Dagestan-1999, August - September Mikhail Nokhov Gymnasium # 1 Khasavyurt

The Invasion of Dagestan, also known as the War in Dagestan and Dagestan War, began when the Chechnya-based Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade (IIPB) Islamist militia led by warlords Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab invaded the neighbouring Russian republic of Dagestan, on August 7, 1999, in support of the Islamic Shura of Dagestan separatist rebels.

In late 1997, Bagauddin Magomedov, the ethnic Avar leader of the radical wing of the Dagestani Wahhabis (Salafism), fled with his entourage to the de-facto independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. There he had established close ties with Arab-born Amir Khattab and leaders of Chechnya's Wahhabi community during the war. In early 1998, Magomedov initiated the relocation of several hundred Dagestani Wahhabis and their families, who were the targets of repression in their native land, to Gudermes in eastern Chechnya. In March 1998, these Dagestanis, together with their Chechen co-religionists, started to drift toward Urus-Martan, where they then began preparations to invade Dagestan. Another notable Dagestani Wahhabi, Magomed Tagayev, formed the "Dagestani Imam's Army of Freedom Fighters."

The years 1998 and 1999 saw the institutional unification of Dagestani and Chechen radicals. The formation of the Congress of the Peoples of Chechnya and Dagestan (CPCD), headed by Shamil Basayev, publicized the expansive intentions of the Chechen and Dagestani Wahhabis and their partners. In November 1998, Basayev left no doubt as to the Congress' program: "The leaders of the Congress will not allow the occupying Russian army to wreak any havoc in the land of our Muslim brethren. We do not intend to leave our Muslim brothers helpless." In January 1999, Khattab began the formation of an "Islamic Legion" with foreign Muslim volunteers. At the same time, he commanded the "Peacemaking Unit of the Majlis (Parliament) of Ichkeria and Dagestan".

In April 1999, Magomedov, "the Emir of the Islamic Jamaat of Dagestan," made an appeal to the "Islamic patriots of the Caucasus" to "take part in the jihad" and to do their share in "liberating Dagestan and the Caucasus from the Russian colonial yoke." According to this prominent Dagestani Wahhabi's vision, proponents of the idea of a free Islamic Dagestan were to enlist in the "Islamic Army of the Caucasus" that he had founded and report to the army's headquarters (in the village of Karamakhi) for military duty. Chechen separatist government official Turpal-Ali Atgeriev claimed since that he had already alerted then Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) Director Vladimir Putin, in the summer of 1999, of the imminent incursion into Dagestan.

On August 4, 1999, several Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) troops were killed in a border clash with a group of Magomedov's fighters led by Bagaudin Kebedov. Three days later, Basayev and Khattab led an incursions of roughly 1,500 armed Dagestanis (mainly Avars and Dargins) and others (mostly Chechens and Arabs) into the mountainous regions Dagestan, seizing the villages of Ansalta, Rakhata and Shadroda and reaching the village of Tando, close to the district village of Botlikh. Shamil Basayev Khatab

Three days later, on August 10, they announced the birth of the "independent Islamic State of Dagestan" and declared war on "the traitorous Dagestani government" and "Russia's occupation units

As resistance to the invaders stiffened, not least from a large if undisciplined volunteer militia, Russian artillery and airpower came into its own. While the First Chechen War had shown the limitations of its use, here it was relied on to ensure that the Russians did not lose the war in those early days. The rebels were stalled by the ferocity of the bombardments: their supply lines were cut and scattered with remotely delivered mines.

This gave Federal Troops time to assemble a counter-attack under Colonel-General Viktor Kazantsev, commander of the North Caucasus Military District. In a thinly disguised admission of failure, on August 23 the rebels announced they were withdrawing from Botlikh district 'to redeploy' and begin a 'new phase' in their operations

General Troshev

On August 27, Putin, then the new Prime Minister of Russia (since August 9, the third of the fighting), flew to Dagestan and ordered a punitive attack against the Dagestani Wahhabi villages of the Kadar zone.

On the night of September 4, as the federal forces were struggling to wipe out the last bastions of resistance in the Kadar villages, a car bomb destroyed a military housing building in the Dagestani town of Buynaksk, killing 64 people and starting the first in the wave of the Russian apartment bombings.

That same morning Chechnya-based rebels launched a renewed incursion into the lowland Novolak region of Dagestan, coming within a mere five kilometers of the major city of Khasavyurt and threatening the republic's capital Makhachkala. Federal forces supported by local volunteers finally forced them back after more heavy fighting.

By mid-September 1999 the militants were routed from the villages they had seized and were pushed back into Chechnya. Meanwhile, the Russian Air Force had already begun bombing targets inside Chechnya. At least several hundred people were killed in the fighting, including an unknown number of civilians. The federal side admitted suffering 279 dead and approximately 987 wounded.

Defenders of Khasavyurt

The main lesson the people of Dagestan learnt from the events of 1999 is that when they are united not a single hostile force can conquer them. This was vividly seen in Khasavyurt where all the people irrespective their religion or nationality got united and formed people’s territory guards with Mayor Saigit Pasha Umakhanov at the head.