Maskhadov was Chechnya’s legitimately elected president.

MOSCOW, March 9 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The killing of moderate Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov eliminates the only resistance chief who advocated a political solution to the bloody 10-year conflict and will destabilize the Caucasus region and Russia as it beefs up radical Chechen fighters, observers said Wednesday, March 9.

The death of a man who was post-Soviet Chechnya's only legitimately elected president would lead to an escalation of the conflict, because it removed a restraining influence on his counterpart Shamil Basayev, seen as a hard-liner, and eliminated a figure with whom the West could pressure the Kremlin to negotiate, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Unlike Basayev, who advocated an expansion of the fight against Russia throughout the volatile North Caucasus, moderate Maskhadov had always insisted that he was fighting for independence of his mountainous republic from Moscow.

“He was a kind person with whom one could have started negotiations,” Lyudmilla Alexeyeva of the Moscow branch of the Helsinki Group, was quoted as saying by IslamOnline.net.

“His assassination leaves no one on the Chechen side who is willing to talk.”

With moderate Maskhadov gone, Basayev's authority will increase and he will have more room to maneuver in staging attacks like the mass hostage-takings at a Moscow theater and a school in the southern city of Beslan.

“He was a restraining force,” his longtime ally and spokesman Akhmed Zakayev told AFP by phone late Tuesday from Britain where he has received political asylum.

But he vowed that the resistance will continue unabated.

“The Chechen fighters have formed a military committee assigned with choosing a successor to Maskhadov,” he said.

Maskhadov and Basayev used to coordinate resistance attacks, but they differed sharply over the targeting of civilians.

Basayev argues that Russian forces spare no one, civilian or fighter, in their continuous aggressions on Chechnya.

Maskhadov vowed to put Basayev on trial for masterminding the hostage siege in Beslan, which killed more than 330 people, once fighting between Chechen fighters and the Russian army comes to an end.

Maskhadov had admitted in an October interview that he disagreed with Basayev in targeting civilians as a means to combat the Russian occupation.

“I myself condemn targeting innocent civilians and have always been telling Basayev that he must fight an organized war against Russia, employing diplomacy and accompanied by strategic and military tactics,” he told French daily Le Monde.

Basayev, left, argues that Russian forces spare no one, civilian or fighter, in their continuous aggressions on Chechnya.

Alexandar Sherkasov, director of the Russian Memorial human rights center, said Maskhadov used to be a “unifying force.”

“He was held in high esteem by all Chechen fighters and was able to hold on their fire whenever he wants,” he told the Russian NTV news channel.

In February, Maskhadov declared a one-month unilateral ceasefire and called for peace talks with Moscow.

Ahmed Abdel Hafez, an Egyptian specialist in Chechen affairs, said that Maskhadov’s killing will unite the moderate and radical camps of the Chechen fighters.

He hit out at the “sepulchral silence” of the Muslim and Arab world over the Russian atrocities in Chechnya.

“Unfortunately, Arab and Muslim leaders have regarded what’s going on in Chechnya as an internal Russian affair,” Hafez told IOL.

Domino Effect

Some even warned that Chechnya's 10-year fight for independence would now expand beyond the mountainous republic.

“The death of Maskhadov will result in a continuation of destabilization of the Caucasus and Russia as a whole,” Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst, told AFP.

Zakayev added that the situation throughout the North Caucasus and in Chechnya itself now risks getting out of hand.

Several Russian journalists further warned Wednesday that the assassination will trigger a fresh wave of attacks inside Russia and the Chechen territories, giving a grim reminder of the grisly Beslan hostage-taking.

“The complete impossibility not only for Chechnya but the whole North Caucasus of remaining part of Russia is now obvious,” said a commentary posted on the resistance Web site kavkazcenter.com.

“Now there is no longer such a person in Chechnya who can stop the war,” it said. “Now the war can't be halted, it can only be finished.”

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