Terror in Karabakh
Chechen Warlord Shamil Basayev's Tenure in Azerbaijan
By Khatchig M.
On July 10, 2006, Chechen guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev was killed in the
village of Ekazhevo, in Ingushetia. Notorious for his responsibility in the
Moscow Theatre siege (October 2002) and the Beslan school siege (September
2004), Basayev was Moscow's most wanted man, and a national hero for many
Chechens. His tenure in Abkhazia, Afghanistan, and Russia is well
documented. Little is written, however, on Basayev's short tenure in Nagorno
Karabakh in the early 1990s. Bits and pieces of information on Basayev's
participation in the Karabakh war on the side of the Azeries could be found
scattered in news reports, interviews, and commentaries published at the
time in the Azeri, Armenian, and Russian media.
Jihad in Karabakh
Basayev arrived in Azerbaijan with his unit sometime in the early 1990s to
fight against the Karabakh army along with the Azeris, allegedly at the
invitation of official Baku. The exact date of his arrival proved to be
difficult to specify by the information available with this writer, because
of the conflicting reports.
During and after the war, Chechen political figures often declined to
comment on Basayev's tenure. For example, in an interview with Chechen
opposition leader Movladi Udugov, published in "Golos Armenii" in July 28
1999, the former prime minister was asked how real are the rumors that
Chechen detachments headed by commander Shamil Basayev and Ruslan Gelayev
took part in the Karabakh war. Udugov refused to comment.
However, there are a number of statements made by Azeri political and
military figures acknowledging Basayev's role in the war against the
Armenians in Karabakh. In 2005, for example, Azeri Colonel Azer Rustamov,
who had participated in the Karabakh war, recounts that in 1992, "hundreds
of Chechen volunteers rendered us invaluable help in these battles led by
Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduev."
Last to Leave Shushi
"One of the last fighters to leave Shusha (The Azeri name for Shushi) was
the Chechen volunteer Shamil Basayev," states Thomas De Waal in his Book
Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (NYU Press,
2003). Shushi was captured May 1992. According to some reports in the
Russian media, Basayev barely escaped being captured.
In 2000, interviewed in Chechnya, Basayev told the Azerbaijani television
company ANS: " Shusha was just abandoned. About 700 Armenians launched an
offensive and it was just a veneer. With such a strong garrison and so many
weapons, especially as Shusha itself is in a strategically significant
position, one hundred men could hold it for a year easily. There was no
organization. Today, we can take one specific general or minister, we can
just take them and say you betrayed it, you took it, you sold it. It is all
talk. There was no single management. No one was responsible for anything."
According to Russian news reports, Basayev said that during his career as a
fighter, he and his battalion only lost once, and that defeat came in
Karabakh. He went on to say that the defeat was against the "Dashnak
battalion".
No Sign of Jihad
As Sanobar Shermatova writes in an article on "(Amir Ibn) Khattab and
Central Asia", published in Moscow News on September 13, 2000: "Chechen and
Afghan fighters continued to fight in Nagorno-Karabakh until 1994. It is
noteworthy that Kabul-Baku flights carried Afghan fighters while return
flights took Chechens to training camps near the towns of Kunduz and Taloqan
that were also home to bases of Tajik opposition whose armed units had by
then been pushed out of the country and into Afghanistan."
Basayev did not stay in Karabakh for long, because he thought the war had
little to do with Jihad and so much more to do with nationalism. In an
interview aired by Azerbaijani TV station ANS on June 14, 2000, he says:
"Frankly, I personally took the mojahedins out of Azerbaijan. We did not
arrived there (Karabakh) for personal gains but for jihad".
In another interview, Basayev tells ANS: "We were greatly surprised by the
enthusiasm and patriotism of the rank-and-file personnel of the Azerbaijani
army and the apathy and mood of time-serving amongst the officer corps. We
came there not for trophies, but for jihad and to help for the sake of God.
But when we saw the situation, there was no sign of jihad. Often when great
casualties were sustained because of the lack of talent and stupidity of the
officers, simply because of the stupidity of commanders, no commander was
punished."
Would Basayev have helped Azeris in case war broke again in Nagorno
Karabakh? In a report by Azerbaijani newspaper Yeni Musavat titled "Any
method can be used to liberate Karabakh," The director of the Chechen Rights
Centre and independent journalist Mayrbek Taramov says "Chechen leaders, for
instance Shamil Basayev, used to say that they were ready to assist
Azerbaijan in re-taking Karabakh. The Chechens are ready to keep their
word".
"The Chechens have once proven that and they are ready to help the
Azerbaijani people for a second or third time. The Chechen mojahedin
consider this their holy duty," adds Taramov.
The short time Basayev spent in the region was crucial in his "career",
because, according to some reports, it was there that he met Amir Ibn
Khattab, sent to the region by Osama Bin Laden to participate in the civil
war in Tajikistan and assist the Azeries in the war against the Armenians.
It is with Khattab that Basayev later traveled to Afghanistan.
From:The Armenian Weekly On-Line: AWOL
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