Shamil Salmanovich Basayev

Vice-President Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

8/26/2007

The Popular Front in the Name of Imam Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for many of the world's most ruthless terrorist attacks. Their leader, a Muslim oligarch and warlord, used terror to firmly entrench fundamentalist Islam in Chechnya. He was now seeking to establish an Islamic state under Sharia law, something that was already in place in many Wahhabi villages in Chechnya.

His Islamic clubs espouse salafi/fundamentalist Islam. Bombings by his "Nation of Islam" under the slogan "the Sword of Islam" had become common occurrences throughout Russia as these Muslims vied for power. By 2002, the bloody arm of Shamil Basayev and the Popular Front reached well beyond the Chechen borders. At this point in his career, Basayev was the most probable Gog candidate, or at least prototype as he is a little too old. His ambition is to unite all of the Caucasus region into a single Islamic state by war and terror. The name Caucasus means "Gog's Fort," and this region from the Black to Caspian Sea, inclusive of Turkey, is the ancestral homeland of the people group which Scripture says Gog will be a ruler and warlord.

Chechen Muslims removed all doubt regarding their ambitions Shamil Basayev stated that he and the rebels he commanded under the name, Riyad us-Saliheyn Brigade (a name which translates "the requirements for getting into paradise"), were responsible for the terrorist attacks attributed to them. He went on to say that such attacks would continue until the group achieved its goal - which was the establishment of an Islamic theocracy in the Caucasus region.

The Islamic warlord's Nation of Islam, Sword of Islam, and Requirements for Paradise Martyrs' Brigade were all relatively recent phenomena, because it wasn't very long ago that Communism and atheism dominated all of the Soviet Union - including the Caucasus region. Although, it didn't take much time for a little Islam to make bad people worse.

Riyad us-Saliheyn terrorists have claimed responsibility for some of the worst terrorist assaults in history. In their first headline grabbing attack, the Martyr's Brigade Meeting the Requirements for Paradise (at least according to the Qur'an) seized control of a Moscow theater, here in October 2002, taking over 800 hostages. A total of 42 Riyad us-Saliheyn terrorists and 90 of their hostages died in that uncivil assault. Two months later in December of 2002, Shamil Basayev's gang destroyed the headquarters of the Chechen government, killing 72 and injuring 280 people. According to Basayev himself, the perpetrators of that assault were an ordinary Muslim father and his two teenage children. Then there was a brutal hospital blast in August 2003 in which 52 were killed and another 72 were seriously wounded. But Riyad us-Saliheyn's most dead assault on humanity took the lives of 344 women and young children in a Beslan school in September 2004.

The group has also used "Black Widow" suicide bombers to carry out attacks, such as the very deadly August 2004 airline and subway bombings. While the death of Shamil Basayev in July 2006 was seen as a setback for the Paradise Brigades, the Islamic group remains an active threat to civilized people in the region, just as Islam remains a threat to the world.

Shamil Basayev was born in the Chechen village of Dishne-Vedeno in 1965. He served in the Soviet Army until 1991, when he returned to Chechnya after the meltdown of the old Soviet Union. Like the 19th century Islamic Imam Shamil, after whom he is named, Basayev hoped to impose the religion of submission on all people in the Caucuses region.

Sources close to Basayev described him as a man who adopted fundamentalist Islam because he loved to fight and he enjoyed killing. His continued adherence to salafi Islam helped ensure funding from the OPEC fiefdoms in the Middle East - especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Despite allegations to the contrary, Basayev claimed that he has never received money from al-Qaeda. Fact is, he didn't need to - OPEC was much more generous. Islam was also great for recruiting jihadists across international borders which became important to Basayev because his butchery caused a loss of popular support in Chechnya.

The first terrorist attack attributed to Basayev was the 1991 hijacking of a Russian passenger plane to Turkey. He struggled to gain notoriety however, because the mass murders he mastermind in the name of Islam were always attributed to a secular independence struggle, rather than his Islamic terrorist organization. The world's journalists simply didn't understand Islam, and they were not interested in holding the religion accountable, because it's not politically correct to criticize a doctrine other than Christianity.

His popularity reached a peak in 1996 when the egotistical Shamil briefly served as Prime Minister of Chechnya. But while Basayev's high profile terrorist attacks, including the 2002 Moscow theater siege, the 2003 hospital attack, the 2004 Beslan school massacre, and the 2005 assassination of Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, raised his image in the Islamic world, it destroyed it elsewhere. And as a chilling thought, the Martyrs' Brigades Meeting the Requirements for Paradise claims that they possess a Russian nuclear weapon.

Essential to these terrorists' "success" was the Saudi-born and indoctrinated Muslim Ibn al-Khattab. The six-fingered man (having lost four to one of his own bombs) played jihad mujahideen in Afghanistan when all the really cool Muslims were terrorizing Russians with American weapons. To secure Saudi OPEC funding for his good work, al-Khattab traveled with his own film crew and videotaped his decapitations of prisoners - a real crowd pleaser back home. He garnered considerable fame for his ability to ambush military supply convoys and inflict maximum casualties. In his most famous raid, Khattab ambushed a convoy in Afghanistan in which he killed 36 Russian soldiers initially and nine more later when his captives were beheaded for the cameras.

Ibn al-Khattab had no qualms about killing civilians. When a Chechen hospital refused to remove its International Red Cross insignias, he murdered six nurses while they slept. Ibn al-Khattab went on to set up fundamentalist Islamic terrorist training camps throughout the Caucasian region and with Gog implications, trained the Georgian supporters of Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

Khattab and Basayev ultimately became militant Muslim brothers with the Saudi media master serving as the prime conduit of funds from the Iranian, Kuwaiti, and Saudi OPECers to the Riyad us-Saliheyn terrorist club. Khattab also sourced jihadists from the Asian and Persian regions immersed in Islam on Basayev's behalf. This partnership allowed the Chechen Muslims to murder their way into the Islamic Hall of Shame.

The third most famous member of Riyad us-Saliheyn was Nur-Pashi Kulayev. He was the sole surviving terrorist to take part in the 2004 Beslan school massacre in North Ossetia, Russia. A former carpenter, Kulayev admitted to taking part in the attack, but has stated that he did not carry a weapon and was only there to protect his brother Han-Pashi, who was killed in the final bombing of the school. Kulayev was put on trial in May 2005 on charges of murder, terrorism, and hostage-taking. A year later he was found guilty of those charges and was sentenced to life-imprisonment.