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Warlord's Death Likely Won't Stop Rebels
Death of Warlord Basayev Likely Will Leave Chechen Rebels Bloodied, but Unbowed
By JIM HEINTZ
The Associated Press

MOSCOW - Shamil Basayev was the face and the brains of the Chechen rebels, but his death Monday is unlikely to be a fatal blow to the insurgency that has bloodied Russian troops for a dozen years.

Just as Basayev thrived for years after a Russian mine blew off one of his legs, the Chechen rebels have kept up their fight despite the loss of an array of charismatic and wily leaders. The violence has spread throughout Russia's poor and resentful, largely Muslim North Caucasus.

Russian politicians crowed that Basayev's demise would take away the man who was an inspiring catalyst for the small guerrilla bands that hide in Chechnya's woods and mountains in often-primitive encampments. The death was seen as a tactical victory for the Russian forces that Basayev had eluded for years.

There are conflicting reports of how Basayev died. Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Federal Security Service, said Basayev was killed as part of a special operation. But other officials, and the rebels, said he died when an explosives-laden truck blew up next to his car: An accident may have accomplished what Russia's military might was unable to do.

The inability to hunt down Basayev was an embarrassment for Russia. When President Vladimir Putin last month ordered special forces to "destroy" the killers of Russian hostages in Iraq, many critics noted that Russia couldn't trap a feared terrorist on its own turf.

Basayev's death "is going to boost the credentials of President Putin as a successful terrorist fighter" ahead of this week's Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, said Dmitry Trenin of the Moscow Carnegie Center. "This is something that always has been very important to President Putin both domestically and internationally."

But Putin's fight against terrorism has been widely criticized for focusing on military actions at the expense of addressing root causes including poverty and repression of unofficial Muslim sects.

Although the Kremlin touts the money it's putting into reconstructing the war-shattered Chechen capital, widespread complaints persist of abductions and detentions by police and shadowy security forces. There are also complaints that money intended for displaced people has been siphoned off in corruption or unpaid through inefficiency.

These allegations contribute to widespread distrust of Russian authorities that could easily evolve into support for the rebels.

Meanwhile, angry forces in other parts of the Russian North Caucasus have launched their own Chechnya-inspired insurgencies. Dagestan to the east is plagued with almost-daily shootouts and explosions and Ingushetia to the west is nearly as blood-drenched.

The violence may have spread too far to be contained, some observers say.

"The destruction of one Basayev will not solve the problem of fighting terrorism in Russia," said Anzor Shakhmurzov, head of the liberal Union of Right Forces party in Kabardino-Balkaria, where militants under Basayev's direction launched attacks last year.

And although Basayev was an inspiration to the rebels, they've persisted despite the killings of other major figures, including Aslan Maskhadov, the president of Chechnya after separatists drove out Russian forces in 1996, and Dzhokhar Dudayev, whose drive for independence sparked the first Chechen war in 1994.

"Dudayev was killed in 1996, but there's still no peace in that republic," said Georgy Zozrov, a leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in North Ossetia, a tense republic bordering Chechnya. "Somebody else will come into the place of Basayev."

The major consequence of Basayev's death might be financial. He was well-connected overseas and apparently key to hustling foreign funds to keep the rebels armed and fed.

However, Basayev's increasingly savage terrorist acts notably the 2004 Beslan school seizure that ended in the deaths of more than 330 people appeared to significantly undermine foreign sympathy for the rebels' cause; the blood-drenched images of Beslan overwhelmed any arguments for respect for the Chechens' complaints against Russia.

Doku Umarov, likely to take the most prominent role among the separatists after Basayev's death, has shown indications of being more pragmatic than Basayev though no less determined. Last month he vowed that rebels under his command would renounce attacks on civilians, but increase their attacks on Russian forces. Such a strategy could rehabilitate the rebels' image to some extent and inject new life.

Jim Heintz, The Associated Press' news editor in Moscow, has covered the Chechen conflict since 1999. Correspondent Fatima Tlisova in Nalchik contributed to this report.

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