Will use any tactic, Chechen warlord warns
Mark MacKinnon
Shamil Basayev, the notorious Chechen warlord who took responsibility
for the recent hostage-taking at a school in southern Russia that ended with more than 350
people dead, says he will use any means -- including chemical and biological weapons
against civilians -- to force Russia to end its bloody five-year war in the Muslim region
and give Chechnya independence.
In an e-mail exchange with The Globe and Mail -- his first public comments since taking
responsibility for the Sept. 1 hostage-taking at Middle School No. 1 in Beslan -- Mr.
Basayev said he is prepared for 10 more years of war with Russia, but also said he will
respect "international law" if Russian soldiers do the same.
The man often called "Russia's bin Laden" expressed regret at the way the school
siege in Beslan ended, but, as in the past, put most of the blame on Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Basayev said he intended the operation to be a repeat of a 1995 hostage-taking at a
hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyennovsk that eventually forced the Russian
side to negotiate and a year later bring an end to the first Chechen war.
Three years after Chechnya was effectively given autonomy from Moscow,
Mr. Putin sent Russian troops back in, saying it was necessary to root out
"terrorists" such as Mr. Basayev who had taken over the breakaway republic and
established training camps for Islamic militants.
"The Russians have been holding the entire Chechen people hostage for five years and
nothing happened. We held 1,000 people hostage only for three days to stop the genocide of
the Chechen people, and the whole world is shocked. What is this if not hypocrisy? . .
."
The e-mail exchange was arranged through the Kavkaz Center website,
which Mr. Basayev has used for several years to communicate with the outside world. The
questions were sent in late September to an e-mail address the warlord had used in the
past. The responses, written in Russian, came 24 days later.
While there is no way to prove that the sender was Mr. Basayev, the answers and rhetoric
are consistent with past statements believed to have come from him.
Russia's Federal Security Bureau, however, believes that someone else has always written
Mr. Basayev's public statements, which they say are too eloquently crafted to be from the
man they portray as an illiterate buffoon.
Mr. Basayev, who since the Beslan siege has had a $10-million (U.S.)
bounty on his head, said he had sent the e-mail from the Zavodskaya region of Grozny, the
Chechen capital. If true, it would mean he was still able to operate deep behind enemy
lines, since Grozny has been under the control of federal forces since shortly after the
latest war began.
Russian officials dismissed the possibility that Mr. Basayev could have sent the e-mail
from Grozny. "He hasn't appeared in Grozny for a long time. His imagination oversteps
the limits of any logic. Basayev has nothing to say and begins to invent some tales,"
said Buvadi Dakhiyev, deputy commander of the anti-terrorist unit set up by Chechnya's
current pro-Moscow regime.
Funding abroad has dried up since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and
Washington, Mr. Basayev complained, and his fighters now receive only a dribble from
abroad -- less than $20,000 from unnamed sources in Turkey, Germany and the United Arab
Emirates.
"I am ashamed of the Muslims," he wrote. "In the three years after Sept.
11, no one has helped us. They are all afraid to be associated with 'the terrorist' and I
am also not very good at asking."
"The Globe and Mail", November 2, 2004
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