Caucasian Front (Chechen War)
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Caucasian Front is a structural unit of the rebel Chechen Republic of Ichkeria armed forces, formally stablished in May 2005 by the decree of the new Chechen rebel President, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev.
While the anti-Russian local insurgencies in North Caucasus started even before the war, two months after Aslan Maskhadov's death, the Chechen separatists officially announced that they had formed a Caucasus Front within the framework of "reforming the system of military-political power." Along with the Chechen, Dagestani and Ingush "sectors," the Stavropol, Kabardin-Balkar, Krasnodar, Karachai-Circassian, Ossetian and Adyghe jamaats were included in it. This, in essence, means that practically all the regions of the Russia's south will be involved in the hostilities.
The Chechen separatist movement has taken on a new role as the official ideological, logistical and, probably, financial hub of the new insurgency in the North Caucasus. Increasingly frequent clashes between federal forces and local militants continue in Dagestan, while sporadic fighting erupts in the other southern Russia regions, most notably in Ingushetia.
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[edit] 2004 Nazran raid
On the night of June 21-22, 2004, a large force of 200 to 300 Chechen and Ingush fighters carried out a large-scale raid on Ingushetia, led by Shamil Basayev. The overnight attacks targeted 15 government buildings in the former Ingush capital, Nazran, and at least three towns and villages located on the Baku-Rostov highway that crosses the republic from east to west.
The targets of simultaneous attacks included the Interior Ministry headquarters in Nazran, the base of an FSB border guard unit in Nazran, and also arms depots, municipal police headquarters and OMON headquarters in Karabulak and Sleptovskaya northeast of Nazran. The raid lasted nearly five hours, and the assailants withdrew almost unscathed with a large quantities of capured weapons; the raiders apparently lost only two men during the attacks (five according to Basayev). The federal troops managed to reach Nazran only at 4 a.m., after the battle there was over, as a 15 or 20 guerrilla raiders succeeded in neutralizing whole 503rd Motor Rifle Regiment of the Russian Army by blockading the road to the city.
According to the official figures of Ingushetia's pro-Moscow administration, in total the dead numbered 98, including the republic's acting Interior Minister Colonel Abukar Kostoyev, his deputy Zyaudin Kotiev, the city of Nazran's chief prosecutor Mukharbek Buzurtanov, the district of Nazran's chief prosecutor Belan Oziev, the Ingushetia's investigator for major criminal cases Timur Detogazov, and other officials. Among the dead were five officers of the FSB and three commandos from the elite Vympel unit; 30 officers were reportedly killed at the Nazran ROVD. A few civilians, including a local United Nations worker, were killed in the crossfire. Army General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, the Russian Deputy Interior Minister and the commander of Russia's Interior Ministry forces, decided to resign after Federal Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev blamed them for the high number of deaths.
[edit] Nalchik raid
On October 13, 2005, local and Caucasian insurgents organized a daylight raid on Nalchik in Kabardino-Balkaria. The failed insurrection attempt claimed lives of more than 90 people, including at least 35 policemen and 92 rebels.
[edit] Other incidents
- January 15, 2005 - The government forces surrounded a group of five rebel fighters in a two-story house on the outskirts of Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan. For 17 hours, the rebels battled Russian special forces supported by armoured vehicles and a helicopter, killing one of elite Alpha Group commandos and wounding another, until a tank smashed the remains of the burned and gutted house.[1] The group was blamed of killing over 30 officers of the Dagestan MVD and the local branch of the FSB. In the weeks preceding the battle, Dagestani insurgents have derailed two trains, sabotaged gas supplies and shot dead a high-ranking intelligence officer from Moscow. In a separate clash this day, special police task force stormed another house in Dagestan's port of Kaspiisk to arrest a separate group of militants, leaving three police commandos, including commander Arzulum Ilyasov, dead. One rebel was killed and one wounded, the third one escaped.
- July 1, 2005 - 11 members of the elite Russian MVD OSNAZ Rus battalion were killed and seven wounded in the bomb attack in Makhachkala. The commandos had been sent to Dagestan only two weeks ago to help the local Interior Ministry forces conduct "operation filter", started after a 4 June bomb blew up an UAZ police vehicle with three policemen inside. On 4 July the chief of the city's MVD Yusup Abdulayev and several other police officials were fired.
- January 2006 - At least three OMON and Spetznaz servicemen died and more than 10 were wounded in a three-day battle on a mountain near Gimry in Dagestan between some 3,000 Russian troops led by the republic's Interior Minister Adilgerei Magomedtagirov and a group of estimated eight armed rebels (or 30 according to the Kavkaz Center version). Despite heavy artillery and aerial bombardment all the fighters managaged to escape the encirclement, leaving behind only an abandonened dugout. The ministry said the group included suspects in a recent assassination attempt on the deputy interior minister that left his son dead.
- July 10, 2006 - The head of the Russian FSB service, Nikolai Patrushev, announced the death of Shamil Basayev in a "special operation" in the Russian region of Ingushetia, near Chechnya. Chechen rebel website Kavkaz Center later confirmed his death, though they reported a CRI representative as saying "there was no special operation whatsoever. Shamil and the other brothers of ours became Shaheeds according to Allah's will." Basayev, who was considered a key link between the Chechen separatists and the North Caucasian insurgency, was killed when a KamAZ truck carrying 220 lbs of explosives exploded in his convoy. Three other militants were killed along with him. [2] [3]
