Interview of Shamil Basayev to Channel 4 News

Answering questions of Channel 4 News

First question: The aim of our operation in Beslan was to stop the war, stop the genocide of the Chechen people, and withdraw the Russian occupying troops. The results achieved in Budennovsk were not reached because unlike that time the Russians were prepared for the operation, although in both cases the officers and soldiers and methods were practically the same.

Paraphrase: (many storms at Budennovsk, 6 ½ hours non-stop, only stopped for new ammunition, 130 people killed. More than 100 people civilians killed in the storm…

Only difference that in Beslan more ammunition and more powerful

But also then more or less free press that could effect public opinion.

When the choice was to stop or to destroy the hospital with people inside they had to stop because their every step was being watched by the press and the whole world.

Said at Budennovsk not to kill but to stop the war)

We came there not to kill people but to stop the war, and if it works out that way to force the Russian leadership to kill its own civilians, if only through this to force the lying and vain world to understand what is really going on, to lay bare our wound and pain, because people don’t see what is happening in Chechnya. They see it only when huge actions like this one occur on the territory of Russia itself.

To be honest I didn’t plan Beslan. We planned the operation in Moscow or Leningrad, and wanted if we could to carry it out even in two places simultaneously. But the lack of finances didn’t allow us to plan that operation in the centre of Russia. So we chose Ossetia, because Ossetia is Russia’s fortpost in the North Caucasus, and all bad that comes to us comes from the territory of Ossetia, with the silent consent of its population. We’re also not delighted by what happened there. To be honest I am even shocked by what happened there, and am still in a state of shock after it because I didn’t expect that cruelty from the Russian leadership. I thought that if we work through all options, if we don’t leave the Russian leadership with a single chance for a bloodless resolution of this problem, they won’t kill children. This is what I thought and you can say I was cruelly wrong.

Putin opted to do this because the hypocritical West supports the slaughter of the Chechen people, the genocide of the Chechen people.

So we are forced to choose these methods in order to try somehow to stop by any means possible the genocide of our people.

I also have a principle of «the worse, the better», because always difficulty is followed by ease, and the harder it is for us today, the faster this relief will come, the faster victory will come. We 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.

Second question: Reasonable people all over the world condemn the cruelty of the Russian army, but how few there are such people in the world. Thousands yes, but not a million.

The whole world is sick through Russian propaganda. I said at the beginning that in Budennovsk Russia used the same methods, and the only difference is in Budennovsk they practically used few flame-throwers.

But in Beslan they destroyed the school using flame-throwers. Most people died there not from our mines but as a result of the Special Forces storm. The whole world today is horrified and asks how could they have used flame-throwers to fire at a school with children inside, using tens of flame-throwers. The fire, the collapse of the roof, it all happened because the special forces used flame-throwers to fire at the building. 

And the special forces wonder at what happened. In this we see an advantage for Chechnya because if in Chechnya all the time these weapons are used in villages, mop-up operations, in Ingushetia and Dagestan and all the world can see this and they’re banned by conventions that Russia has signed but here the world was horrified as though it happened for the first time. So now in clean-up operations they use them less… so here an advantage.

We have not stopped directing our operations against military and political targets on Russian territory. It’s just that your knowledge and our capability to conduct military action are limited. Today everywhere access to freedom of information, free spread of information are barred to us, because any journalist who asks us anything is automatically an accomplice of terrorism or something else. We have had this badge of terrorism hang on us, although as you can see I am conducting anti-terror. Terrorism is conducted by the Russian leadership, and this is state terrorism.

The less access we have to information, the more they close access to the mass media from us to report on events, the more cruel our actions and those of the Russian power structures become.

As for action against military and political targets. The whole world today sees only planes exploding, bombs in Moscow and Beslan. Other than that the world sees practically nothing. In the past year in Chechnya we have conducted more than 15 large-scale operations, in which more than 200 or 300 people have participated at once. We conducted more than 15 operations this spring and summer, and if you count political [targets], the destruction of the leadership of the puppet regime of Kadyrov on May 9, and that was also counted as a terrorist act although it was a military operation, [as was] taking Ingushetia, taking by storm, an operation in Kabardino-Balkaria, where we seized a very large amount or weapons, including this six-barrelled grenade launcher. This was a present from the Kabardinian government for us. We also seized more than 200 weapons, revolvers, heavy machine-guns, about 100 machine-guns and a lot more besides of weaponry and technical implements.

The operation in Ingushetia was the only [operation] to receive coverage because of its effect. But there were also another four operations involving more than 300 people. One was conducted in Avtury and Geldali, in the Kurchaloi district of Chechnya partly in Vedeno. The second operation was in July, the 12 and 13 July, then on August 22 we had an operation in Grozny where again about 300 Mujahideen were involved. This again was just the force in Grozny

For example in the Grozny operation I personally awarded from our trophy weapons 51 people with reusable grenade launchers, and 462 grenades for them. Most of them were fired, and about 80 enemy soldiers and national scum, and more than 50 pieces of military hardware were destroyed, including 6-7 armoured vehicles. In September a special operation was conducted in the Kurchaloy region towards Gudermes, in several villages, where again about 300 Mujahideen took part. There too national traitors were destroyed, many of them, from the Kadyrov rabble. But this too is not reported. This summer was marked too by particularly low losses on our side.

This we also see as a celebration of the most high, because in the Ingush operation we had only 2 shaheeds (martyrs), glory to Allah, in the Grozny operation we didn’t have a single death, although after the battle as we were withdrawing from the town we has two shaheeds, and that was because of their slovenliness. In the Avturi operation we had only one shaheed, although we captured 12 and destroyed more than 60 national scum and Russian occupiers. This doesn’t count many explosions and attacks, isolated or in groups. This summer, spring and autumn were very fruitful for us, but we didn’t have the opportunity to show, to film military operations and so on. It’s just that we have very little financial resources, we have difficulties, and we aren’t able to buy equipment, video equipment, like we used to. So we report little.

So it looks like in a year we just conducted the one Beslan operation, but thanks to the grace of Allah operations beyond the Republic are conducted only by our brigade of shaheeds. But apart from us there are several thousand Mujahideen in the Republic and around, throughout the North Caucasus. The Russians try to give the impression that only our brigade of shaheeds is fighting and there is no-one else. But that is not true. Again I say that apart from us there are several groups of Mujahideen in the forests, in the mountains, in the towns and in the villages, actively fighting. The operations that we conducted this year were joint between the shaheed with other groups of Mujahideen.

Today the attitude of the international community, particularly in the West, to the situation in Chechnya .. I would characterise in no way. I am reminded of a parable of DzhuAn See, the great Chinese sage. An eagle with a 10-metre wingspan flew into the sky, and in a little puddle a toad sat. When the eagle flew over an enormous shadow covered the toad from the sun, and this little frog quacked to scare away the eagle. I hope the international community isn’t offended, but the international community reminds me of this frog. If the eagle flies they’ll say we quacked, we were worried for you, but if it hovers they’ll quietly quack and do nothing.

This summer’s operations on the contrary increased the chance, and the pressure by the West on Putin has increased, whether the West wants or not. But today we have the situation that we all depend on each other, and the world has become closer than ever, and technology allows one person to wage war against an entire state.

Today the whole world depends on each other, and what is happening in Chechnya returns to Russia like a boomerang, and if this spiral isn’t stopped it will spread further. It will touch both Europe and the whole world, because evil that is born must be stopped; stopped by all force. I have said many times that Putin is a revanchist, and that Russism is an ideology worse than fascism. Putin’s activity now reminds one of the Munich Agreement of 1938.

The West closes its eyes on the disgrace created by Russia. Putin and his clique are revanchists who dream of the rebirth of the Soviet empire. And Russia today is not a federation, it’s an empire, and its echoes. Russia is a country of slaves, a country of masters, as her own great poets said. In Russia there is no faith in anything. It wasn’t me, but the great Winston Churchill who said that any paper signed by Russians is worth no more than the paper it’s written on. That wasn’t me or Chechens who said that, but your British Prime Minister. They are the same as they were before. They destroyed our people before and they’re destroying it today, but today they’re attempting to destroy us with our own hands. There are enough national traitors in any people, and today in order to pin all their brutality on us they’re creating in Chechnya an inter-Chechen conflict. They want to transfer their brutality, the murder of more than 250,000 of our people, in order for us to fight a civil war.

We actively brought military operations to the territory of Russia only in 2002, at precisely the time when they began to conduct the Chechenisation of the conflict. Chechenisation of the conflict will never work and civil war will never work because civil war occurs in a free state when free citizens fight. Today we are fighting with lackeys, with the slaves of the Russian Empire, their pawns. They are not citizens of the Chechen Republic, they are citizens of Russia are her slaves.

We are planning Beslan-type operations in the future because we are forced to do so. Today our citizens are disappearing. If you take for example less than a week ago on the Dagestan-Azerbaijan border they caught a girl with a child and through threats to the child they forced her to confess that she is a shaheed and was travelling somewhere to do something, I don’t know. There are many examples of when young girls .. when something happens to 16- or 17-year old girls the Russians call them children, but our 11, 12 or 13-year old girls they say are being prepared as terrorists. I don’t understand how you can recruit 12-year old girls as a shaheed. Under this pretext our girls disappear without a trace.

They can take anyone, all the more so now when entire families disappear. In order to stop this chaos we have to respond in the same way.

Of course now many try to say, particularly in the Russian leadership, that look, civilians, peaceful innocent people. But you must understand us correctly. We are at war and we look at the form, the form, and not at whether the population has weapons in their hands. We look at the form of their participation in this war. People who approve of Putin’s policies, people who pay their taxes for this war, people who send their soldiers to this war, priests who sprinkle holy water on them, who bless their holy duty – this is what they say, they are the heroic defenders of the fatherland – but we are the 'terrorists' defending our motherland. How can they be innocent? They are just without weapons. Russian citizens are accomplices of this war, it just may be that they have no weapons in their hands. They are not peaceful people for us. Peaceful people for us are those that don’t pay taxes for this war, people who don’t participate, and who speak against this war. Only these are peaceful citizens for us.

Cynical though it may look, we are planning these operations, and we will conduct them, if only to show the world again and again the true face of the Russian regime, the true face of Putin with his Satanic horns, so that the world sees his true face. And the most important reason is to stop the genocide of the Chechen people, and to stop the bloody slaughter that is raging in our land. And in order to stop this genocide we won’t stop before anything.

With the grace of Allah we have not only the support of the Chechen people but of all the peoples of the North Caucasus, and throughout Russian territory. This is demonstrated if only by the fact that this war, this cruel battle has already been going for six years, and they cannot do anything with us. Over this time I have been many times in may republics of the North Caucasus, not only in Chechnya. For example this year in January I was in Chechnya, in February I was in Ingushetia and then in Ossetia, in Kabardino. In March I was in the Stavropol region and the Krasnodar region – there we even had a fire-fight but that wasn’t reported because it wasn’t expedient to report that I had been there. At the end of March I was in Ingushetia, and was there till the middle of April. In April I was again in Chechnya, had a couple of meetings, met Mujahideen. At the start of May I was again in Ingushetia. There in July, in June we planned the operation.

Three days after the operation I was already at the other end of Chechnya in the Vedeno region, then in the Kurchaloy region, and there I met Maskhadov, and spent two or three weeks there together. There we conducted a big operation, three days later I was in Grozny where I spent a month, and on August 23-24^th I went again to Ingushetia, and from there to Ossetia. So I travel freely everywhere, to the grace of Allah, and that shows the support of not only our people, but of all kind people. The situation here is not what the Russian leadership tries to show the whole world. Ordinary people everywhere support us, and everywhere sympathise and help, to the grace of Allah. Without faith and the support of our people we would not have lasted a month against this armada, this huge enemy horde. To be honest I would not have stood against that force, because I think of myself as a pragmatic, sensible person, and I do not fight just out of idleness.

Everyone ask us, everywhere, everyone is interested in the participation of the resistance foreigners and in particular Arabs. On that question I’d also like to say that to be honest I am fed up with listening again and again to the same questions. But I’ll answer. In all times any army, any side considered volunteers a good thing and sign of right. Why is it that on the Russian side people don’t go and fight from all over the world, if only because we represent this universal evil that the West advertises us as?

Why is it that people from all over the world buy with their last kopek a ticket by hook or by crook to come and help us? I can assure you that we are not only helped by Muslims from all the world, but we are helped by people of different confessions – Christians, and I even have a good acquaintance who is Judaic and helps us. It is just that today the whole world is stupefied by infectious propaganda. In this war I have counted volunteers from more than 150 countries, including from Great Britain. I have a data base of about 1 ½ million volunteers from the whole world who want to come to us, perhaps there are now more – we haven’t been continuing counting for over a year. And of course we also have a million Chechens in our reserve, because we are supported by the whole people, and if somewhere on the television people are shown, that is people trying to survive.

Even the national traitors will at any time help us and do what they have to, because they have no choice, because most of them are serving the Russians only to survive. And the other part are fishing in these murky waters in order to earn as much money as they can.

If we talk about percentages, in the regular Mujahid there are about as many foreigners as there are in the British army – for example the Nepalese. No more, perhaps even less than the percentage you have.

The future relations between the Chechen Ichkeria Republic and Russia I see as good, god-willing. Although to be honest in the future I don’t see an entity such as the Russian Federation, because in the current politics of the leadership of Russia this splinter of the Soviet Empire will soon god-willing collapse into small small pieces. We are lending our efforts to these ends, in order to rid the whole world of this infection, of this horror.

We are fighting not because we have nothing to do or we like war. No, we don’t like – we also want to lead a calm life, live by our religion and laws, hinder no-one. But today the Russians are creating the situation where we are as though thirsting the blood of others. This is all very similar to a Krylov fable. Even if you look at the photos that were shown over the whole world, of the decapitated heads of those four British telecom workers.

The whole world blamed that on Barayev and the Akhmadovs, the whole world showed this, particularly the Russians, in order to show how cruel the Chechens are and so on. In fact both Baraev and Akhmadov had distant and indirect relations to this. These Britons were kidnapped by a completely different person, and their heads were cut off also by completely different people. In fact one of those who took part in the murder of these telecom workers, in their decapitation, is currently the head of the district department of the Interior Ministry of the Urus-Martan district of the puppet regime in Chechnya. The question is, don’t they know this? Today this person is at work in the power structures.

These Britons were kidnapped by Apti Abitayev from Urus-Martan. He died in the war. With him in the kidnapping and killing was this Ruslan Dzhamalkhan. He is now as I said the chief of police of the Urus-Martan district. He is particularly close to Ramzan Kadyrov.

There is a GRU battalion in the west of Chechnya, and its commander is Said-Magomed Kakiyo. He and his deputy, Aslan Magomadov, they killed the American in Moscow over the Radisson Slavyanskaya, on the order of Umar Dzhabrailov. They are his in-house assassins. And to this day their accounts are open. They also participated in the attempted assassination in this war of the vice-Premier of Moscow – Ordzhonokidze is his name, I think.

This man is also decorated as a Hero of Russia, he is the commander of a GRU battalion. We have another GRU commander in the east, Sulim Yamadayev. Before the war they were involved in kidnapping, seizing mostly Dagestanis and Ingush, and the result of this war is for our brother neighbours to turn from us through this kidnapping, cruelty and stealing. All of this was done for that reason. Sulim Yamudayev’s brother is now in prison in Russia, and was sentenced to tens of years. He was an assassin in Moscow, and he is kept at the moment as a bate. His brother Dzhabrail, who we destroyed in the spring, also a Hero of Russia, posthumously, he was also before the war and in the first was in Moscow an assassin, a hired murderer.

This special group is made up of these people. There is also Moldi Baisarov, also a battalion commander who serves in security for Kadyrov. He took part in the kidnapping of the son of the Ossetian Vice-Premier, they kidnapped the Vice-Premier’s son, and killed two FSB agents there. They also kidnapped another priest, two Jews, two journalists, one Arab businessman who they kidnapped in 1999 and according to my information he is still in their hands and alive. With him, with the Ossetian Vice-Premier’s son they also kidnapped a Bildurov from Sernovodsk. He is also now an FSB officer. His brother is now the special Chechen representative to Chechnya. These are the people who occupy these posts.

There is also Apti Abubakar, alias Richard, who is Baisarov’s deputy, the battalion commander. He was involved in the kidnapping of Vlasov and Shpigun, and in the killing of Russian POWs. On camera he is next to the so-called Tractorist. But that person is also bringing order in Chechnya today. These are the people who earlier created lawlessness here. There were a lot of such groups, and I can provide tens and tens of such examples, if not hundreds.

[Paraphrase: In the period of so-called independence Russia was still waging a covert war.

Claims that most of the kidnapping in these years was done to earn money for the Russian leadership – Chechens only got 10% of the money…]

I am ready to answer before a court for my actions, for my every step, because everyone should be equal before justice regardless of authority they hold, and of their position. Regardless of whether this helps bring peace to Chechnya or not, justice must be justice.

I met Maskhadov in November, and we spent the last ten days of Ramadan together. We fasted together and talked a lot. To all of Maskhadov’s accusations I answered and asked him .. I told him that I was ready to stand before a Shariah court, and answer to it in all its severity if it judges I should be punished.

But I asked him how in the conditions of an occupation and of war whether a court would be able to gather enough witnesses, question them, cross-examine on the accusations, question me and my defence: is he capable of this? And if today our court isn’t able to gather in full how can it judge me? Isn’t it better for him to wait with this court till the end of the war?

If Maskhadov isn’t able today to guarantee a decent investigation, today I think that there is no need to talk very much about it. He committed me to court and the court accepted it to consider, but today the court isn’t able [to function]. If the Russians withdraw their troops and cease the genocide of our people, I am ready to stand before a court, and I will accept any decision of the court with due deference, because I am fighting not for my personal enrichment or still more my personal pleasure. I am fighting for my freedom and for the freedom of my people, to free ourselves once and for all from Russian oppression.

For some reason in Georgia and in Ukraine people are allowed to free themselves from Russian oppression, and the whole world helps them in that, but for some reason for us it is forbidden. No-one helps us. But if you look from the point of view of international law we have more right according to international law to be independent from Russia than Georgia. Because Georgia once entered the Russian Empire voluntarily and in perpetuity. We never entered Russia, but always fought against the Russian Empire. We are now fighting, but are forbidden this right – we don’t have the right.

People misunderstand some things, for example by presenting us as separatists, that we want to separate from Russia. This is not true. We are not separatists, aggression has been committed against us according to international rights and law. Russia committed an act of aggression against us because we left the Soviet Union in autumn 1991, when the Russian Federation, Russia didn’t exist. We even passed a constitution of an independent, sovereign, democratic and state based on the rule of law on 12 March 1992, almost a month before the constitution of the Russian Federation. We have suffered aggression, but because Russia has a nuclear truncheon the whole world denies us the right to be free, the right given us by the Almighty Allah, the right given to us by God and they want to deprive us of it.

this is not a war between Muslims and Christians. Not between confessions but between faith and faithlessness. The majority of Russians are godless, and we are fighting with Satanism. Islam has retained its inner strength most, and has the power and ability to stand against world Satanism. Of Christianity and Judaism only the name has remained, and also practically from Islam. Today we’re fighting global Satanism that puts forward as its shield American imperialism and Russian chauvinism

Whether the Russians want it or not, we have won this war. We just have to put the stamp on it as they say. Time is on our side and is working for us. Our forces are with the grace of Allah in order, everyone knows what they’re doing, we don’t have chaos and disorganisation. We can fight for decades yet, but we want to stop this war because it is striking our own and other peaceful citizens, those that don’t take part in the war. Today in this war we have lost about 5000 Mujahideen, no more. In the two wars we have lost about 7000 Mujahideen. In the first war we lost 2800 and a few more Mujahideen, and there were about 200,000 civilians. That is why we are ready to stop the war, and as Maskhadov says to start negotiations without preconditions.

But there is one condition. That is the non-negotiable and full withdrawal of the occupying Russian troops from our territory. It is only possible in that case.

We welcome the initiative of the Soldiers’ Mothers, because in the end each person is obliged to be a person. Our prophet said if you see ill stop it with your hands, if you can’t stop it with your hands stop it with your tongue, if you cannot stop it with your tongue stop it with your heart. That is the smallest part of the iman.

We’re not romantics and not maniacs. We are fighting out of the necessity to defend our freedom and independence, to stop the undisguised genocide of the Chechen people, and today as I have said, there is a war between the descendents of monkeys – about whom your Darwin said – and the descendents of Adam, glory be to Allah. That is today’s war, between good and evil.