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From tactical terrorism to Holy War:

the evolution of Chechen terrorism,
1995–2004
a
Yagil Henkin
a
Shalem Center in Jerusalem
Published online: 11 Dec 2006.

To cite this article: Yagil Henkin (2006) From tactical terrorism to Holy War: the
evolution of Chechen terrorism, 1995–2004, Central Asian Survey, 25:1-2, 193-203, DOI:
10.1080/02634930600903270

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 Central Asian Survey (March – June 2006) 25(1– 2), 193– 203

From tactical terrorism to Holy War:

the evolution of Chechen terrorism,
1995 – 2004
YAGIL HENKIN
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Introduction
We do not intend to kill any hostages. We shot employees of the [Russian] government . . .
[because] snipers killed or wounded our comrades. There is absolutely no intent to kill them
[the hostages]. We will not shoot women and children—we’re not maniacs.1

These were the words of Shamil Basayev, the commander of the hostage-taking
operation in the town of Budyenovsk in 1995, the biggest terrorist attack in the
Chechen conflict up to that date. They were very different from Basayev’s
words recently when he claimed responsibility for the September 2004 kidnapping
in Beslan. Nor did he hesitate to take credit for the simultaneous blowing up in
flight of two Russian civilian airplanes, killing dozens, including women and
children.
During the first war in Chechnya a decade ago, he was known as a brilliant com-
mander only occasionally involved in terror operations—and his forces did not kill
women hostages. There were only two large-scale terror operations during the 20
months of that war and, the total number of hostages killed by the Chechens was
no more than 15, almost all of them captured Russian soldiers and policemen. The
number killed by the Russians themselves in the course of often ham-handed
rescue operations was about 15 times that number—around 120 in Budyonovsk
alone.2
In a notable example, when Chechen hostage-takers broke through the Russian
siege in the village of Pervomayskoye in 1996, they passed through a minefield.
The Chechens went first and some were killed by mines. The hostages came after-
wards through the cleared path. After their release, they were angrier at the
Russian authorities than with their captors. Dima Alexandrovich, a hostage
during the week-long affair, stated that the kidnappers ‘never shot anyone. They
did not abuse us; in fact, they didn’t even [curse].’3
By the second Chechen war, beginning September 1999, however, Chechen ter-
rorism became increasingly cruel and murderous. Civilians including women and
children were targeted, multiple executions took place, fleeing hostages were shot
in the back.
Yagil Henkin is a Military Historian and a Research Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

0263-4937 print=1465-3354 online=06=1-2=0193-11 # 2006 Central Asian Survey

DOI: 10.1080=02634930600903270
 YAGIL HENKIN

In Basayev’s own recent words, in Beslan the hostage takers insisted:

all hostages, be it children or adults, go on hunger strike in support of our demands . . . . We will
give water to everyone provided Putin immediately stops the war, sends all his troops to the bar-
racks and begins the withdrawal of his troops; We will give food to everyone provided Putin
begins the withdrawal of his troops in reality.4

This, obviously, represented a slow death sentence for the hostages. It is not
surprising that not a single hostage emerged from Beslan with sympathy for
their captors, not only because of the horrifying number of dead, but because of
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the conduct of the kidnappers who, apart from shooting children, also allegedly
raped a group of 15 year-old schoolgirls.5
From ‘we won’t shoot women and children’ to raping women and murdering
children: that is the sad metamorphosis of Chechen terrorism, within a single decade.
What caused the change in the methods and the increase in brutality of Chechen
terrorism? The major factor, it seems, was the Islamic, or to be precise, the Wahbbi one.

The first war: secular war, tactical terrorism, traditional constraints

It needs to be said that Basayev was not driven to new and brutal behaviour by any
sudden increase in Russian aggression. Among the thousands of civilian casualties
of the first Chechen war had been 11 members of his own family, killed just two
weeks before the Budyenovsk raid, but that did not lead Basayev and his subordi-
nates to do at the time in Budyenovsk what would later be done in Beslan.
Other Chechen leaders denounced terrorism throughout the entire decade of
conflict. Aslan Maskhadov, Chechen chief-of-staff during the first war and later
president of the de-facto independent Chechnya, remained opposed to terrorist
attacks. He insisted that the Chechens should ‘fight in honor’ and according to
international law, to show ‘not only courage but also the quality of our
people’.6 The words of his spokesman in 2004 who ‘categorically condemn[ed]
this act of terrorism’,7 were similar to those in a statement from 1996 that
Maskhadov ‘never ordered, and will never order’ terror attacks.8
The first Chechen war had little to do with religion. Most Chechens fought
under the banner of national liberation and self-defence, and a residual fear lest
Russia repeat the deportations ordered by Stalin in the 1940s. Although
Chechnya’s nominally Muslim leaders did not hesitate to use Islamic slogans
for tactical purposes, their goals were secular—national independence for
Chechnya—and they did not allow religion to dictate their strategy. Nor did
they refrain from declaring on occasion their opposition to Islamic radicalism.
The first Islamic volunteers to fight in Chechnya arrived in early 1995. Husein
Iskhanov, Maskhadov’s aide-de-camp, commented that the Islamic warriors led a
good life, had money and preferred not to fight too much.9
The volunteers, however, were headed by the formidable Saudi-born Samir
Saleh Abdullah al-Suwailem, known as Khattab. He later became the most
renowned Islamic fighter in Chechnya and he lead some brilliant attacks including

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 THE EVOLUTION OF CHECHEN TERRORISM

the ambush near Shatoy in April 1996, when his fighters destroyed an entire
Russian battalion. Nevertheless, Islamic volunteers overall had little effect on
the outcome of the war and some accounts of the first Chechen war make no
mention of Khattab at all.
The two large-scale terror attacks during the first war apparently began as
attacks against Russian military targets; when the attacks failed, the Chechens
resorted to hostage-taking in order not to be overwhelmed by Russian forces
and then issued demands in an attempt to extricate themselves. Although
Shamil Basayev became a national hero in Chechnya after Budyenovsk where
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the taking of hostages forced a cease-fire and saved the lives of the Chechen fight-
ers, a significant part of the Chechen high command remained strongly opposed to
terrorism against civilians. Chief of Staff Maskhadov declared in early 1995 that
his forces were prepared to fight against Russia ‘army against army’. He insisted
that his were the lawful forces of a sovereign country and should fight as a regular
army, whenever possible.10
After the Pervomayskoye siege in January 1996, Maskhadov even issued an
order limiting the freedom of movement of Chechen forces and requiring written
authorization for any non-routine military operation.11 Although some Chechen
officials and commanders advocated using terror for tactical ends, they were
limited in their ability to carry out such operations against the will of the high
command. In summary, then, terrorism in the first war was secondary to regular
military operations, and was not a common or preferred method of fighting.
Cultural and moderate religious factors also limited the scope of terrorist attacks
in the first war. A significant part of Chechen society still had traditional con-
straints against killing women and children, even in war.
The majority of Chechnya’s population still belonged to Muslim Sufi brother-
hoods; they opposed the Russians, but did not see the war in terms of a religious
struggle. This is not the time or place to explain the role played by the brother-
hoods, but it will suffice to say that most Sufi leaders in Chechnya did not seek
direct political power.12 Typical was the answer given in 1997 by a religious
leader when asked what influence the religious leaders should have on Chechen
politics: he responded that that was the business of politicians, not ‘clergymen’.13
President Dudayev and other Chechen leaders during the first war may have
invoked Islam from time to time, but little stood behind their words.

Interwar period: Islamization in the Caucasus

All this changed after the first Chechen war, which ended in August 1996 after a
brilliant military campaign in the course of which Chechen forces re-took the
capital Grozny and laid siege to several thousand Russian soldiers. After nego-
tiations, the Russian army withdrew from Chechnya; a few months later, in free
democratic elections—Dudayev having been killed towards the end of the war,
in April 1996—Aslan Maskhadov was elected President of the Republic.
Maskhadov, however, presided over a ruined Chechnya. The effects of the war
were catastrophic: tens of thousands of civilian dead, a devastated capital, and a

195
 YAGIL HENKIN

collapsed economy. Seventy per cent of adult Chechen males were unemployed.
Most factories closed or destroyed during the war did not re-open, and only one
new enterprise, a cement factory, began operating. The oil pipeline from
Azerbaijan to Russia, which passed through Grozny, was the frequent target of
thefts and sabotage.
However, there was a huge surplus of weapons, and no shortage of unemployed
and discontented youth able to use them.
In the destroyed economy of Chechnya, only money talked. The power and
influence of the traditional cultural and religious elites were severely undermined
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and radical Islamists were only too happy to exploit the situation.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Islamic extremists, clerics and believers
from the fundamentalist section of the Wahbbi wing of Sunni Islam, centred in Saudi
Arabia, penetrated a number of largely Islamic, former Soviet republics. Wahbbism
can be distinguished from the indigenous Caucasian Islam by its focus on strict
Koranic law and on Jihad, holy struggle. As Quintan Wiktorowicz wrote,14
Wahbbism preached that war was a religious obligation as long as Muslim popu-
lations anywhere were oppressed by unbelievers. Jihad was viewed as an ongoing
process of Muslim liberation at a global level. Khattab, for example, had fought
in Afghanistan and Tajikistan prior to coming to Chechnya and claimed his goal
was to ‘liberate’ Russia, or at least all of the Muslim republics.15
The war in Chechnya paved the way for Wahbbi influence in the Caucasus. In
the words of Akhmed Kadyrov, then chief mufti of Chechnya, in a 1998 interview,
Units of Wahhabi volunteers from Arab countries came to help us. These units were very well
armed, so our Chechens willingly joined them. Many of them became adherents of that doctrine,
and tried to teach it to us, saying that we were distorting Islam.16

The Wahbbists aimed at displacing and replacing the Caucasian form of moderate
Islam, which they considered heretical, as Chechen scholar Yavus Akhmadov wrote,
Vakhabism (i.e. Wahbbism) attempts to ‘return’ the population to what it views as ‘original’
Islam, rejecting Chechnya’s unique historical experience. The key to this transformation is the
application of rules, norms and practices accepted among the radicals in the Middle East to
the Chechen social and political life. Hence, traditionalists (who constitute the overwhelming
majority of the population) associate Vakhabism with . . . a threat to their religious customs
and identity. For their part, the Vakhabites view the supporters of traditional Islam as backward
sectarians who distort Islam.17

Many of those converted to Wahbbism in Chechnya returned to homes in other

former Soviet republics, as Dr Moshe Gammer put it, ‘well trained, well armed
and well paid’18—in some cases up to US $500 each month, a small fortune
compared to the average pay in the Caucasus or even in Russia. The Islamists
supplied weapons freely to their followers, not a small matter in a society that for gen-
erations viewed owning weapons as a sign of manhood. Also important was the fact
that in the post-war destruction and mayhem, ‘Islam . . . seemed to the war-ravaged
people the only answer to the anarchy prevailing in the country’; any order, even
fundamentalist Islamic order, seemed to many to be preferable to anarchy.19

196
 THE EVOLUTION OF CHECHEN TERRORISM

Typically, numbers of Wahbbists settled in villages and towns. At first they

were respectful of local customs. They paid well for food and everything they
bought. Their charity funds assisted the needy. As time passed, they began to
preach ‘true’ Islam, condemning the traditional version and trying to enforce or
encourage ‘Islamic manners’.
Reporting on one such town in Daghestan, a republic bordering on Chechnya,
Washington Post journalist Sharon LaFraniere wrote:
A Jordanian cleric named Khabib Abdurrakhman arrived in the early 1990s with a seemingly irre-
sistible deal. To a hamlet made destitute by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Abdurrakhman brought
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a slaughtered cow and a free feast every week. He handed out $30 to every convert who came to his
simple mosque. And to those adrift in the social chaos of the Soviet breakdown, he offered a new
purpose in life—a form of their traditional Islam rooted in fundamentalism and militancy. . . .
‘They tried to lure people in a friendly way at first’, according to Magomed Makhdiyev, the village
imam, who said he tried to withstand the fundamentalists’ influence. ‘But by 1999, they were saying,
“Join us or we’ll cut your head off”.’20

Although most Chechens did not adopt the Wahbbist world-view (only 10 per
cent, according to an 2003 estimate by observer Thomas de-Waal21), those who
did were more than enough to provide the extremists with a solid foothold.
Many Chechen Sufis who had opposed Russia during the 1994– 1996 war now
came to the conclusion that the Wahhabis were more of a threat than Russia.
Clashes occurred between Sufi separatists and the Wahbbists, and in some
instances during the second war Sufi fighters refused to join them even against
their common enemy, Russia. These clashes between Sufis and Wahhabis often
deteriorated into gunfights, which further undermined the already nebulous auth-
ority of the post-war Maskhadov government.
Akhmed Kadyrov, who occupied the post of chief mufti under both Dudayev and
Maskhadov, switched sides and supported the Russians in the second Chechen war.
He had considerable support for this in Chechen society, especially in the ranks of
the local religious leadership. Thus, Chechen society fragmented even more.
For his part, Maskhadov tried unconvincingly to proclaim an ‘Islamic’ regime,22
in order to fight the extremists on their own terms. Although he did manage to
prevent civil war—his biggest nightmare—he was not able to tame the extremists
or arrest the criminals, as at least four assassination attempts against him testified.23
By the time the Chechen government finally realized the seriousness of the Wahbbi
threat and tried to expel extremists from the republic, it was too late.

The second Chechen war: terrorism unleashed

During the second Chechen war, terrorism was transformed from an occasional
tactic, usually targeting specific Russian officials and military officers, into a stra-
tegic weapon of choice. Like terror everywhere, Chechen terror was increasingly
employed against civilians, and carried out by civilians.
One example of this was the appearance of women suicide bombers, who were
responsible for at least 220 deaths in 17 recorded incidents. Many of these women

197
 YAGIL HENKIN

left behind photographs of themselves in traditional Muslim clothing, including

veil—that is, traditional if you live in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan; in Chechnya
these clothes had been unknown only five years earlier. Suicide bombers and
particularly women suicide bombers were a phenomenon only of the second
war.24 In the secular or traditional view of Chechen society there was no place
for them, but in the Islamist view, which by the second war had gained significant
support, there was, indeed.
A fathwa (Islamic ruling) by Muhammad bin ‘Abdallah al-Seif (also Known as
Abu Omar Muhammad al-Seif), who was described on Islamic websites as the
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number two leader of the jihad in Chechnya, sanctioned female suicide bombings.
One of the places where this 40-page fathwa was published was the Hammas
website in the Middle East.25
In the first war, with some exceptions, Russian prisoners-of-war were treated
reasonably well. The second war, however, witnessed dozens of executions.
Here, too, a pro-Chechen, pro-Islamic website duly explained why it was permiss-
ible to execute prisoners of war.26
Video-recorded attacks on Russian forces, speeches by Basayev, etc., with
Arabic translation in the soundtrack, were sold around the world, including in
London and even the old city of Jerusalem. These called on Muslims everywhere
to join in the jihad, or at least help finance it—an option that Khattab never
failed to mention.27
Basayev had been the most prominent Chechen commander in the first war,
second only to Maskhadov. He joined the Islamists shortly after the war, perhaps
in the hope of gaining political advantage28 by portraying himself as a guardian
of Islam. Islamic foundations helped support him financially, and he and his fol-
lowers soon became a political force that Maskhadov had to reckon with.
The peak of Basayev’s ‘conversion’ was in August 1999, when he and Khattab
led the occupation of some villages in Daghestan and proclaimed an Islamic
‘state’. They were forced to withdraw only by the combined opposition of the
local villagers and the Russian army.29 This incursion, together with the bombings
in Moscow and Dagestan a month later for which the Chechens were blamed
(although with no real evidence), helped shape the Russian view of the conflict
as a defensive war against Islamic terrorism.30
When the second war began in 1999, Thomas De Wall, the co-author of a pio-
neering book about the first war, Chechnya—Calamity in the Caucasus, was sure
that Basayev has his limits:
Before the war in Chechnya he apparently showed little interest in Islam and his self-declared
ambition to form an Islamic state is perhaps less important to him than a desire to fight the
Russians at every opportunity and whatever the cost.
But although he has taken hostages and hijacked planes, he still has his own rules of warfare. So it
is probable that he is telling the truth when he says that he has no interest in planting the recent
bombs that have killed hundreds of Russian civilians.31

But as Basayev’s words after Beslan showed, he had long since shed any restraints
in the employment of terror.32

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 THE EVOLUTION OF CHECHEN TERRORISM

Some of the Beslan terrorists were Chechens, some Ingush, there were possibly
some Arabs and two were Russian—but all, as far as we know, were Islamic
radicals. What united them was not nationality but Islamic belief.

Conclusion: the question of terror networks

Nevertheless, Chechen terrorism overall was not part of a global terror network; to
a large degree it was introduced by Islamists, but it had nationalist goals inde-
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pendent of jihad. The alleged links between Chechen terrorists and al-Qaeda
have never been proven. As far as is known Bin-Laden or his deputies have
never set foot in Chechnya, although Maskhadov’s government claimed that
Bin-Laden asked to visit in 1998 but was refused. Khattab and Basayev always
denied links with Bin-Laden; although they admired him, they abstained from
shifting responsibility to him.33
Islamic volunteers fought in Chechnya as individuals and did not receive their
orders from international terrorist organizations. It is also virtually impossible to
find native-born Chechen volunteers fighting for Islamic fronts in other parts of the
world. Although the numbers are far from clear, as far as we know far fewer
Islamic volunteers fought in Chechnya against the Russians than in Afghanistan
against the Soviets.34
However, while the Chechens fought two basically nationalistic wars, Chechen
Islamists embraced extremist ideals, adopted extremist rhetoric and employed
extremist means learned from fighters from abroad. Radical Islamists around
the world view the events in Chechnya as part of a global struggle, as demon-
strated by a Hamas poster showing (from left to right) Khattab, Sheikh Ahmed
Yasin (the late Hamas leader), Khattab again, Bin-Laden—and finally, Shamil
Basayev. The text links Chechnya, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Kashmir, Palestine
and Lebanon, as places of jihad. 35 Some Islamic charity organizations, like the
Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) supported both
Chechen Islamists and terror organization like al-Qaeda and Hamas.36
Most Chechens do not support terror acts. The largest demonstrations in Chechnya
in years were held against the Beslan kidnapping (even before it turned into a
massacre). In a recent protest against the planned pardon of Russian Colonel Yuri
Budanov, who was found guilty of raping and murdering a Chechen girl, there
were placards saying ‘Budanov, Basayev—both are murderers’.37 That represents
a remarkable come-down for once national-hero Basayev; such signs are rare, but
four years ago the probability of seeing such a sign at all was nil.
Most Chechens are also ready for a compromise—in both 1994 and in 2003,
surveys found more than 70 per cent ready for a political compromise, despite
the two wars that took place in the interval.38 It does not really matter as long
as the Islamists have the power to fight, and nobody in Chechnya at this point
has the power to stop them. Thus, peace in the war-torn republic seems unlikely
unless the Chechens rise against the Wahbbis, and until a Russian pull-out, this
option is unlikely. The Russians, on their side, surely won’t pull out or even

199
 YAGIL HENKIN

re-deploy until they believe Chechnya will not emerge again as a criminal and ter-
rorist haven. This deadlock probably will continue for the foreseeable future.
Is there any reason to be hopeful?
Surprisingly, yes.
There are some signs that the Islamists are getting less financial support and
volunteers from the Arab world.39
The crackdown on al-Qaeda and Islamic militant groups since 11 September
2001 caused a sharp decline in the activity of Islamic foundations not only in
Chechnya, but in the whole Caucasus. This fact recently caused many rebel
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leaders to shift back from Islamic to nationalistic rhetoric.40 Militant Islamists

find it much harder to collect money in Western countries and to transport this
money through Western banks. Only 10 per cent of the rebels’ funding these
days is believed to come from outside Russia.41 Abu Hafz Al-Urdani, the
current commander of the Islamic volunteers in Chechnya, recently proved that
the Islamists no longer count on Arab support when he accused Arab states of
being in ‘treason of Allah’. He claimed that not a single Arab leader came to
the help of the Chechens. As early as 2000, after the Battle for Grozny in the
second Russian– Chechen war, some Islamic volunteers left Chechnya, claiming
that ‘It’s not Jihad, It’s suicide’.42
If extremists continue to lose financial support, their influence is likely to dimin-
ish. The recent death of Shamil Bassayev will probably also contribute to this
trend. This may help return the conflict to nationalistic lines. Even though a
national struggle can be long and bloody, it is probably easier to end as compared
to a holy struggle.
Surprisingly, the killing of Maskhadov, by Russian security forces in March
2005, may also contribute to negotiations. Traditionally, Western observers
tended to see him as a moderate force, Russia’s only partner for peace. Russian
observers, on the other side, usually viewed him as a terrorist and a liar. Even
the ceasefire he unilaterally declared in January 2005 was thought by most Rus-
sians to be a deception.43 The Russians consistently thought he couldn’t be trusted.
It is not important whether or not this belief is true. It is important that the
Russians believed it and they were not ready to negotiate with Maskhadov. Will
they be ready to negotiate with his successors, and vice versa?
History never repeats itself exactly. However it may come quite close.
In April 1996, the first president of independent Chechnya, Dzohar Dudayev,
was killed by the Russians. His death opened the door to secret negotiations
between the Russians and the Chechens. Even though Dudayev was (at least in
some stages of the first war) ready to compromise, the personal animosity
between him and Boris Yeltsin made any settlement impossible. Maskhadov’s
death may open the door to negotiations, if the Russians so choose. To this day,
Russia is preferring to eliminate the rebels’ leadership than to negotiate with it.
While Russia may succeed in suppressing the Chechen rebellion, it is still possible
that one day her leaders will choose to go back to the negotiation table.
If that is the case, let us all hope a future settlement will fare better than previous
settlements.

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 THE EVOLUTION OF CHECHEN TERRORISM

Acknowledgement
I am grateful to Dr Moshe Gammer for his help and his important comments, and
to my father, Rabbi Judah Henkin and my cousin Miriam Winiarz, for their help
shaping this article.

Notes and references

1. Komsomolskaya Pravda, 15 June 1995.
2. See for example Carlota Gall and Thomas De Waal, Chechnya—Calamity in the Caucasus (New York: New
Downloaded by [University of California Santa Cruz] at 04:22 04 January 2015

York University Press, 1998), p 270.

3. AFP, 18 January 1996.
4. BBC Online, 17 September 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3665136.stm.
5. A local hospital confirmed the claims. See Alex Gantleb, ‘Beslan massacre: it’s only beginning’ (in Hebrew),
Ma‘ariv, 8 October 2004.
6. Maskhadov’s philosophy of war was explained in an interview with Marie Bennigsen Broxup for the USMC,
August 1999. I wish to thank Mr David Dilege of the Urban Operations Journal for the transcription of the
interview.
7. Chechen Ministry of Foreign Affairs official statement, 2 September 2004.
8. Interfax, 16 January 1996.
9. Bennigsen Broxup, Interview with Hussein Iskhanov, for the USMC.
10. On Maskhadov’s strategy and tactics see Yagil Henkin, ‘Un-Guerrilla Warfare’: The History of the Russia–
Chechnya War, 1994–1996 (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: IDF-History, 2004).
11. Gall and De Waal, op cit, Ref 2, p 306.
12. On the role of the Sufi brotherhoods see Moshe Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of
Chechen Defiance of Russian Power (London: C. Hurst, 2006), ch 15.
13. See Viktor Kogan-Iasny and Diana Ziserman-Brodsky, ‘Chechen separatism’, in Metta Spencer, ed.,
Separatism: Democracy and Disintegration (Lanham, 1997).
14. Quintan Wiktorowicz, ‘The new global threat: transnational Salafis and Jihad’, Middle East Policy, Vol 8,
No 4, 2001, pp 18 –38.
15. Interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, 22 November 1999. Rough English translation available
online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chechnya-sl/message/16571 (last accessed 31 August 2006).
16. Prism, 7 August 1998, http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id¼5&issue_id¼
297&article_id¼3325. A Russian version of the interview appeared in Nezavisimaya Gazetta, 11 August
1998 (last accessed 31 August 2006).
17. Yavus Akhmadov, Stephen R. Bowers, Marion T. Doss, Jr and Yuri Kurnosov, ‘Islam in the north Caucasus:
a people divided’, William R. Nelson Institute for public affairs, sub-chapter ‘Religion in the north Caucasus:
Vakhabism and the Chechen conflict’. http://www.jmu.edu/orgs/wrni/islam8.htm. Note the similarities
between Akhmadov’s words and the aforementioned words of Kadyrov.
18. Moshe Gammer, ‘Why didn’t Daghestan turn into second Chechnya’, in Shaul Shay and Yaakov Roi, eds,
The Russian–Chechen Conflict (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Cummings Center/IDF History, 2003).
19. Gammer, op cit, Ref 12, ch 15.
20. Washington Post, 26 April 2003. On the radical Islam movement in Daghestan, see Nabi Abdullaev, ‘Dagestan’s
true believers’, Transitions, 15 March 1999; Robert Chenciner, Daghestan: Tradition and Survival (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1997); and Moshe Gamer, op cit, Ref 20. Dore Gold’s Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia
Supports the new Global Terrorism (Washington DC: Regnery, 2003) is an excellent source about Wahabism in
modern times and the relations between modern Wahabism and terror.
21. RFE/RL, 4 February 2003.
22. In an outrageous speech before the Chechen parliament in early 1998, Maskhadov even blamed ‘world Jewry’
of opposing the republic, out of hatred of the idea of a ‘real’ Islamic state like Chechnya (Interfax, quoted in
Joseph Bodansky, ‘Islamic anti-Semitism: the ghost of the rising hatred’, Nativ 77 (in Hebrew), 2000.
23. On the Islamization of Chechnya after the war see Gammer, op cit, Ref 12, ch 15, 16; Anssi Kullberg, ‘The
background of Chechen independence movement IV: The internal power struggle in Chechnya’, The
Eurasian Politician, October 2003, http://www.cc.jyu.fi/aphamala/pe/2003/tsets-4.htm (last accessed
31 August 2006).
24. In a September 1999 interview with Paris-Match, Khattab claimed that ‘We do not allow women to wage
war. Women should be the keepers of the hearth. [only] When all the men are killed, the women can take
their place’. He quickly changed this view.

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25. MEMRI special Dispatch No 601, October 2003, http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area¼

jihad&ID¼SP60103 (last accessed 31 August 2006); the Center for [intelligence] Special Studies [hereafter
CSS], Israel, ‘Hamas identifies with and supports Chechen and international Islamic terrorism on CDs found
in the Palestinian Authority-Administered Territories’, http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/9_04/
chechnya.htm (last accessed 31 August 2006).
26. Archived with the author. The site, at the internet address http://63.249.218.164/html/articlesexecu-
tion.htm, went off the web.
27. For example, in a 2001 interview to www.qoqaz.net, rough English translation is available http://groups.
yahoo.com/group/chechnya-sl/message/16302 (last accessed 31 August 2006).
28. Even in a September 1999 interview with Paris Match, on the eve of the first war, Basayev continued to speak
in traditional language. It is also interesting to mention that Khattab, who was also interviewed, used some
nationalist terms, and even claimed that he was fighting ‘for our territory’, although he was a Saudi and not a
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Chechen. As Moshe Gammer has noted, Khattab was not necessarily lying; he may have referred to ‘our ter-
ritory’ as the territory of Islam, not just the Chechens’ territory. See also Thomas De Wall, ‘Shamil Bassayev:
Chechen warlord’, BBC Online, 30 September 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/
newsid_460000/460594.stm (last accessed 31 August 2006).
29. The local villagers actually claimed that they repelled Basayev almost on their own, without significant help
from the Russian army (see Gammer, op cit, Ref 20). Khattab claimed that he was responding to Russian
provocations, including bombings of Chechnya.
30. See Alon Weiner, ‘The effect of the war in Chechnya on the Russian public opinion concerning Central Asia’
(in Hebrew), in Shaul Shai and Yaakov Roi, eds., The Russian-Chechen Conflict (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv:
Cummings Center/IDF History, 2003), pp 39–49. In a February 2000 interview to St. Petersburg Times,
Sergei Stepashin—the former Russian Prime Minister—claimed that the Russians had started their prep-
arations to invade Chechnya early in 1999, and neither Basayev’s raid nor the apartment bombings were
the real reason for the second Russian invasion of Chechnya. It must be also said, that even though Maskha-
dov insisted on condemning terror operations, he too still tried to play the Islamic card at numerous
occasions, and there was signs of him undergoing radicalization. See Ralph Davis and Robert Bruce
Ware, ‘Was Aslan Maskhadov involved in the Moscow hostage crisis?’, Journal of Slavic Military
Studies, Vol 16, No 3, 2003, pp 66–71.
31. BBC Online, 30 September 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/460594.stm (last accessed 31
August 2006).
32. As mentioned, Basayev claimed responsibility for the recent downing of civilian airplanes. A little-known
group named the ‘Islambuly Brigades’, after the junior officer who commanded the assassination of Egyptian
president Sadat, also claimed responsibility, and was said to have links to al-Qaeda. Of course either or
neither of these may have been responsible for the bombings (Basayev claimed that he was also responsible
for the sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine, ‘Kursk’). In any case, both claimed to speak in the name of
Islam.
33. See, for example, Khattab’s Interview to Kavakaz.org (translation available at http://groups.yahoo.com/
group/chechnya-sl/message/16302) (last accessed 31 August 2006), in which he claimed that he had
never seen al-Qaeda people in Chechnya, and “it doesn’t matter – you don’t have to be from al-Qaeda to
be an Islamic volunteer and fight a holy war!”
34. In an interview to the Pro-Chechen (and Pro-bin-Laden) site http://www.qoqaz.net, which went off the net
shortly after 11 September 2001, Basayev claimed that he had no need for volunteers from abroad and that he
found it hard to use them effectively in Chechnya’s difficult terrain. In perfectly polite words he hinted that
foreign volunteers were a nuisance. A rough English translation is still available in http://groups.yahoo.
com/group/chechnya-sl/message/9392 (last accessed 31 August 2006).
35. CSS, op cit, Ref 25.
36. Dore, op cit, Ref 20.
37. Associated Press, 21 September 2004.
38. For the 1994 poll see Nikolai V. Grammatikov, ‘The Russian intervention in Chechnya in December 1994:
issues and decision-making’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol 11, No 4, December 1998, pp 111 –132.
For the 2003 poll see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml¼news/2003/09/07/wchec07.
xml (accessed 31 August 2006).
39. The official Russian news service, RIA-Novosty, said on 13 January 2005 that ‘Most of foreign mercenaries
killed in Chechnya are Turks’. It is hard to understand how the Russians could know this fact (maybe out of
captured personal documents?) but it is actually a confession that Arabs do not now play any major role in the
fighting, contrary to former periods of the war.
http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id¼160&msg_id¼5303505&startrow¼1&date¼2005-01-13&do_
alert¼0 (last accessed 31 January 2005).

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40. See for example Andrei Smirnov, ‘Russian agents’ return from Qatar may finally discredit the Islamic world
in the eyes of Chechnya’s rebels’, Chechnya Weekly, Vol 6, No 1, 5 January 2005, pp 4 –6, http://www.
jamestown.org/images/pdf/cw_006_001.pdf (last accessed 31 August 2006).
41. Ibid.
42. His declaration could be found at Global Terror Alert website, http://www.globalterroralert.com/chech-
nya0904.pdf (last accessed 31 August 2006).
43. In a recent poll, at all only 35 per cent of the Russian population heard of Maskhadov’s offer. Out of those 35
per cent, 59 per cent thought it was a deception, and only 9 per cent believed him. Source: The Public Opinion
Foundation Database (FOM), ‘The Chechen conflict: the situation and personalities’, 1 March 2005, http://
bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/Chechnya/eof05080 2 (last accessed 31 August 2006).
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