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Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev: The Bio
Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who was assassinated yesterday in Qatar aged 51, became acting president of Chechnya after Dzhokhar Dudayev was killed by Russian forces in 1996; he was also accused of masterminding suicide bombings in Russia and of links with the al-Qaâeda terrorist network. Yandarbiyevâs brief spell as president came after Dudayev was blown up by a Russian missile on April 26 1996. Dudayevâs last words were: "Do not give up what we have begun. Continue to the end."But doubts were immediately raised about Yandarbiyevâs ability to remain in control; he had only nominal support from tribal leaders and the military command. When he stood in 1997âs presidential elections, he came third, behind the relatively moderate Aslan Maskhadov, and the rebel leader Shamil Basayev. Maskhadov lost no time in sending him to the Middle East, ostensibly as his personal representative. His presence there, and his previous links with the Taliban (he had opened a Chechen embassy at Kandahar during their reign) led him to be identified as a supporter of Osama bin Laden - though he denied having described the al-Qaâeda leader as a "friend of Chechnya". Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was born on September 12 1952 at Vydrika in Kazakhstan. When he was 17, he began working as a bricklayer, and later became a gas well driller; but he had greater ambitions than manual labour, and spent some time at the Chechen-Ingush University. He went on to a job as a proof-reader and an "engineer-technician" at the Chechen-Ingush Publishing House in 1976. After nine years in the job, his literary enthusiasms had developed sufficiently for him to sign up to the USSRâs Union of Writers; he chaired the Committee of Literature Promotion for a year, and then became editor-in-chief of the magazine Raduga. Meanwhile, he published several collections of verse and short stories under the pseudonym Abdul Muslim, and also produced a number of childrenâs stories. But most of his energies were devoted to the independence movement; by 1989, he was vice-chairman of the Association of Highland Peoples of the Caucasus. Two years later, Yandarbiyev entered the Chechen parliament, and rapidly allied himself with Dudayev. As vice-president from 1993, Yandarbiyev was involved in talks with Boris Yeltsin during the shelling of Grozny in December 1994; after Dudayevâs death, he called for a jihad against Russia. Moscow announced Yandarbiyevâs death within a matter of days, but he appeared on television, volunteering to meet Russian leaders, though only if troops were withdrawn from Chechnya. Despite peacemaking attempts later that year, when Yandarbiyev praised the approach of General Alexander Lebed, the conflict continued. During his exile in the Middle East, Russian intelligence services believed Yandarbiyev had been instrumental in the attack on a Moscow theatre in October 2002, in which 130 hostages, and 41 Chechen rebels, died. Thereâs also the LA Times version of the story that identifies him as Basayevâs top financier in the Gulf, so right now he looks like as much of a moneyman as anything else. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-02-16 |
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