Russia - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs - Harvard ...

an independent Islamist state in the North Caucasus. Dagestani Islamist separatists even managed
to establish an independent “Islamist territory” in Dagestan’s Buinaksk district in 1998. 78 Russia’s
domestic security and law-enforcement blame Chechen-trained militant salafites from Dagestan and
Karachayevo-Cherkessia for staging a series of terrorist acts outside Chechnya, including the
destruction of a Buinaksk apartment building in 1999. 79 If a terrorist can blow up an entire
apartment building, he may also assist Chechnya-based radical separatists in detonating a radioactive
bomb that would cause comparable immediate casualties.
In addition to their specific political goals, the emotional motivation for Chechnya-based
radical separatists to stage terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus and elsewhere in Russia has
significantly increased during Russia’s two military campaigns in Chechnya. Blood vendetta has
78 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. Vladimir
Bobrovnikov, “Islam in the Post-Soviet Northern Caucasus (Dagestan): Myths and Reality,” 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.
79 Russian court sentenced natives of Dagestan Isa Zainudinov and Alisultan Salikhov to life in prison for involvement
in the organization of a deadly apartment bombing in the Dagestani city of Buinaksk. Russian prosecutors insisted that
it was Chechnya-based warlord Khattab who ordered the blast that killed 62 when a powerful bomb went off in front of
a 50-apartment building in Buinaksk on September 4, 1999. Simon Saradzhyan, “After One Year, Blast Probe Still
Drags On,” The Moscow Times, September 15, 2000. Russian law-enforcers also maintain that Khattab ordered the
bombings of apartment buildings killing some 220 people in Russian cities during fall 1999. One of the alleged bombers
and native of Karachayevo-Cherkessia Adam Dekkushe was arrested in 2002 and told investigators of the Federal
Security Service (FSB) that it was this salafite-minded warlord who issued the order through his subordinate Sheikh Abu
Omar, deputy chief of FSB Operations and Search Directorate Yevgeny Kolesnikov told reporters in Moscow on July
17, 2002. RTR Television, July 17, 2002. Dekkushev also told investigators that the alleged terrorists had initially
planned to bomb a dike in southern Russia to flood several settlements in hopes of killing thousands, but then changed
their minds. Alexander Shvarev, “Zrya My S Rebyatiami Etim Zanimalis” [We should not have been doing this with
guys], Vremya Novostei, February 19, 2003. According to Alexander Litvinenko, former Lt. Colonel of FSB, however, it
could have been the FSB that organized the apartment bombings. Litvinenko, who claims to have spoken to Gochiyaev,
has not backed his allegations with any direct evidence, however. Yuri Felshitinskii and Alexander Litvinenko, “Blowing
30