American Spectator: The Death of Shamil Basayev

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Today I have a new article on The American Spectator's web site about the life and death of Chechen commander Shamil Basayev. An excerpt:

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.

Read the whole article here. For more on Basayev, see the CT Blog posts written by Bill Roggio and myself.

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