Ruslan Gelayev
Ruslan Gelayev | |
---|---|
Руслан Гелаев | |
Prime Minister of Ichkeria | |
In office 1 January 1997 – February 1997 | |
Preceded by | Aslan Maskhadov |
Succeeded by | Aslan Maskhadov |
Personal details | |
Born | 16 April 1964 Komsomolskoye (Saadi-Kotar), |
Ruslan (Khamzat) Germanovich Gelayev
Biography
Ruslan Gelayev was born in 1964 in the village of Komsomolskoye (Saadi-Kotar) near Urus-Martan, 10 years after his parents had returned from the Stalinist deportation of Chechens into Central Asia. He was from Chechen Highland teip Gukhoy. Gelayev lived for several years outside Chechnya in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, held various jobs and, at one point, served in the Soviet Army.
Soviet-Afghan war
In 1979-1980, Gelayev took part in the Soviet-Afghan war. He led his Spetsnaz battalion in special operations against Afghan mujahideen, before changing sides with Chechens in the 90's.
Georgian-Abkhazian conflict
In 1992–1993, Gelayev took part in the
After his return to Chechnya, he joined the forces of the
First Chechen War
Gelayev fought against the Russian federal forces in the
Following the fall of Grozny and the Russian push into the highlands, Gelayev personally led the defense of the mountain village of Shatoy, where he was wounded several times. Mumadi Saidayev then took over the command of the front.[5] During this battle, on May 27, 1995, Gelayev announced that if the aerial bombing of the village continued, a number of captive Russian military aviation officers would be killed every day and, according to the Russian human rights group Memorial, eight Russian POWs were executed as Gelayev carried out this threat.[6] The later President of Ichkeria (and still later the self-proclaimed leader of the Caucasus Emirate) Dokka Umarov initially served under his command, together with Akhmed Zakayev, before they left it to form their own units.
On April 16, 1996, Gelayev and the Arab commander Ibn al-Khattab wrecked a large column of Russian armored vehicles in the famous Shatoy ambush, killing scores - or possibly hundreds - of federal soldiers, almost all of them within the first 15 minutes of the attack,[7] with minimal losses on their own side. Previously, on March 6, 1996, Gelayev had led a surprise raid on Grozny, seizing large parts of the city for two days and inflicting serious losses on federal forces, before leaving with more than 100 civilian hostages.[8] This was seen as a rehearsal before the recapture of the city in the Battle of Grozny (August 1996), in an operation led by Basayev in which Gelayev also participated, and that ended the war.
After the war, Gelayev became a deputy
Second Chechen War
At the start of the
In February–March 2000, Gelayev's forces took heavy losses as they withdrew from Grozny to the mountains of southern Chechnya, where they discovered that their mountain bases had been destroyed by Russian aircraft, leaving them starving, freezing, and low on ammunition.[11] At that point, the notorious Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev contacted Gelayev, promising him aid and transportation to a safe area. When Gelayev's forces arrived at the specified meeting place, where buses were supposed to be waiting to evacuate their wounded,[12] they were ambushed by a large number of Russian troops. They retreated to Gelayev's native village of Komsomolskoye (Saadi-Kotar). There, around a thousand or more rebels were trapped and the village was pounded for weeks by the federal forces in the Battle of Komsomolskoye, one of the bloodiest battles of the war, ending with hundreds of Chechen fighters and civilians dead, along with more than 50 government troops (according to Russian figures). Gelayev escaped, but with only a fraction of his men, and many of demoralized survivors decided to give up the fight.[11] Anna Politkovskaya wrote, "How could he ever think of taking the war home, to Komsomolskoe, knowing in advance that his own home village would be destroyed!"[13]
Some time after this crushing defeat at Komsomolskoye, the Russian government attempted to negotiate with Gelayev, since he was believed to be in conflict with the other Chechen commanders (especially with Barayev, against whom Gelayev fought a brief personal war following Barayev's apparent betrayal of him at Komsomolskoye). In November 2000, a
In 2001, Gelayev decided to rebuild his forces in the remote
From his bases in Pankisi, Gelayev organised a series of cross-border hit-and-run attacks into Russia. He would not perform any large-scale raid into Chechnya because he wanted to avoid clashes with fellow Chechens serving in pro-Moscow forces and because of his strained relations with Maskhadov and Basayev. However, more than 100 Chechen fighters left his group and returned to Chechnya under the command of Umarov in 2002. Many Dagestani and
Death
In the winter of 2003–2004, Gelayev led a raid from Georgia into the mountainous
However, according to the Kavkaz Center version, Gelayev fought against a larger group of Russian troops and was killed after his arm was shot-off by heavy machine gun fire from a helicopter. In 2013, a retired Spetsnaz GRU Colonel Alexander Musienko claimed that he was aboard a helicopter which killed Gelayev and another Chechen fighter with gunfire and an avalanche caused by rockets already on December 28, 2003, but the corpse of Gelayev was only identified after being dug up from the snow in February 2004. According to Musienko, 20 Chechen fighters were killed and nine were captured and nine Spetsnaz GRU commandos under his command died in this battle, and that the official story of Gelayev's death after the clash with border guards was completely invented.[citation needed] A supposed death of Gelayev in the firefight "that left nine Russian soldiers dead in December" was actually officially reported at the time, but later refuted and assumed to be incorrect after the new version was announced on March 2, 2004.[27]
The corpse was positively identified by the
Family
Gelayev's eldest son, Rustam, was born in 1988 in Omsk, Russia, where his father lived during the 1980s when he was married to a local ethnic Russian woman Larisa Gubkina. After living most of his life outside of Chechnya, in Russia, Rustam moved to Belgium and then to Egypt to study Islam, before allegedly joining the Syrian civil war to fight alongside Syrian rebels (according to the sources sympathetic to the uprising, like Kavkaz Center). Around August 12, 2012, the 24-year-old Rustam Gelayev was reportedly killed by an artillery attack during the Battle of Aleppo. His body was taken to Chechnya, where he was buried on August 17.[26][30][31] Kommersant, however, cited a relative of Gelayev as saying Rustam had been only studying in Syria and was killed on his way to Turkey while fleeing from the war.[32]
References
- ^ His name is also often transliterated as "Khamzat" and "Gelaev".
- ^ Milestones, TIME, Mar. 08, 2004
- ^ Vicken Cheterian, War and Peace in the Caucasus: Ethnic Conflict and the New Geopolitics, page 337
- ^ Dispatches, Chechnya: The Dirty War, Channel 4 documentary, 2006.
- ^ COLONEL HUSEIN ISKHANOV Archived March 8, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Behind Their Backs: Russian forces' use of civilians as hostages and human shields during the Chechnya war (I. Introduction), Memorial, 1997
- ^ Armor Volume 109, Issue 6, page 25
- ^ Russia-Chechnya: Chain of Mistakes and Crimes | Armed Conflict in Chechnya: Principal Stages and Important Events, Memorial
- ^ a b c Obituary: Ruslan Gelayev: Feared Chechen rebel-turned-bandit, The Independent, March 4, 2004 [dead link] (archived article)
- ^ a b The Rebel Who Rides to Russia's Rescue, The Moscow Times, 2 October 2002
- ^ a b Fatigue Thins Chechen Rebels' Ranks, Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2000
- ^ Paul J. Murphy, The Wolves of Islam: Russia and the Faces of Chechen Terror
- ^ Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya
- ^ Chronology of events involving Chechen guerrillas Archived February 26, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Jane's
- ^ Akhmad Kadyrov: Had I been the dictator of Chechnya « Anna Politkovskaya, Novaya Gazeta, March 22, 2002
- ^ Interview with Commander Khamzat Gelayev, Kavkaz Center, 27 October 2003
- ^ He chose martyr's fate, Kavkaz Center Archived February 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ 780 Days in Chechen Captivity, Gazeta.Ru, 2001/08/09
- ^ Russia, Georgia clash over warlord, The Russia Journal, 2002-09-04
- ^ Russians 'beat off Chechen rebels', BBC News, 26 September 2002
- ^ Fierce Clash Between Rebels, Russian Troops, Los Angeles Times, September 27, 2002
- ^ 46 killed in attacks on Russia government, China Daily, 2004-06-22
- ^ Briton killed in Chechen rebel skirmish, BBC News, 26 September 2002
- ^ North Caucasus Weekly Volume 3, Issue 28 (October 1, 2002)
- ^ To kill Gelayev and die Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine, The Russia Journal, 2004-03-02
- ^ a b Chechen Rebels Not Flocking to Syria – Experts, RIA Novosti / GlobalSecurity.Org
- ^ Europe: Russia: Chechen Rebel Killed, The New York Times, March 02, 2004
- ^ FSB Confirms Gelaev's Death Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, Kommersant, Mar. 02, 2004
- ^ Russia: A Terrorist In Life Is A Terrorist In Death, RFE/RL, August 23, 2012
- ^ Son of Chechen Warlord Dies Fighting Assad, The Moscow Times, 22 August 2012
- ^ Son of late Chechen warlord reported killed in Syria, Chicago Tribune (Reuters), August 23, 2012
- ^ Military hits town near Damascus, 100 killed in Syria, Reuters, August 23, 2012
External links
- The Tale of Ruslan Gelayev: Understanding the international dimensions of the Chechen wars, CACI Analyst, 05/28/2008
- Rustam Gelayev: Mysterious Life, Death of Chechen Fighter, PIK TV, 09/05/2012 (about the son of Ruslan Gelayev)