Shamil Basayev—the most notorious, effective, and hunted Chechen insurgent and terrorist leader in the Caucasus—died in a large roadside explosion in Igushetia, a 10*July 2006 event that Russia quickly claimed as a “special operations” success.[1] The last public communiqué that Basayev is known to have written appeared just the day before he died. It was issued to express his Caucasus jihadists’ gratitude to Iraqi mujahideen for their elimination of five “Russian diplomats” and “spies” ambushed in Baghdad on 3 June 2006. Basayev noted that the deaths were fitting revenge for the February 2004 assassination of former Chechen President, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, by Russian Foreign Security Service agents in Doha, Qatar. [2] A likely contributing factor was the Chechen earnest request to the Arab / Iraqi guerrillas for this action. Further illustration of common Chechen-Iraqi insurgent interests were Iraqi militant demands that Russia withdraw from Chechnya.[3]
One of the Russian diplomats in Iraq was killed on the spot, with the other four kidnapped and executed later that month by the Iraqi “Mujahideen Shura Council.” [4] The Shura Council, which videotaped the event, purports to be an umbrella organization for a number of guerrilla groups—for example, “Al Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers (Iraq).” At the time, Al Qaeda was led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the priority terrorist target of U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF). Being Iraq’s most prominent and murderous insurgent, he was killed in a U.S. operation on 8 June, just days after the Russians were kidnapped.[5]
Russian President Vladimir Putin reacted with seeming decisiveness to the murder of the diplomats in Iraq.[6] He requested and received the authority — “unanimously, unconditionally, and limitlessly” — from the Russian Parliament to deploy military and security service/special operations personnel abroad to identify and hunt down terrorists who harmed Russian citizens and to attack their bases.[7] He specifically ordered the personnel “to find and eliminate the terrorists” responsible for the abduction and murders.[8] Not long thereafter on 20 July, Putin appeared on Russian television to personally decorate the unseen (by cameras) and unnamed Russian special operators credited with Basayev’s elimination.[9]
Remarkably in this several-week summer period, several incidents occurred:
a. A top Chechen militant leader was targeted and killed by Russian security services.
b. Russian diplomats (characterized as spies) were murdered in a carefully planned and executed operation by Iraqi insurgents.
c. The most wanted terrorist in Iraq at the time was eliminated in a U.S. special operation via air strike.
d. The vengeance for a 2-year-old Russian security service assassination in Qatar was invoked.
e. The President of Russia vowed to hunt down and kill specific individuals involved in terrorist attacks on Russians.
While the U.S. interest in targeting combatant leaders has become particularly visible and developed in the post-11 September 2001 security environment and subsequent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, attention to the issue predates that by decades. It has been at least as great in other countries, which have their own rich experience, rationale, successes, and failures.
1. See Lawrence A. Uzzell, “Basayev’s Death: Versions Abound,” Chechnya Weekly, 14*July 2006, Vol. VII, No. 28. This article addresses the variety of conflicted stories appearing in the first days following Basayev’s death. The circumstances of his death have been widely disputed, including whether Russian security forces even had a role. However, the Russian government pressed ahead with its claim of a “well-coordinated and targeted” special operation despite some foreign and internal Russian skepticism.
2. See Lawrence Uzzell, “Rumors swirl about Yandarbiev assassination,” Chechnya Weekly, 18 February 2004, Vol. 5, No. 7; also “Qatar extradites two Russian agents convicted of killing Chechen ex-president,” Pravda.ru, 24 December 2004, available from
http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/cr...4/7540-qatar-0 (accessed May 2007).
Yandarbiev was assassinated by a remotely detonated bomb planted in his car, possibly placed while he and his bodyguards were visiting a mosque. His two bodyguards were killed and his teenage son wounded when the bomb exploded on a Qatari highway. Two Russians, allegedly intelligence officers working temporarily at the Russian embassy, were arrested after Qatari security traced their van. They confessed after “clever interrogation” and were tried and sentenced to life in prison. However, authorities in Qatar agreed to their extradition to Russia months later. Alternative stories have Yandarbiev assassinated by rival Chechen factions and disgruntled business partners.
3. Francesca Mereu and Simon Saradzhyan, “Putin: Destroy Hostage Killers,” 29 June 2006, No. 3442, available from
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/storie...06/29/001.html (accessed May 2007).
In addition, the Chechen opposition has a “special unit” whose mission is to search for individuals who commit “war crimes” against the Chechen people or remove property or war booty. Even after the Russians were sentenced in Qatar, the unit commander claimed to be gathering information on Yandarbiyev assassination perpetrators. The unit supposedly has a database that includes fingerprints, voice recordings, and other information for post-war trials against Russians and others who “killed and plundered under the cynical silence of the whole world” wherever they might hide. The unit commander denied any intention to carry out extra-judicial punishment. See also “The experience of Mossad is unacceptable to us,” Chechenpress, 29 October 2004, translated in CEP20041101000342.
4. The Web site of the Chechen resistance-associated Kavkaz Center—
www.kavkazcenter.com/—published the “thank you” telegram. The released part of the message read as follows:
Mujahideen of the Caucasus express huge gratitude to those who has carried out the elimination of the Russian diplomats the spies in Iraq. Their elimination is the worthy answer to the murder by Russian terrorists from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation of the Chechen diplomat, ex-president of CRI [Chechen Republic of Ichkeria], Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.
5. Patrick Quinn, “Zarqawi killed in air strike by U.S.,” Associated Press, 9 June 2005. Also see Scott Macleod and Bill Powell, “How They Killed Him,” Time, 11 June 2006.
6. Putin chose to publicly announce his intentions to seek out the militants involved — and call for help in identifying the murders — at a 28 June 2006 meeting with the Saudi Foreign Minister in Moscow. See Francesca Mereu and Simon Saradzhyan, “Putin.”
7. See three references:
a. “Russia to Fight Terror Worldwide,” 5 July 2006, available from
http://kommersant.com/page.asp?id=687758 (accessed May 2007)
b. “Troops Abroad,” 8*July 2006, available from
http://kommersant.com/page.asp?id=688676 (accessed May 2007)
c. Ivan Preobrazhenskiy: “President’s Military Right,” Politkom.ru, 8 July 2006, translated in CEP20060711035001.
8. Putin’s intentions were called “absolutely moral and legal from a logical point of view,” by the First Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, Oleg Morozov, and widely reported in the Russian media. For example, see ITAR-TASS, 4 July 2006, translated in CEP20060704950089.
9. The 20 July 2006 award ceremony was noted in various media, including Tatyana Aleksandrova and Mikhail Antonov, presenters, “Vesti,” Rossiya TV, 20 July 2006, translated in CEP20060720950276.
HRW (or other NGOs) as superior information sources?
, I'd like to throw a wrench into the conversation. Has anyone been keeping up with the "new and pro-western" Russia? What's been going on with Georgia aside, how about what's STILL going on in Chechnya? 
Bookmarks