Shamil Basayev, the radical field commander who ordered the hostage-taking of Beslan schoolchildren, has been appointed vice president of the Chechen seperatist government by the new president. Which means, should President Dolu Umarov be killed, he will become the new leader of the separatist movement. In so few words, that is not good.

PRAGUE, June 28, 2006 (RFE/RL) — The man who claimed responsibility for the 2004 Beslan school siege, rebel field commander Shamil Basayev, has been appointed vice president of the breakaway republic’s separatist government, putting Russia’s most-wanted man next in line to become separatist president.

Basayev’s appointment, first announced in a presidential decree posted on June 27 on a Chechen website, can hardly be considered surprising. He is the separatists’ top military commander. Prior to being named president of the Chechen resistance movement earlier this month, Doku Umarov, the new separatist president, was Basayev’s subordinate.
“Russian authorities did not want to negotiate with rather moderate people like General Dudayev and Colonel Maskhadov — who, by the way, were Soviet General Dudayev and Soviet Colonel Maskhadov. Now they have to deal with much more radical people in the North Caucasus.” — Ivan Rybkin

Still, Basayev’s appointment may signal a important shift in the separatist camp. Crucially, it leaves him one step away from the presidency.

This signal to the world is that the Chechen resistance is radicalizing further and further, and that merely assassinating its leaders will not “behead” the movement, as the pro-Moscow administration has put it. In fact, it appears that with each assassination, the leadership only becomes more and more extreme, with no improvement in the actual condition of Chechnya itself.

With such a development, it is perhaps important to look at how things got to this point. The Russians have done just about everything wrong up to this point, beginning with the war in 1999 that Putin began.

When former President Mashkadov was about to agree to a peace treaty with Russia, Shamil Basayev took things into his own hands and invaded Daghestan. Instead of simply beating him back and hunting him down, Putin waged all out war on Chechnya. Grozny was leveled to the ground. Thousands of civilians were executed, tortured, and raped. The population radicalized against Russia, an entire generation lost.

Negotiations for peace were basically never considered after that. In exchange for broad autonomy, there could have been no more war in the North Caucasus. Mashkadov could have brought Chechnya into that fold, and in fact he was alive and president until just last year when he was assassinated. His successor, Sadullayev, was assassinated just a couple of weeks ago. New leaders continue to rise up as the old ones are killed; ones that advocate expanding the war into the entire region. The moderates, by Russian standards, are being replaced by utter extremists. In that, outside of launching the war in the first place, is the big mistake that Russia has made. With no where to go, the Chechen resistance has allied with radical Islamists.

Ivan Rybkin explains this one well:

Ivan Rybkin, a former State Duma speaker and former secretary of the Russian Security Council, was closely involved with the Chechen peace process in 1996-98, and liaised with Maskhadov in the run-up to the 1997 Russian-Chechen peace treaty. He told RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service that the Kremlin is largely to blame for the fact that a radical figure like Basayev has come to power in the Chechen separatist movement.

“Russian authorities did not want to negotiate with rather moderate people like General ÄDjokharÅ Dudayev and Colonel Maskhadov — who, by the way, were Soviet General Dudayev and Soviet Colonel Maskhadov,” Rybkin said. “Now they have to deal with much more radical people in the North Caucasus.”

Firzauli said it’s not only the separatist leadership that is becoming more radical — but the Chechen society as well. “We have a new generation which has grown up during the two wars in Chechnya. They have no jobs, no education,” he said. “During their short, young lives they have seen only the brutality and cruelty of the Russian forces. They only know how to blow up Russian armored personal carriers, how to shoot Russian soldiers.”

And it is the people that Russia has to be worried about. It is from them that the separatist government and field commanders draw their ability to operate. They are who are recruited to, provide shelter to, and provide support to them. The past decade has turned the province squarely against Russia, and because of actions taken many years ago, suicide bombings and hostage takings may be the norm for many years to come. If Shamil Basayev becomes president, you can bet on it.