Basayev ran on his war record. "Candidate Basayev," reported the Philadelphia Inquirer, "has compiled what amounts to a greatest-hits video of his audacious war exploits and turned it into a campaign advertisement. At any hour of the day or night, people in this ruined land can tune to a pro-Basayev television station and watch graphic reruns of the most savage moments in Chechnya's 21-month-long war with Moscow, all starring the controversial rebel. There's Basayev, the daring commander, laying siege to the Russian town of Budennovsk, where civilian hostages were doused with gasoline."
One Basayev supporter told Moscow Times correspondent Gall: "I voted for Basayev because I want to show Russia that they may see him as a terrorist, but we do not."
To the relief of the Russians, Maskhadov beat Basayev, 59.3 percent to 23.5 percent. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which sent 72 observers to monitor the elections, raved about its fairness. "It's astonishing that out of death and destruction comes an election which can be termed free and can be termed fair," said then-OSCE Chairman Niels Helveg Petersen of Denmark.
Then Maskhadov named Basayev deputy prime minister. A year later, he made Basayev prime minister and asked him to form a government. But by October 1998, Basayev was out of the government, calling for Maskhadov's removal. "We do not want to behead Maskhadov," the Associated Press reported him saying. "We do not crave his blood. (But) we say he is not fit to serve as the Chechen president."
In August 1999, fighting broke out near the Chechen border of the southern Russian region of Dagestan. "Mr. Basayev," reported Reuters, "said he planned to lead the revolt and would not stop until 'infidels' were expelled from the North Caucasus." Russian troops re-entered Chechnya. War was on again.
Five years later, former Prime Minister Basayev remains at large, plotting evil acts such as blowing up airplanes and seizing schoolchildren.
Obviously, the Russian experience differs greatly from our own. They lack our splendid armed forces, our great wealth and our matchless democratic tradition. And certainly we wish democracy, and liberty, for all peoples. But if free and fair elections could not defeat, contain or long deter Shamil Basayev in Chechnya, is it realistic to assume they will defeat, contain or long deter terrorists elsewhere?