The Caucasus Emirate and the Movement of Military Jamaats

Published on EGF: 18.10.2010

by Mikhail Roshchin

The second Chechen war, which began in early October 1999, was linked to Islam from the outset. It was immediately preceded by the jihad of radical Muslims in the Daghestan mountains during August and September 1999. Furthermore, although during the first years of the war the leadership of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI) – the unrecognised secessionist government of Chechnya proclaimed on 6 September 1991 (Ichkeria = ‘nine lands’ in Chechen, denoting the nine Chechen clans) – was secular, its activities quite quickly began to take on Muslim overtones. The decisions of CRI’s State Defence Committee on 22 July 2002 strengthened the link with Islam when Shamil Basaev was appointed commander of all military operations, and when Abdulkhalim Saidullaev, head of Argun’s jamaat1 and advisor on religious questions to CRI’s president Aslan Maskhadov, was appointed vice-president of CRI. READ MORE

 |  External Relations  |  The Caucasus and the Black Sea