who is putting their hopes on Russian justice and Russian clemency.’ The following day Zakayev’s name appeared as the author of an official Chechen government statement condemning Atgeriyev’s ‘murder’. When asked for a reaction to Atgeriyev’s death, General Gennady Troshev (recently relieved commander of the North Caucasian Military District) simply stated; ‘A wolf does not live in captivity’ (an apt allegory).  Some Chechens expressed disbelief with the death report, believing instead that Atgeriyev had been secretly released to begin a new life after cooperating with the Russians.

So Raduyev, the enigma with two faces, began another life behind Russian bars. Even in such seclusion, however, there were secrets of the Chechen rebellion that some in Moscow did not want discussed even in whispers. The prison deaths of Atgeriyev and former Chairman of the ChRI Parliament Ruslan Alikhadjiev seemed to set a bad precedent for Raduyev’s survival. Raduyev was, after all, not a well man, and a quiet death in prison would please many on both sides of the conflict. The news that Raduyev intended to write a book about his experiences did nothing to increase his popularity. Some, however, continued to deny that the man tried in Daghestan was actually Raduyev; Doku Zavgayev, former Communist Party boss of Chechnya, still maintained that Raduyev died in the Urus Martan hospital, and invited anyone to simply ask the doctors there. Just before sentencing, Raduyev had his own thoughts about his fate: ‘I couldn’t care less if I get a life sentence. I have died three times already. I can spend my life in prison. I have no regrets.’

Raduyev was sent to Solikamsk Detention Centre no.14 in the Ural Mountains, about 1200 kilometers east of Moscow. At first he was kept in solitary confinement, but was later roomed with Alexander Grishayev, a serial killer. Raduyev’s lawyer, Arsanukayev, submitted an appeal to the European Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg, and was preparing a further appeal to the Russian Supreme Court, challenging the evidence presented in the Pyatigorsk bombing case, for which Raduyev had received the life sentence. The advocate also insisted that his client should have been treated as a prisoner-of-war. As such, Raduyev would not be subject to criminal prosecution. Little was heard from the imprisoned warlord until the Moscow hostage-taking crisis of late October 2002 returned Raduyev’s name to the news.

The Kremlin seized on the opportunity provided by the shocking outcome of the hostage-taking to demand Denmark immediately cancel a forthcoming Congress of Chechens in Copenhagen, and to extradite Maskhadov’s personal envoy, Akhmed Zakayev, to Russia as an international terrorist. Russian Justice Minister Yuri Chaika tried to reassure the Danes, pointing out that Russia had placed a moratorium on the death penalty and pointed out that even such a dangerous terrorist as Salman Raduyev had only received a life sentence. On November 26 2002 Russia’s General Prosecutor announced that Raduyev had given evidence regarding Zakayev’s ‘terrorist activities’, namely his participation in the 1999 Islamist incursion into Daghestan (a campaign in which Raduyev had no part). According to Russian records, Raduyev’s health problems started soon after his testimony. The Raduyev revelations appeared to be part of a typically sloppy and unconvincing campaign by Russian authorities to demonstrate Zakayev was a terrorist threat. Kremlin attempts to portray Zakayev as a priest-killer were foiled when the Orthodox priest allegedly killed by Zakayev surfaced in Russia with a plea that he and the church be left out of Moscow’s international machinations.

On December 14 Russian prison authorities announced that Raduyev had died as the result of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage, ‘exacerbated as a result of fasting for Ramadan.’ Almost immediately there were conflicting reports as to whether Raduyev had died at the Solikamsk hospital (which services the surrounding labour camps), or in his prison cell as the result of a beating from guards. The Maskhadov government’s official Chechenpress news agency declared Raduyev’s death ‘a murder,’ resulting from his unwillingness to cooperate with Russian officials in creating a case against Zakayev. Several Russian newspapers reported that it was the murderer Grishayev who notified prison guards that Raduyev had stopped breathing following a beating for refusing an order during a search of his cell.

On December 16 Amnesty International demanded an investigation into Raduyev’s death. Opportunities for an independent inquiry were quashed when Raduyev’s body was buried in the convicts’ section of the Solikamsk cemetery on December 17. Authorities declared that none of Raduyev’s relatives had claimed the corpse within the allotted three days, and that there was no legal reason in any case to release the body in view of recent changes in Russian law that forbade releasing the bodies of ‘terrorists’ to their families. There were also assurances that no investigation was needed, as the warlord had died of ‘natural causes’. The following day an appeal by Raduyev’s family for a reburial in his homeland was refused on sanitary and legal grounds.

According to the Deputy Minister of Justice, an autopsy had revealed that far from having been beaten, ‘nobody even touched him with a finger’… His death was the consequence of a large number of diseases, from which he suffered since childhood. Furthermore he was seven times injured and contused, and in 1996 and 1999 his health status worsened’. [9] Though the imprisoned Raduyev had once railed that he would live 350 years and survive all his tormenters, he, like Atgeriyev, did not survive the first year of his sentence.

Salman Raduyev on Trial

The manner of Raduyev’s death remains as mysterious as the conduct of his life. Though the warlord achieved international fame in his lifetime, he is unlikely to be placed among the heroes of the Chechen resistance by any other than his diminished number of followers. In light of the suspicions regarding Atgeriyev’s alleged ‘false death’ and the quick and unobserved burial of Raduyev’s body in a remote Urals grave-site, there will inevitably be those who will suspect Raduyev has once again cheated death, and has claimed his reward as a Russian provocateur. Like the Cheshire cat, Raduyev has faded from the scene, leaving only his mocking grin.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

AIS Update, January 2017: What happened to Salman Raduyev’s contemporaries?

Shamyl Basayev – Chechnya’s most prominent field commander was killed in January 2006 by a powerful explosion during an arms shipment in Ingushetia. The blast scattered Basayev’s remains as far as a mile away. It remains uncertain whether his death was accidental or the result of a FSB assassination operation. A Chechen involved in the assassination of several Chechen separatists in Turkey was later suspected of having prepared the fatal charge on behalf of the FSB.

Boris Berezovsky – Forced to take exile in London, Berezovsky survived several assassination plots before apparently hanging himself at home in 2013. The coroner delivered an “open verdict” on his death. A Russian “espionage expert” claimed in 2016 that Berezovsky had been assassinated by British secret services over his possession of allegedly embarrassing photos of Prince Philip.

Ibn al-Khattab (a.k.a. Thamir Saleh Abdullah) – The Saudi jihadist was killed by a poisoned letter delivered by a FSB operative in March 2002.

Aslan Maskhadov – The Chechen president was killed by Russian Special Forces in a raid on a bunker in Tolstoy-Yurt in March 2005 after declaring a unilateral ceasefire in the Second Chechen War. His body was placed in an unmarked grave in a secret location.

Lida Raduyeva – Raduyev’s wife moved to Istanbul with Raduyev’s two young sons, Cevher and Selimhan.

Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev – The former Chechen President was assassinated by FSB agents in Doha, Qatar in 2004. Though the agents succeeded in killing Yandarbiyev, sloppy field-work led to their apprehension, deportation and subsequent disappearance following an international scandal.

Akhmed Zakayev – Zakayev’s extradition was prevented by a UK court ruling, but he was later warned he was on hit-lists created by the FSB and Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Moscow ruler of Chechnya. He was later sentenced to death in absentia by the rebel Caucasus Emirate in 2009 for failing to advocate Shari’a. He continues to reside in London but his influence on Chechen affairs is much diminished.

Notes

  1. Andrew McGregor: ‘‘Flying to the Moon on a Balloon’: Islamist coups and conspiracies in the Northwest Caucasus,’ Central Asia – Caucasus Analyst (Central Asia Caucasus Institute – Johns Hopkins University), November 20, 2002, www.cacianalyst.org/2002-11-20/20021120_NORTHWEST_CAUCASUS_ISLAMISTS.htm
  2. The Ingush and Chechens are closely related, speaking similar dialects of the same language. Collectively they are known as the Vaynakh. They were united in the same Soviet republic until 1991, when the more-militant Chechens decided to pursue complete independence from Russia. The break was nevertheless amicable; Ingushetia is the main destination for Chechen refugees and small numbers of Ingush volunteers can be found within the ranks of the Chechen mujahidin.
  3. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, v.III, Collins, London, 1978, p.410-18.
  4. The standard history of the Caucasian deportations can be found in Robert Conquest: The Nation Killers: The Soviet deportation of nationalities, MacMillan, London 1970. See also William Flemming: ‘The Deportation of the Chechen and Ingush Peoples: A critical examination,’ In: Ben Fowkes (ed), Russia and Chechnia: The Permanent Crisis: Essays on Russo-Chechen Relations, MacMillan, London, 1998, p.65-86. Two important articles in English have been produced by Vera Tolz that use information available since the opening of the Soviet archives; ‘New information about the deportation of ethnic groups in the USSR during World War 2’, In: J and C Garrand (eds), World War 2 and the Soviet People, MacMillan, London, 1993, p.161-80, and ‘New information about the deportation of ethnic groups under Stalin’, Report on the USSR, Apr.16, 1991, p.15-20
  5. Two Sufi orders are common in Chechnya, the Naqshbandi and the Qadiri. The Islamization of Chechnya was a slow process, and Islam did not take effective hold in the area until the eighteenth century. The militant Naqshbandis were the dominant order until the later years of Shaykh Shamyl’s rebellion (1825-59), when Kunta Hajji introduced the more reflective and unwarlike Qadiri order despite Shamyl’s opposition. Within several years, however, the Qadiri order underwent a transformation after repeated Russian abuses in Chechnya, replacing the Naqshbandis as the most militant of the forces fighting for Chechen independence.
  6. Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus, New York University Press, New York, 1998, p.292.
  7. Wayne Madsen, ‘Did NSA help target Dudayev?’, Covert Action Quarterly no.61, 1997, pp.47-9.
  8. Sebastien Smith: Allah’s Mountains: Politics and war in the Russian Caucasus, London, 1998, p.236.
  9. Russian Deputy Minister of Justice Yuri Kalinin, Interview for ITAR-TASS, reported in http://www.vesti.ru/news.html?id=21821&tid-10087

 

 

Russia’s 9/11: A Strange Show in a Moscow Theater

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Andrew McGregor

Shout Monthly

November 2002

Smoke and mirrors in Moscow’s Nord-Ost theater: The recent Moscow hostage drama ended in tragedy… But more may have been at play than meets the eye. Various aspects of the attack just don’t add up and the horrific incident, which Moscow refers to as its own 9/11, is proving a convenient prelude to renewed action against the Chechens in the name of the “War on Terror.”

In case you weren’t sure, the Moscow hostage crisis provides the final proof that the Chechens are nothing more than Islamist terrorists, led by vicious extremists in league with al-Qaeda. Well, that’s Moscow’s spin anyways, one that has found favour with columnists and editorialists across North America. A closer look at the players and beneficiaries of the events of the last week reveals a very different scenario.

A theater was a highly appropriate location for what Moscow now calls “Russia’s 9/11.” If their intent was to kill Russian civilians, a small group of terrorists could simply have placed bombs in the theater and left, claiming responsibility by phone. But this play required actors to put a face on the threat posed to Russia by those enemies of mankind, the Chechens. We are led to believe that an uneducated 23-year-old criminal, Movsar Barayev, carried out a complex terrorist operation equal in difficulty to the 9/11 attacks. Yet it is absurd to think that, in a city where Chechens are routinely referred to as “blacks” and are subject to police harassment and beatings every time they step out into the street, the young Barayev could, without incident, have carried out the assembly of some 50 heavily armed rebels (including some of Russia’s most wanted people). How did this large group, with their weapons, uniforms and supplies, travel 1,200 miles from Chechnya to Moscow through countless Russian checkpoints?

Movsar Barayev

The statement from Barayev that Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov had engineered the entire hostage-taking was repudiated by the Chechen leader, who once again stated his opposition to terrorist methods while offering mediation from his personal representative. It also stands in complete contrast to Maskhadov’s record as a professional soldier and officer in the Soviet army, his record of anti-Russian military operations since 1994 and his many attempts to eliminate the Barayev clan and their renegade “Islamic Regiment.” If Maskhadov is indeed the hidden had behind this operation, why would he instruct Barayev to identify him as the terrorist mastermind, ruining the reputations of both Chechnya and himself?

Like his late uncle Arbi Barayev, a noted kidnapper and murderer (“170 dead by my own hands”), Movsar was widely regarded as an FSB agent posing as an Islamist. With a small gang behind him, Movsar carried out few operations of consequence in the current war, devoting most of his energies to maintaining Arbi’s criminal empire and to feuding with President Maskhadov. Why would Maskhadov entrust this extremely intricate mission to a hotheaded gunman from a criminal gang? How is it possible that Movsar Barayev, kidnapper, murderer and suspected Russian agent, could be considered a suitable representative to symbolize the Chechen nation on worldwide media? Never mind that Barayev was already declared killed twice by the Russians, the latest time being less than two weeks before the operation in Moscow.

Russian “discoveries” of huge numbers of empty syringes and liquor bottles in the theatre, and the “smell of alcohol” on the breast of the Chechen women confirm the impression given by Moscow that they are battling drug-besotted heroin dealers in Chechnya, yet it raises two questions: (1) How did a collection of drunks and junkies carry out such an intricate operation; and (2) Why would Maskhadov employ such unreliable types?

After the crisis began, Russian intelligence services released a “secret video” in which Maskhadov allegedly announces that a massive terrorist act will be carried out in the near future. In fact, the video, easily available on the internet, is taken from last August’s meeting of Chechen resistance leaders. Maskhadov promises only a military operation “similar to the Jihad” in the near future. The true meaning of this statement is only apparent if one knows “jihad” was the code-name for the 1996 Chechen seizure of Grozny from Russian forces during the first Russo-Chechen war. There was no announcement of impending terrorist acts.

Though Barayev claimed to be working for Maskhadov, it was Movladi Udugov who was in constant touch by telephone with Barayev. Udugov, a former Chechen government minister, runs an independent Islamist website in Turkey. He is also a long-time political opponent of the Chechen president and a frequent target of Maskhadov’s wrath. Maskhadov never even answers the phone, keeping in mind that his predecessor as President of Chechnya was killed by a Russian missile that homed in on a satellite phone transmission.

So-called Chechen “Black Widows”: Killed by Gas Before They Could Depress the Detonator on their Body-Pack Explosives?

While hostages (including foreign correspondents) were prevented from giving their stories, an employee of the official Russian press who was among the hostages (and apparently little-affected by the gas) gave the sole first-hand account of the tragedy for the first 24 hours. During that time the other surviving hostages were forbidden from communicating with anyone beyond their hospital rooms. That the reporter’s contradiction-filled report differs significantly from those that have begun to emerge from the other survivors matters little now as it has already become the accepted version of events.

After the 1994-96 Russo-Chechen war, it became clear to the Kremlin that their information management skills were severely lacking. In the current FSB-managed conflict, the Kremlin has vastly improved its manipulation of information. While barring all reporters from the region, the Russian government hurls out a steady stream of misinformation on the Chechen rebellion, certain that foreign correspondents with no background in the problem will eventually report some of these fantasies as truth. Who’s behind the hostage taking? Exiled media baron Boris Berezovsky, Maskhadov, Chechen military amir Shamyl Basayev and the usual “un-named Arabs” are all suggested by the Kremlin. The list of Russia’s enemies who conveniently joined in a grand conspiracy to destroy their own cause grows longer by the hour.

There is no doubt that this will be the final step in bringing America onside with the “war on Chechen terrorism.” The crisis validates all of Putin’s assertions that the Chechen leadership must be exterminated rather than negotiated with. For Putin, the timing and methods of the hostage-taking have been expeditious. The peace-seeking Chechen World Congress that opened October 28 in Copenhagen is now assailed as “a congress of extremists,” and Russia has made the transition from aggressor to victim. For Maskhadov and the Chechens, it is another dark moment in the Chechen’s third century of resistance to Russian occupation.

“Flying to the Moon on a Balloon”: Islamist Coups and Conspiracies in the Northwest Caucasus

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Andrew McGregor

Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, John Hopkins University

November 20, 2002

In the courts of several southern Russian cities a series of sensational trials has described ‘an attempted seizure of power’ by Islamists in the republics of Karachai-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Though strong ethnic tensions exist between the Cherkess, the related Kabards, and the Turkic Balkars and the Karachai, most conflict in the region has until now been politically or economically motivated. This fact, combined with the traditionally mild interpretation of Islam practiced in the region, made revelations of a violent attempt to overthrow the Russian state in favor of an Islamic Caliphate highly perplexing. Critics of the trials suggest that the proceedings were unfair and that the conspiracies are creations of the FSB and Russian prosecutors.

North CaucasusBACKGROUND: 

In 1996-99 jama’at-s (religious communities) began to be set up in Karachai-Cherkessia, centred on Imam Ramazan Borlakov’s mosque in Uchkeken. Borlakov was aided by Achimez Gochiyayev and Ibragim Bairamkulov, allegedly using funds supplied by Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, Saudi mujahidin leader Ibn al-Khattab, and Dagestani Wahhabist leader Bagaudin Magomedov.  Borlakov recruited a poorly educated but highly energetic young man, Khyzyr Salpagarov, who quickly became the leader of a Karachai jama’at. Salpagarov’s militancy was reinforced by attendance at one of al-Khattab’s guerrilla training camps in Chechnya in 1998. Borlakov, a charismatic speaker, attracted many to hear his militant sermons. By 1998 there were reports of Islamic missionaries from Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia spreading ‘Wahhabi’ beliefs, and cash, through the northwest Caucasus. The term ‘Wahhabi’ is used in Russia to describe any Sunni revivalist movement, regardless of their actual ties to the Wahhabi homeland of Saudi Arabia.

In the fall of 2001, Russian Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov announced that investigators had uncovered a ‘Wahhabi’ group that intended to stage a coup d’état, and assassinate government officials in Karachai-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. It was alleged that the 11 suspects had received military training from Arab commanders in Chechnya, and were working with ‘foreign Islamic organizations’. Security officials in the republics were puzzled by the case brought by federal authorities; one even responded that ‘to suggest that the 11 arrested men were preparing a rebellion in Kabardino-Balkaria, one of the most stable republics in the Federation, is like claiming someone is going to fly to the moon on a balloon.’ The head of the North Caucasus organized crime unit revealed that ‘investigations have yielded no evidence as to their aims, nor is there any clear definition of their activities. The statement that they were preparing a coup is groundless’. All the accused were ethnic Karachai and Balkars, leading to accusations that the charges were politically motivated by leading Cherkess individuals.

Salpagarov and 16 others were tried earlier this year for plotting to seize power. On the dock, Salpagarov outlined a plot in which his tiny jama’at group would lead an armed uprising to create an Islamic Caliphate across the northern Caucasus with the aid of Ruslan Gelayev’s Chechen guerrilla group. He further claimed that his jama’at had received $2 million from al-Khattab for the 1999 bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk.  Most of Salpagarov’s fellow defendants maintained that they were innocent and being persecuted for their religious faith. Russian sources claim that Salpagarov’s version of events has since been confirmed in the interrogation of Adam Dekkushev, another alleged conspirator extradited from Georgia in July of this year.

IMPLICATIONS:

Other trials of Cherkess, Balkar and Karachai defendants have convicted about thirty people this year for offences such as conspiracy to overthrow the state, membership in illegal armed formations, staging terror attacks, and murder. Many were found guilty for a wave of bombings that the Northern Caucasus experienced over the last three years. The convictions represent part of a much larger problem in the Russian Federation – of over 2000 bombings in the Federation in the last three years, only 15% have been attributed to terrorists.

Many of the defendants were accused of receiving military and ideological training at so-called ‘Taliban training-camps’ in Chechnya. Gochiyayev, who is still at large, has been accused by the FSB of responsibility for the 1999 apartment block bombings in Russia. Several of his alleged accomplices have since been killed fighting Russian forces in Chechnya. Gochiyayev has stated that he was framed in an FSB operation to blow up the buildings to create pro-war sentiment in Russia.

The arsenal that the plotters were allegedly intending to use included two grenade launchers, a dozen rifles, two submachine guns, and a handful of grenades. It was barely enough to equip the conspirators, and was certainly inadequate to arm supporters. Several of the suspects were underage at the time of their offences; others were claimed to be vagrants or outpatients at local psychiatric hospitals. For the time being several of the leaders of the alleged plot remain at large, including Borlakov and Bairamkulov. Shamyl Basayev is about to be tried by a Chechen Shari’a court for his role in the October hostage-taking in Moscow.

The trials of the young militants were conducted in strict secrecy. Defence lawyers charge that the secrecy was required since the conspiracy charges were baseless and without evidence. Some proceedings were conducted amidst charges that the defendants had been tortured during interrogation. Stavropol newspapers unsuccessfully protested the secrecy as a violation of the Russian constitution and criminal code.

CONCLUSION:

For many young people, Islamism offers an alternative to the corruption and ethnic dissonance that dominates the North Caucasus. In this sense, the conspiracy charges may be regarded as more pre-emptive than punitive. One of the more bizarre theories behind the conspiracy charges suggests the involvement of Western security agencies in promoting Wahhabism as a means to the secession of the North Caucasus from Russia. More plausible is the suggestion that state authorities have promoted the Wahhabist threat to counter attention to their own corruption. Unlike the zeal with which the Islamists have been prosecuted, there have been few arrests and fewer convictions in ongoing political violence in Karachai-Cherkessia. In the last year alone, three leading politicians have been assassinated and the chairman of the Supreme Court nearly killed. This violence has little to do with Islam, but is rather the result of different clans battling for control of the republic’s resources.

Ethnic discord and a general crackdown on Islamic activities have fostered an atmosphere in which otherwise improbable accusations are easily believed. Shrinking democracy, declining economic prospects and the growing influence of military and security figures in local politics contribute to the radicalization of young people in the northwest Caucasus. According to Circassian author Amjad Jaimoukha, ‘the authorities must provide the young men with hope and a decent living, so as not to be attracted to extremism. With the oppression of national culture and traditions, the youth are turning to foreign ideas that are undermining the fabric of society.’ There is no doubt that the Russian authorities are alarmed by the appeal of jama’at organizations to disaffected youth from all the major nationalities of the northwest Caucasus. While federal authorities have exaggerated the threat posed by such groups at present, the recent trials suggest that the use of Soviet style methods remain a useful tool in the ongoing consolidation of the Russian Federation.

War Crimes, Reprisals and International Law: The Chechen Experience

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Andrew McGregor

Canadian Institute of International Affairs

Summer 2000

Vainakh Tower, Chechnya (Sputnik News)

In recent months, the warfare in Chechnya has entered into a bitter “no quarter” struggle, prompted in large part by what Chechens see as an unrelenting attack by Russian security forces on the dignity and well being of the civilian population. Rape, torture, murder and hostage-taking are all alleged by the Chechen resistance, who have brought their own Islamic perspective to the problems of what they see as Russian war-crimes. [1] There is, however, no single Chechen viewpoint. It is important to recognize that the Chechen resistance is not hierarchical in structure; it is a network of government forces, clans, bands of warlords and foreign volunteers from North Africa, Bosnia, Turkey, the Middle East and Central Asia, bound only by a common hatred of the Russians. For these fighters, the enemy is waging a genocidal crusade organized by Orthodox Christians and a criminal Kremlin regime, aided materially and financially by the “hypocritical Western states” and the Zionists of Israel. The rhetoric of the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is couched in the language of a crusade, as he urges Christians and Jews to united against an international effort to restore the Islamic Caliphate.

The Russian forces are no less heterogenous; the current war is being fought largely by a bewildering array of special forces units rather than the line regiments of the Russian Army. The spetznaz units include marines, paratroopers (desantniki), SOBR (rapid reaction forces) and kontraktniki, as well as various para-military units, most notably the OMON forces who report to the Interior Ministry. There are, in addition, units of the GRU (Defence Ministry intelligence) and the FSB (heirs to the old KGB). The mujahidin response to this alphabet-soup of opponents is that the Russians `do not recognise that the Mujahideen do not care about the cool names and fancy titles of Russian forces – whatever units the enemy deploys in the field will eventually be annihilated by the soldiers of Allah.’ Allied to this array of forces is Bislan Gantamirov’s largely ineffective pro-Moscow militia. For its part, the Russian government claims to be engaged in a battle against `terrorists’ and `bandits,’ common criminals who fall outside the protection offered to legitimate combatants under international rules of war.

Chechen Fighters (Rferl.org)

Imam Akhmed Kadyrov, Putin’s choice as the new governor of Chechnya, opposed the Russians in the 1994-6 war. He represents the dominant mystical Sufi approach to Islam that has come under increasing pressure in Chechnya from more ascetic Islamic movements, such as Wahhabism. Kadyrov’s reconciliation with the Russians is largely a reaction to the growth of conservative Islam, which has been adopted by many of the most militant field-commanders and their fighters. Though the Kremlin is interested in foisting responsibility for security onto Kadyrov’s shoulders, the religious leader has no real armed force of his own and has to rely entirely on his former Russian enemies. Several of his aides have been assassinated, and the Chechen president, Asian Maskhadov, has publicly called for his death, as have a number of prominent warlords who accuse him of promoting “Russian atheism.”

Police and Martyrs

Certain elements of the Russian security forces have so antagonized the Chechen field commanders with their brutal approach to the civilian population that they have been especially targeted for reprisal attacks by the mujahidin. Among these are the kontraktniki, comparatively well-paid volunteers who are generally older and more hardened than the youthful conscripts of the Russian army and can thus be counted on to do the dirty work of re-occupation. They have generally been shown little or no quarter at the hands of the mujahidin and have been much reduced in numbers through casualties, desertion, or failure to re-enlist at the end of their contracts. The OMON para-military has also been singled out for special treatment by the mujahidin. Unlike units of the Russian armed forces, which may be drawn as a group from individual urban centres. Thus, the Russian command is forced to admit the scope of their losses when mass hometown funerals inevitably attract international media attention. OMON police un its are often unwitting victims of Russian propaganda. They are deployed into areas that have been optimistically declared free of mujahidin operations by the defence ministry, though in reality there is no such place south of the Terek River. With lighter weapons than the regular army (though no less so than the mujahidin) and little training for full-scale combat operations, the columns of OMON armoured personnel carriers are easy prey for mujahidin ambushes. OMON effectiveness is also limited by poor communications and often outright antagonism between the interior ministry and defence ministry forces in the field.

A wave of suicide bombings (or “martyrdom operations” as the Chechens call them) was launched in the spring of 2000 against Russian military units accused of participating in war crimes. The first attack was carried out by Hawaa Barayev, a 19-year-old woman who smashed an explosives-laden car into the barracks of the Russian Special Forces in Alkhan Kala, detonating a massive explosion that badly shook the confidence of the Russians.

The mujahidin made full use of Hawaa Barayev’s action in statements following the attack: “Her sacrifice was a clear message to the enemy: get out or die.” The Chechens claimed that another suicide bombing in Grozny less than a week later was the work of a captured Russian who had converted to Islam and wanted to strike the Russians “for the sake of Allah.” [2] These bombings and other acts of martyrdom were also intended as a message for those in the ummah (the larger Muslim community) “who waste their time with worldly exploits while Muslims are slaughtered in Chechnya and other parts of the world.” Though the Chechen leadership has largely written off the Western nations for being in league with Putin, they remain bitter about the lack of support not just from the Muslim territories of the Caucasus, but also from the larger international Islamic community.

Although the official response of the Chechen government to the suicide bombings has been cooler than the ringing endorsements of the mujahidin warlords, it blames the same factors: “The recent chain of Chechen suicide attacks is a direct response to the Russian inhumane torture, rape and murder of the innocent Chechen civilians including women and children. The Government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria cannot control every Chechen that seeks vengeance for his tortured, murdered and raped relatives. In the whole history of mankind, no one has managed to prevent suicides from committing acts of self-destruction. Because of the Russian brutality and international indifference, such acts are becoming an irreversible process in Chechnya.” [3]

Arbi Barayev, a militantly Islamic field commander and leading “Wahhabite,” has risen to prominence in the current war. Still in his twenties, Barayev is nonetheless a veteran of the 1f994-96 war. He is also the uncle of Hawaa Barayev. Barayev ran the region of Urus-Martan after the first war as a personal fiefdom through the deployment of his “Islamic Battalion,” but he ran afoul of the Chechen government’s Anti-Terrorism Centre when he became a prime suspect in a wave of kidnappings. [4] Several firefights ensued between government forces and Barayev’s men, but Barayev was able to escape prosecution because Maskhadov was reluctant to start an all-out civil war. Although Barayev has proven his effectiveness as a commander in the Chechen resistance, he continues to be surrounded by controversy, in part because of his ruthless methods. Reports (possibly Russian in origin) have circulated that his forces failed to secure the lines of retreat for non-Wahhabite Chechen fighters evacuated from Grozny. [5]

Amir al-Khattab and Shamyl Basayev

On 29 June, Shamyl Basayev, the chief of the Mujahidin Command Council, and Ibn al-Khattab, a Saudi-born warlord, delivered a warning to the Russians that war would spill over into Russian territory unless all Chechen women and children held against their will were released within three days: “We see the repeated violations committed by the Russian military against innocent women and children; we hear the cries of the women who were violated and women who were widowed; we hear the cries of the elderly and the young, and see the concentration camps crowded with the innocent. Our patience has run out in view of these crimes unless a clear deterrent stands in their way.” [6] True to their word, the mujahidin struck on 2 July with five suicide bombings and intensified ambushes and attacks throughout the republic. Incredibly, the Russian security services appear to have taken no precautions against the attacks, even though they were given three days’ warning. The Russians reported scores of casualties, while the mujahidin claimed up to 1500 Russian dead in one day’s actions; it is nearly impossible to ascertain the true numbers because Russian security forces immediately made all the sites off limits to observers. It does appear, however, that incoming casualties strained Russian medical facilities to the limit.

While the Chechen commanders have not hesitated to claim responsibility for the suicide attacks within Chechnya, they have adamantly denied any involvement in the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings and the summer 2000 subway bombing in Moscow. After all, as they point out, there is an abundance of military targets within Chechnya. There is strong evidence that the apartment blasts at least were the work of the Russian FSB. The Chechen vice-president, Vakha Arsanov, claims that the subway bombing was also the work of Russian security forces, designed to revive dwindling Russian interest in continuing the war of attrition in Chechnya and to provide President Putin with greater centralized power. In many ways the war in Chechnya serves as an object lesson to those parts of the federation that followed Boris Yeltsin’s advice to “seize all the autonomy you can” after the dissolution of the USSR.

The Case of “Colonel-Sadist” Budanov

An incident earlier this year illustrates the bitter divide that has arisen between Western and Chechen perceptions of war crimes. In March, Colonel Yuri Budanov raped and murdered an 18-year-old Chechen before crushing her body beneath the tracks of his tank in full view of his regiment. Budanov was arrested and charged by Russian authorities on 29 March. But the mujahidin are suspicious of war crimes trials conducted by Russia, regardless of the outcome; such trials are seen merely as the sacrifice of a few individuals in exchange for a public excuse for Western governments to continue funding the Russian war machine. Thus, the mujahidin offered to exchange nine captured members of the Interior Ministry forces for Budanov, who would then stand trial before the Chechen shari’a court.

Colonel Yuri Budanov (RAPSI)

The nine OMON men, all from the Russian city of Perm, were captured by Emir Khattab while they were on a marauding mission near Zhanni-Vedeno. A mujahidin communiqué signed by Khattab and Basayev stated that the prisoners would face execution unless Budanov was handed over within 72 hours. According to the mujahidin, the brother of the slain woman was in their ranks and would perform the executions himself (as called for in the adat, the still influential pre-Islamic code of law in the north Caucasus). The Russians refused, and the nine OMON men were killed on 5 April. Their photos and identification cards were posted on the rebels’ internet site along with a promise that the execution of prisoners would continue until Budanov was turned over to the mujahidin.

On 9 July, bombs went off in the southern Russian towns of Vladi Kavkaz and Tostov, killing three civilians and injuring fifteen. Rostov is the home of Colonel Budanov, but again the mujahidin denied all allegations of involvement and claimed that the bombs were planted by the FSB to further inflame public opinion; “Let the Russian government and the whole world know that the Mujahidin do not disclaim any operations they conduct. The Mujahidin are proud of all operations they launch and acknowledge them without fear or hypocrisy. Had the Mujahidin conducted these blasts they would have admitted it; but such actions are against the morals of Islam which condemn the murder of the innocent and the weak.  Rather the murder of the innocent is part of the behavior of the cowardly Russians. This war is between us… and the Russian military; it is not between us and the Russian people. If we wanted to conduct explosions, we would have done it against the Russian military in Chechnya and beyond Chechnya.” [7]

Russian Special Forces in Chechnya (Rferl.org)

Other offers to exchange Russian captives for Budanov have failed and more prisoners have been executed. Many captives face summary execution; three Chechen employees of the FSB were killed on 24 July after they were seized by al-Khattab’s “Islamic Peacekeeping Army,” and in early August the mujahidin announced the execution of three captured GRU (military intelligence) agents.

The operations described above are typical of many carried out since March in which officers of the Interior Ministry, Russian intelligence services and “national traitors” (Chechens in the service of the Russian Federation or the puppet government of Akhmad Kadyrov) were executed after hearing the verdict of the Chechen shari’a courts (“Decision on neutralization of criminal activity in the territory of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria,” February 2000).

On 13 March 2000, the Chechen state-committee of defense listed 56 accused Russian and Chechen war criminals, including Yeltsin, Putin and Kadyrov, with an appeal to the international community for help in apprehending them. In September, the mujahidin issued cash contracts on the lives of 20 major Russian politicians and generals. During the September United Nations millennium summit, the Chechens officially asked the United States to arrest and hand over President Putin on charges of mass murder and genocide, and the minister of the interior, Vladimir Rushailo, narrowly escaped death in an ambush in Chechnya.

International vs. Islamic Law

Russian protests against Chechen treatment of prisoners-of-war are somewhat compromised historically by the Soviet army’s refusal to grant prisoner-of-war status to German troops, who they saw as war criminals, in World War II. The Geneva Convention of 1929 does not recognize reciprocity as grounds for violations of its articles by any of its signatories. The most relevant precedents for the Chechen actions can be found in the post-war conflicts in Algeria and Vietnam, where the offending parties were not clearly bound by the Third Geneva Convention. The execution of French prisoners by the Algerian provisional government in 1958 and 1960 was justified as punishment for war crimes, but was more likely in reprisal for the numerous executions of captured Algerian fighters by the French military tribunals, which, like the Russians, refused to consider their captives prisoners-of-war. The reprisal executions occurred before the provisional government acceded to the Geneva Convention in 1960.

Russian Tanks in Chechnya

The mujahidin leadership has gone to great lengths to justify their selective execution of Russian prisoners as in accord with Islamic law and tradition. Basayev and Khattab, though not religious leaders or scholars, claim to have spent six months consulting Islamic texts and scholars “to ensure that our Jihad was within the guidelines of Sharia.” The question of the fate of non-Muslim prisoners-of-war has been addressed many times over the years, and a substantial body of work by Islamic scholars exists on this point. The Chechens have cited the opinion favored by three of the four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, which gives the leader of the Islamic forces and his deputies the option of choosing execution, ransom, confinement or release, whichever provides the greatest benefit to the Islamic community. This allows the mujahidin to reject criticism from within the Islamic world that the execution of the nine OMON men was a violation of the maxim that “No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another” (Koran, 35:18): “We are not obliged to treat prisoners in any particular way; we study the character and circumstances surrounding each prisoner and make a decision that is based upon and thoroughly backed by Divine Law.” [8] It should also be noted that reprisal killings and suicide attacks are consistent with the adat of the northern Caucasus highlands, which calls for blood revenge for the death or humiliation or relatives in the extended clan and provides for a tradition of pledging one’s life in the pursuit of ghazawat, the local form of holy war.

Reprisal punishments hold some attraction for desperate and inferior military forces: “For a technologically weaker party the prisoners it has captured may be one of the few ‘assets’ it possesses vis-à-vis the adversary. The inclination to use this asset is likely to increase if its combatants are not recognized as lawful combatants by the adversary, but are prosecuted and possibly executed as criminals.” [9] Such actions are often counter-productive, as the probability of torture and death provides little incentive for Chechen fighters to surrender. As Chechen commander Akhmad Zakayev has pointed out, it is safer to take up arms against the Russians than to wait for arrest and then attempt to prove that you’re not a fighter. The Chechens are not, however, blameless when it comes to battlefield atrocities. The heavily out-numbered mujahidin rely to a large extent on their fearsome reputation to help even the odds and are rarely averse to demonstrations of their own ruthlessness (The spring communiqué of the mujahidin to the Russian forces consisted of the cheery message: “The ground is turning green once again, and the Mujahidin are ready to reap the fruits of spring. O you Russians! We see that your heads are ripe for decapitation – you have no escape!”). Constantly on the move, the guerrillas do not have the facilities or resources to take many prisoners in any case.

The Chechen approach to the issue of war crimes and international law reveals deep divisions between Aslan Maskhadov’s official Chechen government and the more militant of the mujahidin represented by Basayev and al-Khattab. The mujahidin respond to allegations of violations of international law by citing the following:

  • The mujahidin are not members of the United Nations and have no wish to sign any of their accords or treaties.
  • The mujahidin have never given any commitment not to kill Russian prisoners and cannot therefore be accused of violating any prior agreement.
  • Several of the clauses of the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of prisoners of war correspond to Islamic law and are to be followed, subject to the overriding needs of the Islamic community.
  • The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council routinely violate the Geneva Conventions.

As proof of the selective application of human rights accords, the mujahidin cite United Nations tolerance for the Serbian massacres of Bosnian Muslims at Zepa and Srebrenica, the alleged murder of 2000 Egyptian prisoners of war by the Israeli Army in 1973, and the massacre of thousands of unarmed or surrendering Iraqi troops at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. In August 2000 before the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the Chechen government initiated legal proceedings against the Russian government on charges of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. Russian has nevertheless received significant support from France and Britain in recent months, and the conduct of Russian operations in Chechnya was a non-issue at the G-8 conference in Okinawa in July 2000. According to Shamyl Basayev: “Most of the world today is against us. The Crucifix is being raised anew and war is being declared against Islam and Muslims… [The European nations] are supporting the Russian military by providing it with media support, international loans, important information – all of this is done openly or covertly.” [10] Basayev compares the current conflict to the 19th century massacres and expulsion of the Muslim Circassians of the northwest Caucasus by Russian armies, and identifies a continuous Russian policy to eliminate the Muslim minorities within its borders. In such cases the strict regulations binding military conduct in the harb al-bugha (war against Muslims) do not apply in the harb al-kuffar (war against unbelievers). [11] President Maskhadov has attempted to hold Russia to its obligations as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions by signing the accords on behalf of the Chechen government. [12] In response to Russian assertions that the war in Chechnya is an internal matter to which the conventions do not apply, the Chechens may point to article 1(4) of the 1977 additional protocol which provides that armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination, alien occupation, or racist regimes are considered international conflicts. Failure to recognize the government or armed formations of the Chechen Republic does not relieve the Russian Federation from its responsibilities under the accords: “The armed forces of a party to a conflict consist of all organized forces, groups and units which are under a command responsible to that party for the conduct of its subordinates, even if that party is represented by an adverse party. Such armed forces shall be subject to an internal disciplinary system which, inter alia, shall enforce compliance with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflicts.” [13]

Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov with Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin (Caucasian Knot)

President Maskhadov has also signed on to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Chechen participation in this accord has a more political purpose; the Chechens believe that acceptance of the convention implies de facto international recognition of Chechen sovereignty as an independent successor state of the Soviet Union. In support of that position the Chechen government claims that recognition was already granted in the 1997 Treaty on Peace and the Principles of Interrelations between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria because treaties are normally negotiated between independent states under customary international law. [14] Accession to the 1948 convention also allows Chechnya to call upon signatory states to abide by their obligations to take action against states committing acts of genocide.

Conclusion

The latest war in Chechnya has entered a stage of bitterness and ruthlessness on the part of both protagonists that is unequal to anything experienced in 1994-96. The systematic atrocities engaged in by Russian security forces have revived the tradition of blood reprisals endorsed by the Chechen adat, with the claim of sanction from the shari’a. For their part, the Russian mix of police and special forces units live in constant fear of capture or death at the hands of the vengeful Chechens. Events have proved that the Russian soldier is unsafe anywhere in Chechnya, and the resultant psychological toil leads to acts of cruelty upon the civilian population that are unsanctioned by the customary or explicit rules of war. Maskhadov’s efforts to introduce international law in this conflict are unlikely to hold sway with most of his fellow Chechens, nearly all of whom have seen relatives raped, tortured or murdered. Nor is his appeal to the Convention on Genocide likely to have a greater effect than previous appeals to the international community, but it does establish the groundwork for continuing legal action against the Russian Federation.

Endnotes

  1. The Chechen government recently alleged that Russia used bacteriological weapons within Chechnya and performed chemical and bacteriological experiments on Chechen civilians in Russian concentration camps. “Crisis in Chechnya,” August 12, 2000, http://www.kolumbus.fi/kavkaz/english/12_8.htm (August 14, 2000).
  2. There have been several instances both in the current war and in the 1994-96 conflict of Russian prisoners converting to Islam and turning their skills and weapons against their former comrades. Under Islamic law, non-Muslim prisoners who convert to Islam may not be used in prisoner exchanges with the enemy.
  3. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Press Release 10-667, 3 July 2000.
  4. Chechen government officials accused Barayev of leading the kidnapping gang responsible for beheading four Western hostages in December 1998. Itar-Tass news agency, Moscow, December 26, 1998; “Chechens accuse warlord of leading kidnap ring,” Chechen Republic Online – News – 13 December 1998, http://www.amina.com/news/98/98.12.13.html
  5. See Lyoma Turpalov: “Battered Chechen fighters say fundamentalists betrayed them,” AP, 17 March 2000; and “Meeting of Chechen mujahidin commanders deny the Kremlin propagandists,: 1 August 2000; http://www.kolumbus.fi/Kavkaz/English/01_8.htm (4 August 2000).
  6. “Mujahideen issue severe warning to the Russian government,” 1 July 2000, http://www.Qoqaz.net (4 July 2000).
  7. “Russian Intelligence murder Russian civilians,” 11 July 2000, http://www.qoqaz.net (14 July 2000). On 21 August, the mujahidin claimed that the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk was the work of a Daghestani Muslim crewman who was in league with the Chechen rebels.
  8. “The Islamic ruling on the permissibility of executing prisoners of war,” http://63.249.218.164/html/chechnyaexecart.htm (n.d.), c. June 15, 2000.
  9. Allan Rosas, The Legal Status of Prisoners of War (Helsinki, Soumalainen tiedeakatemia, 1976), p. 448.
  10. “Exclusive interview with commander of Mujahideen forces in Chechnya, Shamil Basayev,” 1 July 2000, Azzam Publications, http://63.249.218.164/html/interviews.htm
  11. Khaled Abou El Fadl: “The rules of killing at war: an inquiry into classical resources,” Muslim World 89, April 1999, pp. 144, 153.
  12. Office of the President, Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Decree no. 10-390, 7 July 2000; Instrument of succession to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their two additional protocols of 1977, accepted by the Swiss Federal Council on 31 May 2000 and approved by the International Committee of the Red Cross, 21 June 2000.
  13. Protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts (Protocol 1), 8 June 1977, singed and ratified by the Russian Federation as a successor state to the USSR.
  14. See Francis A. Boyle: “Independent Chechnya: Treaty of Peace with Russia,” May 1997, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 18(1), 1998.

Islamism in Dagestan: The Roots of the Crisis on Russia’s Southern Flank

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Strategic Datalink no. 80, September 1999

Andrew McGregor, Canadian Institute of International Affairs

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a low-level Islamist rebellion has simmered along Russia’s frontier with the new Central Asian states. In August of 1999, this rebellion crossed into Russia proper as Islamist fighters seized territory in the Russian republic of Dagestan. The explosive violence of the insurrection has dealt another embarrassing blow to Russian security forces and largely eliminated any hope of a Russian-Chechen reconciliation as Russian bombers struck deep into Chechnya in attempts to destroy rebel training bases.

Most of the current analysis of the conflict has depicted the rebellion in terms of a Chechen-inspired Islamic/nationalist revolt against the Russian state, much like the 1994-96 conflict in neighboring Chechnya. The presence of leading Chechen guerrilla commanders such as Shamyl Basayev lends weight to the notion that the fighting in Dagestan is an extension of the earlier conflict into a new arena. Lost in this line of reasoning are the severe divisions the fighting has revealed in the Chechen leadership and the importance of ultra-conservative Islamic “Wahhabism” in creating the direction of the revolt. The Wahhabi campaign in Dagestan is concerned just as much with conquering the Dagestanis as with expelling the Russians.

Rather than constituting a nationalist struggle, as in Chechnya, the campaign in Dagestan is the military expression of a two-and-a-half century old Islamic movement that has been reinvigorated as the ideology of the foreign volunteers who fought communism in Afghanistan. These mujahidin have gone on to form the core of Islamic resistance movements throughout Asia and the Middle East.

Traditional Tower in the Dagestan Mountains (Hotel-all.ru)

Russia, in seeking Western support for its 1994-96 Chechen war, overemphasized the importance of Islam as a source of the conflict, describing the Chechen nationalists as “Muslim fundamentalists,” which clearly, they were not. Even General Dudayev, the late Chechen president, warned in 1991 of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism if the nation did not follow a politically secular path. While nationalism drove the Chechen rebellion, it was the discipline provided by the introduction of the Shari’a (Islamic law) that helped keep the guerrillas in the front lines through the war’s darkest days. The appeal of a more conservative form of Islam grew among some commanders such as Shamyl Basayev, one of the war’s Chechen heroes. For many others though, Shari’a came into conflict with the still important pre-Islamic Chechen code of tradition know as the adat.

Wahhabi Origins

The Wahhabist movement derives its name from the puritan reforms introduced to Arabian Islam in the 18th century by ‘Abd al-Wahhab, a formidable religious reformer who took inspiration from the teachings of the Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328). He rejected religious innovation, the survival of pre-Islamic traditions, pilgrimages to shrines, saint-worship and the cult of intercession; in short, the core of popular Islam as it is practised in the Sufi-influenced North Caucasus. The modern importance of Wahhabism is derived through the Wahhabi alliance with the founder of Saudi Arabia, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Sa’ud, whereby it became the officially recognized form of Islam in that nation.

Though the puritanism of modern Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia has been tempered by political necessity in the post-war decades, the Wahhabism espoused by missionaries and guerrillas in Central Asia and the Caucasus bears none of the restraints found in the Saudi court. Wahhabis often refer to a struggle against “Sufis, saint-worshippers and grave-worshippers,” whom they refuse to acknowledge as true Muslims, and therefore not subject to the prohibition against fighting fellow Muslims. Long seen as a militant expression of Arab superiority over backsliding non-Arab Islamic cultures, the recent growth of Wahhabism in the Caucasus and through the Turkic cultures of post-Soviet Central Asia and China represents an important step in the growth of the movement.

The core belief of Wahhabism is tawhid (literally the “unity” of God), an unflinching commitment to monotheism. The movement rejects the term “Wahhabi” (which implies worship of the man rather than adherence to his ideals), preferring the name muwahhidun, or Unitarians.

The Russian government has warned of the “dangerous expansion of Wahhabism” in Central Asia, and even signed a pact with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in May of this year to combat the movement. The pact is similar to one China signed with the Central Asian states in 1998 in an effort to dampen Islamic militancy in its western province of Xinjiang. [1] In late August, as the Russians battled Wahhabis in Dagestan, President Yeltsin attended a summit of the “Shanghai Five” (named for a previous summit) in Kyrgyzstan. While the summit of leaders from Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan continued, troops from the host country of Kyrgyzstan were battling Islamist guerrillas who had seized several villages in the east of the country. It has been suggested that the gunmen were also responsible for February’s assassination attempt on Uzbekistan’s president.

Islam in Conflict

While quick to designate fellow Muslims as guilty of shirk (polytheism) because of even slight variations from the spirit of eighth century Islam, the Wahhabis have always reserved a special antagonism towards followers of Shi’a Islam (as practiced in Iran, southern Iraq, eastern Saudi Arabia and elsewhere) and members of the mystical Sufi brotherhoods that often incorporate pre-Islamic elements in their rituals and customs. Sufism, or “popular Islam,” can be found everywhere from Bosnia to Indonesia, but it is particularly well grounded in the North Caucasus, making it seemingly infertile ground for Wahhabi expansionism. The lengthy list of prohibitions on personal and social activities demanded by the Wahhabists are also certain to dim their appeal to most Muslims of the North Caucasus. Dagestanis, who converted to Islam centuries before their Chechen neighbors, are on principle unlikely to accept Chechen leadership in any Islamic movement.

In the North Caucasus, Sufi Islam has long been seen to be the staunchest defender of national independence, with the tombs of great Sufi leaders martyred in the struggle against Russian imperialism being among the most revered and visited sites in the region. Sufism survived the Soviet period because the communist rulers of the Caucasus realized, after a long period of persecution, that the only effective way to combat Sufism was to re-invigorate more orthodox forms of Islam. This option was a non-starter for the atheist Soviets in Moscow.

The Mosque of Sulayman on Mount Shalbuz-Dagh (Hotel-all.ru)

At Mount Shalbuz-Dagh in southern Dagestan (a place where the Prophet Muhammad was said to have ascended to the summit on horseback, but is more likely to be a holy site of pre-Islamic origin), seven ascents of the mountain were considered locally to be the equivalent of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Traditions such as these represent the grossest heresy to the Wahhabis. Unlike some other areas where Sufi orders showed submissiveness to Soviet rule, the brotherhoods of Dagestan proved capable of mobilizing and leading resistance to those who would challenge local Islamic practice. The current Wahhabi revolt is not only a challenge to Russian rule, but is the first major challenge to Sufi leadership of independence movements in the North Caucasus since the eighteenth century. To the Wahhabis, the current state of religious expression in the Caucasus is akin to that found by al-Wahhab in 18th century Arabia; full of deviation and pre-Islamic custom, ripe for the most severe Orthodox reformation.

Wahhabism in the North Caucasus

The Wahhabists saw in the Chechen war an opportunity to expand their presence in the Caucasus, providing fighters and refugee relief while missionaries spread the word of Islamic reform and revival. Following the war, the continued Wahhabi presence produced violent religious tensions in Chechnya. In 1997, armed clashes occurred in Dagestani Kari-Makhi between hundreds of Wahhabist converts and more traditional supporters of Sufism. The Wahhabists gained the upper hand, policing the area themselves according to the Shari’a. An attempt by Russian prime minister Sergei Stepashin last year to buy off the Wahhabites with expensive Western medical equipment was a failure, with the Wahhabites accepting the equipment but refusing the presence of Russian police.

After declaring victory against the rebels in late August, the Russian security forces turned their attention to the Wahhabist enclave around Kari-Makhi and Chaban-Makhi south-west of the capital of Makhachkala. Instead of an easy victory over the villagers, the Russians only succeeded in opening a second front as the Dagestani Wahhabis fought back ferociously. Their bombing of a military apartment complex in the nearby town of Buinaksk sent shock waves to the highest levels of the Russian government. At the same time, Wahhabi guerrillas once again poured over the border from Chechnya into the Novolakskoye district in western Dagestan. Russian bombing raids on Chechen targets and the consequent civilian losses will only ensure a steady supply of Chechen volunteers to take up the fight against the hated Russians, thereby playing right into the hands of the rebel commanders.

The campaign mounted by an international group of Wahhabist fighters in Dagestan has gathered little public support, other than in the small Wahhabite communities, and, to a lesser extent, in the western border area of Dagestan, where 60,000 ethnic Chechens live. Isolated by language and geography from most other Dagestanis, these communities have little influence in the republic, which has a complicated power-sharing agreement among its 34 ethnic nationalities. [2] Moderate Muslim leaders have strongly opposed Wahhabism, and called for the arrest of the council of Muslim leaders who gathered in Botlikh to declare an independent Islamic State of Dagestan. The Wahhabis appear determine, however, to impose their will on the rest of the republic; according to one Wahhabi leader, “If the people of Dagestan don’t like to live in accordance with the law of Allah, we will take corresponding steps…”. [3] The rebels have even gone so far as to form a tribunal to judge the members of what they referred to as the “occupation government” of Dagestan. Despite three decades of resistance to the Russians offered by the legendary 19th century Dagestani Imam Shamyl, the current Dagestani government has sided solidly with Russia in the current conflict, even providing local militias with arms to combat the Wahhabi threat. This strategy has been questioned within Russia, which still has a standing army of 1.2 million men and several hundred thousand Interior Ministry troops.

Igor Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, has denounced the presence of “foreign mercenaries” in Dagestan and sternly warned the Organization of the Islamic Conference (an umbrella group of Islamic governments) of the consequences of interference in Russian domestic affairs. Moscow has further accused Saudi Arabia and Kuwait of funding the Wahhabites, and even claimed a connection between the Dagestani rebels and the notorious Osama bin Laden. In September, Russian interior minister Vladimir Rushailo informed FBI director Louis Freeh that Bin Laden was directing the Wahhabi operations in Dagestan, but so far the Russians have failed to provide any evidence of their allegations of foreign support.

Leaders of the Rebellion

The Wahhabi fighters operating in the Caucasus are led by the high-profile Chechen commander Shamyl Basayev, and a shadowy but highly experienced Jordanian known only by his nom de guerre, Khattab. Beside the contribution of his formidable military talents, Basayev assumed the early role of public leadership of the rebellion, issuing statements and posing for photographers. Basayev is, however, a fairly recent addition to the troubles in the Dagestan frontier where the committed Wahabbist Khattab has been operating for several years.

Emir Khattab and Shamyl Basayev

Basayev’s pan-Islamist inclinations were shown as early as 1991, when he joined the armed force of the Confederation of the People of the Caucasus, eventually commanding a force of foreign Islamic volunteers in the Abkhazian separatist struggle against Georgia in 1992. During this conflict Basayev received covert military training from Russian security forces. In 1994, after further training in Afghanistan, Basayev was ready to emerge as a daring rebel commander in the Chechen war of independence, leading an audacious commando raid on the Russian town of Budenovsk as well as the stunning two-day re-conquest of the Chechen capital of Grozny against an entrenched Russian force at least ten times the size of his lightly armed group of fighters.

Basayev appears not to have found a niche in the post-war political structure of Chechnya. Having lost the presidential election to the more pragmatic Alsan Maskhadov (Chechen chief-of-staff in the war), Basayev recently served six months as prime minister before resigning to dedicate himself to the “liberation” of Dagestan. Tensions are well known between the conservative Maskhadov and the militant Basayev, who views the Chechen war as only the first step in the expulsion of Russia from the entire North Caucasus. Basayev and his allies are committed to restoring the Shari’a-based North Caucasus Emirate (1919-20). Led by Uzun Hadji, a 90-year-old Sufi sheikh, the Emirate united Dagestan, Chechnya, North Ossetia, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. The Bolsheviks admired Uzun Hadji for his iron will; as an old man he had survived 15 years imprisonment in Siberia and once promised to “weave a rope to hang students, engineers, intellectuals and more generally all those who write from left to right.” [4] The Wahhabis envision a theocratic “Islamic Confederation of the North Caucasus” covering the same area as the former Emirate. Some Russians fear that the Islamist Caucasians also have designs on areas within Russia proper, including parts of Stavropol and Krasnodar krais, and Rostov Oblast. [5]

Despite the trouble the Dagestan adventure has caused Maskhadov in repairing Chechen-Russian relations, ties of comradeship seem apparent in Maskhadov’s unwillingness to cooperate with the Russians in suppressing the Wahhabi bases and supply lines in Chechnya. The extent of Maskhadov’s patience with the fiery Basayev is, however, unknown. Many observers have regarded a civil war within Chechnya as inevitable, but so far the deep-seated Chechen aversion to killing other Chechens seems to have prevented open conflict.

In Russia, Basayev is publicly despised as a terrorist, and privately feared as a brilliant guerrilla leader and a major threat to Russian dominance of the Caucasus. His reputation is so formidable that once, after musing to shocked reporters that if food ran out for his men they could always eat dead Russian soldiers, he felt compelled by their expressions to add that he was only joking.

Shamyl Basayev and ChRI President Aslan Maskadov

In late August, Maskhadov sacked security advisor Mavladi Udugov and security chief Ibrahim Khultigov for their participation in the attack on Dagestan. Udugov was the energetic and often flamboyant spokesman for the Chechen forces in the 1994-96 war against the Russians, but reinvented himself for the subsequent presidential elections as a dour, black-suited Islamist. Well respected by the Russians for his control of information and handling of international media, Udugov’s support is a major contribution to the rebel effort. While Udugov presents confident rebel commanders in press conferences and television interviews, Russian public relations remain as confused and unbelievable as ever. After mistakenly bombing the Republic of Georgia, Russian spokesmen claimed that unnamed individuals had carried unexploded Russian bombs from Chechnya to Georgia before strewing them on the ground in order to cause embarrassment to the Russians. Only after this rather preposterous refused to float did the Russians finally admit to a mistake.

In his mid-thirties, like Basayev, Emir Khattab arrived in Chechnya in early 1995 leading a mujahidin battle group composed of Saudi Arabians and North African Arabs. A veteran of the Afghan war, Khattab keeps his origins secret but is believed to be a Jordanian ethic Chechen, a member of the extensive North Caucasus exile community in Jordan. By other accounts, Khattab is held to be a Saudi Arabian, marked by a heavy regional accent in his Arabic. Wounded three times in the Chechen war and denounced by the Russian government as a foreign mercenary, Khattab remained in Chechnya after the war, marrying a Dagestani woman. Known locally as “the Black Arab,” Khattab and his men have frequently been accused of forming one of the leading gangs in Chechnya’s lucrative post-war kidnapping business.

Emir Khattab with Rocket Launcher

Khattab gained immense notoriety in the Chechen war with his destruction of a Russian column at Yarysh-Mardy in March 1996, the humiliation of which is thought to have led the Russians to assassinate Chechen president Dudayev in reprisal. His contributions to Chechen independence have made Khattab impossible to remove from Chechnya, though the Maskhadov government is well aware that the Wahhabis regard Chechnya’s dominant form of Sufi Islam as heresy. Customarily accused by the Russians of any outrage in the region, including the murder of six Red Cross workers in the village of Novye Atagi in 1996, Khattab has responded: “Whenever anything happens, the Kremlin immediately accuses me, without a shred of evidence.” [6]

Since the end of the Chechen war, Khattab has run a number of guerrilla training bases in eastern Chechnya, though these were mostly destroyed by Russian air raids in late August 1999. It was from these bases that Khattab launched an attack on the Russian armour base at Buinaksk in December of 1997. Khattab claims that his force of 115 “foreign mujahidin” surprised the garrison and destroyed 300 vehicles, including 50 brand new T-72 battle tanks. [7] Though the Russians claimed only two tanks destroyed, they were clearly embarrassed by Khattab’s ability to launch a successful attack deep into Russian Federation territory.

Referred to by Basayev as “head of the Islamic Army of Dagestan,” it is most likely to be Khattab rather than Basayev who conceived the Wahhabist rebellion in Dagestan. The hard core of the fighters also appear to be mujahidin from Khattab’s command. While Basayev commands the headlines in the press, Khattab’s importance is recognized by the Russian military, which claimed to have seriously wounded and captured Khattab in mid-August. The Emir was shortly afterwards seen on TV, mocking reports of his capture and asserting the success of mujahidin operations.

Khattab and Basayev have both threatened to bring the war to Moscow through terrorist attacks on political leaders and installations. The Russians are taking the threats seriously, and have stepped up the visible military presence in Moscow, creating yet another strain on the Russian budget and the fragile political structure. As explosions rip through Moscow, Russian security forces are left wondering whether they are the work of gangsters, radical anti-materialists, Islamic terrorists, or even the product of Moscow’s decaying system of gas lines.

The initiation of the rebellion in Dagestan may yet prove to have been a strategic miscalculation on the part of the Wahhabi volunteers; Dagestan is more likely to dissolve into a bewildering web of ethnic violence than to suddenly rise as one under the Wahhabi banner. The initial success of their campaign will, however, sow the belief amongst the great number of Dagestanis disaffected by corrupt Russian rule that defiance of the militarily inept Russian security forces is possible. Resilient and aggressive by nature, the Wahhabi movement will provide a growing threat to the stability of most of the ex-Soviet Islamic nations ranged along Russia’s southern frontier.

Endnotes

  1. Andrew McGregor, “Mummies and Mullahs: Islamic separatism in China’s ‘New Frontier’,” Behind the Headlines, 56(4), CIIA, Summer 1999.
  2. The exact number of ethnic groups or nationalities in Dagestan is a matter of some dispute. Depending on your definition, the number of groups may range from 9 to 200.
  3. Bagaudin Magomedov, quoted in Reuter-AP, “A call for holy war: Islamic rebels want Russian states liberated,” Toronto Star (Toronto ON), 11 August 1999.
  4. Marie Bennigsen Broxup, “The Last ghazawat: The 1920-1921 uprising,” in MB Broxup (ed.), The North Caucasus barrier: The Russian advance towards the Muslim world (C. Hurst, London, 1992).
  5. Boris Nikolin, “The Threat from the Caucasus,” Russian Politics and Law 36, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1998), p. 40.
  6. Jamestown Foundation Monitor, A daily briefing on the post-Soviet states 3, no. 202, 10-29-97 http://www.jamestown.org/pubs/view/mon_003_202_000.htm, 08-19-99. Blame for the massacre was eventually laid by the Chechen government against a pro-Russian Chechen who had fled to Moscow to evade charges. Geoffrey York, “Chechens believe assassin roams free,” Globe and Mail, Toronto,, 27 January 1998.
  7. Communiqué from Emir Khattab, “Mujahideen attack Russian base in Dagestan” (Parts 1-2), Azzam Publications, MSA News (12/29/97), http://msanews.mynet.net/MSANEWS/199712/19971228.1.html, 08/19/99. The mujahidin claim to have videotaped the entire operation, as is their practice.