Aslan Maskhadov

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3rd President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
Aslan Maskhadov Масхадан Али кант Аслан Masxadan Ali kant Aslan

In office 1997 – March 8, 2005
Vice President	Vakha Arsanov
Preceded by	Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev
Succeeded by	Abdul-Halim Sadulayev

Born	September 21, 1951 Karaganda, Kazakh SSR
Died	March 8, 2005 (aged 53) Tolstoy-Yurt, Chechnya
Nationality	Chechen
Political party	Vainakh Democratic Party
Spouse	Kusama Maskhadova
Profession	Officer (armed forces)
Religion	Sufism

Aslan (Khalid) Aliyevich Maskhadov (Chechen: Масхадан Али кант Аслан Latin: Masxadan Ali kant Aslan, Russian: Аслан Алиевич Масхадов) (September 21, 1951 – March 8, 2005) was a leader of the separatist movement and the third President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

He was credited by many with the Chechen victory in the First Chechen War, which allowed for the establishment of the de facto independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Maskhadov was elected President of Chechnya in January 1997. Following the start of the Second Chechen War in August 1999, he returned to leading the guerrilla resistance against the Russian army. He was killed in Tolstoy-Yurt, a village in northern Chechnya, in March 2005.

1 Biography
2 Unmarked grave
3 Trivia
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

On September 21, 1951, Aslan Aliyevich Maskhadov was born in the Karaganda region of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) of the Soviet Union, in the small village of Shakai, during the mass deportation of the Chechen people ordered in 1944 by Joseph Stalin. His family was of the Alleroi teip. In 1957, his family returned to Chechnya where they settled in Zebir-Yurt, Nadterechny District.

Maskhadov joined the Soviet Army, trained in the neighbouring Georgian SSR and graduated from the Tbilisi Artillery School in 1972. He then graduated with honours from the Leningrad Kalinin Higher Artillery in 1981.^[1] He was posted to Hungary with a self-propelled artillery regiment until 1986 and then from 1986 in the Baltic Military District. He served from 1990 as the chief of staff of Soviet missile and artillery forces in Vilnius, capital of the Lithuanian SSR. In January 1991, Maskhadov participated in the January Events, the seizure of the television tower by Soviet troops (which he regretted later), but didn't participate in the assault itself.^[1]^[2] During his service in the Soviet Army, he was presented with two Orders For Service to Homeland. Maskhadov retired from the Soviet Army in 1992 with the rank of a colonel and returned to his native land. He was at the head of ChRI civil defence between late 1992 and November 1993.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, in the summer of 1993, Maskhadov took part in raids on the armed opposition against the government of Dzhokhar Dudayev in the Urus-Martan, Nadterechny, and Gudermes districts. An unsuccessful anti-Dudayev mutiny in November 1993 resulted in the dismissal of Viskhan Shakhabov as chief of staff of the Chechen armed forces, Maskhadov was appointed as the acting chief of staff and, in March 1994, as the chief of staff.

[edit] First Chechen War

In December 1994, when the First Chechen War broke out, he was the senior military figure on the Chechen side during the war and was widely seen as being instrumental to the Chechen victory over the Russian forces. As the First Deputy Chairman of the ChRI State Defence Council (ChRI President Dudayev was the chairman) and the chief of staff, Maskhadov organised defence of the Chechen capital during the Battle of Grozny. Maskhadov commanded the city from the Presidential Palace in Grozny, where on one occasion a Russian bunker buster bomb landed 20 meters from him but failed to explode. In February 1995, Dudayev promoted Aslan to Divisional General.

From June 1995, Maskhadov took part in peace talks in Grozny to resolve the crisis in Chechnya. In June 1996, at the negotiations in Nazran, Ingushetia, Maskhadov, on behalf of the ChRI administration, signed the Protocol of the Commission's Meeting on Ceasefire and Measures to Resolve the Armed Conflict in the CRI. In August 1996, after Grozny's seizure by Chechen units he repeatedly held talks with Alexander Lebed and on 31 August 1996, the signing of the Khasav-Yurt Accord took place, a ceasefire agreement which marked the end of the First Chechen War.

[edit] President of Chechnya

Aslan Maskhadov and Boris Yeltsin shake hands after signing the Moscow peace treaty

On 17 October 1996, Maskhadov was appointed Prime Minister of Ichkeria, while he also remained Chief of Staff and Defence Minister Maskhadov nominated himself for President of Ichkeria on December 3, 1996, for the January 1997 free democratic presidential and parliamentary elections held in Chechnya under the aegis of the OSCE, running primarily against Shamil Basayev and Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.

The elections were conducted on the basis of the Chechen constitution adopted in March 1992, according to which the Chechen Republic was an independent state. Representatives of more than 20 countries, as well as the United Nations and the OSCE, attended the elections as observers. Running with Vakha Arsanov, who became his Vice-President, Mashkadov won a majority of 60% of the votes and was congratulated by the President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, who pledged to work towards rebuilding relations with Chechnya. Maskhadov was inaugurated on February 12, 1997, and at the same time he assumed the office of Prime Minister and abolished the office of Defence Minister he had occupied since late 1996. Maskhadov remained commander-in-chief of the republican armed forces. On May 12, 1997, Maskhadov then attained the apex of his political career when he signed a peace treaty with Yeltsin at the Kremlin.^[3]

[edit] Between two Chechen wars

In the end of 1996, when Maskhadov assumed his office, nearly half a million people (40% of Chechya prewar population) have been internally displaced and lived in refugee camps or overcrowded villages.^[4] The economy was destroyed and the warlords had no intention to disband their militias. Under such circumstances, Maskhadov's political fortunes began to wane. His political standing within Chechnya became increasingly insecure as he lost control to Basayev and other warlords. Even his Vice-President Arsanov became his political enemy. Just like in the years before the First Chechen War under Dudayev, the years of Chechen independence were notorious for organized crime, including kidnapping, leading to several public executions of criminals.^[5]^[6] Maskhadov introduced Islamic law in August 1997.

He also attempted with only limited success to curb the growth of Wahhabism and other fundamentalist Muslim groups supported by Basayev, producing a split in the Chechen separatist movement between Islamic fundamentalism and secular nationalists. Maskhadov survived several assassination attempts on his life on 23 July of 1998, and March 21 and April 10, 1999, in which the attackers used anti-tank missiles and bombs, possibly organized by organized crime figures or religious extremists, although Russian secret services were officially blamed.^[7]^[1]

[edit] Second Chechen War

In the summer of 1999, he condemned an attempt by Basayev and his Arab blood brother Ibn Al-Khattab to spread war to the neighboring republic of Dagestan^[1] (known as the Invasion of Dagestan). This raid, and the Russian Apartment Bombings, were both blamed on the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. On October 1, 1999, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared the authority of President Maskhadov and his parliament illegitimate. Putin sent Russian forces into Chechnya in and his promise of a quick and decisive victory propelled him to the Russian Presidency.

On October 11, 1999, Maskhadov outlined a peace plan offering a crackdown on renegade warlords,^[8]the offer was rejected by the Russian side. In response, President Maskhadov declared a gazavat (holy war) to confront the approaching Russian army. Soon, martial law was declared in Ichkeria and reservists were called, and the building of his Presidential Palace was one of a supposed targets of the disastrous Grozny ballistic missile attack on October 23, 1999.

After Chechen forces' withdrawal from devastated capital following another battle for the city, Maskhadov returned to life as a guerrilla leader, living in hiding as Russia's second most wanted man after Basayev, with Russia placing a $10 million bounty on his capture. He was seen as the political leader of the separatist forces during the war, but it is unclear what kind of a military role he played. Maskhadov offered his readiness for unconditional peace talks with Moscow several times in 2000 alone, continuing in the following years, but his appeals for the political solution were always ignored by the Russian side.^[9]

Maskhadov advocated armed resistance to what he saw as a Russian occupation but condemned attacks on civilians. He allegedly supported the assassination of pro-Russian Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov in Chechnya, whilst condemning the Russian assassination of Chechen separatist ex-President Yandarbiyev in Qatar in 2004. Maskhadov consistently denied responsibility for the increasingly brutal terrorist acts against Russian civilians by Basayev's followers, continually issuing denunciations of such incidents through spokesmen abroad, such as Akhmed Zakayev in London. He described the rebels behind the Beslan school siege as "madmen" driven out of their senses by Russian acts of brutality.^[10]

On January 15, 2005, Maskhadov issued a special order to stop all military operations but these in self-defence, both inside and outside Chechnya, until the end of February (the date marking the anniversary of the Stalin's Vainakh deportations of 1944) as a gesture of good will, and again called for a negotiated end to the Chechen conflict. Umar Khambiev, his designated negotiator said the separatists were no longer seeking independence, but only "guarantees for the existence of the Chechen nation."^[11] This surprise uniliteral ceasefire was supported by Basayev but flatly rejected by the Russian and pro-Russian leaders who once again refused to negotiate.^[12] Maskhadov's order to temporarily cease the offensive actions was largely followed by the rebel movement, except in Dagestan.^[13]

[edit] Death

Maskhadov's body displayed on Russian state television

On March 8, 2005, less than a month after Maskhadov announced the cease-fire, Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) head Nikolay Patrushev announced that special forces attached to the FSB had "today carried out an operation in the settlement of Tolstoy-Yurt, as a result of which the international jihadist and leader of armed groups Maskhadov was killed, and his closest comrades-in-arms detained". He said the special operations unit had wanted to take Maskhadov alive for interrogation, but claim that they killed him accidentally with a grenade thrown into a bunker where Maskhadov was hiding. Maskhadov had apparently ordered his bodyguards to leave before engaging the Russian special forces on his own. A body was shown on Russian television that looked very much like Maskhadov. Akhmed Zakayev, one of his closest allies who acted as his spokesman and foreign minister, told a Russian radio station that it was probable that Maskhadov had indeed been killed; he indicated later that a new Chechen leader could be chosen within days. Vladimir Putin awarded those responsible for the killings with medals. Shortly following Maskhadov's death, the Chechen rebel council announced that Abdul-Halim Sadulayev had assumed the leadership.

Although the circumstances of Maskhadov's death remain unclear, Russian media has reported that Maskhadov's own bodyguards had accidentally killed him in the panic of the fire fight. Another version has Maskhadov killed by forces loyal to Chechnya's Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov had vowed to avenge the assassination of his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, and at the site described the FSB operation as revenge. According to one unconfirmed report, the Chechen President was deliberately killed after being lured into talks with the Russian side which were to take place with the mediation of a number of foreign countries.

Four Chechens: Vakhit Murdashev, Viskhan Hadzhimuradov, Skanarbek Yusupov and Ilias Iriskhanov were captured by the special operation. Since October 10, 2005, their case is in the High Court of Chechen republic. According to their evidence^[14] Maskhadov was caught during preparation of a peace settlement with Russian Federal authorities.

[edit] Unmarked grave

On April 24, 2006, the General Procurator's Office of Russia officially refused to turn the remains of Aslan Maskhadov over to his relatives for burial. The refusal was described as legal:

Maskhadov A.A., in connection with terrorism, was criminally responsible for many separate serious crimes on the territory of the Russian Federation. Taking this into account, it was decided to suppress Maskhadov's activities and Maskhadov was being pursued for our protection. The burial of such persons is carried out in accordance with the rules concerning the burial of those whose death was a result of the suppression of their terrorist actions, affirmed by the government of the Russian Federation on 20 March 2003, in Order No. 164. In this case, the body is not handed over for burial, and the location of the burial is not communicated.

Maskhadov's family is since campaigning to release his remains or disclose what happened to the body.^[15]^[16]

[edit] Trivia

Aslan Maskhadov is the author of a book titled Honour above Life (Grozny, February 1997).

He married at the age of 17. His wife Kusama holds a graduate degree in teaching. There is a son, Anzor, who took part in military action during the First Chechen War and a daughter, Fatima. Their grandson was born on 4 May 1994 and named Shamil after Imam Shamil. There is also a granddaughter.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

[edit] Biographies

[edit] Interviews

Ekspress-Khronika (Express Chronicles), No. 8 (611), 26 February 2000, p. 1.
Komsomolskaya Pravda, 18 March 2000, p. 7.
Kommersant, 21 April 2000, p. 1.
Kommersant, 22 April 2000, p. 3.
Kommersant, 27 January 2001, p. 1, 3.
1999 interview by Marie Bennigsen-Broxup posted on the Small Wars Journal web site
The last interview Maskhadov gave before his death to RFE/RL
Controversial interview Maskhadov gave to Boris Berezovsky's Kommersant newspaper