Disrupting Escalation Of Terror In Russia To Prevent - Belfer Center ...

Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, and Dagestan, actively participating
in the anti-government insurgency.
In Dagestan, militant salafites—led by Dagestani warlord Rappani Khalilov— have
already demonstrated that they may easily resort to indiscriminate and massive terrorist attacks.
Russian prosecutors believe that Khalilov’s group was behind the bombing of the Victory Day
parade in Kaspiisk on May 9, 2002 that claimed the lives of forty-three Russian servicemen and
civilians and wounded over 200. In addition to targeting the military, Khalilov’s terrorist group,
Jennet, has also proclaimed a war against the Dagestani and federal law enforcers. Law-enforcers
estimate that members of this group were behind killings of some eighty officers from June 2003
to June 2005.
Dagestani ‘Wahhabis’ did not hesitate to launch indiscriminate attacks as well. They
carried out the first in the series of deadly apartment building bombings in Russian cities, which
preceded the second Chechen war. Sixty people died when an apartment building collapsed after
a powerful bomb exploded in the Dagestani city of Buinaksk in September of 1999. 31 The
insurgent network in Dagestan has demonstrated formidable resilience, remaining active in
carrying out attacks on law enforcers even after a massive police crackdown on its members, in
which dozens of them, including the major plotter of the terrorist attacks, Rasul Makasharipov,
were ambushed and killed in 2004 and 2005.
In Ingushetia, the local “Wahhabi” cells are an increasingly potent force. They
participated in the June 2004 raid in which groups of Chechen and Ingush extremists led by
21,000 salafites in Dagestan could be described as “militant” as of 2000, according to estimates by Alexei
Malashenko in “Islamic Factor in the Northern Caucasus,” Gendalf, Moscow, 2001.
http://pubs.carnegie.ru/books/2001/03am.
Due to all of the above factors, we will use the definition as militant salafites or put the word Wahhabi inside
quotation marks to stress that it is the term used by Russian officials and media.
31 Several natives of Dagestan were convicted of this bombing and Khattab was implicated by Russian officials in
ordering the attack. Nabi Abdullaev, “Buinaksk Apartment Bombers Convicted,” Moscow Times, March 20, 2001.
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