Invasion of Dagestan (1999)

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Invasion of Dagestan
Russian special forces in Dagestan
Date August 7, 1999 - September 14, 1999 Location Dagestan Result Russian victory Second Chechen War
Belligerents
Russian Federation Dagestani militia	Chechnya-based Islamic insurgents Dagestani Islamic militias
Commanders
Vladimir Putin Viktor Kazantsev	Shamil Basayev Ibn al-Khattab
Strength
17,000[citation needed]	About 1,500[1]
Casualties and losses
279 dead and 987 wounded (official data)[2]	Unknown

v • d • e Conflicts in the Former Soviet Union Nagorno-Karabakh – South Ossetia – 1st Abkhazia – Georgia – North Ossetia – Transnistria – Tajikistan – 1st Chechnya – 2nd Abkhazia – Dagestan – 2nd Chechnya

The Invasion of Dagestan,^[3] also known as the War in Dagestan^[4] and Dagestan War,^[5] 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. The war ended with the retreat of the IIPB and was one of the triggers for the Second Chechen War.

Contents 1 Prelude to the conflict 2 War in Dagestan 3 Aftermath 4 Opposing forces 4.1 Federal forces 4.2 Rebel forces 5 Theory of Russian government involvement 6 Notes 7 See also 8 External links

[edit] Prelude to the conflict

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."^[1]

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.^[6]

[edit] War in Dagestan

On August 4, 1999, several Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) troops were killed the 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 town of Botlikh, without firing a shot.^[7] 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."^[8][1]

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. This conflict saw the first use of aerial-delivered fuel-air explosives (FAE) against populated areas, notably on the village of Tando by the federal forces.^[9][10] The rebels were stalled by the ferocity of the bombardments: their supply lines were cut and scattered with remotely delivered mines. This gave Moscow 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.^[11]

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 (to which his precedessor Sergei Stepashin had granted limited autonomy a year earlier), even though they had not participated in the uprising. 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.^[12]

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.

[edit] Aftermath

Russia followed up with a bombing campaign of southeastern Chechnya; on September 23, Russian fighter jets bombed targets in and around the Chechen capital Grozny. Aslan Maskhadov, the separatist president of Chechnya (ChRI), opposed the invasion of Dagestan, and offered a crackdown on the renegade warlords. It was refused by the Kremlin and in October 1999, after a string of four apartment bombings blamed by Russia on the Chechens, Russian ground forces invaded Chechnya, starting the Second Chechen War. Since then, Dagestan has been a site of an ongoing, low-level insurgency which became part of the new Chechen war. This conflict between the government and the armed Islamist underground in Dagestan (in particular the Shariat Jamaat group) aided by the Chechen guerrillas has claimed lives of further hundreds of people.

[edit] Opposing forces

[edit] Federal forces

Despite the initial poor showing of the government forces (for example, military helicopters were hit by anti-tank guided missiles during a rebel raid on the Botlikh airfield), Moscow and Makhachkala were able to put together a relatively impressive fighting force, including light infantry units (drawn from the Spetsnaz special forces, paratroopers and naval infantry) crucial to mountain and counter-insurgency warfare.

The government forces were made up of three main elements: light and airmobile infantry units able to operate in the mountains and in small ambush and assault forces; larger mechanised units to seal areas off and maintain rear area security; and artillery and air support elements able to interdict supply lines and box the rebels in. Most of the 'teeth' were drawn from regular army units, with the exception of the MVD's Internal Troops' 102nd Brigade and Rus commando force and the local Dagestani OMON riot police. Makhachala has long expected an incident of this sort, and since its OMON troops proved so ineffectual in 1996 when Chechen rebels seized hostages in the Dagestani city of Kizlyar, it has put some of its scarce resources into turning this force into, in effect, a small local army. The Dagestani OMON force numbers almost 1,000 men and, bar the absence of armour and artillery, they are equipped as motorised infantry; the force even had a number of BTR-60 and BTR-70 armoured personnel carriers and heavy support weapons.

At the end of 1997 the republic also began raising a volunteer territorial militia. During the emergency its ranks were swelled with reservists and volunteers to around 5,000. Their training and equipment was minimal, making them little more than a home guard force, but their numbers helped secure the government's rear areas and their very presence helped legitimise the government forces, neutralising the charge that this was merely an attempt by Russians to control the Caucasus (Dagestani OMON or volunteers were often shown on local TV reports, presumably to drive home this message).

[edit] Rebel forces

The insurgents proved to be a motley collection of Chechen guerrillas, Dagestani rebels, and Islamic fundamentalists and mercenaries from across the Arab world and Central Asia. Estimates of the insurgent forces' strength have varied from 300 to over 2,000 (a field force of no more than 1,400 seems most credible). While mostly experienced veterans of the Chechen and other wars, they were lightly equipped. They possessed ample supplies of small arms, support weapons, several 9M111 Fagot ATGM's, mortars and appropriate ammunition but they appeared to have only two BTR-60 APCs (quite possibly captured from government forces in the first days of the attack), a single T-12 antitank gun and a few truck-mounted ZU-23 anti-aircraft guns for use as fire support.

Notional first-among-equals of their leaders was Basayev, Chechen rebel leader, erstwhile prime minister and founder of the CPCD. Basayev's position was in many ways an ambiguous one. He was a staunch Muslim but didn't share the extreme Wahhabism of many of his allies; however, he did strongly believe that Dagestan and Chechnya should be one state. Although a seasoned and wily guerrilla commander, this war saw him as much as anything else being used as a political figurehead. His CPCD was officially charged with forming new "structures of Islamic self-government" in rebel-held areas. The brevity of the occupation and the opposition of many locals to their "liberation" meant this was never a serious process.

Ibn al-Khattab's Islamic International Brigade formed the core of the insurgent forces, accounting for perhaps half of the rebel fighters. Having fought against the Russians during the first war in Chechnya, he then went on to wage an open campaign against President Maskhadov, whom he regarded as too close to Moscow. Khattab had concluded a marriage of political convenience with Basayev, but in effect retained operational command and a veto on political direction.

The third element in the loose rebel triumvirate were the Dagestani Islamic militants. Besides Bagauddin Magomedov, the two key figures were Nadir Khachilayev and Siradjin Ramazanov. An ethnic Lak and former leader of the Union of Muslims in Russia, Khachilayev has a long pedigree of opposition to the local regime of Magomedali Magomedov. In 1998 he launched an abortive attempt to storm the government buildings in the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala. Khachilayev escaped to Chechnya where he found sanctuary with Islamist guerrilla movements, eventually forging an alliance with Khattab. Despite their Dagestani origins, he and the self-styled prime minister of 'Islamic Dagestan', Ramazanov, proved essentially marginal, reflecting their failure to raise recruits to their side after they had launched their operation. The self-proclaimed Shura (Islamic council) of Dagestan welcomed the "liberation" and declared an Islamic state, but it proved to have relatively little authority.

[edit] Theory of Russian government involvement

According to Boris Berezovsky, he had a conversation with the Chechen Islamist ideologist and Basayev's propaganda chief Movladi Udugov six months before the beginning of the rebel invasion of Dagestan.^[13] Allegedly, Udugov proposed to start the Dagestan war to provoke the Russian response, topple the Chechen president Maskhadov and establish new Islamic republic made of Chechnya and Ingushetia that would be friendly to Russia. Berezovsky asserted that he refused the offer, but "Udugov and Basayev conspired with Stepashin and Putin to provoke a war to topple Maskhadov..., but the agreement was for the Russian army to stop at the Terek River. However, Putin double-crossed the Chechens and started an all-out war."^[13] A transcript of the conversation was leaked to one of Moscow tabloids on September 10, 1999.^[14]

The incursion into Dagestan leading to the start of the new Russian-Chechen conflict was regarded by the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya as a provocation initiated from Moscow to start war in Chechnya, because Russian forces provided safe passage for Islamic fighters back to Chechnya.^[15] It was reported that Alexander Voloshin of the Yeltsin administration paid money to Basayev to stage this military operation.^[16][17][18] Basayev reportedly worked for Russian GRU at this time and earlier.^[19][20][21] However, Basayev himself denied any involvement with the GRU.^[22]

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Russian apartment bombings

[edit] External links

• War in Dagestan - Jane's Europe News (October 1999)
• ISN Case Study: The North Caucasus on the Brink (August 2006)

v • d • e Armed Conflicts involving the Soviet Union and Russia (1917–present) International Russian Civil War · World War II · Korean War · Ogaden War External Polish-Soviet War · Winter War · Hungarian Revolution of 1956 · Soviet war in Afghanistan Internal First Chechen War · Invasion of Dagestan (1999) · Second Chechen War

v • d • e Russian-Chechen Conflict
Main events	Specific articles	Federals	Separatists
Wars First Chechen War Dagestan War Second Chechen War Notable battles Grozny (1994) Grozny (1994–1995) Grozny (1996) Grozny (1999–2000) Komsomolskoye (2000) Other Khasav-Yurt accord Russian apartment bombings Hostage crises: Buddyonovsk Kizlyar Moscow Beslan	Second Chechen War 1999 bombing campaign Assassinations Casualties Aircraft losses Crimes and terrorism: Mass graves Suicide attacks Insurgency since May 2000 Caucasian Front International response Federal government in Chechnya	Combatants: Russian Federation Russian Army (Ground Forces) MVD (OMON, Internal Troops) FSB and GRU Special forces (OSNAZ, Spetsnaz) Republic of Chechnya (Kadyrovtsy) Key leaders : Boris Yeltsin Vladimir Putin Doku Zavgayev Akhmad Kadyrov † Alu Alkhanov Ramzan Kadyrov	Combatants: Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Mujahideen Key leaders: Dzhokhar Dudayev † Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev † Aslan Maskhadov † Abdul Halim Sadulayev † Dokka Umarov Shamil Basayev † Akhmed Yevloyev Khattab † Abu al-Walid † Abu Hafs al-Urduni † Muhannad