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July 18, 2006
The recent death of Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev is the latest in a series of losses of key figures for the Chechen resistance movement. The movement’s self-styled president, Abdul-Khalim Sudalayev, was killed in June of this year. Although most experts agree that Basayev’s death does not signal the end of the resistance, there is considerable doubt as to its future.
Known as Russia's most wanted man, Shamil Salmanovich Basayev was a leading Chechen field commander behind some of the most violent and high-profile attacks in the war for Chechen independence. The most notorious of these operations, the September 2004 siege of a school in Beslan, ended with over 300 people dead, many of them children. Attacks such as this one, and a mass hostage-taking in a Moscow theater in 2002, contributed to Basayev's reputation as a radical and uncompromising figure in the separatist movement. The United States officially designated him a terrorist in 2003.
Basayev's willingness to carry out large-scale terrorist operations, what he called "bringing war to the Russian people," made him a polarizing figure within the rebel organization. His notoriety attracted new fighters to the movement, particularly young men, and he worked closely with other separatist groups in neighboring areas of the North Caucasus. Though he was named vice president of the Chechen rebel movement in June 2006, Basayev was often at odds with its moderate figures, who saw his terrorist tactics as counterproductive and disagreed with some of his more radical Islamic positions. His incursion into the republic of Dagestan in 1999 undermined hope for a peaceful end to the conflict, and precipitated Moscow's re-entry into war.
Some say the fight was personal for Basayev: his wife and two children were among several family members killed by Russian bombs in 1995, and Basayev himself lost a leg to the fighting in 2000.
Basayev's death is seen as a political boon for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian forces had been repeatedly frustrated by past failures to capture or kill the rebel commander, and reports of his death were positively received by the Russian public. "Basayev was the most feared and hated man in Russia, and knocking him off is like getting [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi," says Steven Sestanovich, CFR senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies.
The loss of Basayev is a serious blow to the Chechen separatist movement. Only one of the movement's key founding members remains in Chechnya, current rebel President Doku Umarov, and it is unclear who will fill the position Basayev occupied. "There are no other figures equal to him in stature, or in the breadth of the operations they undertook," says journalist Andrei Babitsky.
Doku Umarov, the current president, is the only leading figure still alive in Chechnya. Umarov is an experienced guerilla commander who joined the Chechen separatists in 1994. He was born in April 1964 in a village in southern Chechnya, and has a degree from the construction faculty of the Oil Institute in Grozny, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). In a statement made in June, reprinted on the website chechenpress.org, Umarov said a coalition of North Caucasus separatist movements was preparing to spread their fight further into Russia. However, he insisted their targets would be military, not civilian.
Some Chechen separatists have settled in the West. Two of the most prominent members are:
The asylum issue has been a somewhat prickly subject in relations with Russia, which regards the rebels as terrorists. “This used to be more of an irritant than it is now, but it still allows Russian officials and journalists to complain of double standards,” says CFR Fellow Sestanovich. “The U.S. and U.K. governments have made a point of trying to ascertain that the Chechens granted asylum have not been involved in terrorism.”
Although the Chechen movement seems to be fading, many experts say it is far from dead. Basayev's death may mean the end of large-scale terrorist attacks, but this could improve the separatists' image, and pave the way for renewed international involvement in the region.
Russia's difficulties in Chechnya have also spread to neighboring areas of the North Caucasus, says Elizabeth Fuller, an expert on the region with RFE/RL in Prague. "You can't talk anymore about the purely Chechen separatist movement," says Fuller. "The volume of the spillover is such that it's now a North Caucasus problem, not purely a Chechen problem." This may reinvigorate the Chechen movement, increasing the number of fighters drawn to the cause and widening the scope of the conflict.
Fuller also talks about a "generational change" among Chechen fighters. "You have a whole new group of young commanders, and we have no idea who they are or what sort of people they are."
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