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Militant salafites from the North Caucasian republics have fought in both Chechen wars and
participated in the 1999 incursion of separatists from Chechnya into Dagestan under the command
of Basayev and Khattab. According to Shamil Beno, former Moscow envoy under head of the
Chechen government Akhmad Kadyrov, Dagestanis accounted for more than 80 percent of the
rebels who took part in the botched incursion. 50
Despite setbacks dealt by Russian troops and law-enforcers, the militant strain of Islamic
fundamentalism remains a formidable presence in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus,
drawing followers mostly from local provinces as well as from Muslim republics in central Russia
and from abroad. 51 While these groups have not displayed a strong interest in acquiring WMD, they
have contacts with Chechnya-based radical separatists and might choose to assist them in the
execution of catastrophic nuclear terrorist attacks.
Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov has no control over a significant portion of these
radical separatist groups. Despite his claims to the contrary, Maskhadov and his loyalists can do
little but coordinate occasional joint operations inside Chechnya. Moreover, rival leaders regularly
challenge Maskhadov’s presidential status. 52 The radical separatists who are beyond Maskhadov’s
control may eventually stage independent attempts to carry out acts of catastrophic nuclear terrorism
50 Beno was quoted as making this estimate in Andrei Smirnov, “Terrorism: Vzryvy/Vtoroi Front Chechenskikh
Boevikov” [Terrorism: explosions/second front of Chechen rebels], Grani.ru, January 21, 2002, available at
http://www.grani.ru/blast/articles/lorry/ as of July 10, 2002.
51 Dagestan’s Islamist radicals suffered a major setback when federal troops crushed the self-proclaimed Islamist
independent zone in Dagestan’s Buinaksk district. The local salafites declared “Islamist territory ruled by the Sharia law”
in four settlements of Dagestan’s Buinaksk district, known as the Kadar zone, in 1998. Russian troops managed to
overtake the villages in August 1999. After their defeat in the Kadar zone, Dagestan’s salafites have gone underground
and are presently “nowhere, but everywhere.” Vladimir Bobrovnikov, “Islam in the Post-Soviet Northern Caucasus
(Dagestan): Myths and Reality” in Islam in the Post-Soviet Newly Independent States: The View from Within, edited by Alexei
Malashenko and Martha Brill Olcott, Moscow Carnegie Center, Moscow, July 2001.
52 “Brigadny General Arsanov Prosit Maskhadova Uiti V Ostavku” [Brigadier General Arsanov asks Maskhadov to
resign], July 9, 2002, Lenta.ru, available at http://www.lenta.ru/vojna/2002/07/09/arsanov/ as of July 12, 2002.
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