Aslan Maskhadov

Aslan (Khalid) Aliyevich Maskhadov (Асла́н (Хали́д) Али́евич Масха́дов; Масхадан Али-воӀ Аслан (Халид); 21 September 1951 – 8 March 2005) was a Soviet and Chechen politician and military commander who served as the third president of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

He was credited by many with the Chechen victory in the First Chechen War, which allowed for the establishment of the de facto independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

On 21 September 1951, Aslan Aliyevich Maskhadov was born in Karaganda Region of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) of the Soviet Union, in the small village of Shakai, during the mass deportation of the Chechen people ordered in 1944 by Joseph Stalin.

His family was from the Alaroy teip (of the Alkhan nek'e branch).

In 1957, his family returned to Chechnya, where they settled in Zebir-Yurt, Nadterechny District.

Maskhadov joined the Soviet Army, trained in the neighbouring Georgian SSR and graduated from the Tbilisi Artillery School in 1972.

He then graduated with honours from the Leningrad Kalinin Higher Artillery in 1981.

He was posted to Hungary with a self-propelled artillery regiment until 1986 and then from 1986 in the Baltic Military District.

He served from 1990 as the chief of staff of Soviet missile and artillery forces in Vilnius, capital of the Lithuanian SSR.

In January 1991, Maskhadov participated in the January Events, the seizure of the television tower by Soviet troops (which he regretted later), but didn't participate in the assault itself.

During his service in the Soviet Army, he was presented with two Orders For Service to Homeland.

Maskhadov retired from the Soviet Army in 1992 with the rank of a colonel and returned to his native land.

He was at the head of ChRI civil defence from late 1992 to November 1993.

The elections were conducted on the basis of the Chechen constitution adopted in March 1992, according to which the Chechen Republic was an independent state.

Representatives of more than 20 countries, as well as the United Nations and the OSCE, attended the elections as observers.

Running with Vakha Arsanov, who became his vice president, Mashkadov won a majority of 60% of the votes and was congratulated by the Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who pledged to work towards rebuilding relations with Chechnya.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in the summer of 1993, Maskhadov took part in raids on the armed opposition against the government of Dzhokhar Dudayev in the Urus-Martan, Nadterechny, and Gudermes districts.

An unsuccessful anti-Dudayev mutiny in November 1993 resulted in the dismissal of Viskhan Shakhabov as chief of staff of the Chechen armed forces, Maskhadov was appointed as the acting chief of staff and, in March 1994, as the chief of staff.

In December 1994, when the First Chechen War broke out, he was the senior military figure on the Chechen side during the war and was widely seen as being instrumental to the Chechen victory over the Russian forces.

As the First Deputy Chairman of the ChRI State Defence Council (ChRI President Dudayev was the chairman) and the chief of staff, Maskhadov organised defence of the Chechen capital during the Battle of Grozny.

Maskhadov commanded the city from the Presidential Palace in Grozny, where on one occasion a Russian bunker buster bomb landed 20 meters from him but failed to explode.

In February 1995, Dudayev promoted Aslan to divisional general.

Beginning in June 1995, Maskhadov took part in peace talks in Grozny to resolve the crisis in Chechnya.

In June 1996, at the negotiations in Nazran, Ingushetia, Maskhadov, on behalf of the ChRI administration, signed the Protocol of the Commission's Meeting on Ceasefire and Measures to Resolve the Armed Conflict in the CRI.

In August 1996, after Grozny's seizure by Chechen units he repeatedly held talks with Alexander Lebed and on 31 August 1996, the signing of the Khasav-Yurt Accord took place, a ceasefire agreement, and peace treaty which marked the end of the First Chechen War.

On 17 October 1996, Maskhadov was appointed Prime Minister of Ichkeria, while he also remained chief of staff and defence minister.

Maskhadov nominated himself for President of Ichkeria on 3 December 1996, for the January 1997 free democratic presidential and parliamentary elections held in Chechnya under the aegis of the OSCE, running primarily against Shamil Basayev and Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.

By the end of 1996, when Maskhadov assumed his office, nearly half a million people (40% of Chechya prewar population) had been internally displaced and lived in refugee camps or overcrowded villages.

The economy was destroyed and the warlords had no intention to disband their militias.

Under such circumstances, Maskhadov's political fortunes began to wane.

His political standing within Chechnya became increasingly insecure as he lost control to Basayev and other warlords.

Even his Vice-President Arsanov became his political enemy.

Maskhadov was elected President of Chechnya in January 1997.

Maskhadov was inaugurated on 12 February 1997, and at the same time he assumed the office of prime minister and abolished the office of Defence Minister he had occupied since late 1996.

Maskhadov remained commander-in-chief of the republican armed forces.

On 12 May 1997, Maskhadov then attained the apex of his political career when he signed a peace treaty with Yeltsin at the Kremlin.

Following the start of the Second Chechen War in August 1999, he returned to leading the guerrilla resistance against the Russian army.

De facto Ichkeria ceased to exist at the beginning of 2000.

Until his death, Maskhadov was President in exile.

He was killed in Tolstoy-Yurt, a village in northern Chechnya, in March 2005.