 | | "Please don't kill me! I don't wanna die! I'm too young!" |
The new Chechen rebel leader pledged on Monday his guerrillas would never surrender and said they would use any methods of warfare "acceptable to God" in their fight for independence from Russia.| "That whole 'acceptable to Allan' requirement is a fairly fluid concept here in Chechen-land..." |
The little-known Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev became the rebels' leader after Aslan Maskhadov was killed on Tuesday. He said he would maintain the policies of the relatively moderate Maskhadov, who led the rebels for a decade, but analysts suggest he will actually be closer to warlord Shamil Basayev, who ordered the Chechens' bloodiest attacks on civilians. "We will not conduct any forms of fighting against innocent people. But we have the right to employ against the enemy any methods that are acceptable to God," Sadulayev said in his first announcement since taking the leadership. It was not clear if he considered Basayev's tactics, such as the Beslan hostage-taking that killed 330 people -- half of them children -- to be "acceptable".
"We will defend our people from the Russians' genocide no matter what price we have to pay," he added in a statement, liberally sprinkled with Koranic quotations, published on the rebel Web site www.chechenpress.co.uk. Sadulayev's elevation has baffled analysts and Russian officials, and one pro-Moscow Chechen has even claimed the new leader does not exist. But a rebel publicity blitz has said he will ably fill Maskhadov's shoes, and the Web site www.kavkazcenter.com said his appointment had cut short Russian joy over Maskhadov's death. "(Sadulayev's appointment) was completely unexpected for the Kremlin ... which is in the state of a boxer who gets knocked down after he made what he thought was a knock-out punch," said an article on the Web site. A separate article, tellingly headlined "Chechen President Abdul-Khalim: who is he?", said he was born in 1967, that his wife was killed in 2003 and that he had left Chechnya only once -- when he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Maskhadov frequently appealed to the Kremlin to hold peace talks to end the war, which has devastated Chechnya, cost 20,000 soldiers' lives and killed tens of thousands of civilians. But Sadulayev suggested he saw no point in negotiations with a Russia whose troops had killed a rebel leader trying to make peace. "The enemy, as we saw on March 8, answered our president's love of peace with perfidy and baseness," he said. "The Chechen people is capable of breaking the arrogance of our enemy, and of forcing it to make peace."
In a sign that the rebels have not slackened their resistance to Russian rule since Maskhadov's death, 13 soldiers were injured on Monday when rockets were fired into their base in Grozny, only yards from the government building. The Chechen war has spread into Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria -- other Muslim regions of southern Russia. Troops battled two gunmen in a house in Dagestan late into the night on Monday, and the region's rebel leaders promised to keep up their fight under Sadulayev's leadership. "The Islamic group 'Shariat' and all other armed groups (in Dagestan) ... pledge their oath to the (Islamic leader) of the Caucasus and all Russian Muslims, Abdul-Khalim," said a statement from an Islamist group on www.kavkazcenter.com. | "We'll defend him with our blood." |
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