Shamil Basayev
Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (Chechen: Салман ВоӀ Шамиль; Salman Voj Şamil; Russian: Шамиль Салманович Басаев; 14 January 1965 – 10 July 2006), also known by his kunya "Abu Idris", was a North Caucasian leader who served as a senior military commander in the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He held the rank of brigadier general in the Armed Forces of Ichkeria, and was posthumously declared generalissimo. As a military commander in the separatist armed forces of Chechnya, one of his most notable battles was the separatist recapture of Grozny in 1996, which he personally planned and commanded together with Aslan Maskhadov. He also masterminded several of the worst terrorist attacks that occurred in Russia.[1][2]
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Salmanovich and the family name is Basayev.
Shamil Basayev
Aslan Maskhadov
14 January 1965
Dyshne-Vedeno, Checheno–Ingush ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
10 July 2006 (aged 41)
Ekazhevo, Ingushetia, Russia
Abdullah Shamil Abu-Idris
1991–2006
Brigadier General
Starting as a field commander in the Transcaucasus, Basayev led guerrilla campaigns against Russian forces for years, as well as launching mass-hostage takings of civilians, with his goal being the withdrawal of Russian soldiers from Chechnya.[3] From 1997 to 1998, he also served as the vice-prime minister of the breakaway state in Aslan Maskhadov's government. Beginning in 2003, Basayev used the nom de guerre and title of "Emir Abdullah Shamil Abu-Idris". As Basayev's ruthless reputation gained notoriety, he became well revered among his peers and eventually became the highest ranking Chechen military commander and was considered the undisputed leader of the Chechen insurgency as well as being the overall senior leader of all other Chechen rebel factions.
He ordered the Budyonnovsk hospital raid in 1995, the Beslan school siege in 2004,[4] and was responsible for numerous attacks on security forces in and around Chechnya.[5][6][7] He also masterminded the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis and the 2004 Russian aircraft bombings. ABC News described him as "one of the most-wanted terrorists in the world".[8] Despite his aura, journalist Tom de Waal described him as "almost unassuming in the flesh", being "of medium height, with a bushy beard and high forehead worthy of a Moscow intellectual, and a quiet voice."[9]
Basayev was killed in a truck explosion during an arms deal in July 2006. Forensic evidence suggests that his death was caused when a landmine he was examining exploded, but Russian officials have also claimed that one of the Kamaz trucks used was booby-trapped and detonated to destroy the arms shipment, also killing Basayev.
Biography[edit]
Family history[edit]
Shamil Basayev was born in the village of Dyshne-Vedeno, near Vedeno, in south-eastern Chechnya, in 1965[10] to Chechen parents from the Belghatoy teip.[11] He was named after Imam Shamil, the third imam of Chechnya and Dagestan and one of the leaders of anti-Russian Chechen-Avar forces in the Caucasian War.
His family is said to have had a long history of involvement in Chechen resistance to foreign occupation, especially Russian rule.
In the 14th century an ancestor fought Timur, a great-great-great-grandfather served as Imam Shamil's deputy and died fighting the Czar, while a great-grandfather died fighting the Bolsheviks.[12] His grandfather fought for the abortive attempt to create a breakaway North Caucasian Emirate after the Russian Revolution.[13]
The Basayevs, along with most of the rest of the Chechen population, had been deported to Kazakhstan during World War II in an act of ethnic cleansing on the orders of the NKVD leader Lavrenti Beria. They were only allowed to return when the deportation order was lifted by Nikita Khrushchev in 1957.
Early life and education[edit]
Basayev, an avid football player, graduated from school in Dyshne-Vedeno in 1982, aged 17, and spent the next two years in the Soviet military serving as a firefighter. For the next four years, he worked at the Aksaiisky state farm in the Volgograd region of southern Russia before moving to Moscow. He reportedly attempted to enroll in the law school of the Moscow State University but failed, and instead entered the Moscow Engineering Institute of Land Management in 1987. However, he was expelled for poor grades in 1988.[14] He subsequently worked as a computer salesman in Moscow, in partnership with a local Chechen businessman, Supyan Taramov.[15] Ironically, the two men ended up on opposite sides in the Chechen wars, during which Taramov sponsored a pro-Russian Chechen militia (Sobaka magazine's dossier on Basayev reported that Taramov apparently equipped or "outfitted" this group of pro-Russian Chechens; they were also known as "Shamil Hunters").
Personal life[edit]
Basayev had four wives, a Chechen woman who was killed in the 1990s, an Abkhaz woman he met while fighting against Georgia, and a Cossack he was said to have married on Valentine's Day, 2005.[16] A fourth secret wife, Elina Ersenoyeva, was apparently forced to marry Basayev under threat of her two brothers' lives, and subsequently hid the identity of her husband from her friends and family.[16] Following revelations about the marriage, Elina was abducted in November 2006, four months after the death of Basayev, allegedly by the Kadyrovtsy ("pro-Kremlin" Chechen forces). She has never been found.[16][17]
In May 1995, eleven members of Basayev's family were killed in a Russian air raid including his mother, his two children and a brother and sister. He also lost his home in the same attack, becoming the first Chechen who took revenge outside Chechen lands, in the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis.[18]
He lost a leg in 2000 during the Second Chechen War.[19]
His younger brother, Shirvani Basayev, who fought the Russians alongside him, is now living in exile in Turkey.[20]
Early militant activities[edit]
When some hardline members of Soviet government attempted to stage a coup d'état in August 1991, Basayev allegedly joined supporters of Russian President Boris Yeltsin on the barricades around the Russian White House in central Moscow, armed with hand grenades.[21]
A few months later, in November 1991, the Chechen nationalist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev unilaterally declared independence from the newly formed Russian Federation. In response, Yeltsin announced a state of emergency and dispatched troops to the border of Chechnya. It was then that Basayev began his long career as an insurgent—seeking to draw international attention to the crisis. Basayev, Lom-Ali Chachayev, and the group's leader, Said-Ali Satuyev, a former airline pilot suffering from schizophrenia, hijacked an Aeroflot Tu-154 plane, en route from Mineralnye Vody in Russia to Ankara on 9 November 1991, and threatened to blow up the aircraft unless the state of emergency was lifted. The hijacking was resolved peacefully in Turkey, with the plane and passengers being allowed to return safely and the hijackers given safe passage back to Chechnya.
Interwar period[edit]
Basayev stepped down from his military position in December 1996 to run for president in Chechnya's second (and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria's first and only ever internationally monitored) presidential elections. Basayev came in second place to Aslan Maskhadov, obtaining 23.5% of the votes. Allegedly Basayev found the defeat very painful.
In early 1997 he was appointed deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya by Maskhadov. He briefly served as acting leader of Chechnya during President Maskhadov's trip to the Middle East in 1997.[43] In January 1998 he became the acting head of the Chechen government for a six-month term, after which he resigned. Basayev's appointment was symbolic because it took place on the eve of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of his renowned namesake. Basayev subsequently reduced the government's administrative departments and abolished several ministries. However, the collection of taxes and the Chechen National Bank's reserves shrank, and theft of petroleum products increased seriously.
Maskhadov worked with Basayev until 1998, when Basayev established a network of military officers, who soon became rival warlords. As Chechnya collapsed into chaos, Basayev's reputation began to plummet as he and others were accused of corruption and involvement in kidnapping; his alliance with Khattab also alienated many Chechens. By early 1998 Basayev emerged as the main political opponent of the Chechen president, who in his opinion was "pushing the republic back to the Russian Federation." On 31 March 1998, Basayev called for the termination of talks with Russia; on 7 July 1998, he sent a letter of resignation from his post as the Chechen Prime Minister. During these years he wrote Book of a Mujahiddeen, an Islamic guerilla manual.
Death[edit]
On 10 July 2006, Basayev was killed near the border of North Ossetia in the village of Ekazhevo, Ingushetia, a republic bordering Chechnya.[84]
According to the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor of Ingushetia, a group of three cars and two KAMAZ trucks (one pulling the other by a rope) gathered at the spot of an unfinished estate on the outskirts of the village in the early morning hours of 10 July.[85] According to a handful of witnesses, men in black uniforms came in and out from the wooded area adjacent to the estate that runs to the border of North Ossetia; the men were carrying boxes, shifting them from one vehicle to another, when a massive explosion occurred.[85]
It is believed that the partially completed estate, which contained empty new buildings, was being used as an insurgent reception and distribution point for large quantities of weapons purchased from abroad.[85] It is also believed that the most "anticipated" part of the incoming shipment was located in the KAMAZ trucks, but because one of them broke down the weaponry had to quickly be transferred into the cars.[85]
Basayev is assumed to have been the main recipient of the arms, and thus in charge of distributing them. With the back tailgate of one of the trucks open, Basayev allegedly asked that a mine be placed on the ground for inspection, at which point it exploded.[85] An Ossetian forensic specialist who examined Basayev's remains stated that, "The man…died of mine-blast injuries. The explosive device was quite powerful…and the victim was in close proximity to the epicenter. Most likely, the bomb lay on the ground, and the victim was bending over it."[85]
Basayev's upper torso was recovered at the epicenter of the blast, while smaller pieces of his remains were scattered over the distance of a mile.[85] Included among the smaller pieces was Basayev's prosthetic lower right leg, which led FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev to confidently assert that Basayev was dead even before positive identification.[85]
Russian officials stated that the explosion was the result of a special targeted killing operation. According to the official version of Basayev's death, the FSB, following him with a drone, spotted his car approach a truck laden with explosives that the FSB had prepared, and by remote control triggered a detonator that the FSB had hidden in the explosives.[84][86][87]
Interfax, quoting Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev, reported that the explosion was a result of a truck bomb detonated next to the convoy by Russian agents.[88] According to a Russian edition of Newsweek,[89] Basayev's death was a result of an FSB operation, whose primary aim was to prevent a planned terrorist attack in Chechnya or Ingushetia the days before the G8 summit in St Petersburg. The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said: "He is a notorious terrorist, and we have very clearly and publicly announced what is going to happen to notorious terrorists who commit heinous crimes of the type Mr. Basayev has been involved in."[90] In February 2014, a Turkish court convicted a Chechen national Ruslan Papaskiri aka Temur Makhauri with the killings of several Chechen separatists on Turkish soil. The pro-Chechen separatist Imkander organization held a press conference claiming that Turkish investigators believed that Makhauri had prepared the explosives laden truck that killed Basayev.[91]
On 29 December 2006, forensic experts positively identified Basayev's remains.[92] On 6 October 2007, Basayev was promoted to the rank of Generalissimo post mortem by Doku Umarov.[93]
Book of a Mujahideen[edit]
Basayev wrote a book after the First Chechen War, Book of a Mujahideen. According to the introduction, in March 2003 Basayev obtained a copy of The Manual of the Warrior of Light by Paulo Coelho. He wanted to draw benefits to the Mujahideen from this book and decided to "rewrite most of it, remove some excesses and strengthen all of it with verses (ayats), hadiths and stories from the lives of the disciples." Some sections are specifically about ambush tactics, etc.[94]