The night is darkest just before the dawn

The death of Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, President of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, is a great and very sad loss for the whole Chechen land. May I express my sincere condolences to his relatives, friends, and comrades-in-arms.

He was the youngest Chechen president in history.

The fate of his family was tragic. Shortly before Sadulayev became president, his beloved wife, mother of his five children, was captured and killed by the occupants. He could not save his wife, because he was defending the whole Chechen land and the freedom of its citizens. But he did not like to talk about this tragedy, because there are tens of thousands of other Chechen women and girls, who were tortured and killed in Russian filtration camps.

Indeed, life of a president is hard. In Chechnya, which is occupied but not subdued, being a president is also a mortal danger. Yet, it is a great honour. Not only is the land of our ancestors, with its mountains, rivers and forests, entrusted to the president, but also its freedom, for which so many Chechens have sacrificed their lives.

In his last interview, published by the Bulgarian “Politika” weekly, Abdul-Halim frankly answered the trickiest questions of the journalists and defended his position very successfully. His speech was simple and unsophisticated, but it showed great depth of thinking and great purity of intentions.

Politics is usually seen as a dirty business – and indeed, there are a lot of corrupt politicians. However, if all the politicians got a bit more alike our late president, the world would surely be a better place.

Pity that we came to know and appreciate him so late… He was so young and handsome, but the God always takes the best people. Now Abdul-Halim Sadulayev is in the Heaven, together with our other presidents killed by Russia: Jokhar Dudayev, Zalimkhan Yandarbiyev and Aslan Maskhadov. And don’t believe they are dead. As Koran reads: “All those who follow the right way, I will take them alive, though you cannot understand this”.

But look how many people with dead souls still live around us in this world! Surely, their fate is much worse than that of the fallen Chechen warriors.

General Jokhar Dudayev, our first president, used to say “All the Chechens are generals, and I am only the last of them”. He loved his nation very much, and he believed in it. The death of another Chechen president cannot reverse the history, which is full of horrible crimes against the Chechen nation. The night is darkest just before the dawn.

Time will come when the Chechen land frees itself from filtration camps and prisons, from block-houses and barbed wire. People shall return to their fireplaces, and Chechen towers shall rise again over Ichkeria’s mountains, resembling the real Kyonakhs. I wish the Chechen nation victory, bright sun, blue skies, and prospering land of Ichkeria.