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Aslan Alivitch Maskhadov (born September 21, 1951) was a Chechen general and chief of staff during the 1994–1996 war against Russia. Maskhadov is a silent, organized military leader whom many credit with the Chechen victory in the mid-1990s. In January 1997, Maskhadov was elected President of Chechnya on a platform including demands for independence from Moscow.
Maskhadov was born to Chechens in exile in Kazakhstan; his family returned to Chechnya in 1957. He soon joined the Soviet army, serving first in Hungary and then in Lithuania. After Lithuania regained its independence in 1991, Maskhadov returned to Chechnya to become the Chief of Staff for the Chechen army. After fighting the war with Russia, which did not result in independence in spite of multiple victories, Maskhadov became a candidate for President, running against Shamil Basayev, a field commander with a popular following. After Maskhadov's victory, he worked with Basayev until 1998, when his rival established a network of military officers which soon devolved into territorial warlords scattered around Chechnya. With the arrival of this opposition, Maskhadov found himself the target of assassination attempts and his country suffered through multiple terrorist attacks which reduced his popular support. Maskhadov's attempts to stifle Wahhabism and other fundamentalist Muslim groups, coupled with his inability to keep Chechen militants from making incursions into the neighboring Republic of Dagestan, made him appear incompetent and incapable of controlling his country.
Maskhadov now lives in hiding. Through spokesmen, he has often denounced the series of increasingly brutal terrorist acts carried out by Basayev's followers since 1999. While some Western observers consider these denunciations plausible, Russian officials consider them insincere and have always accused both Basayev and Maskhadov of being the masterminds behind the terrorism.
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