Originally posted (today) by Robert Ware on Peter Lavelle's Russia discussion list.
The Death of Abdul-Khalim Sadullaev
Robert Bruce Ware
Event: Chechen rebel leader, Abdul-Khalim Sadullaev, was killed on June 17 by Chechen forces loyal to Moscow.
Significance: Sadullaev served as President of the Republic of Ichkeria, as the separatist rebels style themselves, since March 2005, when Russian forces killed his predecessor in that post, Aslan Maskhadov. Sadullaev issued a series of decrees that purported to restructure the militant organization, but which had little real effect. He exercised only symbolic power, while real power remained in the hands of militant field commanders, such as Shamil Basaev and Doku Umarov. However, Sadullaev also declared his opposition to attacks upon civilians, which have sharply decreased in their number and magnitude.
Sadullaev's Life: Sadullaev was born in Argun, Chechnya about 1967. He was an ordinary fighter during the first Chechen War (1994-1996). However, he attracted attention during the interwar years (1997-1999) by means of his Islamist proselytizing, and served as a judge in the sharia courts that were established in those years. During the second Chechen war (1999 -- ) he commanded a prominent militant unit.
Russian officials have claimed that he was instrumental in the 2001 kidnapping of Kenneth Gluck, a U.S. citizen employed by Doctors without Borders. Authorities have also claimed that Sadullaev was among the organizers of an attack on government facilities in Ingushetia that killed approximately 100 people in June 2004. There are also reports that Sadullaev's wife was abducted and killed by Russian forces in 2003. When he succeeded to the Ichkerian presidency in 2005, Sadullaev brought radical Islamist ideology to the forefront of the Chechen resistance. He explicitly redefined the goal of the militant struggle as the establishment of an Islamist state extending the breadth of the North Caucasus from the Black Sea to the Caspian. He designated commanders to lead the struggle throughout the region, including the Russian republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria where militant activities have been on the rise. Earlier this year Sadullaev also shook up the militants' international organization. He shifted the roles of Movladi Udugov, a radical Islamist who has long managed international propaganda for the organization, and Akhmed Zakayev, a London-based spokesman, whom Sadullaev tapped as the Ichkerian foreign minister in May. In an interview published in the June 9-15 issue of Politika (a Bulgarian weekly), Sadullaev named Umarov as his successor and seemed to anticipate his own end, saying: "there was someone [to command] before me. And if through the will of Allah I meet my death, there is someone to continue this task even better."
Sadullaev's Death: Sadullaev was killed in a shoot-out with loyal Chechen forces in his hometown of Argun, about 20 miles east of the Chechen capital of Grozny. One of his supporters reportedly sold information of his whereabouts to police for the price of a heroin fix.
Following his death, Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov declared that the militant forces had been "beheaded". Ramzan has also sworn to kill Basaev, who claimed responsibility for the 2004 assassination of his father, the loyalist Chechen President Akhmed Kadyrov. Just a few days before Sadullaev's death the militants released a video of Basaev and Umarov, in which Basaev offered a bounty of USD 50 thousand for Ramzan's assassination, while joking that Ramzan was worth much less.
Analysis: Coming so quickly after Basaev's boast against Ramzan's life, Sadullaev's death is a public relations blow for the militants.
Sadullaev's image as a man of principle who drew courage from his Islamist convictions resonated with a segment of the Chechen population. A recent informal poll estimated his popular support at 24 per cent against 27 per cent for Kadyrov, though this may have had much to do with the fact that Sadullaev was the only effective opposition to Ramzan's arrogant brutality. In the same poll, Shamil Basaev found support from only one per cent. Yet, despite Ramzan's boast, the militant organization has not been "beheaded" by Sadullaev's death. In fact, Sadullaev exercised little real power over warlords such as Shamil Basaev and Doku Umarov in Chechnya, and Rapanni Khallilov in Dagestan. His decrees regarding the organization and objectives of the militants were little more than political theater produced for export through the international media.
Militants operating in the North Caucasus are not centrally organized, and they are only loosely coordinated. It would be a mistake to regard the violence as spreading outward from Chechnya. Instead various loose militant groupings have risen in each of the North Caucasian republics in response to the corruption and inefficacy of their separate governments. Basaev and Umarov have effectively capitalized on the willingness of these groups to join the Shamil show whenever it comes to town. This has culminated in major attacks in Ingushetia in 2004 and in Kabardino-Balkaria in 2005. Yet between these attacks, the militants in each republic have operated in a largely uncoordinated manner. Within each republic, they are divided into numerous local cells that also operate semi-autonomously and that are increasingly responsible for their own funding. As illustrated by the circumstances of Sadullaev's death, the Islamist militants of the North Caucasus are running short of international funding. Six years ago they were receiving millions of dollars of international support, which they used to entice local fighters. Now the militant's funds are stretched so thin, that they can be sold by one of their own for dose of drugs. As militant funds have declined in recent years, loyalist forces have been increasingly successful at identifying informers among their ranks.
The trend suggests that Umarov may not have long to live. These circumstances also illustrate the longstanding involvement of regional militants in criminal enterprises, such as the drug trade, which are an increasingly important source of their funding. The decline in international funding is partly the result of multi-national interdiction efforts that have been led by the United States since September 2001. It also reflects the fact that the focus of international jihadists has shifted from the North Caucasus to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Despite these hardships, Sadullaev's presidency was a compromise that helped to maintain a balance of power among militant commanders. The fact that his demise is coupled with Umarov's ascendance will now challenge this balance in multiple ways, increasing the propensity for further disintegration of the militant organization.
Conclusion: In order to offset this potential, the militants are likely to stage a major attack some time in the next few months. Such an attack would reestablish coordination among militant groups, and would attract the publicity necessary for Umarov to assert his leadership. Yet while it would certainly occur with the active support of Umarov, the attack would probably be initiated and led by Basaev, who would thereby reassert his domination of the militant movement in an effort to limit Umarov's authority and reestablish the balance of power between them. There is a probability for such an attack to occur in Chechnya as vengeance upon Ramzan and his forces. However, since Chechen authorities are well prepared to respond to a major attack, there is also a possibility that an attack will occur in Dagestan or Ingushetia, where officials (for markedly differing reasons) are in weaker positions. Regardless of where it occurs, any such attack is likely to combine Chechen militant groups with those from Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria. Since Umarov, like Sadullaev, has rejected violence against civilians it is probable that such an attack would target government authorities.
Even Basaev seems to have been chastened by world reaction to his claim of responsibility for the terrorist atrocity at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia in September 2004. Were the attack to focus on government facilities it would help to undermine claims by Ramzan and some Russian officials that Sadullaev had been plotting a terrorist attack to coincide with next months G-8 summit in St. Petersburg. Yet if there are grounds for skepticism about these claims, one should also be leery of counter claims that Sadullaev was on the verge of negotiating peace with Moscow. Sadullaev had declared that he would never do so unconditionally. The fact that similar claims were made at the time of Maskhadov's death in 2005, is an indication that the Ichkerian's, like many similar groups the world over, operate a political arm at a discrete distance from their militant activities. In the case of the Chechens, this political arm has regularly presented itself as seeking to moderate the conflict though it has never exercised authoritative control over the militant commanders.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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