Shamil Salmanowitsch Basajew

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Basayev in 1995

Shamil Salmanowitsch Basajew ( Russian Шамиль Салманович Басаев ; born January 14, 1965 in Dyshne-Vedeno , Chechnya ; † July 10, 2006 near Ekaschewo , Ingushetia ) was a Chechen Islamist terrorist and rebel leader who was responsible for numerous attacks and armed attacks. Until his death, Basayev was considered the most wanted man in Russia .

biography

Early activities

Basayev's grandfather had fought for the establishment of an independent Caucasus emirate after the October Revolution . After graduating from school in 1982, Basayev did his basic military service in the Soviet Air Force . Later he worked in the Aksaiski sovkhoz in the Volgograd region . He then went to Moscow , where he applied unsuccessfully to law school at the Lomonossow University there . In 1987 he took up an agricultural engineering degree, which he had to drop out in 1988 due to poor grades. Basayev then decided to stay in Moscow for some time and worked there temporarily as a ticket inspector, doorman and finally until August 1991 in a computer shop that was run by a Chechen who also lived in Moscow.

During the August coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow in 1991, armed with a few hand grenades, he was one of the defenders of the White House in which Boris Yeltsin was holed up. In Moscow, Basayev also experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union .

Alleged radio equipment used by Basayev during the Battle of Shusha, exhibited in the "Museum of Fallen Soldiers" in Stepanakert

In November of the same year, the Chechen nationalist Jokhar Dudayev unilaterally declared Chechnya to be independent from Russia. Boris Yeltsin did not recognize this, however, and thereupon declared a state of emergency in Chechnya. As a result, Basayev and several other Chechen nationalists hijacked a Soviet plane with 178 passengers on its way to Ankara in November 1991 . The hostages were eventually released in Grozny , the capital of Chechnya . From 1991 to 1992 he was trained by Islamist extremists in Pakistan . In 1992 he led Chechen volunteers who supported the Azerbaijani army in the defense of the city of Shusha in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict . He was one of the last to leave the position before the Karabakh Armenians took it . Basayev later said his only defeat was against the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh . Then he went to Abkhazia . There he fought from 1992 to 1993 as the commander of a Chechen battalion for the secession of the autonomous republic from Georgia , where he became deputy defense minister. Basayev's unit was responsible for killing thousands of Georgian civilians in Sukhumi , Gagra and the Abkhazian village of Lesselidze . In 1994 he left Abkhazia and began partisan training in Afghanistan for three months .

Rise to the Chechen leading figure

During the First Chechnya War from 1994 to 1996, he and Aslan Aliyevich Maskhadov became a leading figure in the rebel movement. In December 1994 he organized the defense of Grozny against Russian troops. In May 1995, 11 members of Basayev's family, including his wife and two children, were killed in a Russian bombing raid. In June 1995 he organized the hostage-taking of Budyonnovsk , in which over 150 people were killed. Basayev and his accomplices were given safe conduct. In 1996 he became the commander of the Chechen fighters. In August he led the successful attack to capture the Chechen capital of Grozny.

When Chechnya became de facto (but not de jure ) independent, Basayev entered politics for a short time. In the Chechen presidential elections in January 1997, he ran against Maskhadov as a presidential candidate, but lost. A year later, Maskhadov named him Prime Minister , but limited this position to six months.

Islamic fundamentalism

The relationship between Maskhadov and Basayev was outwardly tense, as Basayev and Maskhadov advocated, at least verbally, different approaches towards Russia. Basayev's ally was the Saudi Arabian-born Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist Ibn al-Khattab . Basayev and Chattab strove for the rule of Wahhabism , an ultra-conservative branch of Islam, in Chechnya. Islamic Sharia law was introduced into their domain . From 1996 they are said to have received financial support from Osama bin Laden .

In August 1999, Basayev and Chattab started a rebellion in the Russian Republic of Dagestan , which borders Chechnya, the so-called Dagestan War . He did this without the consent of Aslan Maskhadov, whom he ignored in his capacity as Chechen head of state. The escalation into an armed conflict that was brought about by the Wahhabi gangs from June 1999 onwards is the main trigger of the Second Chechnya War . Basayev's efforts to free parts of Dagestan from the sphere of influence of the Russian Federation provoked a defensive reaction from the Russian armed forces. This finally broke the ceasefire that had existed since 1996 and was never really stable. As a result, the Russian armed forces , which, not least because of the energetic policies of Vladimir Putin, were much better equipped and outnumbered by far, succeeded in initially driving the Chechen separatists from Dagestan in August 1999. The rebels were unable to counter the Russian offensive that followed in the autumn, although the Chechens were incited to unconditional resistance, not least by Basayev. The rebels were beaten by the Russian armed forces regardless of the civilian population, who were often also on the battlefields. The Russian side also tested the effectiveness of new weapon systems, such as aerosol bombs or a new type of rocket launcher . Unlike many of his Chechen subordinates who were killed defending Grozny, Basayev only lost one leg in the fighting to an anti-personnel mine when he withdrew from Grozny in January 2000. Basayev has lived underground ever since. Because of his handicap, he was no longer able to participate directly in attacks after 1999.

Escalation of high-profile violence

In October 2002 he organized the hostage-taking in Moscow's Dubrovka Theater , which Mowsar Barajew directed. 129 hostages and 41 hostage-takers died when the theater was stormed. He later boasted that he had trained young women from Chechnya to be suicide bombers ( Smertnizy in Russian ).

On December 27, 2002, he confessed to the attack on a government building in Grozny, in which a truck carried by suicide bombers and loaded with explosives rammed the building and killed 80 people. Basayev published a video of the action and claimed to have carried out the remote ignition himself.

In 2003, Basayev was officially named a terrorist by the United States .

In May 2004, Basayev had Chechen President Akhmat Kadyrov assassinated. During a victory parade on May 9 in the Grozny football stadium, a powerful explosive charge exploded under the stands where Akhmat Kadyrov was sitting. Akhmat Kadyrov died a little later from his injuries. Basayev confessed to the act on a mirror page of the Kavkaz Center .

In August 2004, Basayev confessed to the bombings on two Russian passenger planes and an attack on the Moscow underground , in which 99 people were killed.

He was also the organizer of the Beslan hostage situation, which killed at least 335 people between September 1 and 3, 2004, including many school children. The Russian domestic intelligence service FSB put 300 million rubles (8.2 million euros ) on his head.

Basayev ruled out a peaceful solution to the Chechnya conflict. The war will last 20 to 25 years. It will only end when “the law of Allah rules in Jerusalem ”.

On July 11, 2006, the Russian domestic secret service, the FSB, stated that on the night of July 10, 2006, Basayev had been liquidated as a result of a long-planned operation by the Russian secret service near Ekashevo in Ingushetia (North Caucasus). Chechen rebels confirmed his death on the same day but claimed that it was an accident. FSB boss Nikolai Patrushev said, however, that special forces of the army attacked and killed Basayev while transporting an explosive device, thus preventing a planned terrorist attack, according to the official version from the Russian side. In a later genetic examination of the body, the identity of Basayev could be confirmed.

See also

literature

  • Paul J. Murphy: The Wolves of Islam: Russia and the Faces of Chechen Terror. Potomac Books, Washington DC 2006, ISBN 1-57488-831-5 .
  • Mirosław Kuleba: Szamil Basajew, (Polish), Odysseum 2007, ISBN 8386010169

Web links

Commons : Shamil Basayev  - collection of images, videos and audio files
items

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rebel chief Basayev is committed to the Beslan massacre. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. September 17, 2004, accessed September 4, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Басаев, Шамиль. Lenta.Ru, July 10, 2006 (Russian).
  3. ↑ Thomas De Waal: Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-8147-1945-7 , p. 179.
  4. ↑ http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1069740.html
  5. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from March 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ https://www.wsws.org/de/articles/1999/08/dage-a19.html
  7. ↑ The Chechen Separatist Movement on cfr.org (English)
  8. ^ Greg Simons: Mass Media and Modern Warfare: Reporting on the Russian War on Terrorism. Routledge, 2016. p. 174
personal data
SURNAME Basayev, Shamil Salmanowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Басаев, Шамиль Салманович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chechen rebel and terrorist
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Dysne-Vedeno , Chechnya
DATE OF DEATH July 10, 2006
Place of death Ekashevo , Ingushetia