THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCED Monday that its security forces
had killed Shamil Basayev, a commander of the jihadist insurgency
in Chechnya. The death of the man responsible for the 2004 Beslan
school massacre may prove every bit as significant for Russia as
the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will be for the U.S. and allied
forces in Iraq. But one detail that shouldn’t be overlooked in the
rush to assess the strategic importance of Basayev’s death is how
this man, who began his fighting career as a swashbuckling
separatist, was transformed over time into an international
jihadist aligned with al-Qaeda.
By the time Basayev died, his allegiance to al-Qaeda and
connections with the terrorist group could not seriously be
doubted. In September 2004, counterterrorism consultant Dan Darling
provided a detailed analysis of the links between Basayev’s fighters and
al-Qaeda.
These links center around Basayev and Umar ibn al-Khattab, a bin
Laden protege who brought his military prowess to the Caucasus in
1995. After Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in June 1996,
giving it de facto independence, Basayev and Khattab became close.
By late 1998, they planned to unify radical Wahhabi factions in
Chechnya and Dagestan. This culminated in their men invading
Dagestan in August 1999 with the stated intention of establishing
an independent Islamic state. After Russian forces drove them from
Dagestan and then invaded Chechnya following a series of apartment
bombings, Basayev and Khattab remained comrades-in-arms up until
Khattab’s 2002 demise.
The connection between these men and al-Qaeda are many. Basayev
and Khattab sent emissaries to Afghanistan in 1999 who returned
with “several hundred members of al-Qaeda’s elite Brigade 055 as
well as a large amount of cash to help bankroll the invasion of
Dagestan.” Bin Laden continued to send money and weapons to
Chechnya as combat against the Russians intensified late in
1999.
Nor did this support cut one way. In a show of solidarity with
bin Laden, Khattab sent fighters to Afghanistan after 9/11. After
the Taliban regime’s collapse, “a number of key al-Qaeda
commanders…sought sanctuary with Khattab.” And al-Qaeda bomb
maker Midhat Mursi trained European al-Qaeda members in toxins and
basic chemical weapons from a Chechen stronghold in Georgia’s
Pankisi Gorge.
IT WAS NOT ALWAYS SO FOR BASAYEV. He was born on January 14, 1965,
and raised by a family with a long history of resisting Russian
domination of the Caucasus. His first two brushes with fame are
suggestive of a man committed not to pan-Islamic ideology, but to
freeing his people from foreign rule.
Basayev first gained national attention in the August 1991
Soviet coup attempt, when Communist hardliners briefly wrested
control from Mikhail Gorbachev. A 26-year-old grenade-toting
Basayev joined Boris Yeltsin’s supporters at the barricades to
resist the coup. He later described this move as calculated, saying
that “you can kiss Chechnya’s independence goodbye” if the
hardliners prevailed.
Basayev’s fame grew later that year when he came to see
erstwhile ally-of-convenience Boris Yeltsin as an enemy of the
Chechen struggle. In November 1991, when then-president Yeltsin
dispatched Russian troops to Chechnya in response to its
declaration of independence from Moscow, Basayev hijacked a
passenger plane and took 171 hostages. In stark contrast to the
bloodlust he later displayed, Basayev let all the hostages go
unscathed. He explained that the hijacking’s goal was tied to the
Chechen struggle for independence: “We wanted to show that we would
resort to anything to uphold our sovereignty.”
THERE HAVE BEEN TWO DISTINCT wars in Chechnya since it declared
independence in 1991. The first, running from 1994 to 1996, was a
fight against Russian control. The second began in 1999, and was
precipitated by the Chechen mujahideen invading Dagestan.
This was no war of liberation, but instead was headed by
jihadists.
During the first war, Basayev emerged as the Chechens’ best
commander. In an excellent profile of Basayev that the New York
Times published in September 2004, C.J. Chivers described how
Basayev was then known for his battlefield prowess and “sarcastic
charm”:
During his long run as Russia’s most wanted man, Mr.
Basayev briefly shed the image of a terrorist in the mid-1990’s to
become a storied guerrilla commander, exuding tactical dexterity
and sarcastic charm as he led fighters who chased the Russian Army
from Chechen soil. Back then he rarely displayed the ascetic habits
of the Islamic extremists he later embraced; in a break during a
battle in 1995 he pointed to looted vodka and offered a journalist
from The New York Times a drink….
Unlike Osama bin Laden, with whom he is sometimes compared, Mr.
Basayev lacked a list of global grievances and the blank messianic
stare. He focused his rage against Russia, and, even after the
deaths of his family members, often wisecracked.
In 1996 he warned a British reporter that if war resumed,
“Moscow will be destroyed — not one person will be left,” but he
then leavened the threat with a punch line, “I’m just warning you
so if you have any flats there you’d better sell up.”
But Basayev was eventually transformed into a brutal, humorless
warlord who appeared to have less interest in Chechen independence
than in furthering the international jihad. It is always difficult
to speculate on the cause of such wrenching personal changes, but
certainly the Russians’ killing of his family looms large. In May
1995, Russian attacks reportedly killed eleven of Basayev’s
relatives, including his wife, two daughters, and a brother.
After the June 1996 Russian withdrawal from Chechnya, Basayev
lost his bid for the Chechen presidency but was appointed prime
minister. Little more than a military commander, Basayev was
unsuited to this job and became politically marginalized. It is
around this time that he drew close to Khattab and other jihadist
figures that had flocked to the country. Most Western analysts view
the alliance between Basayev and the jihadists as a marriage of
convenience rather than a genuine religious transformation on
Basayev’s part. But then again, most Western analysts understand
neither theology nor religious conversion and so needlessly
downplay them as salient factors.
Even if Basayev’s conversion to radical Islam was a fraud, his
terrorist attacks carried out in its name were tragically real.
Basayev is linked to large number of major terror attacks.
The best known is the Beslan school massacre in 2004, in which over
1,200 people were taken hostage. More than 340 were killed, with
children comprising over half of the victims. Another prominent
incident is the October 2002 Dubrovka theater attack in Moscow, in
which Chechen rebels took over 800 theatergoers hostage. When
Russian special forces attempted a rescue, 129 hostages died —
most of whom were killed by the narcotic gas the Russians used to
knock out the rebels.
THE PARALLELS BETWEEN BASAYEV’S LIFE and the fate of his beloved
Chechnya are striking. Basayev’s shifting goals from Chechen
independence to the promotion of pan-Islam mirror the shifting
objectives of the two wars. And just as the Russians’ treatment of
Basayev’s family and his people seemingly drove him into the arms
of the jihadists, so too has Russian callousness in pursuing the
second Chechen war driven many Chechens toward solidarity with the
terrorists.
There are many lessons to be gleaned from Basayev’s life and the
Chechen war as a whole. One clear lesson, reflected in both Basayev
and the Chechen people, is how wars that are brutally executed can
play into the jihadists’ hands. Another lesson is that, while the
Chechen mujahideen should clearly be seen as an enemy of
the U.S., we should be careful about how we engage nation-states
like Russia in the global war on terror. Though the Russians did
not initiate the second Chechen war, their brutal execution of the
conflict has played one hundred percent into the terrorists’
hands.
