Caucasian Front (Chechen War)

The Caucasian Front () also called Caucasus Front or the Caucasian Mujahadeen, was formally established in May 2005 as an Islamic structural unit of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria's armed forces by the decree of the separatist President of Chechnya Abdul-Halim Sadulayev during the Second Chechen War.

History

The organisation united various rebel jamaat groups across the North Caucasus to fight the Russian rule not only in Chechnya but also in the rest of the Russian Caucasus. It was led by a Chechen commander Shamil Basayev until his death in July 2006 and since then by an ethnic Ingush Akhmed Yevloyev. Yevloyev was captured alive in June 2010. In October 2007 leaders of the Caucasian Front announced the organization now fights to establish the Caucasus Emirate throughout the North Caucus of Russia.

While the anti-Russian local insurgencies in North Caucasus started even before the formal creation of the Caucasian Front, two months after Aslan Maskhadov's death, the new Chechen separatist leader Abdul-Halim Sadulayev officially announced that they had formed a Caucasus Front within the framework of "reforming the system of military-political power." Along with the existing Chechen, Dagestani and Ingush "sectors", the Stavropol, Kabardin-Balkar, Krasnodar, Karachai-Circassian, Ossetian and Adyghe jamaats were included in it, meaning that in theory most the regions of the south-west Russia's would be involved in hostilities. The Chechen separatist...
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