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IN THE BEGINNING, there was Shamil. A legendary warrior-priest in the classic tradition of the Caucasus, Shamil crossed Islam with the sword and led his guerrilla army in a twenty year war against the Imperial Russian army in the mid-1800s. He fought a last stand in the anonymous mountain village of Vedeno, Chechnya, though the whole of the land seems imbued with talismans of a struggle beyond any human memory. To Russians, Shamil is primarily a literary character - a Cochise or a Sitting Bull in the epic of Russia's battle to tame the wild frontier. Shamil eventually surrendered in his native Dagestan, but such was his reputation that the Czar commuted his execution and allowed him to survive as a popular curiosity, like Sitting Bull in Buffalo Bill's circus. To the Muslims of the North Caucasus, on the other hand, Shamil is less a national curio or poetic reference than an awesome ancestor to all - a proud man from whom all proud men are descended. In the beginning, there was Shamil - and he might be there for the end as well. One hundred and fifty years later, Vedeno has once again been the scene of unreal carnage, in yet another incomprehensibly desperate struggle between Russians on one side and North Caucasians on the other. Vedeno, the site of Imam Shamil's last stand, is probably better known today as the hometown and primary stomping grounds of notorious Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. Reveling in his reputation as the Most Wanted Man in Russia, Shamil Basayev - he has since added a series of Arabic ornaments to his name - is the official cause of the latest war in Chechnya. The Russian military has been battling Basayev's militia terrorist non-stop for almost 10 years, and the result in the total destruction of Chechnya and the surrounding areas. Ever since Chechnya proclaimed independence, Basayev has been the man to back up this claim. He fist gained fame when he led a group of Chechen rebels held some 1,500 Russian civilians hostage inside the Budennovsk city hospital. A Russian attemp to free the hostages ended in failiure, and negotiations had to be done with the rebels. Basayev was guaranteed a safe return to Chechnya, where he continued fighting until the Russian army retreated. When the Russians invaded in late 1999, Basayv has been the central role of resistance up to today, as the struggle in Chechnya continues.
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