Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506190026
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD BOUDREAUX LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
Central to that tradition was the Basayev family's two-story stone house - built in the year 1010 and now reportedly destroyed by Russian bombs - in the mountain village of Vedeno. In its defense, one Basayev ancestor fought the 14th-century Central Asian warlord Tamerlane.
A great-great-great-grandfather died in wartime service as a deputy to Imam Shamil, for whom Shamil Basayev was named.
A great-grandfather was killed fighting the Bolshevik army, and his son died when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin deported 800,000 Chechens to Kazakhstan and Siberia in 1944.
Tragedy befell the Basayev household in a Russian air raid late in May. After losing his village, his home, his mother, two children, a brother, a sister and six other kin, Basayev did last week what no ancestor - and no other Chechen warrior - had ever done.
He took vengeance outside his homeland.
He struck in spectacular fashion, storming a city of 100,000 people with up to 75 guerrillas who slipped in undetected, seized government buildings, grabbed as many as 2,000 hostages and herded them into a hospital, demanding nothing less than a Russian surrender in Chechnya.
``We are sick of watching our villages being bombed and our women and children being killed,'' the bearded commander explained from the hospital in Budennovsk, surrounded by Russian troops, armored personnel carriers and sharpshooters. ``Let them come and storm the place. It does not matter to us when we die. What matters is how we die. We must die with dignity.''
Basayev is soft-spoken and barely 30 years old. But few who know him think he will get out alive.
Like most Chechens, Basayev is a Muslim, as attuned to the Koran as to military manuals. He believes that dying in a holy war will take him straight to paradise.
When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and Chechen President Dzhokar M. Dudayev declared independence, Basayev began preparing for a separatist struggle against Moscow.
Late that year he hijacked a Russian passenger plane to Turkey, where Chechen guerrillas were getting assistance.
Then he raised a 500-member volunteer force to help Abkhazia, another Caucasian ministate, break away from rule by Georgia in 1992.
Basayev rose from chief of Dudayev's bodyguards to deputy commander of the Chechen general staff and then field commander of the Chechen forces, the third rank in the Chechen hierarchy.
Russian security services have spread reports of a rift between the brash, independent commander and the 50-year-old president. Sergei V. Stepashin, Russia's top security official, said Dudayev had lost control of the army and Basayev was now ``at the helm.''
In Budennovsk last week, Basayev said he planned the raid independently from Dudayev, who denied any responsibility. But he proclaimed loyalty to Dudayev and demanded that Yeltsin negotiate with the Chechen leader.
by CNB