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Analysis
Due to its originality with regards to employing large-scale suicidal
hostage-taking operations, the systemic use of female suicide bombers, past
involvement in radiological terrorism, indiscriminate targeting logic,
extreme lethality, the use of suicide bombers on airplanes, the cunning
112 Riyadus-Salikhin Suicide Battalion
ability to infiltrate enemy environment, and in general a highly ambitious
modus operandi, the RAS falls into the category of the most spectacular terror-
ist organizations of all time. The reasons behind the RAS extravagant
approach will be explored in further detail in the upcoming section, where
the variables hypothesized to be the key factors influencing the level of ter-
rorists innovation will be scrutinized.
Role of ideology and strategy
The RAS ideology and strategy played a significant role in triggering the
group s innovative tendencies, in the sense that the organization s opera-
tional preferences corresponded directly to the ideological and strategic
emphasis on large-scale attrition inside the Russian territory.
The RAS ideology could in most generic terms be described as funda-
mentalist Islamism. To a great extent it is this religious dimension that dis-
tinguishes the RAS and its affiliate groups from the more secular elements of
the Chechen resistance, which emphasize the national liberation aspect of
the struggle against Russia. In Chechnya, Basayev and his associates are
commonly referred to as Wahhabis or the bearded ones, a label that does
not by any means bear a positive connotation, given the fact that many of
the Wahhabi elements have had a history of violently enforcing contribu-
tions for the jihad from the local population.403 This may be one of the
reasons why Basayev repeatedly denied being a Wahhabi: None of us are
Wahhabis he claimed.404
Historically, Basayev s ideological progression is rather inconsistent, con-
sidering that he has in the past not only fought on the Russian-supported
Abkhazian side in the separatist campaign against Georgia, but has even
personally protected president Yeltsin with two grenades in his hand during
the Communist party coup attempt of August 1991. Belonging to the tradi-
tional Naqshbandi Sufi order, Basayev had shown little interest in radical
Islam, until he learned that he was leading a jihad from Russian NTV tele-
vision, as one Moscow-based Wahabi preacher had sarcastically com-
mented.405 In order to understand Basayev s ideological and strategic
mindset, it is particularly useful to focus on his various influences and role
models such as Ernesto Che Guevara, whose poster Basayev kept on the
wall of his dorm room while he was studying at the Land Tenure Engineers
Institute in Moscow and from whom Basayev learned the basics of guerilla
strategy.406 An even stronger influence was Imam Shamil, the historical
Chechen figure who between 1830 and 1859 led the forefathers of today s
Chechens in a bloody struggle against Tsarist Russia, later establishing the
first Islamic state in the Caucasus. Basayev took great pride in being named
after Imam Shamil, and his incursions into Dagestan and Ingushetia
demonstrated the desire to re-establish Shamil s Islamic state ranging from
the Black to the Caspian seas. Another clear influence in terms of ideology
has been Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem a.k.a. Omar Ibn-al-Khattab,
Riyadus-Salikhin Suicide Battalion 113
the Saudi mujahid and Afghan veteran alongside whom Basayev had fought
in Nagorno-Karabakh and Chechnya for almost a decade. Under Khattab s
influence, Basayev s thinking gradually became integrated into the global
jihadi agenda, as demonstrated by the 1999 invasion of Dagestan with the
proclaimed goal of freeing [the province] of Zionist influences. 407 And
while the RAS has always carefully defined its war as one of national libera-
tion, amid the growing disenchantment with the lack of overt international
sympathy for the Chechen cause after Dubrovka, the group rapidly became
imbedded in the global jihadi agenda even more.
Like ideology, Basayev s strategy has also been an evolving phenomenon.
For almost a decade Basayev has argued that time was on his side, anticipat-
ing that the longer the Russian occupation of Chechnya persisted, the
greater pressure at both the domestic and international level would be
created to end the war. A strong component of this strategy was the
emphasis on casualties, summed up in Basayev s observation that [the Rus-
sians] can t handle heavy troop losses. They know that if it happens, the
Russian people will eventually rise up against the war. 408 However,
Basayev s patience with the inaction of the international community seems
to have run out over time, and Basayev decided to make one last desperate
attempt to capture international sympathy with the hostage-taking opera-
tion in Dubrovka. Following a miserable failure in this regard, Basayev s
strategy changed radically. First, there was a shift toward an increased
emphasis on terrorist, as opposed to guerilla operations, and the RAS was
established as a permanent group dedicated specifically to this purpose. This
shift revealed the increasingly apocalyptic nature of Basayev s campaign,
both in terms of intensity as well as targeting. In this regard, Basayev s
long-existing strategic emphasis on attrition remained constant, but had
gradually shifted from military to civilian targets, leading all the way up to
the deliberate targeting of schoolchildren in Beslan with the goal of provok-
ing a large-scale war in the entire Caucasus. Second, suicide operations
against civilian targets, especially ones utilizing female suicide bombers,
became Basayev s principal weapon of choice in the Dubrovka aftermath.
The RAS had adopted the classical underdog explanation of this action
stating: we have no warplanes, so we will be blowing ourselves up in
Russian cities. 409 Suicide bombings thus became not only the way of pro-
ducing a maximum amount of casualties; they also represented the ultimate
form of protest against the current conditions, especially when the bombers
were women.
After Beslan, Basayev described the RAS strategy as the worse, the
better, arguing that difficulty is followed by ease, and the harder it is for
[the Chechens] today, the faster this relief will come, the faster victory will
come. [The Chechens] are laying naked bare nerves, and forcing the whole
world to remember that there is still a war in Chechnya, although Putin lies
and claims there is none. 410 This statement also reveals another core
element of the RAS strategy, being the deliberate embarrassment of Russian
114 Riyadus-Salikhin Suicide Battalion
leadership mainly through the effective use of counterpropaganda, the goal
of which is to prove that the Russians are distorting the facts about the
status of the war in Chechnya. This purpose was often fulfilled by the use of
high pressure hostage crises in the Russian territory with the goal of not
only forcing the Russian leadership to choose between unattractive options;
even more importantly these incidents aimed to produce a high level of
casualties with the goal of subsequently pointing the finger at the Russian
leadership for incompetence and cruelty.
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