Shamil Basayev is not well know in this country, although the extent of his crimes has made him as despised and hated in Russia as Osama bin Laden is here in America. Ever since his 1991 debut–the hijacking of a passenger plane from Mineralnye Vody to Turkey and then on to the Chechen capital of Grozny–his name has become synonymous with terrorism throughout the entire Russian Federation. In 1995, during the height of the First Chechen War, he and an estimated 130 followers held more than 2,000 people hostage at a hospital in Budennovsk–an act that foreshadowed the horrific slaughter of 186 schoolchildren by his followers in Beslan in 2004.
The cause of Chechen independence is one that many Western pundits and policy-makers have embraced, and it was only made more palatable by the ruthlessness and brutality with which the Russian military responded. Yet Basayev and his followers did nothing but undermine the movement. His organization’s ties to international terrorism, including al Qaeda, transformed what was once a nationalist independence movement into an active threat to the United States and its allies. It is within this context that one should view one of his final public statements, posted on the rebel website Kavkaz Center, in which he praised the “Iraqi Mujahideen” in reference to the al Qaeda-linked Mujahideen Shura Council’s recent kidnapping and murder of four Russian diplomats in Baghdad.
Unraveling the tangled web of connections between Basayev’s Chechen followers on the one hand and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network on the other is a task made considerably more difficult by the prevalence of Russian propaganda, which stretches such links to the point of lunacy. Still, a number of such connections are generally accepted among terrorism analysts. Among these is the prominence of Arab commanders and clerics who have fought under Basayev’s leadership, the presence of at least a small number of Chechen fighters loyal to Basayev as far afield as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, and links to Arab and Turkish nationals who subsequently returned from Chechnya to take part in terrorist operations in their homelands. Rohan Gunaratna’s Inside Al Qaeda documents the role that Basayev’s acolytes have had in radicalizing the Chechen conflict, noting that bin Laden “maintained a close ideological, technological and financial relationship with Khattab, the military commander of the mujahidin in the Caucasus.” This relationship presumably carried over after Khattab’s death in 2002 to his successors, Abu Walid al-Ghamdi (a member of the same Saudi tribe as three of the 9/11 hijackers), Abu Zeid, Abu Omar al-Saif, and Abu Hafs al-Urduni. Gunaratna further notes that “In the Caucasus, Al Qaeda’s Afghan-trained members were model fighters, who often went on to occupy senior posts, thereby increasing Osama’s renown. The Al Qaeda influenced Al Ansar mujahidin . . . were also responsible for most of the Chechen conflict’s suicide attacks, previously an unknown tactic.”
While it would be a definite mistake to view Basayev as nothing more than a henchman of Osama bin Laden, the same links (ideological, technological, and financial) mentioned by Gunaratna continue to bind the two organizations. It is because of this that senior al Qaeda figures, after being evicted from Afghanistan, sought refuge in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, long considered a haven for Chechen rebels and it is for this reason that both Abu Omar al-Saif and Abu Hafs al-Urduni have been so strident in their calls for attacks on American troops in Iraq. Both bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, regularly praise the actions of the “mujahideen in Chechnya” in their propaganda statements. Basayev himself stated in a February 2005 interview that “Today we’re fighting global Satanism that puts forward as its shield American imperialism and Russian chauvinism.”
While Basayev was not given to speech-making like bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, what he lacked in rhetoric he more than made up for in threats and violence. In March 2004, for instance, he posted the following on the Kavkaz Center website: “We will bomb, blow up, poison, sent on fire, stage gas explosions and fires whenever possible on everything else on the territory of [Russia] . . . We reserve the right to use chemical and poisonous substances this year.” While thankfully no such attacks occurred, Basayev’s reputation for brutality, and his willingness to employ suicide bombers (often the widows of his dead Chechen fighters) against civilian targets made the threat credible. Basayev had already pushed the Chechen conflict well beyond the tiny republic’s borders into the neighboring regions of Dagestan, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia, and even into Moscow itself in a number of attacks that include the October 2002 seizure of the Poshipnikov Zavod Dubrovka Theater. It should also be noted that, regardless of his organization’s role in the 1999 bombings in Moscow, Basayev and his deputy had already set the stage for the Second Chechen War the previous month when hundreds of Islamist fighters under their command attempted to seize control of the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan.
One needs only to look at Basayev’s tenure as acting prime minister of Chechnya from 1997 to 1999 to understand his vision for the region. Gangsterism and organized crime flourished while international terrorist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan were favored by the regime. Indeed, during this period, the only state that recognized Basayev’s independent Chechnya was Mullah Omar’s Afghanistan. Surely, given the suffering and brutality that the Chechen people have endured at the hands of Russia, they deserve better than a mere exchange of one tyranny for another.
Basayev’s demise is unlikely to provide an immediate end to the fighting in Chechnya, at least not while other powerful commanders like Doku Umarov and Abu Hafs al-Urduni remain active. Nor is it likely to put an end to the brutal and counter-productive Russian policies that drove hundreds of young Chechens into Basayev’s arms and, by extension, those of his allies. But it does provide a sense of justice to know that the monster who presided over the attack on Beslan has met his demise. If nothing else, that is progress.
Dan Darling is a counterterrorism consultant.
