← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 17188 | Posts: 13 | Started: 2005-03-08
2005-03-08 18:47 | User Profile
[URL=http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/39AF1E65-4A83-4AAA-9211-DC6568A9C996.htm]Al Jazeera[/URL] Chechen leader killed, Russia says Tuesday 08 March 2005, 19:42 Makka Time, 16:42 GMT
The Chechen deputy prime minister has confirmed to Aljazeera that separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov has been killed by Russian troops.
Russian media had earlier reported on Tuesday that ousted Chechen President Maskhadov was killed by troops in Chechnya.
Interfax news agency quoted army spokesman Ilya Shabalkin as saying Maskhadov had been killed by Russian troops.
Russian television stations aired pictures of a bearded corpse they said were of Maskhadov.
His death would mark a major success for President Vladimir Putin, who built his power largely on a tough line against the Chechen resistance fighters.
Moscow blames Maskhadov for a string of deadly attacks in Russia, including an attack on a school in the south Russian town of Beslan in which at least 326 hostages - half of them children - died.
However, Maskhadov had rejected through his representative in Europe claims he helped plan the Beslan school siege.
Ahmed Zakayev, former Chechen deputy prime minister, told Der Spiegel news magazine Maskhadov had in fact tried to do everything to bring the siege to a peaceful end.
Recently, Maskhadov had called for talks with Moscow on the
Chechens' demands for independence, but the Kremlin insisted it would not "negotiate with terrorists".
2005-03-08 18:48 | User Profile
It looks like the Russians bagged the son of a bitch.
The Good Lord willing, they'll have Shamil Basayev's head on a spike in short order.
Walter
2005-03-08 22:59 | User Profile
Wow, this is the first I heard of this. I've been watching MSNBC and CNN today with no mention of this. THis is quite incredible news out of the blue. The Chechen jihad ("separatist") movement was effectively over after 9/11 and Iraq. Jihad movements in far off places is over. The U.S. has effectively focused all the forces of jihad upon it, and the terrorists have consolidated and re-aimed their guns on Iraq, the Middle East, and the US & Israel. What Arab or Muslim militant would even consider traveling to Chechnya and freeze his ass off fighting for some dubious mountainous Islamic republic, when the U.S. is in the heart of the Islamic world smashing and killing without restraint, and promising to keep on doing this for years to come!
2005-03-08 23:01 | User Profile
...in related news, the entire editorial staff of The Weekly Standard, Commentary, The Forward and National Review Online have called for a moment of silence to commemorate the Chechen "freedom fighter's" passing.
2005-03-08 23:11 | User Profile
Oh, yes, and my condolences to all the Hebrew supporters of this Jihadist movement in Christian lands: Richard Perle, Bill Kristol (and his mama Gertrude and his papa Irv), Charles Krauthammer, Ken Adelman, Richard Pipes, Stephen Schwartz, Larry Diamond, Strobe Talbot, William Safire,...
And my condolences to all the useful idiot goyim scum: Alexander Haig, Georgie Anne Geyer, Christopher Smith, Mitch McConnell, Jesse Helms, George Weigel, Bob Dole, ...
2005-03-08 23:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]...in related news, the entire editorial staff of The Weekly Standard, Commentary, The Forward and National Review Online have called for a moment of silence to commemorate the Chechen "freedom fighter's" passing.[/QUOTE] Damn, you beat me to it.
2005-03-08 23:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]...in related news, the entire editorial staff of The Weekly Standard, Commentary, The Forward and National Review Online have called for a moment of silence to commemorate the Chechen "freedom fighter's" passing.[/QUOTE]
Exactly. Check out this rogues gallery --[URL=http://www.peaceinchechnya.org/about_members.htm]ACPC[/URL] Notice the cute dove at the top left. :lol: Amazing how a gang of chickenhawks can turn into doves like that.
2005-03-09 00:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Six]Exactly. Check out this rogues gallery --[url="http://www.peaceinchechnya.org/about_members.htm"]ACPC[/url] Notice the cute dove at the top left. :lol: Amazing how a gang of chickenhawks can turn into doves like that.[/QUOTE] The Chechen question certainly does put the neocons' hypocrisy on display. In fact, it puts it on a pedestal behind velvet ropes with bright, stage lighting focused on it. Too bad so few people pay attention.
2005-03-09 02:21 | User Profile
Good to see some white men, somewhere, still have the guts & skill to slot a Muslim terrorist.
Go Russia! :thumbsup:
2005-03-09 04:14 | User Profile
If so, I'll drink to that!
2005-03-09 08:20 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/international/europe/09chechnya.html?pagewanted=1&th&oref=login]New York Times[/URL] Russians Kill Chechen Separatist Leader in His Hide-Out By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: March 9, 2005
MOSCOW, March 8 - Russian special forces killed the leader of Chechnya's separatists, Aslan Maskhadov, on Tuesday in a raid that gave the Kremlin a rare victory in a bloody war that has killed tens of thousands and spawned a wave of terrorist attacks across Russia in recent years.
Mr. Maskhadov, who from hiding led thousands of fighters after Russia's second invasion of Chechnya in 1999, died in a bunker beneath a house in an outwardly peaceful village, Tolstoy-Yurt, only 12 miles from the region's capital, Grozny, according to officials and news accounts.
His death is akin to the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, depriving insurgents of their political and symbolic leader, though with still uncertain effects on those determined to resist Russian forces in Chechnya, including with acts of terror.
Although Mr. Maskhadov, who was 53, nominally commanded Chechnya's fighters, he appeared to have lost influence over Russia's most wanted man, Shamil Basayev, the rebel commander who has claimed responsibility for the worst terrorist attacks, including the siege of a theater in Moscow in 2002 that killed 129 and a school in Beslan last September that killed at least 339, half of them schoolchildren.
President Vladimir V. Putin appeared on television with the director of the Federal Security Service, Nikolai P. Patrushev, who told him that his forces had killed Mr. Maskhadov and arrested four associates. In brief, unemotional remarks, Mr. Putin simply asked Mr. Patrushev to confirm the identification of Mr. Maskhadov's body and to submit a list of those involved in the raid for medals.
"There is still a lot of work to do there," the president said, referring to Chechnya. "We have to build up our forces to protect the people of the republic and citizens of all Russia from the bandits."
Mr. Maskhadov's imminent capture or death has been reported before, but officials showed little doubt that it was Mr. Maskhadov who had died in the raid. NTV showed graphic images of a body that resembled him. The body lay in a pool of blood, bare-chested, arms outstretched. There was what appeared to be a bullet hole beneath his left eye.
One of Mr. Maskhadov's most prominent aides, Akhmed Zakayev, said sources inside Chechnya had confirmed his death. "It is just one more political assassination," Mr. Zakayev said in a telephone interview from London, where he has received political asylum.
He cited the deaths of Chechnya's first post-Soviet president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, who was killed by Russian forces during the first war in 1996, and his successor, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who died in a car bombing in February 2004 while in exile in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. A court there convicted two Russian secret agents and sentenced them to life in prison, though the men were later released to the Russian authorities.
"The ordinary people of Chechnya are being killed every day because they disagree with the federal authorities," Mr. Zakayev said, "as are the people they have elected."
Mr. Zakayev said the separatist movement's leaders - now in exile or in hiding - would follow the region's former constitution and elect an interim leader, as they did after Mr. Dudayev's death.
Dmitri V. Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Mr. Maskhadov's death might not change events on the ground significantly, given that his leadership had become increasingly symbolic and that Mr. Basayev remained at large. But he called it a "political victory and a moral victory" for the Kremlin.
"I think it's significant for Mr. Putin, first of all," Mr. Trenin said. "He can produce evidence that the antiterrorist operation in Chechnya is yielding results. He needed that, especially after Beslan."
The Russians considered Mr. Maskhadov a terrorist, not a rebel leader, and accused him of masterminding many of the attacks that have struck from the Caucasus in southern Russia to the heart of Moscow itself in recent years, killing hundreds of civilians in a theater, at a rock concert, on the subway and aboard trains and passenger airliners.
After the siege of Middle School No. 1 in Beslan, a small city in North Ossetia, the authorities offered a reward of $10 million for information leading to his arrest or Mr. Basayev's. It was not immediately clear whether the reward would be paid now that he had been found and killed.
Mr. Maskhadov denied involvement in the worst of the attacks in messages he communicated through his envoys in Europe and the United States or through the Internet.
He denounced the siege in Beslan and vowed in statements to prosecute Mr. Basayev. Earlier this year he was reported to have offered a month-long cease-fire, which ended on Feb. 23. Attacks in Chechnya did seem to slow, but Russian officials denounced the gesture as a stunt, refusing as before to hold any negotiations with him or other separatist leaders.
Officials provided few details on the raid, which was not surprising since it involved officers of the F.S.B., the successor to the K.G.B., who even afterward were shown on television still wearing black masks.
Maj. Gen. Ilya Shabalkin, who announced the death, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Maskhadov had been hiding in a bunker beneath a house in Tolstoy-Yurt, while his four associates were outside.
The general suggested that the agents had intended to arrest Mr. Maskhadov but that he had resisted. "He was hiding in the bunker," he said. "So the bunker had to be blown up. Apparently he was shellshocked but tried to shoot back."
He said no Russian forces had been hurt.
Mr. Maskhadov was born on Sept. 21, 1951, in Kazakhstan, where Stalin had ordered the deportation of most of the Chechen population during World War II, an act that carries heavy symbolism among all Chechens to this day. He served most of his life in the Soviet Army, rising to the rank of colonel and serving in Communist Hungary, and later in Lithuania as the Soviet Union began to fall apart.
After Chechnya, a small, mountainous Muslim region on Russia's southern border, declared its independence in 1991, he resigned his commission and became commander of the armed forces of a country that was unrecognized. He remained military leader during the first Chechen war, from 1994 to 1996, when he commanded a daring assault to retake Grozny from Russian troops.
President Boris N. Yeltsin then negotiated an end to the war, leaving Chechnya with de facto independence. In January 1997, Mr. Maskhadov was elected president, defeating the man whose name is still linked to his, Mr. Basayev. By 1999, with the region roiled by lawlessness, Mr. Basayev mounted an attack on neighboring Dagestan, and Russian forces poured in again, driving the rebellious leaders from Grozny and eventually from most of Chechnya.
It is a measure of how deeply troubled and chaotic the region is that despite the presence of tens of thousands of Russian and pro-Moscow Chechen forces, Mr. Maskhadov was able to hide - for how long is not clear - in a village in the center of Chechnya itself.
2005-03-09 10:46 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=10757513]Interfax[/URL] Mar 9 2005 11:00AM
Chechnya to center on Basayev search after Maskhadov's death GROZNY. March 9 (Interfax) - Now that Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov has been killed, the republic's presidential security service will focus on an operation aimed at detaining terrorist Shamil Basayev, Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov told Interfax.
"The elimination of Aslan Maskhadov will accelerate the process of establishing the whereabouts of Basayev and detaining him. Now we can pay twice as much attention to this problem, as previously we had to work in several directions," Kadyrov said.
Basayev is extremely dangerous to society, and "terrorism is his way of living and his way of thinking. In fact, nothing can deter him. He will stop at nothing. Possible mass casualties among civilians will not stop him," he said.
"Basayev has never been guided by any ideas. His main goal is blood. He wants blood to be shed at any cost. He is a maniac who should be isolated from society for the rest of his life or eliminated. The security service will do everything in its power to shorten the number of Basayev's days," he said.
2005-03-09 18:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis][url="http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=10757513"]Interfax[/url] Mar 9 2005 11:00AM
Chechnya to center on Basayev search after Maskhadov's death GROZNY. March 9 (Interfax) - Now that Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov has been killed, the republic's presidential security service will focus on an operation aimed at detaining terrorist Shamil Basayev, Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov told Interfax.
"The elimination of Aslan Maskhadov will accelerate the process of establishing the whereabouts of Basayev and detaining him. Now we can pay twice as much attention to this problem, as previously we had to work in several directions," Kadyrov said.
Basayev is extremely dangerous to society, and "terrorism is his way of living and his way of thinking. In fact, nothing can deter him. He will stop at nothing. Possible mass casualties among civilians will not stop him," he said.
"Basayev has never been guided by any ideas. His main goal is blood. He wants blood to be shed at any cost. He is a maniac who should be isolated from society for the rest of his life or eliminated. The security service will do everything in its power to shorten the number of Basayev's days," he said.[/QUOTE] Both Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev had years of training in the Soviet military. When I think about this situation in Chechnya I think about how good the training in the Soviet military was. It seems/seemed as if alot of Americans dismissed the conventional forces of the Soviets and the level of their training, yet when you look how tough and crafty these former Soviet military commanders were and are-- Maskhadov and Basayev-- you realize how horrendous it would've been to be in a ground campaign with these types. Hell, the US military is having a tough time with rag-tag, untrained neighborhood warriors, in an area with no mountains nor forests, nor any covering vegetation.