Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [137]
After Abkhazia, Basayev and his rabble turned up as mercenaries on the Azerbaijan–Armenian front.
1995, June: Seizure of more than 1,600 hostages in Budyonnovsk, including 150 children. One hundred and thirty people died at the hands of Basayev and his thugs.
Autumn 1999: Apartment blocks in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk blown up. Russian intelligence services claim the terrorists were trained through the joint efforts of Khattab and Basayev.
2002, October: Audience of the musical Nord-Ost and others taken hostage in Moscow.
2004, June 22: Raid on Ingushetia in which approximately 100 people died. Organised by Basayev and the current President of the unrecognised [sic] Republic of Ichkeria, Doku Umarov.
2004, August 25: Two passenger aircraft blown up with the loss of 90 lives.
And finally, the most dreadful terrorist atrocity of all, the hostage-taking at the school in Beslan on September 1, 2004.
On the night of June 9, 2006 Basayev, Russia’s bin Laden, was “blown to bits,” according to a press release from the FSB Directorate in Ingushetia, in a powerful explosion in Ekazhevo. He reappeared, piecemeal, on Tuesday, July 11 when his head was sent to Nazran for one type of identification, and his artificial leg to Vladikavkaz for another.
Such are the official announcements, and if we were not talking about the iconic death of a terrorist we have been trying unsuccessfully to catch for the past 10 years, they might raise a smile. By Wednesday, July 12, however, the intelligence services were putting out completely contradictory accounts of the death of Terrorist No. 1. Basayev was an idiot dynamiter travelling in convoy from abroad in a truck full of explosives and primed detonators; alternatively, Basayev had been betrayed by someone on his own side who had taken the bait of half a million US dollars.
In tripping over themselves, they laid the foundations for future myth-making, like that which for so many years now has surrounded the death of President Djohar Dudayev. Since only those with a “need to know” have any idea where Dudayev’s grave is, and because nobody else has seen him dead, many in Chechnya will tell you to this day that Djohar is alive and will return when the time is right; alternatively, that he is alive and has gone into exile with the connivance of the intelligence services; or, then again, that it was not in fact a missile that killed him but …
In other words, where reliable information is not provided, look out for myths. Many Chechens are saying today that this is not the end of Basayev. He too will become a legend, and tales will circulate that he has been sighted on a remote island in the Indian Ocean, or …
No matter what the circumstances of Basayev’s death, whether he was blown up or blew himself up, the important thing is that he is dead. This baneful factor has been removed from the equation. So, what is going to happen in Chechnya now? Which resistance fighters will follow which flag? The explosion in Ekazhevo was probably welcomed by some of them who were plainly opposed to Basayev, and saw him as a black sheep who disgraced everyone. Let us not forget that the detachment of Gelayev, who was subsequently killed in Dagestan, removed itself to Georgia precisely because it didn’t want to fight Basayev’s way. It was a moment of truth: should the strategy of outrages like Nord-Ost and Beslan be continued, or should it be rejected and a policy adopted that in no circumstances should atrocities be committed against entirely innocent victims? Mid-2002 was a watershed moment when our intelligence services should have shown some intelligence, but the opportunity was missed.
Now we are in 2006, almost four years after Nord-Ost, and soon it