Insurgency in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia

Kabardino-Balkaria:


-Early militant activity: In August 2004 Yarmuk announced the beginning of military operations in the republic. Their online manifesto rejected terrorism, referring to alleged government responsibility for the 1999 Russian apartment bombings ("We are not fighting against women or children, like Russian invaders are doing in Ichkeria. We are not blowing up sleeping people, like FSB of the Russian Federation does"). The manifesto noted the corruption of the "mafia clans" that led the republic ("These mere apologies for rulers, who sold themselves to the invaders, have made drug addiction, prostitution, poverty, crime, depravity, drunkenness and unemployment prosper in our Republic").^[10]


Yarmuk launched its first attack in Kabardino-Balkaria that same month, ambushing policemen in Chegem district. A turning point came in December 2004, when Yarmuk members conducted a raid on the office of the federal drug control agency in Nalchik, during which they seized large quantities of weapons and ammunition. The founding leader of Yarmuk, Muslim Atayev, was killed when the police stormed an apartment in Nalchik in January 2005. The organization continued to operate, staging attacks under the leadership of his successor, Rustam Bekanov. He was killed three months later and was replaced by Anzor Astemirov, a former deputy director of the Islamic Center. The group's base of operations was Nalchik and the Balkarian enclave around Mount Elbrus.^[7]


-Nalchik raid and aftermath: Yarmuk was the main force involved in the botched raid by around 100–200 mostly untrained militants on the capital Nalchik in 2005, during which more than 140 people, including 95 alleged insurgents, were killed. Scores of suspects were detained after the attack, and at least 52 were put on trial. The Jamaat apparently lost most of its members, including the deputy leader Ilyas Gorchkhanov. Survivors retrenched, and in late 2007 were subsumed into the United Vilayet of Kabarada, Balkaria and Karachay that would operate not only in Kabardino-Balkaria but also in the neighboring republic of Karachay–Cherkessia after the destruction of its native Karachay Jamaat. The number of attacks attributed to Vilayet KBK at that time had been relatively low, being mostly targeted assassinations such as that of Anatoly Kyarov. One exception was the shooting of a group of nine Russian hunters in November 2007. The militants systematically kept recruiting new fighters and gathering weapons.^[12][9][10]


-Surge of violence: Following the killing of the group's leader Anzor Astemirov in March 2010, the leadership was assumed by more aggressive young commanders like the Baksan area-based Asker Dzhappuyev and the south-west sector commander Ratmir Shameyev, who regrouped Vilayet KBK and changed its tactics. The group went on to perpetrate two high-profile bombings: a blast at the Nalchik hippodrome that injured two ministers during May Day festivities and a sabotage attack on the Baksan hydroelectric power station that inflicted significant economic damage in July. The group was also involved in a large number of near-daily attacks directed against members of security forces. According to a statement made by the Russian federal Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev in November 2010, "the highest level of the terrorist threat in the North Caucasus is in the republics of Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria", as the KBR saw six times more gun attacks and nearly five times more explosions in 2010 as in the same period of 2009.^[13][14] The Vilayet KBK fighters began to simultaneously act as a Taliban-style morality police, targeting alleged "dens of vice".^[10] Between March and May 2011, the Russian Security Services killed nearly the entire leadership of the Vilayet, including overall Emir Asker Dzhappuyev, Emir Zakaria of the southwestern sector and Emir Abdul Jabbar of the Northeastern Sector.^[15]


-Low level insurgency: The death of so many commanders led to a decline in the number of rebel attacks in Kabardino-Balkaria, mostly taking the form of attacks on local police officials and police stations.^[16] In September 2011 Alim Zankishiev (aka Emir Ubaidallah) became the new leader of the rebels,^[17] he was killed by Russian security forces in March 2012. ^[18] A security operation in Nalchik in September 2012 again saw the killing of several senior commanders (Emir Hamza of the North-Western sector and acting leader of the group,^[16] Emir Abdal-Malik of the North-Eastern sector and Shamil Ulbashev, Emir of the Central Sector) in a single operation.^[19][20] Ruslan Baryrbekov (also using the Nom de guerre Amir Khamza) briefly became leader before being killed in September 2012 when Khasanbi Fakov became emir.^[16] Fakov was killed by security forces in August 2013 in Nalchik,^[16] as was his successor Tengiz Guketlov in March 2014.^{[21][22][23][24]}


Vilayat KBK suffered a split in August 2015, with Robert Zankishiev joining Caucasus Emirate commanders in other North Caucasus republics in pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, while Zalim Shebzukhov led those who retained loyalty to the Caucasus Emirate.^[25] Both commanders were killed by Russian security forces in operations in November 2015 and August 2016 respectively.^{[5][26][27][28][29]}


Karachay-Cherkessia:


The Karachay Jamaat was founded in 1995.^[30] The group preached the ideas of Wahhabism , creating branches in Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria . At first, the jamaat was led by the elderly imam Adam Semyonov, but then he stopped accommodating young parishioners.^[31][32]


In May 2002, the newspaper „Izvestia" named Ramazan Borlakov as the founder of the Karachay-Cherkess Jamaat . Being the imam of one of the local mosques, in the mid-1990s he visited several Arab countries at once, where he found sponsors to open his own madrasah in his homeland, in the city of Uchkeken: "Gradually the sermons became more aggressive. Borlakov himself repeated more and more often that Muslims in Russia are oppressed, that Muslims need to unite and that they need to live according to Sharia , and not secular laws. That the official organization – the Spiritual Administration of Muslims – is a rotten and corrupt structure that is friendly with the authorities and does not care about the poor".^[33] Izvestia calls Achimez Gochiyaev a student of Borlakov. Borlakov handed over the management of the Karachay-Cherkess Jamaat in mid-1998 to his most faithful student Khyzyr Salpagarov. Shortly before the start of the Second Chechen War , terrorist leader Ramazan Borlakov established contact with the Arab terrorist Khattab . Borlakov sent his supporters to his training camps and then formed the so-called " Karachay battalion " from them. Among the militants of the "battalion" was Achemez Gochiyaev, who also sent his followers to the camps of Khattab and the leader of the Dagestan Wahhabis Bagautdin Dagestani.^[31]


In March 2010, after the liquidation of the leader of the Kabardino-Balkarian jamaat Anzor Astemirov , the Karachay and Kabardino-Balkarian "jamaat" were united into the "United Vilayat of Kabarda, Balkaria and Karachay".^[34][35][36]


Leaders:

Conclusion[edit]

The insurgency in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia officially ended in 2017, following a series of successful counterinsurgency operations by Russian security forces. However, sporadic incidents of violence and unrest continue to occur in the region, highlighting the ongoing challenges of maintaining stability in the North Caucasus.