A republic of the Russian
Federation in the North
Caucasus, Dagestan borders Azerbaijan to the south,
Georgia and Chechnya to the west and the Caspian
Sea to the east and is one of the oldest Islamised territories in Russia. Its diverse population includes many
indigenous ethnic groups – the largest being the Avars
– as well as Slavs and Turkic- and Farsi-speaking
populations.
There is a common yet erroneous tendency to analyse
Dagestan in reference to Chechnya. The two republics
share a history of struggle against the Russian Empire’s expansion, most importantly during the common resistance led by Imam Shamil in the nineteenth
century, which was defeated
in Dagestan in 1859.
That is where many historical commonalities end,
however. Dagestan became an “autonomous” Soviet
republic in the 1920s. Russia, first under the Tsars
and later in the Soviet era, exerted tighter control over
it by playing on the balance between the many ethnic
groups and creating local allegiances. Meanwhile,
Chechnya endured territorial divisions and mass murders of its population (both during the nineteenth century and the 1944 deportation), which fed a cycle of
revolts and sustained independence aspirations.
The relationship between the two republics has been
in flux since the mid-1990s, when Chechnya became
increasingly unstable. During the first war there
(1994-1996), Dagestan welcomed internally displaced
persons (IDPs), but Chechens did not receive the
same support during the second war, which started
after warlords Ibn al-Khattab and Shamil Basaev invaded Dagestan in August 1999. While the incursion
showed worrying links be
tween Chechen and Dagestani Islamic extremists, their methods and ideology
were unpopular in Dagestan and convinced many that
Chechnya was the source of instability and lawlessness in the region.