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Backgrounder: Russia's Chechen Resistance

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Elisabeth Smick
July 18, 2006

Introduction

The recent death of Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev is the latest in a series of losses of key figures for the Chechen resistance movement. The movement’s self-styled president, Abdul-Khalim Sudalayev, was killed in June of this year. Although most experts agree that Basayev’s death does not signal the end of the resistance, there is considerable doubt as to its future.

Who was Shamil Basayev?

Known as Russia's most wanted man, Shamil Salmanovich Basayev was a leading Chechen field commander behind some of the most violent and high-profile attacks in the war for Chechen independence. The most notorious of these operations, the September 2004 siege of a school in Beslan, ended with over 300 people dead, many of them children. Attacks such as this one, and a mass hostage-taking in a Moscow theater in 2002, contributed to Basayev's reputation as a radical and uncompromising figure in the separatist movement. The United States officially designated him a terrorist in 2003.

Basayev's willingness to carry out large-scale terrorist operations, what he called "bringing war to the Russian people," made him a polarizing figure within the rebel organization. His notoriety attracted new fighters to the movement, particularly young men, and he worked closely with other separatist groups in neighboring areas of the North Caucasus. Though he was named vice president of the Chechen rebel movement in June 2006, Basayev was often at odds with its moderate figures, who saw his terrorist tactics as counterproductive and disagreed with some of his more radical Islamic positions. His incursion into the republic of Dagestan in 1999 undermined hope for a peaceful end to the conflict, and precipitated Moscow's re-entry into war.

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Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.