If We Burn, Russia Burns

Russia attacked Chechnya with huge forces and the Chechens have been holding out against the Russians for six months now. How did you manage that?

DUDAYEV: That secret lies in the 300 years the Chechens have been fighting Russia's evil and violence. It's hard to describe all the violence that is being waged today and which a normal person cannot understand: how is it possible to throw live people out of helicopters in front of everyone? How is it possible for a company of soldiers to rape one woman? How is it possible to use missiles and planes and helicopters and all other weapons against living unprotected people, at your own people?

Russia wants to suggest to the West that the opposition here is strong. What does the opposition represent, when in talks with ordinary Chechens we are told that there is no opposition but only traitors?

The whole world knows that there was no opposition here and that there is none today. Russia is gathering a group of bandits in Russia and calling them the opposition and arming them heavily and paying them. Then they advance on Grozny from all sides, strike it once, a second, third time, occupy the country, deploy their headquarters, destroy and capture part of the territory and that is called "opposition A La Russe".

In May last year, there was an attempt on your life. How many of them have there been and why does Russia fear Dudayev so much?

I can't even remember how many there were. The essentially Russian leadership is waging open terrorism. Now they can no longer be called attempts. Planes fly overhead and destroy blocks of buildings where families live... And that is called an attempt? Perhaps in Russian.

Look at the documents. The kind of program of complete destruction of a nation they prepared, the deportation of an entire nation... Entire towns in regions where they were to be deported were built in four years. Special towns made of cabins reserved for Chechens.

Many volunteers said if it's war let there be war in Russia as well, to make the Russian realize it's war. Why did you oppose terrorist attacks in Russian cities?

Terror is the final resort. For a man terror is the last thing, as for state policy you would have to be paranoid.

But, I said, and I repeat, that the transfer of military action to Russian territory is not just terror but a legality which does not depend on me, whether I want it or not. Three hundred men aged 17 to 50 were left without homes, no means to survive, without work and the right to life, they have had only one profession for years; soldiering and I don't have the strength to restrain them to this piece of land. This war will last a long time and will be far reaching.

I am saying openly that we need to extend the war with Russia: if we burn with Russia, with no remains, Russia will burn alongside us! Or we'll get out of this position that Russia imposed. There is no half-way solution. Fortunately for Russia and the world, the situation is still under control for now But I won't be embittered if the process slips out of my control.

Why did you choose soldiering for a profession as a young man?

As far as I remember I couldn't agree to the violence over our people. So to test my strength I decided to try the most forbidden thing in Chechnya: profession - pilot.

Where do you think the Russian press reports on the Chechen Mafia originated?

From the year 1989 when preparations for all this began. Soon after the first all-national congress which opted for sovereignty, propaganda began from state political and ideological levels. They were preparing to swallow the Chechens. To put fear into the Soviet peoples and the world: here's what'll happen if you're disobedient. To patch the empire into new clothes through violence. They needed to create a Chechen image as a nation of criminals and Mafiosi.

That failed and now they turned and created a completely different image so there's no more Chechen Mafia but Islamic fundamentalists. That myth has also burst but that's not important to Russia, she wants to lay blame, disregarding the fact that the gap between Muslim fundamentalism and the Mafia cannot be bridged. Now they want to show their efforts as the fight of Islam against the Christian world and forget that Russia is without spirituality. That war of the spiritual world against Russia will continue.