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Text: Zhang Runchen
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introduction
He was Putin's number one enemy, whom Putin called the "North Caucasus one-legged wolf." He was the mastermind of the largest terrorist attack in Russian history, and left his mark on countless tragic cases. He was a "hero of the independence faction" in Chechnya, who single-handedly forced back a Russian army of 100,000.
He is the "Caucasian wolf" who came and went without a trace - Shamili Basayev. "Caucasian wolf" has only one leg, but his ferocity and cunning are almost unparalleled in the history of Russia, and psychopaths and terrorists are an "honor" for him, because only to terrify the enemy is his purpose ...
(Basayev)
1. The birth of the wolf
Shamil Sharmanovich Basayev was born in 1965 in the village of Deshneviteno, Vijonsk district, Chechny-Ingushetia SSR. Basayev is actually an ethnic Russian, but his family is a rare Russian Muslim, which is why his family appeared in Chechnya.
The family's attitude towards the Soviet Union and Russia was very subtle, in fact, the Basayev family had an antipathetic attitude towards Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. In his early years, Basayev was not an extremist Muslim, in fact, Basayev was a secularist nationalist, in fact, the early Chechen independence faction headed by Dudayev was basically this kind of person.
This ideology accompanied Basayev for the first half of his life, when he was admitted to the Moscow Institute of Land Planning and Engineering in 1987, but was expelled the following year because of his unsatisfactory grades, and Basayev embarked on a different path in life. In 1990, Chechnya achieved semi-independent status within the Soviet Union.
(Dudayev)
Basayev also returned to Chechnya at this time to start raising the flag for Chechen independence, during which time he read Oswald's philosophical work The Decline of the West, and then Basayev claimed to have "found a way to regain Chechnya", after which Basayev went from a secularized nationalist to an ultra-conservative religious element.
This is also the biggest difference between Basayev and Dudayev, the leader of the Chechen independence faction at that time, although Dudayev and his ilk are also unfriendly to ethnic Russians, their nationalists will also persecute ethnic Russians in Chechnya. But they will not take the initiative to go to the territory of the Russian Federation to carry out terrorist attacks, at least not to massacre women and children, but Basayev will.
In 1991, Basayev became Chechnya's presidential candidate, but lost to Dudayev in the general election. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dudayev declared the independence of Chechnya, and Yeltsin then declared a "state of emergency" in the Chechen region. Basayev planned the first terrorist attack of his life because of the "protest" against the state of emergency.
(Dudayev)
It's just that the location is not in Russia but in Turkey, where he hijacked a Russian flight on November 9 of that year, and became "famous" because of it. Upon his return to Chechnya, Dudayev appointed him commander-in-chief of the "Presidential Guard" with the rank of colonel.
Although Basayev was nominally a subordinate of Dudayev, in reality Basayev had his own independence. In 1994, Basayev left the Chechen government and went to Afghanistan, a "haven for terrorists", to receive "military training". At the end of 1994, the first Chechen war broke out, and Basayev also returned to Chechnya with his people to fight.
Dudayev's appointment of him as "commander of special forces" can be considered to be the best use of everything. In 1995, the situation of the Chechen war began to show a "one-sided" situation, and although the Chechen armed forces were fierce, they were far worse than the regular Russian army, and it can be said that Chechnya was bound to lose. It was at this time that Basayev came into the picture...
(Chechen officer)
2. Terrorism, turning things around
On June 14, 1995, "Chechen special forces" secretly infiltrated the city of Budyonnovsk in the Stashropol Territory, a hundred kilometers north of Chechnya. The terrorists were supposed to target the city hall and the Ministry of Internal Affairs building, but during the attack, they were fiercely counterattacked by the Russian military police.
As a result, the terrorists had no choice but to turn their target to the Budyonnovsk City Hospital, where the patients, medical staff and family members of the patients were taken hostage. At this time, Basayev was actually in the Budyonnovsk Municipal Hospital, which can be said to be the best time for the Russian military to kill this "Caucasian wolf", but the authorities did not pay attention to Basayev at that time.
At that time, Basayev proposed to the Russian government that he would release the hostages, that Yeltsin himself must negotiate, that Chechnya must be withdrawn, that peace negotiations must be made, that Chechnya's independence must be recognized, and that all hostile acts against Chechnya must be stopped. In order to show his "sincerity", Basayev was extremely brutal and, while still alive, dismembered six wounded Russian soldiers in the hospital.
(Basayev)
Yeltsin, of course, could not accept Basayev's terms, and on June 17, the Russian security forces began to attempt a strong attack, but in the process they lost more than 20 military and police, and although they successfully rescued 100 hostages, more than 30 of them died in the exchange of fire. After the rescue failed, a furious Basayev slaughtered dozens of more hostages.
Faced with huge casualties among the hostages, Yeltsin no longer dared to act rashly. On June 18, Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin personally held telephone talks with Basayev. Basayev reached a ceasefire agreement with Russia on behalf of Chechnya, and the Russian army made significant concessions and was forced to start withdrawing its troops from Chechnya.
It can be said that the Budyonnovsk hostage incident was the turning point of the first Chechen war, and it is also one of the few wars in modern warfare that does not take a specific battle as a turning point.
(Terrorist Attack)
On June 19, Basayev and his group left Budyonnovsk with 120 Russian hostages in a bus, escorted by Russian special forces. After arriving in Chechnya, Basayev and his gang disappeared into the Chechen forests, and 120 hostages were released intact.
In this incident, Basayev retreated, and it can be said that he single-handedly forced back the Russian army of 100,000 in Chechnya, bought precious respite for Chechnya, and also postponed the final fate of Chechnya until 2000. And for Basayev himself, his popularity in the horror world also rose for a while, and it was also at this time that Basayev received the title of "Caucasian wolf".
After the end of the first Chechen war, Dudayev was killed for the decapitation of the Russian army, and Basayev became one of the most prestigious characters in Chechnya. In the illegal elections in Chechnya after the end of the war, Basayev challenged for the presidency for the second time. But in this election, Basayev unexpectedly lost to the "pro-Russian" Maskhadov.
(Basayev negotiations)
The reason for this strange situation is that the Chechen people know very well that choosing Basayev means war, choosing Maskhadov means peace, and Chechnya is too tired. And Maskhadov also left Basayev a prime minister after the election, but Basayev's ambitions do not stop there, and his terror career will not end.
Third, it is both the peak and the end
In August 1999, Basayev's ambitions reached their peak, and together with foreign mercenaries, he launched an armed offensive against Dagestan and took the initiative to provoke the second Chechen war. Only this time Basayev's opponent is no longer Yeltsin, but Putin. Putin is not polite to Chechnya at all, using missiles and artillery shells to teach Chechens what it means to be respectful.
(Terrorist Attack)
In 2000, the Second Chechen War was almost over, and neither Basayev nor Maskhadov were the final winners in this struggle for power in Chechnya, and the religious leader Kadyrov, who went directly to Russia, became the final winner of Chechnya. Neither Maskhadov nor Basayev chose to abandon resistance and continued the "guerrilla war".
In October 2002, Basayev tried to regain "yesterday's glory" by sending his terrorists into Moscow and seizing the Dubrovka Theater. But Putin did not compromise at all, and a total of 100 hostages were killed in the rescue operation, but none of the terrorists escaped.
Basayev reached the pinnacle of his life in 2004, the year he became the world's second only terror tycoon to Osama bin Laden. He killed the Chechen leader Kadyrov in this year, and at the same time created the "Beslan hostage incident" that shocked the world.
(Terrorist Attack)
Basayev had a habit of personally planning terrorist attacks, and he himself even took part in some terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus. It's just that in every battle with the Russian security forces and intelligence services, he has always been able to inflict considerable losses on the Russian troops who came to capture him, and the same is true for the terrorists under his command.
The Russian special forces suffered heavy losses in the "Beslan hostage incident", but almost all the terrorists were killed, and only one person remained. The whole world has seen Putin's determination to fight terrorism, including Basayev, who in fact gave up "winning" Putin negotiations after Beslan.
And the new leader of Chechnya, Kadyrov Jr., also offered a huge reward to Basayev, totaling 10 million US dollars, totaling about 300 million rubles. And Basayev's "bounty" for Putin is even higher, with a full $20 million, but no one has ever really completed this bounty...
(Terrorist Attack)
After the second Chechen war, Russian intelligence began to systematically target these terrorist leaders. On 19 March 2003, Khattab, a terrorist and mercenary leader from Jordan who had helped Basayev launch the second Chechen war, was poisoned by venom letters.
On 13 February 2004, Chechen separatist leader Zelimuhan was killed in a bombing while travelling in Qatar and fled to no avail. On March 8, 2005, Maskhadov committed suicide with no hope of breaking through the siege while surrounded by Russian troops. At this time, the only Chechen independence faction with a head and face was Basayev.
In the same year, Basayev also gave an interview to ABC, and the relevant footage was released to the world. The Russian government strongly condemned this, but Russian intelligence also found Basayev's hideout through video. In 2006, Russian agents infiltrated Basayev's hideout and planted a bomb in his car, in which he was killed in the early hours of July 10.
Basayev, a generation of terror tycoon "Caucasian wolf", was so aggrieved that he was blown up in his own car....
(Victims of terrorist attacks)
Resources:
China Youth Daily: Russia offers a reward of 10 million US dollars for the capture of Maskhadov Basayev. [OL].2004.09.09.
Zhao Cheng.Kill the "Wolf of the Caucasus"[J].Global Military, 2006(07X):2.
Qi Lei, Wang Shiwei.Russian Agent Zhi Chop "The Wolf of the Caucasus"[J].Global Military, 2007(05S):2.
Guangming Daily, Chechen Terror Demon Basayev, 2006/July/12/Edition 012