The Dark Night

“The death of Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, President of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, is a great and very sad loss for the whole Chechen land. May I express my sincere condolences to his relatives, friends, and comrades-in-arms.

“He was the youngest Chechen president in history.

“The fate of his family was tragic. Shortly before Sadulaev became president, his beloved wife, mother of his five children, was captured and killed by the occupants. He could not save his wife, because he was defending the whole Chechen land and the freedom of its citizens. But he did not like to talk about this tragedy, because there are tens of thousands of other Chechen women and girls, who were tortured and killed in Russian filtration camps.

“Indeed, life of a president is hard. In Chechnya, which is occupied but not subdued, being a president is also a mortal danger. Yet, it is a great honour. Not only is the land of our ancestors, with its mountains, rivers and forests, entrusted to the president, but also its freedom, for which so many Chechens have sacrificed their lives.

“In his last interview, published by the Bulgarian “Politika” weekly, Abdul-Halim frankly answered the trickiest questions of the journalists and defended his position very successfully. His speech was simple and unsophisticated, but it showed great depth of thinking and great purity of intentions.

“Politics is usually seen as a dirty business – and indeed, there are a lot of corrupt politicians. However, if all the politicians got a bit more alike our late president, the world would surely be a better place.

“Pity that we came to know and appreciate him so late… He was so young and handsome, but the God always takes the best people. Now Abdul-Halim Sadulaev is in the Heaven, together with our other presidents killed by Russia: Djokhar Dudayev, Zalimkhan Yandarbiyev and Aslan Maskhadov. And don’t believe they are dead. As Koran reads: “All those who follow the right way, I will take them alive, though you cannot understand this”.

“But look how many people with dead souls still live around us in this world! Surely, their fate is much worse than that of the fallen Chechen warriors.

“General Djokhar Dudayev, our first president, used to say “All the Chechens are generals, and I am only the last of them”. He loved his nation very much, and he believed in it. The death of another Chechen president cannot reverse the history, which is full of horrible crimes against the Chechen nation. The night is darkest just before the dawn.

“Time will come when the Chechen land frees itself from filtration camps and prisons, from block-houses and barbed wire. People shall return to their fireplaces, and Chechen towers shall rise again over Ichkeria’s mountains, resembling the real Kyonakhs. I wish the Chechen nation victory, bright sun, blue skies, and prospering land of Ichkeria.”

Alla Dudayeva is the widow of the first Chechen president Djokhar Dudayev, killed by Russians in 1996

Chechen Press

 

The Greater the Lie

An Interview with Abdul-Halim Sadulaev, President of Chechnya, Subsequently Murdered by the Kremlin

Q: The Muslim world today does not show such active interest in the Chechen struggle for independence. What in your opinion is the reason?

A: The situation in the world has changed. If earlier, Jihad was waged mainly on our territory, then many of the world’s countries are engaged in this holy struggle today — Afghanistan, Iraq, in the first instance Palestine. Many Islamic countries have become frontlines. So the support of the Muslims is now divided. But we never felt that ordinary Muslims took no interest or didn’t help us. On the contrary, not only the men help us, our Muslim sisters support the mojaheddin too by sending us their personal valuables. We know that a great many Muslims make duas to Allah for us . And that too is support.

Q: The Chechen mujaheddin are criticised for carrying out operations targeting civilians. What do you day to such criticism?

A: “The greater the lie, the more they’ll believe it.” The Russians spread propaganda, claiming that all we are interested in is killing civilians. They try to plant this propaganda across the world. However, everyone knows full well in reality who is killing civilians and who gives out orders to murder. Everyone knows that Putin gave his troops the order to kill ten innocent civilians for every dead soldier, declaring that it was the only way to acchieve victory.

Last year Russian troops savagely killed the six-month-old child and wife of one of our mujaheddin. And there are hundreds of such cases. The world’s press says nothing about this, nothing about the fact that the Russians have killed fifty thousand Chechen children. Or are the children of Chechen Muslims not considered innocent civilians?

Source: Chechen Press (2006/03/27)

 

Chechen Traitors Join the Resistance

 

Kadyrovites (Chechens serving the Kremlin puppet Ramzan Kadyrov)

In the first few days of July up to forty armed Kadyrovites fled to the mountains to join the mujahideen. According to information sources, at present the former Kadyrovites are in a special quarantine base in the Chechen mountains.

Each of the fleeing Kadyrovites is undergoing investigation to check for participation in the killing of Muslims and other serious crimes.

As the former Kadyrovites themselves confirm, they took the decision to go over to the mujahedin after the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria [the resistance government] announced an amnesty to those traitors who repented and were not involved in the killing of innocent civilians and mujahedin.

The Kadyrovites fleeing to the mountains state that in the ranks of the munafiqs, especially among the youth, there is quite a strong mood of repentance. Many are seeking an independent path of escape.

Source: Десятки кадыровцев бежали в горы

 

Sufi Resistance in the Caucasus

“The North Caucasus realms of Chechnya and Dagestan had been under official Ottoman rule but effectively independent until the armies of the Czar began their drive for conquest in the 18th century. The Naqshbandi warrior Shaykh Mansur Ushurma declared a jihad and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Russians at the Sunzha River in 1785. He was briefly able to unite much of Chechnya and Dagestan under his rule. Shaykh Mansur’s followers continued their insurgency against the Czarist forces even after his death in prison in 1793. Full-scale armed revolt resumed in 1824, this time under the Naqshbandi Shaykh Imam Shamil, who rebuilt an Islamic state in Chechnya and Dagestan before his capture in 1859.Peace didn’t last long, but it was Russia’s own intolerance of sufism which broke it. In 1861, a Daghestani shepherd named Kunta Haji Kishiev became the first in the region to embrace the Qadiri order, which, unlike the Naqshbandis, allowed vocal zikr, ecstatic music and dancing. Initially, Kunta Haji counseled peace with the Russians. But as his popularity surged, many veteran fighters from Shamil’s disbanded army fell into his orbit—so alarming the Russians that he was arrested and exiled in 1864. That same year at Shali in Chechnya, Russian troops fired on over 4,000 Qadiri dervishes, killing scores and igniting a fresh wave of violence. Together with the rejuvenated Naqshbandis, the Qadiris rose up against the Romanovs repeatedly, hasrassing Czarist forces in the Caucasus through the Bolshevik Revolution.

“In the revolutionary years, a Qadiri-Naqshbandi movement led by Shaykh Uzun Haji battled both the White and the Red armies to create a “North Caucasian Emirate.” The intransigent Uzun Haji—whose tomb remains a pilgrimage site for Chechen Muslims—purportedly said: “I am weaving a rope, to hang engineers, students and in general all those who write from left to right.” His movement was crushed in 1925, but the Soviets, branding the sufis “bandits,” “criminals” and “counter-revolutionaries,” continued to arrest, execute and deport the “zikrists.” In World War II, Stalin accused the sufis of still-unproven collaboration with the Nazis, and in 1944 forcibly relocated six entire Caucasian nationalities, including the Chechen and Ingush, to camps in Central Asia. More than a million Caucasus Muslims were deported.”

Sufism and the Struggle within Islam

 

The Face of a Shahid (insha Allah)

Four munafiqs stumbled across the body of Sheikh Abdul-Halim Sadulaev, President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria after he had been killed by the Russians in a chance encounter. One of them recognised him and was struck by the nur (light) shining from his face.”Look at his face,” he cried involuntarily. A second one, who it seems could read Arabic, cried out, “And look at his arm too. The name ALLAH is traced out in his blood.”

At that moment one of them photographed Sadulaev and hid his telephone. The awe-struck munafiqs left Sadulaev’s body untouched, left his money, which had been destined for the mujahideen, untouched by his side.

Sadulaev’s corpse was later found and mutilated, and the money looted.

The munafiq who took the photograph has circulated the story of what he witnessed and says he is now ready to join the mujahideen resistance.

Знамение Аллаха на Шейхе Абдул-Халиме