| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| More on Maskhadov's successor |
| 2005-03-11 |
| Little-known Chechen cleric Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev will take over as interim rebel leader after Aslan Maskhadov's death earlier this week, rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev said Thursday. Analysts said, however, that the announcement was probably an attempt by radical warlord Shamil Basayev to buy time as he figures out his next move. The Federal Security Service announced Tuesday that Maskhadov had been killed that day in a bunker during an FSB sweep in Tolstoy-Yurt, a village near Grozny. Zakayev, who served as Maskhadov's representative and lives in Basayev backed Sadulayev's candidacy in a statement posted Wednesday on another rebel web site, Kavkaz Center. Andrei Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said there was simply no one to replace Maskhadov and his political experience, and that Sadulayev's rise to power was a stop-gap measure aimed at giving Basayev time to think. "This move is essentially necessary for Basayev," Malashenko said. "It is a pause that will buy him time to figure out what he is going to do and how he is going to act. He is fully aware that he can hardly move from the battlefield to politics because no one will talk to him -- not America, not Europe, no one." Malashenko said Sadulayev is a "colorless personality" who would not be around very long. "He may have some influence as a religious leader, but to think that he has any political clout or that anyone would line up to vote for him is simply delusional," he said. Maskhadov's son Anzor, who lives in Baku, said Sadulayev was a worthy successor to his father, Interfax reported. But Ruslan Yamadayev, a former rebel who is now a State Duma deputy, suggested that Sadulayev did not exist. "This is some kind of bluff. I think there is no such person on Earth," Yamadayev said on Ekho Moskvy radio. In a statement on the Kavkaz Center web site, Maskhadov's family appealed to world leaders to use their authority to help secure the return of Maskhadov's body. They accused Moscow of "trampling on universal human standards" and treating Maskhadov's body in a "savage, barbaric manner," according to the statement attributed to his widow, Kusama, his daughter Fatima and Anzor Maskhadov. "Because of this, more pain has been added to our loss," the statement said. "This is blasphemous and completely inexplicable in a modern, civilized world." Deputy General Prosecutor Nikolai Shepel said Wednesday that the body is expected to be buried at an undisclosed location -- in line with a federal law on terrorism. Maskhadov was charged with terrorism last year for allegedly ordering the Beslan school attack and charged in 2000 with carrying out an armed revolt in Chechnya. Lawyer Igor Trunov, who represented the victims of the Dubrovka theater hostage crisis and apartment bombings in Volgodonsk and Moscow, said that according to the law, Maskhadov's body should not be given to his family because he was killed in an anti-terrorist operation. He said, however, that the law violates the Constitution because it allows authorities to declare anyone killed in such operations guilty of terrorism. "Even if they were completely innocent, the family can't recover the body," Trunov said by telephone. "It's a clear violation of rights." Maskhadov's body has been taken out of Chechnya for an autopsy, after which it will be buried, Shepel said Thursday. The autopsy is expected to last at least two weeks, he said. Details remained sketchy as to exactly how Maskhadov was killed. Major General Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the federal forces in Chechnya, said by telephone that the preliminary version is that Maskhadov died in an explosion after FSB commandos tried to blast their way into the bunker where he was hiding. Citing the ongoing autopsy, Shabalkin declined to comment on a statement attributed to him in The New York Times on Wednesday that Maskhadov was shell-shocked after the blast and was killed by commandos in an ensuing gun battle. Pictures of Maskhadov's body released by the FSB show what appeared to be a small bullet wound under his left eye. Kommersant, citing forensics experts, said the images indicate that Maskhadov may have been shot in the back of the head and that the injury under his eye was the exit wound. Ivan Buromsky, a professor at the Russian State Medical University's forensic medicine department, said exit wounds tend to be larger than entrance wounds. "But there are a lot of factors involved, including distance and the weapon used," Buromsky said by telephone. "In fact, sometimes exit and entrance wounds can look very similar." Buromsky also said that blood that appeared to have trickled out of Maskhadov's left ear in the FSB images gives little insight into how he died. "Any time there is an internal head injury -- be it from a blast, a gunshot or a blunt object -- blood is going flow out of the ears," he said. Moscow-backed Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov backed off from his initial remarks that Maskhadov had been accidentally shot by a bodyguard. "I was just joking, you know, that a bodyguard's gun accidentally went off," Kadyrov told Interfax. "In reality, they threw a grenade in there, and Maskhadov died from that." Kadyrov also denied a web site report that his security forces had killed Maskhadov on Sunday and that he had asked federal forces to take credit. In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry angrily lashed out at Poland for criticizing Maskhadov's death. Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld called the killing "a crime" and "a political mistake because ... Maskhadov was the only partner with whom an agreement could be sought." The Foreign Ministry said Poland does not understand the situation in Chechnya and the war against terrorism. |
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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Chechens now in the hands of Basayev |
| 2005-03-10 |
| The killing of top Chechen rebel Aslan Maskhadov leaves the insurgency largely in the hands of Shamil Basayev, the most brutal of the warlords a development that could undermine any chance of peace even as the Kremlin celebrates a success in the long conflict. On Wednesday, there was uncertainty over what the death might mean, with Russia facing the fundamental question of how much an insurgency depends on its leaders a dilemma faced by Israel in the targeted killings of key Palestinian militants and the United States in the hunt for the top men in al-Qaida. Russia hopes the Chechen insurgency might be hobbled, with a series of militant leaders systematically eliminated over the years. In recent months the Russians also appear to have reaped some gains from a tough policy that apparently includes detaining rebels' relatives. And the Chechens might suffer diplomatically too, because Maskhadov was respected by some European mediators as a possible negotiator a mantle not likely to pass to Basayev. The death of the more moderate Chechen leader could leave the Europeans with no major figure they can push the Russians to negotiate with. In Russia, some legislators hailed Maskhadov's killing as a sign that Russia, which has suffered repeated terrorist attacks, might be on the right track at last. "When terrorists feel they are literally being trailed, fighting groups are systematically being detained, when in fact a top leader is eliminated, this creates an atmosphere in which there's no place for terrorist attacks," said Vladimir Vasilyev, head of the security committee of the lower house of parliament. But there appeared to be the prospect of a stepped-up Chechen effort to avenge the killing and to prove the cause lives on. "Certainly I think military activity will be activated," Maskhadov's London-based envoy Akhmed Zakayev told The Associated Press, echoing the threats of other militants. "It will be planned operations that will be carried out by our armed forces as long as the Russian occupiers continue violence in Chechnya." Even some supporters of the Kremlin campaign seemed to doubt it would force an end to attacks especially since Maskhadov was believed to directly control comparatively few of Chechnya's estimated 1,500 rebels. "I don't think Maskhadov's death is such an irreplaceable loss for the rebels," said Aslambek Aslakhanov, a Chechen who serves as Russian President Vladimir Putin's special adviser on the North Caucasus region. But diplomatically, Maskhadov's loss may have real impact. He was seen as a relative moderate in comparison with the Islamic fundamentalist Basayev and had repeatedly called for negotiations to end the fighting. His suggestion that compromise was possible and the fact that he was Chechnya's elected president for a brief period of de facto independence and relative calm lent him credibility and support among Chechens tired of the conflict. "For me, the death of Maskhadov is a great pain. He was aiming for peace and wanted to achieve it, but the Kremlin didn't want this," said a resident of the Chechen capital Grozny, who gave his name only as Shudin. Maskhadov was blamed by the Russians for terrorist acts, but he usually denied the accusations. Russia can now step up the hunt for Basayev, its most-wanted fugitive, who has more than a decade of experience in evading Russian dragnets. In any case, with Maskhadov's "violent death ⊠a new period has begun in the modern history of the Russian-Chechen military confrontation, which not only allows for no negotiations, but also for no end to the war," rebel ideologue Movladi Udugov wrote on a rebel Web site. Zakayev suggested the new phase could bring more terrorist attacks, saying: "It's my personal fear that the radical part of the Chechen resistance, after what happened yesterday, will feel its hands untied and freed from any moral responsibility." Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld called the killing "a political mistake because ⊠Maskhadov was the only partner with whom an agreement could be sought." He added: "I do not exclude that those who carried out the killing wanted to cross out the possibility of an agreement." The Council of Europe said it regretted the killing and urged that "the effort to find a political solution to the situation in Chechnya must continue." Undermining the prospect is the increasingly jittery atmosphere in Chechnya, where violence attributed to the pro-Kremlin local security forces is expected to spread. Recent months have seen an upsurge in clashes between Islamic militants and federal Russian forces in practically every republic in the Caucasus Mountains region fighting not directly linked to Chechnya, but perhaps inspired by the conflict there. |
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