Arbi Alautdiinovich Baraev - Field commanders of militants - About the war in Chechnya - Local conflicts - Russian soldiers as a reliable support for Russia. Arbi Baraev

The liquidation of the Chechen field commander Arbi Barayev was the result of a special operation by the FSB and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, which took place from June 19 to 24 in the village of Alkhan-Kala. During the operation, Arbi Barayev and 17 militants from his inner circle were killed, many were captured, and federal forces lost one person killed during the operation. 28-year-old Arbi Barayev was one of the most bloodthirsty Chechen field commanders, his cruelty instilled horror even in his closest associates. It was Barayev who was suspected of the murder in 1997 of Akmal Saitov, an employee of the Russian government representative office in Grozny, the kidnapping of the representative of the Russian President Valentin Vlasov, journalists from ITAR-TASS, NTV and Radio Russia, and the Israeli boy Adi Sharon. Arbi Barayev personally beheaded three English and one New Zealander engineers from the British company Granger Telecom for whom they refused to pay a ransom.

Baraev was born in 1973 into a rather poor family in the village of Alkhan-Kala, barely graduated from high school and, like many young Chechens in those years, was left without work. Although soon enough his uncle helped him, who got his nephew a job as a guard in the traffic police. The 17-year-old sergeant was distinguished by good physical fitness and some narrow-mindedness. In fact, Arbi Barayev never thought independently, he always tried to imitate someone and follow someone. He did not know any life except war, did not accept any human laws, except for the poorly learned fatiha (the first sura of the Koran), killed people because they, not being relatives, meant nothing to him. In 1998, on the orders of Yandarbiev, he tried to organize a Wahhabi rebellion in Gudermes, which was suppressed by Gelayev’s “secular” detachment. Ultimately, his cruelty made him disliked by many Chechens, which predetermined his fate.

Operation development

In mid-February 2001, the special services began developing an operation to physically eliminate Arbi Barayev. The work to establish his whereabouts was quite difficult. Baraev, possessing a truly bestial instinct, was very skillful in hiding. So, to hide from the federals and special services, he used about 40 caches in settlements and regions throughout Chechnya. Although initially suspicious, from the beginning of spring the militant’s mistrust turned into real paranoia. Arbi Barayev could be sitting with people from his inner circle at the table and suddenly, out of the blue, take with him one or two close associates or simply security guards and disappear in an unknown direction. He could say that he went to relieve himself and disappear for a while. After several hours, and sometimes even days, Barayev either called or via a messenger reported his new location. He conveyed information about the exact time of gathering in any place to his entourage and to famous field commanders like Basayev, Khattab or Gelayev at the very last moment.

He executed some of his closest associates and friends personally for the mere suspicion of treason. So, on someone’s slander, suspecting him of collaborating with the federals, he hung one of his comrades by his feet in the courtyard of his house and cut off his genitals in front of his wife.

Field commander Arbi Barayev

At the same time, precisely because absolutely everyone was afraid of him, and so many also hated him, information about Barayev’s appearance in one place or another was received by counterintelligence officers with enviable regularity. It is worth noting that it was not the FSB agents, whom he feared so much, who reported his movements. In most cases, the stories were told by ordinary Chechens who were already pretty tired of him. This fact is very indicative, since Chechnya has always been and remains a rather difficult area for creating an agent network. In this case, the information came from proactive sources from among local residents.

Overlaid

The main problem was that Arbi Barayev was not in one place for more than 10 hours. It was for this reason that the operation to eliminate him failed in April. Feeling that he is being surrounded more and more tightly, Baraev decides to hide. He intended to escape through the territory of Georgia, and further to Turkey. But crossing the border cannot be planned or carried out alone. And to implement such an operation requires enough time. At the same time, counterintelligence learned about any far-reaching plans of the field commander quite quickly. Barayev's two attempts to get abroad ended in nothing.

At the same time, there was a moment in the development of the operation that seriously made life easier for the employees of the special security service. Arbi Barayev always returned to his native village of Alkhan-Kala. Several operations carried out in an attempt to capture him, in this rather large village (population about 20,000 people), ended in nothing. The militants used a clear plan, which provided for their redeployment from areas of the village that had not been cleared to those where the “cleansing” had already taken place.

On June 24, 2001, information that Arbi Barayev with a group of about 20 militants was hiding in Alkhan-Kala came from local residents. The houses where the militants were supposedly located were even named.

Start of operation

Since the development of Arbi Barayev had been going on for several months, the forces and means involved in the operation were in constant readiness. To block all escape routes from the village, special units of the FSB, GRU and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were deployed at several lines. In total, about 500 people were involved in this operation. There was no planned purge, which was reported on television; they were looking for one specific person. Although at the same time they blocked the entire village, doing it quite demonstratively, even using a tank. It was of no use, but it served the function of demonstrating strength. The calculation was made that Barayev would not leave Alkhan-Kala, hoping for his own luck. In this operation, the special services changed tactics. When conducting a sweep, the inspectors did not simply move from one area of ​​the village to another, but left 2-3 special forces in each inspected house in order to exclude any movement of militants within the village. The operation time was not limited. Having information in hand that Barayev was in the village and having blocked Alkhan-Kala, the special services were going to “scratch” until the object of the search was found.

The first day of the operation did not produce any results. At night, the special forces soldiers retreated from the village to blocking units along the perimeter. The next day everything happened again. But other units and people had already gone into the houses to try with fresh eyes to discover any clues or signs that had remained hidden from previous groups. The second day of the special operation brought the first fruits. While moving from one house to another, 2 militants were shot dead. Later, another one was killed in one of the houses. But this was just a sign that the operation was being carried out correctly and the result should come. By nightfall, special forces units again left the village. The third day of the operation was a real success. In addition to the fact that 5 more militants were killed, they managed to take one prisoner. As it turned out later, this was a person from Barayev’s inner circle. And although he himself did not tell anything significant about him, local residents confirmed that he was always next to him. From this it was concluded that the militant was still in the village, and it was decided to intensify the search in the area where the prisoner was taken.

Completion

The operation was carried out with the involvement of various special forces. The most promising houses ended up in the clearing zone assigned to the special forces detachment of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs "Rus". The detachment's soldiers blocked 3 houses that were located near the place where the prisoner was taken. Informants had previously pointed out one of these houses. He was subjected to a particularly thorough check, examined several times already, but nothing was found. During the next round, one of the special forces, passing by a cabinet standing in the yard, heard a suspicious creak and decided to check the source of the noise. Having moved the cabinet aside, the special forces soldiers saw a hole dug behind it, from which a machine gun burst immediately rang out, one of the soldiers was killed. As it turned out later, behind the closet standing in the yard, there was a cache that was dug under the house; it was created back in the mid-90s; it also had a second exit.

There was no way to get inside; when trying to inspect, one soldier died, another soldier and an officer were injured. The special forces of the Rus detachment decided to shoot the building. Having cordoned off the house, they brought up an armored personnel carrier and began shelling it from the KPVT, while at the same time requesting help by radio. Soon an FSB special forces group arrived, which also opened fire on the militants holed up in the house, and fired two volleys at the house from a Shmel flamethrower. As a result, the militants stopped shooting, and the house caught fire. By this time it was starting to get dark and there was no time left to inspect the building; the special forces again left the village. The next day, the corpse of Arbi Barayev was found near the house, one of the most brutal Chechen field commanders was destroyed, the special operation ended.

On June 25, 2001, Russian special services officially announced the liquidation in Chechnya of one of the leaders of gangs, the “high-level” field commander Arbi Barayev

On the anniversary of the terrorist’s death, the online publication Kompromatnaya Information.ru publishes little-known details of the special operation to detect and eliminate A. Barayev.

Command received

In 2001, the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya entered a new stage when the reins of power were given to the FSB. It was after this that the special services seriously began to develop the most odious field commanders in Chechnya. The first was Arbi Barayev. The choice fell on him not by chance. Baraev is, as they say, the most “frostbitten” of all Chechen field commanders. He, without ceremony, shot at the slightest suspicion of cooperation with the federal authorities, not only the residents of Chechnya, but even his own fighters. The number of personally killed has long exceeded a hundred. Baraev and his gang were the main kidnappers in Chechnya. It was he who shot two Englishmen and a New Zealander, and then threw the severed heads on the road.

Even his supporters did not understand him. In 1998, he organized a Wahhabi rebellion in Gudermes. For this, A. Maskhadov deprived him of his awards and the rank of brigadier general, as well as the position of commander of the “Islamic Special Purpose Regiment,” which Barayev commanded from the middle of the “first Chechen company.” In retaliation, Barayev organized an assassination attempt on him, and openly announced the severance of relations with Maskhadov.

An attempt was also made on Barayev, after which his lung and part of his stomach were removed. Doctors literally pulled the bandit out of the grave.

As for influence, at present the influence of a Chechen field commander is determined by the amount of money he has that he can pay to his fighters. According to unconfirmed reports, Barayev was directly connected with Turkish intelligence services. Therefore, he had enough money. It's no secret that the CIA is behind the Turks. There is no doubt about the financial capabilities of this organization.

The only ideology and God he worshiped was money. He did not hesitate to accept them either from Maskhadov, with whom he officially broke up, or from Wahhabis, whom he was not. He took money for fulfilling certain orders made by payers.

That is why, in mid-February 2001, certain FSB structures received a command to develop an operation to physically eliminate, first of all, Arbi Barayev.

Development

On the one hand, the work to identify its base locations was very difficult. Possessing a truly bestial instinct, Baraev hid quite skillfully. Only the fact that he used about forty caches in different regions and settlements of Chechnya to hide from federal forces and special services speaks for itself. Suspicious initially, from the beginning of spring his distrust turned into paranoia. He could sit with his inner circle at the table and, out of the blue, take with him one or two associates or simply guards and disappear in an unknown direction. Or say that you went out to relieve yourself and disappear for a while. After a few hours, or even a day, he either called or through a messenger reported that he was there. He informed even his entourage, even such commanders as Gelayev, Basayev or Khattab, about the time of assembly in one place or another at the very last moment. He didn't trust anyone, not even the women he slept with. He executed some of his friends and associates personally on suspicion or slander alone. When they “whispered in his ear” that he had sold out to the feds, Barayev hanged one of his old comrades by his feet in the courtyard of his house and personally cut off his genitals in front of his wife.

The following incident is also reported. A woman came to ask him for financial help to treat a militant who was wounded in his own gang. Instead of helping, Baraev asked how she knew that he was in this house. The woman, who did not expect such a question, hesitated, but then answered what the people said. This confusion was enough for a morbidly suspicious Arby to take out the APS and shoot her dead on the spot.

On the other hand, precisely because absolutely everyone was afraid of him and so many hated him, information about his appearance in one or another locality was received by counterintelligence agents quite regularly. Moreover, this was not reported by the FSB agents, whom he was so afraid of. Ordinary residents of Chechnya told the story because they were already pretty tired of him.

This fact is very significant, since Chechnya has always been a very difficult area for creating agents. As a rule, contacts were made by so-called blood relatives, who at the time of recruitment still remembered money. Here the information came from proactive sources.

Overlaid

Many people consider it a mistake by the special services that Barayev was not taken alive. But the fact is that from the very beginning no one planned to take him prisoner. In this capacity, no one is interested in him. As an informant, he could hardly be useful. And no one needs to bother with the capture, risking people in order to shoot them later.

The trouble was that Baraev practically was not in one place for more than ten hours. It was because of this that the operation to eliminate him, scheduled for April, failed. Feeling that he was being surrounded more and more tightly, Baraev tried to hide. He planned to leave through the territory of Georgia. Türkiye is already there. However, you cannot plan such an action as crossing the border alone, and you cannot carry it out. In addition, it also takes time to implement it. The counterintelligence officers learned about all of Barayev’s far-reaching plans very quickly. Two attempts to cross the border failed. It’s true that the “ward” of the counterintelligence officers did not fall into the trap. But in the current situation it was already a matter of time.

And yet, there was one point in the development of the operation that seriously made life easier for FSB employees. Baraev constantly returned to “his collective farm.” Alkhan Kala remained the main village of his base. Several operations to capture him in this rather large village yielded nothing. The militants had a clear plan to move from areas of the village that had not yet been cleared to those where the “cleansing” had already been completed. Moving in this way, Baraev absolutely believed in his elusiveness. Once, for more than an hour, he boastfully talked on his mobile phone about how he was fooling the feds around his little finger, citing the fact that he had his own people everywhere. But from operation to operation, the list of houses where he periodically hid became more and more clear. It became clear that his capture or destruction would require a strict blockade of the entire village. About two thousand special forces soldiers from various departments took part in the previous, fifth operation. But even here Baraev managed to escape. It was like that.

At one of the intersections there was a contract soldier from the army special forces. The cleansing of the village was in full swing. Suddenly a group of young people appeared on the road. As they approached, they clearly demonstrated their friendliness and lack of weapons. They didn't look like militants. Most likely they were locals, the contractor decided and let them in. Then the following happened. The guys surrounded the special forces soldier and, holding his hands, restricted his movement, saying: “If you want to live, don’t move.” At this time Baraev appeared and moved from the unchecked zone of the village to the already cleared one, and that was it.

On June 24, local residents received information that Arbi Barayev and about twenty militants were hiding in the village of Alkhan Kala. The houses where the militants are located were even indicated.

Liquidation and the first fruits of the search

Since the development of Baraev had been going on for several months, the forces and means allocated for the operation were in readiness. To block the escape routes from the village at several points, special forces of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the GRU were brought in. In total, about five hundred people took part in the operation. There was no planned purge, which was reported on television; they were looking for Barayev. Although, indeed, they blocked the entire village and quite demonstratively, even bringing in a tank. It was functionally useless, but it showed strength. The calculation was that Baraev would not leave his native village this time, hoping for his own luck. This time the tactics were slightly different. They cleared the village, but according to the “clean and secure” principle. That is, during the inspection, not only did a wave of clearing units pass through, but two or three special forces remained in each house: in order to exclude the possibility of Barayev’s return. No one limited the time of the operation. Having received clear information that Baraev was in the village and having blocked all exits from it, they decided to “scratch” him until the search object was found. The first day gave nothing. At night, the special forces retreated from the houses to the blocking units. On the second day everything happened again. But other units and people were already entering the houses in order to identify with a fresh look some traces or signs that had escaped the attention of their predecessors. The second day of the operation brought the first results. While moving from house to house, two militants were shot. Then another one was killed in the house. But this was only a sign that the actions were being carried out correctly and there should be a result. As darkness fell, the troops left the village again. The third day of the operation was a real success. In addition to killing five more, they managed to take a prisoner. As it turned out later, he was Barayev’s closest associate. And although he himself did not say anything significant about Barayev, local residents said that this man was always close to Arbi. And if so, it means that Barayev is still in the village and we should look for him in the area where the prisoner was taken.

The search circle is narrowing

Work in the village was carried out by various special forces. The required houses were located in the clearing zone of the special forces detachment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation “Rus”. One of the leaders of this department, citing the fact that no additional forces were required, left in an armored personnel carrier to personally supervise a more thorough inspection.

Three houses located near the place where the militant was captured were blocked. One of the houses had previously been indicated by informants as a possible place where Barayev was hiding. When they went inside, they found no one. A more thorough check also yielded nothing. But the search continued. During the next check, one of the special forces, passing by the closet, heard a suspicious creak. Having moved the cabinet aside, we saw a hole from which they immediately fired from machine guns. As it turned out later, under the cabinet there was an entrance to a cache located under the house. Moreover, it was prepared back in the mid-nineties. The cache also had a second exit.

An officer and a soldier were wounded, and one special forces soldier was killed. There was no way to get inside. The VV special forces jumped out of the house, drove the armored personnel carrier about one hundred and fifty meters away and began shooting at the house with KPVT. At the same time, it was reported on the radio that during the cleansing operation they encountered fierce resistance. Having accepted the information, a group of FSB special forces hastened to help. Entering from the left flank, they opened fire on the militants holed up in the house, and then sent two Bumblebees into the house. As a result, the fire from the machine guns died down and the inferno began to burn. Its inhabitants, standing nearby, began to lament. They began to ask them what upset them so much, since they were crying as if for the dead. But the women replied that they were simply sorry for the house and things. However, in the end, they confessed that there were militants in the house. It was already dark, and there was no time to inspect the fire. Let's go.

If you hurry, you will make people laugh

On the fourth day of the operation, three bodies were found in the basement of the house. One of them, based on indirect signs (physique, etc.), resembled Barayev, but it was difficult to accurately identify him, since half of his head was missing. One of the witnesses confirmed that it was Barayev. The leaders of the special forces units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs immediately tried to pull the blanket over themselves. The body on the armor was taken to the checkpoint, and the press was informed that Barayev had died. But later, with a more thorough identification, it was possible to establish that it was not Barayev, but one of his militants. Relatives called identified him. This is how that pause arose when no one really knew whether Baraev was alive or dead. FSB officers continued to search. Upon closer inspection, abundant traces of blood were found on the fence of the burnt house, which led to the shore of the Sunzha. There was an assumption that Barayev tried to escape by swimming. Some even suggested searching at the bottom in case he drowned. Judging by the blood, he was seriously wounded. But then they decided to look for a doctor who could help Barayev.

Barayev is dead, but where is the body?

In the end, it was possible to identify the person who actually tried to help the seriously wounded Barayev. But, according to him, despite a certain list of drugs used, Barayev was no longer a survivor. He didn’t know where the body went, he only pointed out where he tried to help the wounded man. It was a table in the garden of a neighbor's house. But the owner of the house did not say where Barayev had gone. Conversations with the elders also led to nothing, although they confirmed that Barayev had indeed died. Even when he was dead, they continued to be afraid of him and refused to give up his body. Only after several hours of painful negotiations, the owner of the house showed where the bandit’s body lay. On the fifth day, Barayev’s corpse was discovered near the fence in the ruins of adobe bricks. The cache was made very carefully. First, all the bricks were taken out, then they put the body in, and only then they put bricks in again. Traces of work were swept away, and the bricks were covered with dust to give the ruins their original appearance.

For a dog - a dog's death

After identification, Barayev’s body was given to relatives so that they could bury him according to Muslim laws. However, residents of the village of Alkhan Kala did not allow the funeral procession to enter and did not allow Barayev to be buried in their cemetery. They believed that the body of this bandit would desecrate the graves of their ancestors. In addition, the village residents were so irreconcilable also because they constantly suffered from periodic sweeps and checks carried out in Alkhan Kale in order to capture Barayev. As a result, the procession turned around and the body of the most “frostbitten” of all Chechen bandits was interred in the village of Gekhi.

Based on materials from Agentura.ru

The first to make names for themselves through atrocities against prisoners and hostages were field commanders Abu Movsaev and Sultan Gelikhanov. But soon they were surpassed in all respects by a young “talented” student from Alkhan-Kala, Arbi Baraev. Foreign Wahhabi theologians valued him “for his firmness towards the enemy,” and the leaders of Ichkeria took him into account. Many Chechen youths looked up to him. Udugov propaganda created the image of a national hero from Arbi.

However, we must pay tribute to Barayev’s determination. He was a unique person in his own way: in five years he climbed the career ladder from traffic police foreman to brigadier general (analogous to our rank of lieutenant general)! It’s time to be included in the Guinness Book of Records. Moreover, the 27-year-old Chechen owes such a rapid ascent not to his brilliant mind, talents or valor of heart, but to the human blood he shed: since January 1995, he has personally tortured more than two hundred people! Moreover, with the same sadistic sophistication he mocked a Russian priest, an Ingush policeman, a Dagestani builder, and subjects of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain.

“An executioner is not a profession, it is a calling,” Barayev confessed. And the dirtier the work politicians assigned him, the more willingly he took it: after all, they paid for it at double the rate.

During Soviet times, Arbi Baraev served in Chechnya as a traffic police foreman. The work is boring, but profitable. He learned to deftly take bribes from those who like to cheat, was strict with violators, but was easy-going for the appropriate bribe. He demonstrated humility to his superiors and meekly counted out his due share of the exactions. But he believed that he deserved better. The one who is carried away by the demon of ambition is no longer able to be restrained by reason. Arbi perceived D. Dudayev's coming to power as a great personal success, since, like many other Chechens, he relied on him.

Soon he found himself in the personal guard of Dudayev’s relative Sultan Gelikhanov (former head of the Gudermes traffic police), whom the separatists appointed to lead the north-east of the republic. Of course, the chief's trust in his guard was not based in a vacuum. Firstly, they were united by belonging to the same tukhkum*. Gelikhanov was from the Yalkharoy teip, Baraev was from the Mulkoy teip. Secondly, “impeccable” service in the corrupt Chechen traffic police. And thirdly, the desire to get to the top.

With the beginning of the first Chechen campaign, he created his own small detachment, which then grew into a large independent unit.

At the beginning of 1995, Dudayev issues a secret decree on the creation of a group to capture “languages”. Vakha Arsanov was appointed to lead it, who involved his relative Barayev in a new field of activity. It must be said that Arbi showed remarkable ingenuity and a creative approach: instead of Russian military personnel, he began to kidnap rich Chechens who collaborated with the federal government. If official Moscow refused to pay for them, the hostages’ relatives from the Chechen diaspora in Russia counted out the money. Business was booming. Baraev hoped to get the biggest jackpot by kidnapping the son of RAO UES Deputy Chairman Nurdy Usmanov, whom he kept in one of his prisons in Urus-Martan.

If he made money from hostages, he earned his fame through torture. He took particular pleasure in mocking wounded Russian prisoners.

In accordance with the prevailing fashion among militants, he recorded all his sadistic delights on videotape. Then, exchanging videotapes, the murderer friends savored particularly juicy details. It is Baraev who is credited with the invention of the “Chechen lotto”. For the uninitiated, I’ll explain: this is a game for flayers. Three to five (depending on the mood and dosage of drugs) Russian captured soldiers are taken. A Chechen “banker” comes out with a machine gun in his hands and explains the rules of the game. On the count of “one-two,” everyone begins to do push-ups or squats. Whoever leaves the race gets a bullet in the head, and the winner participates in the subsequent draw.

According to official statistics, several tens of thousands of people were captured by bandits, and only about a thousand were released. Of course, each prisoner experienced a personal tragedy. But those who were in the clutches of Barayev stand apart: they really had to go through all the circles of hell.

After the end of the first Chechen campaign, Baraev, with the tacit support of his relative V. Arsanov, vice-president of Chechnya, put the slave trade on a grand scale. According to experts, the income from kidnapping hostages in Chechnya exceeded even the income of the Ichkerian drug lords.

Through his proxies, he managed to establish strong “informal” connections with people close to power structures in Moscow. According to many analysts, it was Barayev who became the main trading partner of high-ranking federal officials and businessmen who engaged in such a profitable business as the ransom of hostages.

According to the “gentleman’s agreement” of the parties, Barayev was entitled to no more than 25 percent of the ransom amount. Most of it went to the Russian “liberators.” But even these percentages were enough for me not to be too constrained in my desires. They claim that he received $7 million from the Russian Presidential Representative in Chechnya, Vlasov, who was once kidnapped, and that the head of the FSB Directorate for the Republic of Ingushetia, Gribov, and his deputy, Lebedinsky, were sold for $800,000.

I have already mentioned that the vast majority of slave traders had a special humane attitude towards lucrative hostages. After all, you can only ask a good price for a healthy, well-groomed prisoner. And this unwritten rule was respected by everyone. With the exception of Barayev. He could unexpectedly snap and, for the sake of pleasure, beat off the hostage’s kidneys, and then torture him, not caring about commercial interest.

When Yandarbiev, Udugov and Basayev set out to disrupt Maskhadov’s “alliance” with London, which was showing simply indecent interest in Chechnya and Caspian oil, they conceived a terrible plan: the murder of three captured British citizens and a New Zealand citizen. Arbi Barayev was invited to play the role of the main performer. He not only killed captured foreigners, but cut off their heads. All this was filmed on videotape.

In the West, the demonstration of these terrible footage caused shock. Europeans, pampered by humanism, could not understand why Chechen field commanders compete so passionately in super-cruelty. Meanwhile, Baraev’s efforts were not in vain. International terrorist No. 1 Osama bin Laden paid millions of dollars for the pleasure of watching such an “action movie.”

Arbi was one of those who led the rebellion in Gudermes in July 1998 against a unit of the National Guard loyal to the president. The Wahhabis did not stand on ceremony with their fellow countrymen. 13 guardsmen were killed in firefights and dozens were wounded.

In response, A. Maskhadov disbanded the “Islamic regiment”, depriving Barayev of his military rank and awards. Arbi did not remain in debt and organized an assassination attempt on the head of Ichkeria. By a lucky coincidence, the president was not injured.

Within four hours, the head of the Ministry of Sharia Security, A. Arsaev, on Maskhadov’s instructions, was planning an action to destroy the young and early Wahhabi “leader” (the real leaders of Wahhabism, meanwhile, were watching the development of events with interest). But the intricate operation stalled until Arby’s “sworn friend”, a repeat offender R. Gelayev, got involved for personal reasons. It was his guards who shot Barayev almost point-blank with pistols, but, surprisingly, he remained alive.

With his involvement in kidnappings, Arbi made more and more enemies among influential Chechen teips. So, in May 1999, on the way out of Grozny, he was wounded in the back by people from the Terloy tukhkum. Every fifth Chechen teip declared chir (blood feud) on him, so the appearance of Barayev in many Chechen villages would mean inevitable death for Arbi. However, not only Chechens. Some Ingush teips gave him the same sentence. In particular, the “vendetta” was declared by the relatives of an Ingush policeman captured in July 1997 at the Almaz-2 checkpoint.

However, this Wahhabi allowed himself to run into trouble even when he grossly violated the traditions and customs of the mountaineers. Celebrating the birth of his second son in Urus-Martan, the happy father became so angry that he began firing from his house not only with a machine gun, but also with a grenade launcher. One of the grenades landed in a neighbor's yard and injured a teenager. When the grandfather of the wounded boy tried to reason with the “raging Islamist,” he ordered the old man to be tied up and beaten. The neighbors swore on the Koran to wash away this insult with Barayev’s blood.

Amazingly, even after this he managed to beat death for a long time. The bullet found him at the end of June 2001 during a special operation by federal forces in Alkhan-Kala. In his ancestral village, a bloody sadist was killed. And after this they managed to defeat his entire gang.

THE ADVENT OF WAHABISM

On the night of December 21-22, 1997, armed militants carried out a daring attack on the military camp of a motorized rifle brigade stationed in Buinaksk. The attackers (according to various sources there were from 40 to 60 people) acted in groups of 8-10 people and were armed with grenade launchers, machine guns, and machine guns. They arrived on the outskirts of Buinaksk in a KamAZ, Volga and Zhiguli with the intention of seizing equipment from the brigade’s fleet of combat vehicles.

The guards at the posts showed vigilance and were the first to take the fire. The battle lasted more than an hour. From a distance of 400-500 meters, the militants first fired at the park area and the territory of the military camp from both sides. They managed to destroy several units of military equipment and vehicles. The duty units, alerted, prevented the militants from breaking through into the fleet of combat vehicles. During the battle, Lieutenant M. Kozyrev was wounded and Private A. Sovenko was shell-shocked.

In the morning, the bandits got in touch, requested vehicles and began to leave, taking with them the bodies of their dead. According to radio interception data, negotiations were conducted on air both in Chechen and in the languages ​​of some peoples of Dagestan.

At 7.30 in the morning, near the village of Inchkhe, bandits at a checkpoint took five local policemen hostage. They abandoned the KamAZ in a populated area, set it on fire, and then boarded a seized regular bus with passengers (mostly women) and tried to use it to break through towards Chechnya.

Alarmed units of internal troops, as well as groups of Dagestan special forces, blocked transport arteries, eventually forcing the militants to leave the bus and release the women. The bandits took with them Dagestan policemen as human cover (before this, this role was performed by local residents). When the bandit group broke through to the administrative Chechen-Dagestan border, one terrorist was killed and three were wounded.

In the village of Dylym, the gang split into two parts. The main one, using the mountainous terrain and heavy fog, went to Chechnya, the other disappeared into the mountains.

The authorities of Dagestan have officially requested from Grozny the extradition of the criminals who committed the attack on the military unit in Buinaksk. Chairman of the State Council Magomedali Magomedov specifically contacted the leadership of Chechnya about this.

There is one curious detail here: just four days before this, a round table was held - “Dagestan-Chechnya: Peace Initiatives”, where the parties, represented by the first deputy heads of government of the two republics, expressed their determination to jointly fight crime. But, as one would expect, there was no reaction from Maskhadov regarding this provocative action of the Chechen militants.

It is worth noting that the Khasavyurt direction on the administrative border with Chechnya was considered the most tense at that time. It was here that most of the terrorist attacks against Russian military personnel were carried out. Especially explosions of armored vehicles. The appearance of militants in Buinaksk is explained primarily by the fact that federal forces outposts along the administrative border with Chechnya were often 10-15 kilometers apart and could not simply physically control the entire border area. Apparently, it was also due to the fact that the territories adjacent to Buinaksk were populated almost half by Akkin Chechens, some of whom provided active assistance to bandit groups.

As for the motorized rifle brigade stationed in Buinaksk, at that time it became the center of attention not only of Chechen militants, but also of the Dagestan criminal world: shortly before this, an officer’s dormitory there was blown up. It was only by luck that no one was hurt. Soldiers and officers of the brigade, mostly Russians, were openly threatened with death; leaflets were scattered on the territory of military camps demanding that they leave Buinaksk. There were frequent cases of beatings of military personnel. And the mass kidnappings of soldiers in the fall of 1998 further aggravated the situation.

To be honest, such things happened with the connivance of local authorities and law enforcement agencies; unpunished terrorist acts and kidnappings, explosions at train stations and markets, car and livestock thefts had become almost commonplace in the North Caucasus by that time.

Throughout the 90s, a new radical religious movement, Wahhabism, was gaining strength here, which very soon acquired a distinct political overtones. And no wonder: Chechnya was increasingly turning into a kind of incubator for growing Wahhabis. Their representatives strengthened their positions in power. A. Maskhadov, who initially fought against the “radicals,” was forced to come to terms with religious extremism, at least in practice. And they increasingly expanded their zones of influence and by the end of 1997 they no longer hid their claims to coming to power in Dagestan and a number of other North Caucasian republics.

In multinational Dagestan, Wahhabis appeared after the first mass pilgrimages of local Muslims to the holy places in Mecca and Medina. And although their teachings are alien to the religious worldview of Dagestani Sunni Muslims, the community of “pure Muslims” grew by leaps and bounds. In dollar leaps and bounds from Saudi Arabia, a state where Wahhabism is the official ideology.

It should be noted that the Arabian sheikhs made a good choice in a complex geopolitical game. Mass unemployment among young people, loss of worthy life guidelines, humiliating financial situation - all this created fertile ground for all types of radicalism. And then, at first, every convert received a gift of a thousand dollars from the bearded Wahhabis. The prize for introducing five more people to the new faith weighed five thousand “greens”. The activists' monthly salary ranged from $300 to $700. In 1995 alone, all kinds of radical Islamic centers spent 17 million dollars on propaganda of Wahhabism in Dagestan. After all, traditional Sunni Islam for the Caucasus, I emphasize once again, is not suitable as a “revolutionary base”, a springboard for the onset of extremism.

One can recall how the battle for the souls of Muslims unfolded in the republic between the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Dagestan and the Wahhabi sect, who accused each other of heresy. The first convinced with the word of true faith, the second shoved money into the hands of the poor, for which Wahhabism was popularly called “dollar Islam.”

If earlier the sectarians had the patience to conduct scientific and religious disputes with the Sunnis, then later they chose a different tactic. The Wahhabis directed their main efforts towards the disintegration of Islam from within, and in every possible way discredited the mullahs and imams of the traditional sense. And as soon as a respected religious figure in the republic made a rebuke of Wahhabism, he was forced to remain silent forever. Thus, in 1998, the Mufti of Dagestan, Said Mukhamed-Khadzhi Abubakarov, was vilely killed, having dared to openly criticize the Wahhabis for schismaticism from the rostrum of the People’s Assembly. Around the same time, the former head of the village of Karamakhi was brutally murdered, from where Sunni Muslims were expelled after bloody clashes.

In just three years, a small group of Karamakh residents (8 people) grew to several thousand well-armed militants, who in 1999 created their own “independent territory” in Dagestan, which included the villages of Karamakhi, Chabanmakhi, and Kadar.

The leaders of the “Islamic Community of Dagestan” (“Jamaat”), created by the Wahhabis, did not hide their ultimate goal - secession from Russia and the construction of a new type of Islamic state together with Chechnya. At the same time, two scenarios for coming to power were considered: the first - through elections, the second - by armed means. According to the second option, rebel groups occupy several regions of the republic, and then the formed Wahhabi government, on behalf of the peoples of Dagestan, turns to Chechnya for help in the fight against Russia. It was expected that immediate military assistance - openly or secretly - would be provided to the rebels by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, as well as Turkey, which was interested in the transit of Caspian oil through its territory.

To implement the force option, Jamaat had its own “combat formations.” About six hundred militants of this detachment were baptized during the first Chechen war. Almost all of them fought under the command of the field commander Emir Khattab. The most capable terrorists underwent training in Pakistan: they studied the Koran in the morning, and improved their sabotage skills during the day and evening.

Between the Wahhabi military formations and the so-called army of General Dudayev, led by S. Raduev, a military agreement was signed on assistance “in the liberation of the Caucasus from the Russian Empire.” Not only Jamaat soldiers, but also Akkin Chechens living in the Khasavyurt region of Dagestan were trained at the Raduev bases.

Having once headed the Gudermes district Komsomol committee, Raduev acquired good connections in the neighboring area. In any case, he felt here, according to the Akkin Chechens, not a guest, but a master. And he did not hide his irritation when he met Avars whom he openly disliked.

Wahhabism became most widespread in the Kizilyurt region, where the largest center of “dollar Islam” in Russia, the “Central Front for the Liberation of Dagestan,” was located. There is no need to explain from whom the Wahhabis were going to liberate the republic. Moreover, their words did not differ from their deeds. The “liberators” created several “fronts” in the republic. They were well-equipped technically, had satellite communications, warehouses with ammunition and weapons, and a publishing house specializing in the production of anti-Russian and anti-army literature, which was primarily distributed in the same areas where Russian military facilities were located.

Here is a quote from the Central Front appeal:

“O Muslim brothers! If we do not expel Russian dogs from our territory now, we may lose our people forever, as happened in other republics where these Russian bastards visited... We decided to follow the path of jihad, and there are two paths before us: either victory or martyrdom*" .

This extremist organization claimed responsibility for the December 1997 attack on a motorized rifle brigade in Buynaksk. After this brazen armed attack, the Kizilyurt sectarians, led by their spiritual leader Bugautdin Magomedov, were forced to move to the new capital of the North Caucasian Wahhabis - to the Chechen Urus-Martan.

A curious revelation was made by field commander Shamil Basayev, who called the bloody battles of the united Chechen and Dagestan Wahhabis with Maskhadov’s forces “a battle for the soul of Dagestan.”

M. Tagaev, who called himself the commander of the rebel army and was twice convicted, declared 1999 “the year of the cleansing of Dagestan from all Russians.”

The military hierarchical ladder of the Wahhabis is noteworthy, where the highest levels were allocated exclusively to Chechens. And the Dagestan guys, it seems, had to do all the dirty, bloody work. And with this alone they were made to understand that in the “Caucasian family” of Wahhabis, the “groom” is Chechnya, and Dagestan is the “bride.” And a woman should know her place.

Many in the North Caucasus reproached Z. Yandarbiev, M. Udugov, Sh. Basaev, S. Raduev for supporting Wahhabism, which has Arab roots. After all, if we proceed from the interests of the Chechen people, then we should not encourage the Islamic “ultra”. However, knowledgeable people knew that the Chechen leaders had other priorities. Firstly, the most authoritative field commanders have long and firmly linked themselves with the interests of their Arab masters. Caspian oil does not flow through Turkey or Russia, which means that the Arab sheikhs profit even more from Arabian oil. And what could be sweeter than the rustle of money?

Secondly, only by focusing on the Arabs can you have a “wedding” with Dagestan and break through to the sea. Until these plans were implemented, the interests of the Chechen field commanders would completely coincide with the interests of the Middle Eastern oil monarchies.

The successful completion of the unification of the two neighboring republics made it possible not only to withdraw from the “allied plans”, but also to abolish the activities of Wahhabi organizations. Because in this case, to develop the economy, the Chechens needed not only cheap labor from the Dargins, Lezgins, and Russians, but also a smoothly operating oil pipeline. Where? No, not to Novorossiysk, but to the Georgian port of Supsa... For several years, in great secrecy, a new mountain road was built along the bed of the Argun River through the Main Caucasus Range in the direction of Itum-Kale-Shatili. It was planned to use it to launch oil and gas pipelines to Georgia. So the actions of the Chechen supporters of the Wahhabis were consistent and logical.

In this regard, A. Maskhadov’s statement at one of the rallies in Grozny is interesting: “During the war, as the chief of the General Staff, I thought that we knew about what was happening in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It probably started the same way there too. During the difficult days of the war, they, generously financed, carried out their ideology. After the war, not understanding this ideology, we started dividing up positions. Wanting to make like-minded people out of them, we flirted with them and indulged them. Now we are reaping the fruits of our behavior. Today, when dealing with the consequences of this religious movement, we must say that we underestimated its role. That’s why we came to today’s result.”

Alas, Maskhadov did not have the courage to overcome Wahhabism. He surrendered under pressure from the opposition.

Wahhabis usually lead an ascetic camp life. The “war against infidels and bad Muslims” to a victorious end does not involve sentimentality. But when the conversation turns to Emir Khattab, the faces of the stern “Mujahideen” brighten: this is their guiding star. Khattab ordered black flags to be installed on every Wahhabi car - signs of the “holy war” with the infidels. He spoke publicly extremely rarely, but on the eve of the invasion of Dagestan he declared this republic to be the next front where the “gazavat” would unfold.

Chechnya has long attracted the attention of another Arab terrorist, Osama bin Laden. Firstly, Maskhadov’s opposition, represented by Udugov, Basaev, Yandarbiev, was ready for an alliance with any rich uncle if he fights “Jews and crusaders.” Secondly, many of Osama’s friends from Afghanistan and other “hot spots” settled here.

In the spring of 1999, negotiations between Raduev and bin Laden’s people took place in Peshawar, Pakistan. And soon a representative of the “Chechen Ministry of Foreign Affairs” hurried to the capital of the Afghan Taliban, Kandahar, who discussed the issue of moving a Saudi millionaire-terrorist to Chechnya. According to the Arabic newspaper Hayyat, published in London, if necessary, the problem of providing asylum to bin Laden would be solved.

It was Osama who, more than others, had a hand in the aggression of the Chechen Wahhabis against Dagestan. His father-in-law, Mullah Omar, gave a fatwa (blessing) for the attack. Bin Laden himself not only transferred more than $30 million to Basayev and Khattab, organized the supply of weapons and combat training, but also personally visited sabotage camps near the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt on the eve of the invasion of Dagestan. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this with reference to leading American experts.

According to one of the advisers to the US Congress, Yu. Bogdansky, a recognized expert on bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire terrorist has been involved in planning military operations in Dagestan since the spring of 1998, together with Basayev, senior Pakistani intelligence officers and the leader of the Sudanese Islamists Hassan al-Gurabi.

Wahhabi claims to supreme state power are rejected in all countries (with the exception of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). Even if radical Islamists win the elections, they are trying to prevent them from taking the helm of government. This was the case in Algeria in 1992, and this was also the case in Turkey, when the military forced the Welfare Party, which received the majority of votes, to resign as soon as it tried to establish contacts with Muslim radicals. Egypt is waging a merciless fight against the Wahhabi groups of the Muslim Brotherhood.

We, alas, could not get rid of the inferiority complex, were timid, and were embarrassed to deal a powerful blow to Wahhabism (primarily legal and political). Russia decided to rapidly civilize, relying on the basic values ​​of both the West and the East, which means it should not forget the experience they suffered: first the missionary comes, then the merchant, then the soldier.

Meanwhile, for a long time, the missionary activities of the Wahhabis in our country were almost not controlled by anyone. Visiting ministers of “pure Islam” from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan regularly spoke in mosques, throwing mud at the local Muslim clergy, encouraging unrest and discord.

In Kabardino-Balkaria, the Egyptian Terik inspired victory; in Karachay-Cherkessia, he was echoed by a certain Biji-ulu, who declared himself “Imam of Karachay.” “Parishes” of Wahhabis grew like mushrooms after rain in the Stavropol region, in the Rostov (Novoshakhtinsk) and Volgograd (Volzhsky) regions, in Astrakhan. And in the Dagestan villages of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, they openly, almost officially, established their power.

What about Moscow? Never mind. At that time, Prime Minister S. Stepashin visited the lair of the Wahhabis in Dagestan (“Kadar zone”) and was quite pleased.

“Good, kind guys,” he reassures the public. - Workers.

Moreover, the head of government sent humanitarian aid to the Dagestani Wahhabis! In Makhachkala they just threw up their hands in surprise. What can I say? No comments needed.

Six months later, these rural “workers”, using years of prepared and well-fortified defenses, held back the attacks of aviation and artillery from federal troops for half a month...

Paradox! Apparently, this, unfortunately, can only happen here. Maskhadov fought against Wahhabism in Chechnya for more than two years (!), leading to armed clashes, and Moscow did not lift a finger not only to help him, but also did nothing to destroy extremist groups in the depths of its territory. In general, in the south of Russia all conditions were created for the spread of Wahhabism throughout the Caucasus. Everything was ready for war.

Chechen terrorist, field commander and uncrowned king of the Chechen slave trade, leader of a gang. Nickname – “Emir”, radio call sign – “Tarzan”.

Arbi was born in 1973 into a poor family, in the village of Yermolovka near Grozny (now Alkhan-Kala). His father, who had no education, died when his son was 11 years old. Two years later, the mother also died. In the 1980s, Arby went to Grozny discos with a sharply sharpened knitting needle and, in a fight, did not hesitate to use it instead of a knife. He barely graduated from high school in Urus-Martan and, like thousands of young Chechens in those years, was without work and any prospects. However, he was supported by his maternal uncle, Vakha Arsanov, the future vice-president of Ichkeria and Aslan Maskhadov’s closest assistant. At that time, Arsanov worked in the traffic police department of the then Soviet Chechen-Ingush Republic. He assigned his young nephew to the state traffic police, where he started as a sergeant, but in a “grain” place - on the Caucasus highway at the entrance to Urus-Martan.

Barayev was exceptionally loyal to his uncle, and was soon enlisted in the fledgling National Guard, and in 1991 became his personal guard. Then he moved to the security of the chairman of the National Security Service of Ichkeria Sultan Gelikhanov, the former head of the Gudermes traffic police. Since Baraev was very physically developed, he became a good bodyguard, and later Gelikhanov handed him over to the personal security of the then Vice-President of Chechnya Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, one of the ideologists of “pure Islam”, called “Wahhabism”. From that moment on, Barayev’s gangster career began to take off.

At the beginning of 1995, Dzhokhar Dudayev issued a secret decree on the creation of a detachment to capture Russian military personnel. The leader of the group, Vakha Arsanov, asked to include his relative Barayev in it. True, Arby preferred to kidnap wealthy fellow countrymen who collaborated with the federal government, for whom relatives or the feds paid a substantial ransom.

As part of Shamil Basayev's gang, terrorist Baraev took part in the raid on Budennovsk. After the death of Dzhokhar Dudayev, Yandarbiev, who became president, remembered his former bodyguard and entrusted him with the formation of the Islamic Special Purpose Regiment. Barayev went through the entire first Chechen war with weapons in his hands, and after its end he received a well-deserved reward: for the courage shown in battles with the Russians, the former traffic police officer was appointed brigadier general.

The newly-minted general was actively involved in hostage-taking and the slave trade. His baptism of fire was the kidnapping of two police colonels. Arby then exchanged them for two of his racketeer relatives detained in Moscow. In January 1996, at CHPP-2 in Grozny, a terrorist and his thugs took 29 power workers from Rostov-on-Don hostage. In October 1996, Barayev’s people kidnapped Demelkhanov, a resident of the village of Goyty. The general shared the ransom received - 60 thousand dollars and a foreign car for 100 thousand - with Yandarbiev. With the money raised, Barayev maintained his regiment and built a special prison for hostages in Urus-Martan and Goysky.

Later, Arbi found a new “roof”: his uncle, the then vice-president of Ichkeria Vakha Arsanov, again, as before, became his accomplice and patron. Already in 1997, there were hundreds of people who wanted to take revenge on Emir-Tarzan (as he liked to call himself), especially in neighboring Ingushetia, where he was very active. For example, Baraev was declared a blood feud by the relatives of a deceased employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia, an Ingush by nationality, captured by terrorists in July 1997 at the Almaz-2 post, on the 725th km of the Rostov-Baku highway. The slave trader exchanged the policemen for six of his militants arrested in Ingushetia for kidnappings. In the fall of 1997, attempts were made on Baraev several times, but unsuccessfully.

Since 1997, Arbi began to ignore Aslan Maskhadov and his power. And on July 14–15, 1998, at the head of his special forces detachment, he tried to capture Gudermes and introduce the laws of “pure Islam” there. But the newcomer was defeated by local residents and detachments of national guards under the command of the Yamadayev brothers. Maskhadov demoted General Barayev to the rank and file, disbanded his regiment, and outlawed Wahhabism.

The former brigadier general could not forgive even the president of Ichkeria for such humiliation. On June 23, 1998, in the center of Grozny, a radio-controlled mine went off under Aslan’s jeep. The president was saved from certain death by the armored bottom of the SUV. Private Arbi Barayev, along with other persons, was also suspected of organizing the terrorist attack. Only the oath of non-involvement, which he swore, placing his hand on the Koran, saved him from the Sharia court.

At the request of certain individuals, Barayev’s people took hostage and killed three Englishmen and a New Zealander (four severed heads were found in the snow in December 1998 on the side of the Caucasus highway). These communications engineers came to Chechnya to restore telecommunications. Why was it necessary to kill people when a ransom of ten million dollars had already been agreed upon, and the money was on the way, as Barayev knew very well? Later they said that he was paid precisely to deal with foreigners as “coolly” as possible. And the money was allegedly brought to him from Belokamennaya. It turns out that the murder was beneficial to someone in the capital. This monstrous crime outraged not only the world community, but even the authorities of Ichkeria. Maskhadov declared Barayev an outlaw, and the respected field commander in Chechnya, Ruslan Gelayev, even promised to “personally remove the head” from Arbi for the murders and kidnappings of civilians. Even then, not only the official authorities of Ichkeria, but also many field commanders realized that the vindictive and uncontrollable terrorist was dangerous for everyone and it was time to put an end to him.

In the fall of 1998, on Minutka Square in Grozny, the jeep in which Barayev was located was riddled with four machine guns. Wounded and paralyzed, Arbi fell into a coma, surgeons inserted two Ilizarov apparatuses into his arm and leg, and removed his spleen, kidney, parts of his lung and stomach. He had to learn to walk again. (According to other sources, a security guard for field commander Gelayev unloaded a Stechkin clip at the extremist at point-blank range during the showdown). Be that as it may, having recovered, Barayev publicly declared that he was breaking off all relations with Maskhadov and was no longer participating in the division of power or the war. After that, he moved to Urus-Martan to do business.

They say that Arbi sold fake gasoline, printed counterfeit dollars, and controlled several markets in the North Caucasus and Moscow. The explosion of the central market in Vladikavkaz in March 1999, which killed 64 people and seriously injured about 100, was most likely his doing. Perhaps the cause of the tragedy was the refusal of the market owners to pay the bandit a share of the income.

Barayev and his gang, which included part of the soldiers of the disbanded Islamic regiment, again began taking and trafficking hostages, which has now become a very profitable enterprise. To begin with, extremists kidnapped Russian Presidential Envoy Valentin Vlasov and received $15 million for his release. The slave trade was put on stream, as they say. Emir-Tarzan took hostage soldiers and officers, officials and businessmen, children of rich parents, police officers, journalists, Red Cross employees - anyone for whom a ransom could be obtained. His thugs kidnapped ORT television crews, Italian Mauro Galligani, the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in North Ossetia, French citizen Vincent Costel, and many others. Employees of the Investigative Committee under the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs considered the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Chechnya and several high-ranking people of this republic to be the think tank and accomplices of the slave trade. Then information spread that some high officials from Lubyanka were also involved in Barayev’s slave trade.

Arby's became "notorious" for his cruelty to prisoners. He personally tortured prisoners and hostages and finished off the wounded. The shocking torture of women was recorded on video. Since January 1995, the terrorist has personally executed more than 190 people. They say he invented the so-called “Chechen lotto”. The prisoners, taking a prone position, did push-ups from the ground. Those who lost strength faced a bullet, and the winner received participation in the next bloody “draw.” Relatives of people kidnapped and killed by the “king of the slave trade” vowed to take revenge on him. In June 2000, they planted a landmine on one of the Ingush roads near Chechnya, but the mine went off late and the terrorist’s car was not damaged.

Barayev met the second Chechen war in Grozny, although he did not defend the surrounded capital for long. Realizing that resistance was useless, with his detachment, which included, according to various sources, from 300 to one thousand people, he broke out of the ring and returned to his native Alkhan-Kala. The terrorist was still particularly cruel and cunning. Let's say he publicly shot several of his fighters, accusing them of stealing 500 thousand dollars received from abroad, which he himself pocketed. In his village, as neighbors say, Barayev lived quietly, not hiding from anyone. Rumors about Arbi’s connections with high ranks of certain special services were all over Chechnya: this guy was too arrogant and elusive, calmly driving through any Russian checkpoint in his luxury jeeps. Thanks to Barayev’s connections with the Russian special services, he always managed to evade raids by federal forces. And then celebrate your next wedding with pomp. His sixth wife was Zura, who in October 2002 set out to avenge her husband and commanded kamikaze women during the hostage crisis at the theater center in Moscow on Dubrovka.

In June 2000, Arby again declared war on the feds, creating the terrorist group Jihad 3. His cousin Khava drove a truck loaded with explosives into the Russian riot police base in Alkhan-Yurt. The powerful explosion, in addition to the woman herself, killed 17 servicemen and injured dozens. She became the first Chechen female kamikaze. Then followed a whole series of terrorist attacks against Chechen officials collaborating with the federal intelligence services. Arbi Barayev's last action was a series of explosions in Gudermes, which resulted in casualties. This was the end of the patience of the Russian troops - they decided to eliminate the elusive extremist.

Possessing truly bestial instincts, the terrorist hid quite skillfully, using about forty caches in different regions and settlements of Chechnya. He didn't trust anyone, not even the women he slept with. Emir-Tarzan executed some of his friends and associates personally, based on mere suspicion or slander. It was precisely because almost all residents feared and hated him that counterintelligence officers regularly received information about the appearance of an extremist in one village or another.

However, several operations to capture it yielded nothing; the militants had a clear plan to move from areas of the village that had not yet been “cleared” to those where the “cleansing” had already been completed. Moving in this way, Baraev absolutely believed in his elusiveness.

The last hunt for the bandit took place from June 19 to June 24, 2001. Special forces of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs took part in the hostilities, in particular the elite group “Vityaz” and the special forces detachment of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation “Rus”. 23 houses were destroyed down to the basements, of which 20 belonged to families that had nothing to do with the militants (so, in any case, the Chechens say). Dozens of helicopters and hundreds of armored vehicles took part in the action. To escape, Arbi ran to the houses of his many relatives and asked for help from other field commanders via shortwave radio. But no one came to rescue Emir-Tarzan.

During the next check, one of the special forces, moving aside a closet in the house, saw a hole from which they immediately fired from machine guns. Under the cabinet there was an entrance to a cache located under the house. One special forces soldier was killed, and an officer and a soldier were wounded. They started shooting at the house from armored vehicles. As a result, the return fire from the machine guns died down and the building caught fire. The next day, Barayev’s corpse was discovered in a hiding place near the fence in the ruins of a brick. After a forensic examination, the dead terrorist was presented to journalists, filmed, and then his body was handed over to relatives.

The terrorist could not be buried properly. The truck with Arbi’s body was met at the entrance to Alkhan-Kala by villagers armed with whatever they could and were not allowed into the cemetery. Even in his home village, Barayev killed at least five people: three administration officials, an imam and the head teacher of a local school. Arbi's mother-in-law, his last wife and nephew Movsar had to turn around the procession and go to the neighboring village of Gekhi. When the cars left Alkhan-Kala, stones and curses were flying after the dead man.

Arbi Barayev’s business was continued by his nephew (Movsar’s mother is Arbi’s sister). His real surname is Suleymanov, but while his uncle was still alive, in order to emphasize his own importance, he began to use the well-known family surname Baraev.

Movsar was born in 1979 in the Chechen town of Argun. Neighbors remember him as a quiet and calm child. According to a former teacher, “he was a gentle boy, a good student.” At the age of 11, he was taken in by his uncle, Arbi Baraev, who lived in Alkhan-Kala, who raised the boy to be a brutal militant.

Young Barayev became one of the commanders of a sabotage battalion, distinguished by its extraordinary insolence and cruelty. He managed to undergo training with the “black Arab” Khattab. There was information that Movsar was the emir of the Meskert-Yurt jamaat, that is, the head of the local Wahhabis. He became one of the best fighters and was appointed as his uncle Arby's personal bodyguard. Suleymanov-Baraev is responsible for several explosions in Grozny, Gudermes and Urus-Martan, attacks on federal convoys and other crimes. According to Chechen police, Movsar was one of the organizers of the terrorist attack in Alkhan-Yurt on December 9, 2000, when a Moskvich-412 car bomb exploded. Then 20 people died and 17 were injured.

During a special operation in Grozny, a videotape was found in the possession of detachment militant Movsar Barayev. The tape contains a recording of the interrogation and torture of two women and a man from the village of Andreevskaya Dolina. The terrorists demanded that the captives confess to collaborating with the Russian special services, then they cut off the head of one of the captives. At the same time, the executioners laughed and mocked the two remaining hostages.

After the death of Arbi Barayev in June 2001, his nephew headed his gang. Movsar said that he would “continue the work of his relative until the bitter end.” In the very first months of his command, he managed to strengthen his position both among the leadership of the gangs distributing money and among the subordinate commanders of small gangs. He managed to arrange generous financing for his gang using the money he received from Khattab. In March 2002, Barayev Jr. proudly told a pro-terrorist news agency that his fighters managed to kill 13 Russian soldiers, but there were five wounded in his “battalion.”

Movsar Suleymanov, like his relative, quarreled with other field commanders because of his greed. They say that he shot another leader, also a famous kidnapper from the clan of the Akhmadov brothers, Rizvan, taking 45 thousand dollars from him. To whitewash himself, Movsar accused the murdered man of having betrayed Arbi Barayev, and sent special forces of the federal forces after him in June 2001. Suleymanov also clashed with the Chechen commander Usman Chenchiev. The reason was the most common criminal redistribution of spheres of influence. Several times the feds spoke about both the death and the detention of Movsar, but all these reports were not confirmed. And then in October 2002, Suleymanov-Baraev showed up in Moscow. Before this, he made a statement in front of the Al-Jezira cameras: “Each of us is ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Allah and the independence of Chechnya. I swear by Allah, we are more ready to die than you are ready to live.” And the female terrorist said: “Even if we are killed, thousands of our brothers and sisters, ready to sacrifice themselves, will come in our place.”

On October 23, 2002, on Melnikova Street, 7, in the former House of Culture of the Bearing Plant, and now a theater center, the musical “Nord-Ost” was performed. During the second act, a group of masked armed men burst into the stalls. The terrorists fired several shots into the air and ordered everyone to stay put. There were about a thousand people in the theater. The 40 bandits apparently put on the so-called “suicide belt,” following the example of Arab suicide bombers. Each belt contains 15 kg of explosives. The consequences of the explosion of forty bombs could be terrible.

One of the authors of the musical, the famous bard Alexei Ivashchenko, and several actors managed to escape from the dressing room. Later, the bandits released Muslims, a group of children and French diplomat Katya Ivanova-Teryan. The terrorists put forward demands to stop hostilities and withdraw Russian troops from Chechnya. The people whom the militants released claimed that the hostages were being beaten. The Chechens said that the theater was mined and would be blown up if the Russian special services tried to storm the building. They called themselves suicide bombers of the 29th brigade, commanded by the Chechen field commander Movsar Barayev.

Reinforced police squads, OMON and SOBR fighters, as well as the leadership of the capital's Central Internal Affairs Directorate arrived at the scene of the incident. The operation to free the people was led by top officials of the Russian FSB. The building was surrounded by fighters from the Alpha anti-terrorist unit and snipers. Negotiations with Russian parliamentarians, including Chechen State Duma deputy Aslanbek Aslakhanov, did not bring any results. On the night of October 24, extremists freed a girl who became ill, two pregnant women and 15 children. Aslanbek Aslakhanov had a telephone conversation with the head of the terrorists, Movsar Barayev, but this did not bring results. The extremists put forward a new demand - to provide them with a large sum of money. Then they killed a 20-year-old girl who was trying to contact her parents by phone.

Two girls managed to escape from the building. The terrorists fired at them from a grenade launcher and wounded one hostage. According to the official version, after 23-year-old Movsar Barayev-Suleymanov and his militants began killing hostages at dawn, Russian special forces began storming the building in which there were about 700 people. The security forces blew up the rear wall and broke into the House of Culture. It seems that most of the terrorists died from the gas used, and not from bullets. The hostages were also poisoned, and not all of them were saved: every tenth one died - such was the price of the assault. According to a security representative, Movsar Barayev was liquidated during this action.

In March 2004, the office of Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin and the editorial offices of leading French newspapers received letters by regular mail. The authors demanded that the government repeal the law prohibiting girls in public schools from wearing clothing that emphasizes their religious affiliation. If this ultimatum is not fulfilled, the “servants of Allah” promised to “take tough retaliatory measures.” “We will plunge France into horror, into the abyss of terror and remorse,” one of the messages said. Signing themselves as “Mosvar Barayev’s commandos” and calling themselves “servants of Allah, the almighty and wise,” the unknown terrorists threatened France with the most brutal actions in response to “entering the war against Islam.”

The news agency of Chechen separatists “Kavkaz-Center” reported that the Russian FSB is allegedly planning to carry out major terrorist attacks on French territory. 200 kg of explosives have already been delivered to France by diplomatic mail, which are stored on the territory of the Russian embassy in Paris. In response to this, the FSB Public Relations Center called the Chechens’ messages “complete nonsense and spring schizophrenia.”

To date, French intelligence services cannot answer the question of whether there really are terrorist groups called “Mosvar Barayev’s Commandos” and “Servants of Allah, Almighty and Wise.” It also remains unclear why the name of the Chechen terrorist killed during the liberation of hostages in the building of the Moscow theater center on Dubrovka in October 2002 was misspelled. In one of the letters, the “commandos” narrate on behalf of their commander, “Mosvar”. In fact, Barayev's name was Movsar. Extremists continue his work, and terrorism is invincible? However, according to the French interior minister, these threats do not bear the “characteristic signature” of Islamic extremists. Despite this, they are taken seriously by the authorities. Experts believe that it is too early to say whether the Mosvar Barayev Commando group is really ready to carry out its threats.

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 109 (2239) dated June 26, 2001.

Yesterday, representatives of the federal forces in Chechnya announced the death of Arbi Barayev, one of the most cruel and unprincipled field commanders. The military even promised to show his corpse to the public, but at the last moment they changed their mind, citing the need for investigative actions. The liquidation of Barayev is undoubtedly the biggest success of the federals in Chechnya this year.

Targeted rocket attacks on Baraev's estate, which includes the settlements of Alkhan-Kala, Alkhan-Yurt, Kulary and the village of Ermolovskaya, began a week ago, immediately after militants detained on suspicion of committing the Gudermes explosions told investigators that they were acting on order of the elusive Terminator. In the very first days, 23 houses were destroyed, in which, according to operational data, the terrorist and his militants could be hiding. After the artillery preparation was completed, the villages were surrounded by hundreds of machine gunners in camouflage - Moscow and Stavropol riot police, FSB officers, special forces soldiers of the internal troops, and the so-called targeted sweeps began.

Local resident Alpatu Khadisova is the only one who, together with her two daughters, seven and eight years old, managed to get out of the blocked village yesterday. She went out on foot in a roundabout way towards Grozny. She covered the three-kilometer route to the Zavodsky district of the city in five hours. A resident of Alkhan-Kala told a Kommersant correspondent what she and her fellow villagers experienced during the special operation: “I have never seen so many armored vehicles and military personnel in our village.” According to her, more than 100 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles entered from Grozny alone. Every street and alley was occupied by the military. Helicopters were constantly circling over the village. Even at night, when the shooting had more or less died down, people were afraid to leave the basements. Those who got out of the part of the village where Barayev’s headquarters was located said that the military set fire to many houses on the street where Barayev lived with his bodyguards. Walking through the streets, the military entered every house and, if no one was inside, set it on fire. In front of Kommersant's interlocutor, the house of her neighbor, who left the village a year and a half ago, was set on fire. If the military found adult men in the house, they took them away for filtration. They also visited Alpat Khadisova several times. They asked where the men were, where the weapons were, and they turned over everything in the house in search of money and valuables. Throughout the week, while the special operation was going on, the villagers could not leave their homes, many had run out of water supplies, and people simply prayed to Allah for it to rain. Until now, most residents do not know that the roads leading into and out of the village are open, and are afraid to come out of their hiding places.

The federals encountered virtually no resistance - during the week during which the operation took place, only one soldier was killed by a stray bullet, and several more people were slightly injured. But the militants entrenched in the villages had a hard time - as representatives of the joint group of troops in Chechnya say, 18 Mujahideen were killed on the spot, and about two dozen more were captured. However, Barayev himself could not be found either among the living or among the dead. Reports began to emerge that Barayev had once again eluded his pursuers, and it was only on Monday morning that the military announced that they had found the field commander's body.

Dead Barayev was found when they began to clear away the ruins of one of the houses in Alkhan-Kala, destroyed by a direct missile hit. As the military says, the Terminator apparently received numerous wounds and severe concussion during the shelling. For some reason, the retreating militants did not take the body with them, leaving it to the feds. Thus ended the story of one of the most odious personalities.

Arbi Barayev, a Wahhabi from the Mukala teip, went through the entire first Chechen war with weapons in his hands. For the courage shown in battles with the federals, Aslan Maskhadov appointed the former traffic police sergeant as a “brigadier general” and assigned him to command the “Islamic special-purpose regiment.” Around the same time, the 23-year-old general captured and hid his first hostages in an agricultural equipment warehouse in Alkhan-Kala: Colonel Aslan Shortanov and Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Shaikin. At that time, the demands of the future “number one slave trader” were modest: he exchanged police officers for two of his relatives detained in Moscow for extortion. But even then he realized that huge money could be made from human trafficking.

Suffice it to recall the kidnapping of the Russian Presidential Envoy to Chechnya, Valentin Vlasov, for whose release Barayev demanded $11 million (but, as they say, received half that), and the head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in North Ossetia, French citizen Vince Costel, who were killed by Barayev’s bandits English engineers Peter Kennedy, Darren Hickey, Rudolf Petschi and New Zealander Stanley Shaw, for whom the ransom could not be obtained. Their severed heads were thrown onto the side of the Caucasus highway. Hundreds of victims, dozens of terrorist attacks - this is Barayev’s track record. But each time he managed to evade responsibility. “Nobody catches him, that’s why he’s elusive,” the Alkhankala residents said about Barayev. And the head of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, even admitted to a Kommersant correspondent that “rumors that Arbi Barayev enjoys the patronage of the special services seem not without foundation.”

An illiterate mother is a blind child.
Zeynalabdin Tagiyev, Baku millionaire
(from the answer to the question why he builds
Seminary for women in Baku).
Circa 1902

In 1973, at the very beginning of summer, when the local heat had not yet become unbearable like the luggage of a cruel driver who rented someone else’s donkey, and the country roads had not yet covered the roadside bushes and trees with their fine whitish dust, in Alkhan-Kala, not far from Grozny, In the Mulkoy teip, a boy was born into the Barayev family. The birth of a child is always a joy. The birth of a future warrior in the Vainakh teip is doubly joyful.
Nothing can darken such joy, not even the poverty of the family that has found an heir.
On the eve of giving birth, the boy’s mother dreamed of an old Arab man in long white robes. Mullah, to whom she told about her dream, called this dream prophetic and advised him to give the boy the name Arbi. This was good and wise advice.
"Arbi" is translated from Chechen as "Arab". Arabs in Chechnya are respected as the people who gave the Muslims the Prophet. And the Chechens themselves adopted Islam at one time from Arab missionaries who spread the religion of Allah in the Caucasus back in the 8th century. The process went faster with the mediation of the Mamelukes - who grew up from Chechen boys sold by their own parents into Turkish slavery and became skilled and merciless warriors there. The Porte, growing by leaps and bounds, needed new territories, and the Mamelukes returned to their homeland along with the missionaries. This circumstance gave the necessary weight to the words of the preachers of Islam, and the Vainakhs, who had professed Christianity for more than five hundred years, became Muslims. Indeed, it is better to be a living follower of the Prophet Muhammad than a dead follower of the Prophet Issa, who went against the Mamluks and is no less revered in the Islamic tradition. However, “no less” never meant “equal” or “more.” The fact is that Muhammad in this table is the seal of the prophets.
And whoever is the seal has the last word.
However, let's return to the plot.

The mullah's confidence that the Almighty himself had sent her this dream flattered the devout woman, and the assumption made in connection with this that her future son would become a great man made her happy. Neither she nor her husband Alautdi, born in Kazakhstan into the family of an exiled Chechen, had any education. This is probably why their understanding of human greatness did not go beyond traditional Vainakh ideas. The fact is that every Chechen is, first of all, a warrior, and war with both the near and distant environment is a natural state for him. It is precisely this mentality that allows him to consider the property of his rich neighbor as his legitimate booty, to seize which, if his own strength is not enough, the most warlike men of the teip unite into armed groups led by a military leader (in Chechen “byachcha”. The arithmetic of such raids is simple: whoever captured the greatest booty is the greatest and most respected.
Tradition, you know...
However, calling the worldview and value orientations of the majority of representatives of the Mulka teip “traditional” for Chechens could only be done with great reservations. The fact is that in Ichkeria (as the mountainous part of modern Chechnya was then called) and in Dagestan Buinaki for a long time (from about the end of the 8th century) an Arab emir reigned, who was a close relative of the dynasty of Damascus caliphs. The genes of the emir and his retinue still make themselves felt both in the appearance and in the behavior of people from Argun and its neighboring areas. The Arabs assimilated in Chechnya despise traditional mountain norms of behavior (adat), preferring Wahhabism or other radical Islamic teachings and the use of force as a universal and most effective way to solve any problems. They view Islam and Sharia only as a means to achieve their own goals.
Historians and researchers of the Caucasus note that the cruelty of the emir’s descendants to this day is noticeably superior to that of average Chechens.

After discussing the mullah's prediction, both mother and father decided that their Arbi would become a great warrior.
“And he will take revenge...” added Alautdi, more referring to his own material troubles than to the centuries-old Vainakh grievances.
“He will take revenge...” his wife echoed and sighed, remembering the noisy crash from the neighboring house.
Avarka's husband fired Alautdi a year and a half ago, blaming illiteracy, reluctance to study and regular absenteeism. In fact, Alautdi was not a truant, he was just often sick. He didn’t think about the fact that by taking a ballot you could be sick legally. Let's not blame him. It's hard to take advantage of something you don't have the slightest idea about.
Since then, the head of the Barayev family, who lost his job, has been doing odd jobs. The family was poor.
However, poverty and poor health did not prevent Alautdi from having children.
Families in the Mulkoy teip have always had many children; to lag behind relatives in this matter would be completely undignified.
In addition, at that time few people considered poor health or poverty to be any serious factors that could somehow influence the demographic indicators of society. Let's be honest, after all, a decline in the birth rate is more typical for societies that have already entered the phase of material prosperity, and those who vegetate in poverty breed like rabbits. The fact is that the instinct aimed at the survival of the population forces one to compensate for the lack of quality of life with an excess of the number of people trying to survive.
But let's not be ironic about how the world works - you either eat caviar or throw it!

Ah, Arbi, Arbi... - the mother said to her son who had returned from the street, wiping his broken nose with a wet rag. - When will you become my man? When will you grow up? If you can’t defeat the offender with your fists, go back home and get a knife from the kitchen. Learn to overcome your fears. If you are afraid of someone else's blood, kill a chicken every day!!! We have a lot of them. Killing a chicken is not scary at all. You don’t even need to think about anything. Chickens do not take revenge on those who kill them. If you start killing people, it’s dangerous to stop. Until you kill the last bloodline, you can’t sleep peacefully!
- But if I don’t have mercy on my enemies and kill them, will their relatives then kill me? - Arby didn’t understand.
“If you’re smart, they won’t kill you,” the mother sighed. - Besides, it is not at all necessary to become a “kuig bekhki” and kill yourself. And you need to choose your enemies wisely. If you kill a Russian, no one will take revenge on you. Russians are like chickens. They do not take revenge for their killed, and therefore no one respects them. And you, my boy, grow big and strong! And never forget to take revenge on your offenders. Let them be afraid! Remember that only those who are feared are respected. This is how the world works.
- Why then do they write in fairy tales that good always triumphs over evil? - the completely confused boy was surprised.
“You’ve already answered your question,” Mom smiled. - Everything is correct. Good indeed always triumphs over evil. This means that the one who wins is the good one.

Arby didn’t think about his mother’s words for long: mostly his thoughts revolved around how he should now choose his enemies if they had already done it for him themselves. Vile and treacherous. Depriving the possibility of a similar choice.
It was annoying to realize this.
After going through his memory of recent offenders, Arby discovered that all his current enemies are stronger than him. After reflecting on this depressing fact, resentment was added to the annoyance, and the boy decided that tomorrow he would make new enemies for himself. Those who will be weaker than him. There were no problems with the choice of candidates - the younger brothers of his offenders were the best suited for the role of enemies. The fact that their elders would later stand up for them did not change the decision made. They've already offended Arby this way and that. And at least you can get revenge. As my mother taught me. It’s just a pity that he doesn’t have his own company. Such that no one would have the desire to offend him. However, this too was fixable, Arby realized.
- How do you choose friends? - he asked.
- Friends? - the mother was surprised. - Vainakhs don’t have friends. There is only your own tape and its enemies.
- Even if they are Chechens? - the boy was amazed.
- If they are from another teip, they are enemies! You can team up with them against a common enemy, but they will still expose other tapes to fire in order to weaken them. And after victory they will kill you or subjugate you.
- Is it possible to unite with common enemies against those who want to subjugate or set you up? - Arby became interested.
He didn't want to obey, but he didn't want to be killed even more.
“When there are only enemies around, then you can unite with enemies,” the mother answered, pursing her lips. She probably remembered something unpleasant. “But you’re reasoning correctly,” she approved after thinking, “the main thing is, don’t forget that anyone with whom you teamed up is already preparing to betray you.” Never trust anyone, my boy. He who trusts does not live long.
- Can you trust Uncle Vakha? - Arby asked, remembering the plastic machine he got for his birthday. It would be reckless to label as an enemy someone who gives such pleasant gifts.
“Uncle Vakha is allowed,” my mother smiled. - He's from our teip.

The next day, Arby came home shining like a new nickel. The plan went exactly as he had hoped.
As soon as he went out into the yard, he immediately saw the younger brother of the leader of his offenders fiddling in the sand. Arby walked up to the playful toddler, knocked him down and began kicking him, trying to hit him in the head with the toes of his recently purchased boots. He did it poorly - the boy tried to cover his face with his hands and twirled around as if he were a real snake.
When his brother and a group of his friends came running to the cries of the new enemy, Arby took a heavy table knife from his pocket and, grabbing the brat by the hair, threw his head far back, and then, slowly, pressed the sharply sharpened blade on his throat, which was exposed and stretched like a string. . That's exactly what he did when he slaughtered his mother's stupid chickens. Feeling the cold metal pressing down on his trachea, the brat stopped resisting and shut up.
- Stand! - Arby ordered and when his offenders stopped, he added. - If anyone moves, I will kill him!.. Like a chicken!..
Having thoroughly enjoyed their wide eyes and whitened faces, he dictated his terms:
- Why did you get up? Now call his mother! And let it go quickly! If I get tired of waiting, I'll kill him!!! If it’s not the mother who comes, but the father, I’ll kill him! If anyone tries to run away, I will kill him! - the leader of his offenders, who tried to sneak away on his behalf, he stopped with a sharp shout. - Not you! Somebody else! And now they will tie your hands, then you will come up and kneel at his feet! Turn your back to me!

We didn't have to wait long.
The boy stopped the out of breath woman, but maintaining a calm expression on her face, five meters away from him and the toddler who had already peed himself.
“Don’t say anything and listen to me,” he said. -Are you listening?..
The woman nodded. She watched him with the dry eyes of a cobra caught in the loop of an insidious serpentologist, but this cobra understood the nuances of the current situation. Arby's heightened intuition told him that his enemy's mother was furious, but if he was convincing enough, he would do whatever was asked of her. It was good and right.
After pausing for quite a long time and catching the moment when the frightened woman, who was trying with all her might to maintain composure, began to moisten her eyes, Arby voiced his demands to her. There were few of them, and they all boiled down to one thing: now they would let him go home silently and without reproaches, but then, if any of the woman’s sons or their friends tried to offend him, he would hunt down and kill her youngest son.
- Is it clear? - he asked. - Then explain this to your jackals. If any of them did not understand something, you will cry.
“If you kill my son, they will call you “cheer” and take revenge,” the woman remarked indifferently and shrugged her shoulders.

They take revenge on someone who is guilty of something. I also know that before this they announce “chir daheyar” to him. But no one has told me yet, neither about the “cheer”, nor about what I am guilty of. “I haven’t done anything to anyone, but they’re already taking revenge on me,” Arby shrugged in response and chuckled and asked ironically. - What will change if they take revenge on me who is already guilty? For me - nothing. And for you - a lot.
The pause dragged on.
- Why are you keeping silent? - Arby began to get nervous. - Should I kill him right now? I'll kill you! If I'm lucky, I'll kill the second one too. Understand?
“Don’t…” the woman asked, overpowering herself. Her voice trembled, and tears appeared in the corners of her eyes.
- Then I went? - Arby clarified and, receiving an affirmative nod, hid the knife in his pocket.
Passing by the older offender who was kneeling, he kicked him forcefully in the side.
He fell silently. It's awkward, like a sack of potatoes.

“You won’t lay a finger on him again,” the woman said when Arby, who never looked back, disappeared behind the fence of his house. - Moreover, you will greet him if you meet him. Politely, as with an elder.
- Why? - The eldest son, who tried to get up from his knees, was surprised at the last demand.
- Because he has already grown up, but you haven’t yet! - the mother snapped.
Despite the fact that her son could not get to his feet because of his wrists tied behind his back, she never shook hands with him. Anyone who gives victory to a weaker opponent does not deserve respect. Now, if he does not achieve the restoration of lost authority, he will forever remain a loser.
Losers are a burden for the tape. Even at their best, they are just pawns, infantry, cheap cannon fodder. If the tape needs to sacrifice someone, it will sacrifice the losers first. So what if every loser is someone's son?
There are no other rules in packs of wolves.

When Arby returned home and put the knife he had taken the day before in the kitchen table drawer, his mother didn’t ask anything. After waiting for her son to leave the kitchen, she took out the knife and washed it thoroughly.
About two hours later she was called into the yard.
Through the gap between the window frame and the curtain, Arby saw that the mother of his enemies had come to see his mother.
The women talked calmly and, probably for that reason, did not last long. About twenty minutes.
- When your father comes, you will need to tell him to buy you a good knife. “Killing both people and chickens with the same knife is wrong,” said the mother who returned from the street. - And next year I will send you to the karate section. At first it will be hard and painful for you, but no one should see your fear and your tears. And then you will be respected as a warrior. But, most importantly, no one should see your pity. This is the only way you can become a great warrior and the most respected of the amirs.

Two weeks later, Arby turned ten years old, and Uncle Vakha gave him a real knife with a beautiful sheath that fit on his belt.
Arby took the gift he received for granted.
- Do you have any enemies? - he asked his uncle, carefully testing the cutting edge of the well-balanced blade with the pad of his thumb.
“Yes...” admitted the uncle, taken aback by such a question. - Who doesn’t have them? But why do you need this?
- If they kill you, I will have to take revenge. “I want to remember who needs to be stabbed,” Arby told him.
The completely confused uncle could not find an answer and, probably therefore, reduced the conversation to a clumsy joke that for a real Chechen traffic cop, everyone who drove out or entered the road was already an enemy. Even disabled people in wheelchairs. However, noting his nephew’s amazement, he laughed disarmingly:
- Even a herd of sheep is not slaughtered all at once. Otherwise, the next day there will be no meat not only for barbecue, but even for kherza-dulh or zhizhig-chorpa, which contain more potatoes than meat. As long as a Chechen has enemies, he will not go hungry!
- But you won’t forgive them, will you? - the boy clarified.
“Forgiving your bloodline is a worthy act,” said Uncle Vakha. - But I won’t forgive anyone. Nowadays, few people forgive. The time has come, it’s not time for “maslaat”... War...
- What war? - the nephew was amazed. - We don't have any war.
“That’s right,” his interlocutor easily agreed. - Everyone thinks that there is no war, but there is. And smart people are already preparing to take their spoils from this war. This is what they started with. A war within one's own country is the most convenient time for big booty. So what if they call it “perestroika” on TV? The main thing is that there is enough loot for everyone who understands that it has begun. Otherwise, we will have to fight with each other.

“Nokhchi Borz,” the uncle remarked, clicking his tongue, when the boy, satisfied with the answer, went to his room, and the adults returned to their adult conversations. - He’s not even fifteen yet, but he’s already thinking about the honor of his tape. He'll go far!

Arby's father died when his son was barely eleven years old. Two years later, the mother also died. Before her death, she once again reminded her son not to be afraid of anything or anyone. The mother died with a light heart - she knew that they would not leave her son. Arby had someone to take care of - he had an uncle who once gave him a plastic machine gun and a real knife, and he had his tape. Her confidence was reinforced by the fact that according to Vainakh customs, nephews and cousins ​​on the maternal and sister lines (shicha and myakhcha) in the family of the eldest man are equal to their own children. That is why the Vainakhs often designate many of their relatives with the Russian word “brother,” although they are not half-brothers at all. This confuses Europeans greatly, but for Chechens it is part of their worldview.
A few years later, it turned out that the far-sighted and ambitious uncle had his own plans for his orphaned nephew, and their relationship fatally determined the future dizzying career of a pathological killer.
In the nineties, Arbi barely graduated from high school in Urus-Martan and, like thousands of young Chechens in those years, was left without work. He had no job and no prospects for the future. After marrying my nephew for a couple of months, the same “Uncle Vakha” hired him for his first job after graduating from school. Arbi was identified by a traffic policeman at the intersection of the Caucasus highway, at the entrance to Urus-Martan. In the still Soviet Checheno-Ingushetia, this was more than a “grain” place. Money and prestige. For a real man.
The secret of such successful employment was simple - Vakha Arsanov, the maternal uncle who took care of the orphan, was a high-ranking employee of the Traffic Police Department of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
Soon Arby, who started as a simple guard sergeant, became a sergeant major.

In 1991, with the beginning of the stupid and incomprehensible Chechen revolution, Vakha Arsanov was entrusted with the formation of the so-called “national guard”. A huge number of his protégés - former traffic police officers - became its basis.
And who said that traffic cops with their mentality are not guards?
It's not even a guard, it's a legion!
The nephew, infinitely devoted to his uncle, became his personal bodyguard. The seventeen-year-old sergeant was distinguished by exceptional physical strength and a certain narrowness of outlook. He clearly did not bother assessing the legality of the orders given by his uncle. He simply carried them out. Arby idolized his uncle and was ready to unconditionally believe in any ideas he uttered.
If he had been a little more independent, a little more unpredictable, he wouldn't have stood a chance. A tool is called a tool because its owner uses it as he wants and at a time convenient for himself, and not for the tool. But physical strength, endurance and dog-like devotion made the “all-weather” Arbi Baraev one of the best “bodyguards” in Chechnya, and a few years later Arsanov handed him over as a personal bodyguard to then Vice President Zelimkhan Yandarbiev.
- Can he kill a person? Anyone I can point to? What if this is needed? - Zelimkhan asked Vakha.
- Just tell me! He'll kill you like a chicken! There are no people for him unless they are his relatives! - Vakha Arsanov assured his friend.

Inquiries:

Vainakhs are Chechens and Ingush.
Prophet Issa - in the Islamic tradition, Jesus Christ is recognized and considered as one of the ten first prophets, but at the same time he is not attributed a divine essence.
Mamelukes (from the Arabic Mamluk - slave, white slave) - warrior-slaves first began to be used in the Baghdad Caliphate during the reign of the Abassid caliph al-Mutazim (833-842), but soon this phenomenon spread widely in the Muslim world. The Mamelukes were recruited from the children of Turks, Georgians, Circassians, etc., sold into slavery (or captured during raids). Initially, they became famous as the guards of the last Egyptian sultans of the Ayyubid dynasty. But in 1250, the Mamelukes overthrew Turan Shah (the last of the Ayyubids), seized power in Egypt and elected their own sultan. In 1260, they defeated the Mongols who invaded Palestine and Syria and expelled the remnants of the crusaders from these countries. In the 13th-16th centuries. The Mameluke army served the Cairo Sultanate. As a mercenary army, they managed to fight on the side of many Middle Eastern rulers and even on the side of Napoleon I. The last remnants of this army were almost completely destroyed during the retreat of Napoleon I’s army from Russia during the Patriotic War of 1812.
Both in old and modern history, the facts of such predatory raids on various regions of the same Stavropol region are well known.
Adat is the so-called “customary” law, established by custom, and a set of traditional norms of behavior of the North Caucasian highlanders, passed on from generation to generation. Compliance with adats is absolutely obligatory, and failure to comply is punishable. As the peoples of the North Caucasus became Islamized, the norms of Islamic law - Sharia - began to be added to adats.
In case of non-reconciliation of bloodlines, blood feud in the Caucasus can continue for tens and hundreds of years, until the complete destruction of one of the clans.
Kuig bekhki (Chechen) - guilty hand. According to the adat, only the person at whose hands someone died can be persecuted by bloodlines. Thus, in the case of a contract killing, all blame rests solely with the perpetrator.
Chir (Chechen) is the proper name for the custom of blood feud.
Chir dakheyar (Chechen) - the name of the procedure for declaring blood feud.
Kherza-dulkh and zhizhig-chorpa are dishes of Chechen cuisine, for the preparation of which lamb, potatoes, vegetables, herbs and hot seasonings are used.
Maslaat (Arabic) - reconciliation of bloodlines.
Nokhchi Borz (Chechen) - Chechen wolf.
According to the rules established in the custom of blood feud, only a man who has reached the age of fifteen can take revenge and be the object of revenge. The participation of women in blood feud is specifically stipulated by custom and, as a rule, excluded from actual practice.
Vakha Arsanov is the uncle of the famous Chechen field commander Arbi Barayev. At the time of the events described, Vakha Arsanov was a high-ranking traffic police officer of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. A few years later he will become vice-president of Ichkeria and Aslan Maskhadov’s closest assistant.