“137 families were [Wahhabis], and only about two thousand families. Was it necessary to destroy the whole village because of this? - Madina says angrily. - I remember when they fled from the village, they cried. And some military man says: "I should have cried when your husbands hid in the hay and brought weapons to the village." I answer him: "If you knew that they were hiding and carrying him, why did you allow it?"

Although the Russian security forces were well aware of the rebellious enclave in the Kadar zone of Dagestan, the operation began more than strangely on August 28, the first to enter the village of Karamakhi were soldiers of the Dagestan OMON and internal troops. The bandits let them be drawn into the village. On the streets - not a soul. Silence. Captain Sarazhutdin Aliyev's group almost reached the mosque (this is the center of the village) when the bandits opened fire on it. The militiamen accepted the fight. The OMON chief, Abbas Shikhsaidov, fired back to the last bullet, after which he blew himself up and two bandits with a grenade. Another fighter, Rajab Zumanov, did the same. In total, thirteen people died in Karamakhi. Only two policemen managed to escape. The captured riot policemen were chopped to pieces. Murad Shikhragimov was wounded in both legs. Despite the pain, this courageous man crawled to his own for two days. And not just crawling, but dragging a seriously wounded comrade on him. Soon after this tragic incident on Mount Chaban, a reconnaissance group of special forces of the internal troops ran into an ambush of militants. The result of the battle: four soldiers were killed, sixteen were injured.

Over the five days of the operation, the federal forces did not achieve any success, got bogged down in fruitless skirmishes and gave the militants time to improve their defenses. Khattab and Basayev felt the constraint and indecision of the enemy, which gave them additional confidence in the success of the invasion. On September 3, 1999, the new commander of the United Group of Federal Forces in the Republic of Dagestan, General Gennady Troshev, flew to Makhachkala. After examining the situation, he contacted Moscow and insistently asked that no one "pull his sleeve." Troshev himself recalls: “The operation began on August 28, 1999, it was prepared and carried out mainly by the forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. However, from the very first steps, miscalculations at various levels of leadership became obvious. The plan of the operation was simplified, the real strength of the bandit formations was clearly underestimated, the methods of action of the republican militia and subdivisions of the internal troops were inadequate. For example, the Dagestani militiamen went to restore order in Karamakhi in UAZ cars, with pistols and handcuffs, believing that such equipment is sufficient to disarm the Wahhabite detachments. They were greeted with organized machine-gun (!) Fire, and such frivolity resulted in heavy losses - wounded and killed employees. The Wahhabis acted in accordance with all the rules of military science, and the police went to take them, like some small gang of crooks. Surprisingly, even after the "lesson" taught by the bandits, the leadership of the operation did not have fewer mistakes. Firstly, the control point was located in the Upper Dzhengutai - a dozen kilometers from the Kadar zone. At such a distance, many generals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs led the operation virtually blindly. Secondly, the radio networks of the police and internal troops were under the full control of the bandit formations of the Kadar zone. The Wahhabis not only listened to everything, but also launched "disinformation", organized radio interference. There is complete chaos on the air. As we can see, no serious conclusions were drawn in this regard after the first Chechen campaign.

Thirdly, there was no clear interaction between the subdivisions of the internal troops and the police, as a result, the ill-conceived attacks were easily repelled by the bandits ... regrouping of troops: they began to conduct detailed reconnaissance and identify the forces and means of militants in the Kadar zone, reconnaissance, etc. after marching, they took up positions and lines according to the plan: the motorized rifle battalion of the 242nd motorized rifle regiment left Kaspiysk and formed 17 checkpoints around the Kadar zone at a distance of about 5 kilometers from the center of hostilities; parachute from. The 322nd airborne battalion of the 76th airborne division with a tank company of the 242nd regiment and five ATGM crews advanced to the area of ​​the village of Kadar and blockaded Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi from the south and east, a battalion of the 205th motorized rifle brigade arrived here (without two companies) with a spetsnaz company - for the protection and defense of the command post and the artillery battalion, as well as a special medical detachment, a communications center for the command post of the district and an artillery battalion of an artillery regiment. And before that, we sent four special forces groups to the Chan-Kurbe gorge to reconnoiter the route and escort the columns. They set up three checkpoints to prevent the attacks of the militants. Three kilometers north of Nizhny Dzhengutai, in the field camp, the main part of the artillery was placed: the artillery division of the 944th self-propelled artillery regiment and the jet battalion (BM-21). Aviation based at the airfields in Mozdok, Budennovsk and Morozovsk (about 6 Su-24 and Su-25) was also involved in the operation. Subsequently, however, some of the planes were transferred to the Novolaksky direction - to destroy the bandit detachments that broke through on September 5. All this complicated regrouping of forces and means was carried out by us so clearly and in an organized manner that we managed to overlap the planned schedule. Instead of two days, we spent only a day on redeployment. By the end of September 4, the troops were ready to start active hostilities. We created two blocking rings around the Kadar zone, which ensured the necessary isolation of the bandits, excluding the possibility of their breakthrough. However, the enemy's reconnaissance also worked. The large-scale movement of troops did not escape her attention. The Wahhabis both inside the Kadar zone and outside it, in neighboring Chechnya, realized that the time for police detachments (armed with pistols and handcuffs) was over: the "federals" were getting down to business seriously and were not going to joke this time. Therefore, in order to divert our attention from the Kadar zone, the bandits took a number of unexpected daring steps. " Late in the evening of the same September 4, in the city of Buinaksk, on Shikhsaidov Street (formerly Levanevsky), a five-story residential building was blown up on the territory of the military town of the Russian Defense Ministry. The power of the bomb, according to experts, was 300 kg of TNT. The charge went off at 21 hours 45 minutes. 68 people died under the ruins of two entrances, more than 150 were injured of varying severity. The house was inhabited mainly by families of servicemen of the 136th Motorized Rifle Brigade. “I immediately went there to study the situation on the spot,” Troshev writes in his book “My War”. “After making sure that the rescue work had begun and that the rubble was being cleared, I went to the headquarters of the 136th brigade, reported to the leadership in Moscow about the terrorist attack and the measures taken to exclude new explosions. Search groups were formed from military personnel and representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who combed the city and especially the area around the brigade. And their actions soon yielded results: on one of the streets, near the hospital, a ZIL-130 car with a kung (bread truck) was found. The vehicle aroused suspicion in the search team, and the servicemen examined it carefully. It turned out that the kung was stuffed to capacity with an explosive mixture, and an explosive device with a clockwork mechanism was set at 1 hour and 30 minutes. Apparently, the terrorists hoped that after the explosion of a residential building and the evacuation of the injured, a mass of people would gather at the entrance to the hospital (although with this amount of explosives one could wipe half the city off the face of the earth). So it would have happened if not for the sappers. The commander of the engineering battalion, Major Kryukov, managed to neutralize the infernal machine 10 minutes before the explosion! " As it was later established during the investigation, the terrorists loaded more than 5 tons of explosives into KamAZ, hid it among the watermelons, and then freely delivered it to Buinaksk. Here they needed two more cars. One car filled with explosives was driven to house No. 3 on Shikhsaidov Street, and the other to house No. 147 on Dakhadayev Street. For this crime, the terrorists were promised 300 thousand dollars, but they received only half. Arbi Barayev paid off with the demolition men, who explained to the performers that since only one car exploded, and not two as planned, their fee would be cut in half. Troshev: “In the morning (at 7.00) on September 5, about 700 (according to some sources - more than a thousand) militants broke through the barriers of the police and internal troops on the border with Dagestan and rushed into the interior of the republic. By the end of the day, they captured the settlements of Shushiya, Akhar, Chapaevo, Gamiyah, Novolakskoe, Tukhchar and reached the line 5 kilometers southwest of Khasavyurt. According to operational data, some Akkin Chechens living in Dagestan were ready to support the invading bandits. All this made the situation extremely difficult. After all, with the capture of Khasavyurt, a direct road to Makhachkala opened before the militants. To prevent this very real danger, General V. Kazantsev, the commander of the North Caucasus Military District, took over command of the federal forces in the Novolak area. Although it was quite obvious that the militants' strike on the Novolaksky district was just a diversion, some "hotheads" began to demand from me, firstly, to transfer part of the forces to Khasavyurt, and secondly, to quickly finish the operation to eliminate the Wahhabi enclave ... In short, they began to hurry and take away the forces. I vehemently objected to both the one and the other. He argued, convinced, and argued. In the end, in order to be left behind, they had to sacrifice part of the aviation. My obstinacy was explained, of course, not by stubbornness, and certainly not by personal ambitions. Now I had a clear idea of ​​who and what I was dealing with in the Kadar zone. Two villages with a population of about 5 thousand people turned into a single powerful fortified area. Its garrison consisted not only of local residents (mainly Dargins), but also alien Chechen and Arab militants. From the intelligence, I learned that Khachilayev, Jarulla, Mukhamed, Zhdamaludin, Mohammed-Rasul, Khalifa are in command of the fighting units, they have hundreds of bandits under their command. There is a separate formation - exclusively from mercenaries who went through the training camps of Khattab. As it turned out, for several years (!) In a row the Wahhabis diligently turned their villages into fortresses, as if they knew that sooner or later the federal authorities would run out of patience. Each house was equipped with powerful basements with loopholes for firing. Underground communications were being prepared, ammunition and material depots, classrooms, a hospital and even a prison. In addition, the terrain created natural obstacles in the path of the attacking troops. Villages - on the hills, and around - gorges: the effect of inaccessibility. As is known from historical chronicles, it was here that the troops of the Persian king were defeated. The decisions of the Sharia court over the past few years also give an idea of ​​how the local Wahhabis prepared for war: the guilty were punished in the form of, for example, a month of excavation or unloading a cement machine. I repeat, as a result of all this, a whole underground city was created near the villages of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, which is not afraid of either artillery or air strikes. This was confirmed after the very first strikes by all means on the positions of the bandits. It would seem that nothing alive should remain after such a raid, but as soon as we went on the attack, many firing points of the militants started working. The sniper fire was especially destructive. We got killed and wounded. Artillery and aviation had to work again and again. We specified the fire engagement schedule for every day and every night. The goals were constantly being adjusted. The main burden fell on the shoulders of the gunners, since bad weather (rain and fog) prevented the active use of aviation. However, we rolled out tanks to the northern outskirts of Kadar, and they supplemented the artillery fire with direct fire. In fact, for two days - September 5 and 6 (which corresponded to the previously approved plan) - fire was inflicted on enemy positions. Therefore, after the very first volleys, one of the Wahhabi leaders, a former State Duma deputy, Nadir Khachilaev, requested negotiations. He demanded a ceasefire and a "corridor" for all the militants to enter Chechnya. We, of course, answered that there could be no question of any "corridor" for the bandits. Or surrender and surrender of weapons, or destruction. The only thing we will agree to is to provide the remaining women and children with an opportunity to leave the war zone. Most of them left even earlier, but some were left in the villages as hostages in the hope that the "federals" would not open fire under these conditions. In the end, seeing that the leadership of the operation was not going to make concessions, the bandits released almost all old men, women and children ... I placed my command post over the abyss, on the outskirts of Kadar. Rebellious villages - at a glance. Although it was unsafe, one of the soldiers at the command post was wounded. On the opposite (northern) side of the Kadar zone, in the field camp, the command post of the 22nd operational brigade (IV) was located under the command of Colonel V. Kersky, whose units played an essential role in the defeat of the bandit formations. On the morning of September 8, they already attacked the positions of the militants in the area of ​​new buildings in the north of Karamakhi. From the south-west, the soldiers of the 20th special forces detachment moved to the assault, and from the southeast and east the special forces of the 8th detachment struck. At first everything went well, but the bandits quickly restored the fire system after the raids of our aviators and artillerymen. Enemy snipers started working and had to retreat. On the same day of the assault, a group of Wahhabis were captured, trying to break out of the encirclement - nine people: six men (among them the Khasbulatov brothers, the brother of the wife of one of the Wahhabite leaders - Jarulla - Azil Irisbiev, etc.) and three women (including his wife Jarullah - Bariyat). Again it was necessary to bring down the fire of artillery, aviation and tanks on the combat positions of the bandits. At the same time, they tried to save the buildings - they hit only on reconnoitered targets, but, unfortunately, it was not done without destruction. After the fire raids - a new assault. By September 10, the special forces of the 17th detachment of the Internal Troops captured the southern (lower) outskirts of Chabanmakhi, the 20th detachment captured the southwestern outskirts of Karamakhi, the 1st battalion successfully overcame the quarter of new buildings and reached the outskirts of the so-called "old village" of Karamakhi. By September 11, the reconnaissance company of the 22nd brigade “saddled” the Chaban mountain dominating the entire area and, in fact, ensured the success of the special forces, who made significant progress. The 8th detachment took the height above the middle part of the Chabanmakhi village, and the 20th detachment captured the entire southern part of the village and went to its eastern outskirts ... Although the enemy fought desperately in some areas. For example, in Chabanmakhi, during the assault on a strongpoint, one of the fanatic militants, standing up to his full height, rushed with a grenade at our soldiers. He blew up himself, and one of the soldiers, two wounded. During the day (from the morning of September 11 to the morning of September 12), the reconnaissance battalion and a detachment of special forces overcame three powerful strongholds of the Wahhabis, suppressed several groups of snipers and went to the center of the village. Already at noon, the Russian tricolor was flying over Karamakhi. The streets of the village were strewn with the corpses of bandits. Already on the eve of the Wahhabis, it was felt that they panicked, many wanted to surrender - we knew this both from radio intercepts and from the testimony of prisoners. However, the mercenaries did not give the "local" the opportunity to surrender, forced to fight to the end. They understood that if they could somehow avoid the harsh punishment of the law under one pretext or another, then they had no excuses: their hands were up to the elbows in kpovi even before they came to the Kadar zone. Simultaneously with the onslaught of the 22nd brigade in Karamakhi, the special forces of the GUIN and OMON units continued to advance in Chabanmakhi. The Dagestani riot police fought especially bravely. They proudly hoisted the Russian flag over the village again. It happened on September 12 at 18.00. The remnants of the defeated gangs rolled into a wooded hollow near the northwestern outskirts of Karamakhi. In fact, on the morning of September 13, a "cleansing" operation began in both villages. At the same time, they finished off the surviving militants in the "brilliant green" between the settlements. It wasn't easy. For two days (until September 15) we smoked the bandits out of all the cracks. Having abandoned their weapons, they seeped out of the battle zone individually and in small groups. They wrapped themselves in carpets, crawled on all fours between the sheep in the flocks, in general, went to all the tricks, saving their skins. It is bitter to admit this, but, unfortunately, some managed to leave ... On the whole, a powerful group of militants - up to 1000 people - was defeated in the Kadar zone. Hundreds of killed and wounded captured. A powerful fortified area was destroyed. The Wahhabi enclave of Dagestan ceased to exist ...

On September 15, I reported to the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff on the successful completion of the operation in the Kadar zone. Marshal I. Sergeev congratulated me, and A. Kvashnin seemed to breathe a sigh of relief ... "(14) It should be pointed out that the author of the above lines, General Troshev, it was during the siege of the Wahhabite stronghold in the Kadar zone of Dagestan that he outlined his tactics of saving soldiers' lives during the assault. The scheme was straightforward - first, massive artillery and aviation fire on the militants' positions, and only then the advance of the infantry. Trosheva was repeatedly harassed about this and was even nearly removed from office for slowness, but he was adamant. The prevailing common sense of the command identified such tactics as fundamental. Unfortunately, it was far from always applied in practice, although almost all generals kept repeating in front of video cameras about the need to save people. Much more willingly, the military command spread about the killed militants and gladly showed their corpses to journalists. On the whole, the new phase of hostilities that began in the summer and autumn of 1999 was characterized by a significantly greater preparedness and activity of the federal forces. Their absolute superiority led to the destruction of most of the pieces of heavy equipment still in the hands of the militants. At the end of 1999, illegal armed groups had only significant stocks of small arms, which were completely insufficient for the defense of the territory of the Republic, but which were sufficient for conducting massive partisan actions in Chechnya and beyond. In response to the actions of the federal forces to destroy the bandit formations within the framework of the general mobilization announced in Chechnya, about 30,000 reservists have registered. A. Maskhadov decided to create three fronts. One of these fronts - the eastern one - was headed by Sh. Basayev. "Defense Minister" M. Khambiev said that Chechnya "will not only respond to any invasion with an offensive of its own forces," but "special Chechen units will begin to operate in the Russian rear." The terrorist attack in Buinaksk was only the first link in a whole chain. On September 6, 1999, an explosion occurred on Manezhnaya Square in Moscow, which injured more than 40 people. On the night of September 9, there was an explosion on the street. Guryanov in Moscow. 93 people died, 131 were injured. On the night of September 13, an explosion of a residential building on the Kashirskoye highway in Moscow followed. In parallel with the information strikes against the new favorites of the West in the person of Luzhkov (and behind him Primakov and Gusinsky), who failed to ensure the security of Moscow and turned out to be extremely corrupt, the explosions and death of ordinary people served as a powerful stimulus for the formation of an opinion in society about the need for a “final decision the Chechen issue ”. Almost patriotic hysteria began in the independent and democratic media with calls to "finish off the Chechen reptile." Moreover, such "ultra-liberals" as Svanidze and Dorenko, not to mention NTV, were also zealous in this. Even E. Masyuk was removed from the air, creating the image of "a Chechen hero without fear and reproach with a grenade launcher in his hands." (I wonder what these "heroes" had in their hands when they visited the pit in which they put the "independent" journalist, waiting for Gusinsky to fork out for the ransom?) Thousands of Russians were killed on the territory of Chechnya during the period from 1991 to 1999, not counting those killed during the hostilities of 1994-1996. More than 800 Russian citizens were kidnapped for ransom in the territories adjacent to Chechnya. If in 1989 293.7 thousand Russians (23.1% of the population) lived on the territory of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, then by the beginning of the current hostilities there were only about 29 thousand. The overwhelming majority of them are of retirement age ”(78), and also that in Moscow“ the three thousandth Chechen organized criminal group controls a number of hotels, about a dozen casinos and 50 gas stations. In the capital there is also a criminal Chechen special forces of 200 armed fighters to the teeth ... "

This article was written in the fall of 1999, after the return of a group of representatives of the "Memorial" society from the war zone in Dagestan. During the two-week trip, among other things, we interviewed refugees from the villages of the Kadar zone, twice visited the village of Karamakhi, got acquainted with the materials submitted by the Dagestan authorities about the events in the region, and communicated with the military. The meetings and conversations with the villagers were not “organized” by the authorities - although some of our interlocutors expounded exclusively “official truths”, the majority were ordinary people in difficult circumstances who sincerely talked about the tragic events in their villages. Gradually, the collected information formed a complete, albeit complex, picture.

This complexity was its main difference from most of the articles and reports of those weeks. Most of the journalists have definitely taken the "federal" side. However, the circumstances of the place and time gave grounds for this - in Dagestan in August-September 1999, the Russian military, for the first time, probably after 1945, feeling like the defenders of their people, behaved accordingly ... though with some exceptions. The Karamakhi enclave, otherwise known as the Kadar zone, became such an “exception”: here the “siloviki” behaved as if they were on a foreign land. Little was written about this flip side of the war at that time: the Russian media definitely preferred only “one side of the coin”, while still sincerely and voluntarily.

But the reason for writing the article offered to the reader was a publication from another row, from among those who were in the minority - due to the latter circumstance, such texts have a greater chance of being accepted as truth. In the 37th issue of Novaya Gazeta in 1999, a story written by Alexander Gorshkov of an officer who took part in the "cleansing" of the village of Karamakhi was published. In this story, it was just about the “horrors of war”, but, firstly, the villagers appeared as a single mass opposing the federal forces, and, secondly, the brutality of the latter overshadowed the “cleansing” operations of the first Chechen war. In Karamakhi we saw something different - but more about that in the article ...

We wrote this article in reply, sent it to the editorial office, but it was not published - now it is no longer important why. A collapse of events began: both in the Caucasus - in October, federal troops entered Chechnya - and in Russia as a whole - the political process for which the war was the main PR tool. What happened in Dagestan was rapidly receding into the past.

But even now, the publication of this article seems quite appropriate. And because the events of August-September 1999 in the village of Karamakhi are part of our common “lasting past”, which has not yet been sorted out. And because, despite all the changes, the style of the Russian government has largely remained the same: at first not to notice the problem, then not to notice its complexity, and in the end use force. All this is undoubtedly effective - at first there are no difficulties, then - they are, but simple, and finally, in a simple way, it is solved. A curtain. Awareness of problems, discussion, decision-making - all this, as it were, is absent. Today - because the public space is almost collapsed. Then, in the late 1990s - because Russian society itself, voluntarily turned away from difficult issues.

A man approached a group of men in civilian clothes sitting on the square near the dilapidated building of the former police station and began to excitedly talk about something. The gloomy people got up, took their submachine guns and quickly walked up the street from the square. There, on the forested slopes of the mountains surrounding the village, some of those who are called Wahhabis are still hiding; one has just been seen near the caves. Now the militias were going to capture or kill their fellow villager. Soon, automatic fires rang out from above.

We watched this scene on September 20 in the village of Karamakhi. The first time one of us [A. Cherkasov] visited there when the "cleansing" was still going on, the second time we came to the village when its part was already "cleaned out" and was controlled by local militias.

At the entrance to the village, on the side of the highway, there was a long column of trucks, trailers, and cars. Very dissatisfied men walked along it in groups of something - these are the inhabitants of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, who had left their villages, waiting for permission to return to their destroyed houses. Then - a police post, a serpentine road, a winding road into the gorge, several burned-out armored personnel carriers on the side of the road, and, finally, a view of the village of Karamakhi opens. Here, at the entrance, there is a detachment of the Dagestan militia. The military is gradually leaving the Kadar zone, transferring control over the villages to the Dagestani Ministry of Internal Affairs. Local residents also scurry about here - those who, by hook or by crook, managed to overcome the cordons on the roads and get into the village. Having learned that one of us [S. Kovalev] is a deputy of the State Duma, they immediately began to complain - they say that now, when the fighting is over, and most of the residents have not yet been allowed back, the remaining houses and even ruins are being looted. The militiamen - both newcomers and their own, Dagestani - are pulling out of their houses everything that has survived.

There were almost no policemen in Karamakhi - fearing snipers entrenched on the slopes of the surrounding mountains, they try not to walk along the rural streets. Militia groups from the surrounding Avar villages (mainly Dargins live in the Kadar zone) were not allowed in either Karamakhi or Chabanmakhi. To maintain order in Karamakhi, part of the local residents who fled at the beginning of the fighting were allowed to return, to whom the Ministry of Internal Affairs handed out carbines. However, many of the militias were armed with machine guns; we didn't ask where they got them from. We described the reaction of these militias to the news of their fellow villager-Wahhabite discovered somewhere nearby at the very beginning of the article.

The village of Karamakhi was terribly destroyed - there are almost no intact houses, most of the buildings were turned into ruins. But even now it was clear that it was a strong, prosperous and working village. It spreads widely in a small mountain valley. Solid spacious houses surrounded by large estates. The source of wealth is also visible - in the village and around it, all the land that can be cultivated is occupied mainly by vegetable gardens. The villagers themselves took the grown cabbage, potatoes, and other vegetables to sell not only to Dagestan, but also far beyond its borders. For this, many families had their own cargo trailer, which, in addition, made it possible to have additional income due to long-distance transportation.

The streets of the village are asphalted, gas and water are installed. Most of the houses were heated in winter with gas steam heating. Now the pipes of the gas pipeline are torn and twisted by the blast wave, riddled with fragments.

"Where does such wealth come from? Only from the Wahhabis!" - this is what has been stated in many newspaper and magazine articles. It was they, the Wahhabis (depending on the sympathies of the author, whether trying to insidiously bribe the villagers, or, on the contrary, taking care of their well-being) gave money to buy trailers, gasified and asphalted the village. Such statements caused extreme bewilderment of the residents of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, with whom we spoke. Trucks, including trailers, they bought both before the appearance of the Wahhabis in their villages, and with them - but with their own hard and long-earned money.

As for the improvement of the village, it is more difficult here. As far as we can judge, the appearance in the village of a religious fundamentalist community striving for power had only an indirect relation to this. Asphalting of streets, gasification, improvement of water supply Karamakhians associate with the name of the head of the administration of the villages of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi Akhmed Atayev. In any case, it was under him that a significant part of this work was carried out. It is obvious that he was a protege of the Makhachkala authorities and tried to resist those who (rightly or not - we will not go into the discussion on this matter) are called Wahhabis. Based on the classical conflictological scheme, in such cases, in order to reduce the base of support for opposition groups, the authorities are advised to pay attention to the social sphere - which has been done. The Karamakhi administration allocated money for the improvement, but it did not help. On June 21, 1996, Atayev, who was driving in a car, was killed in an ambush. It was not possible to find the killers. Several members of the Wahhabi community were arrested, who were then acquitted by the Supreme Court of Dagestan for lack of evidence.

Now the former prosperity is a thing of the past. It is clear that it will take many years to rebuild the village, and winter is about to begin. It was for this that the Karamakhis and Chabanmakhis, with whom we spoke, presented a tough account to their fellow villagers-Wahhabis: “We told them to at least moderate their intransigence towards the authorities. They warned that this would not end well for the village. But no, they did not want to listen to us, they started an armed confrontation. At any cost, they wanted to assert their “correct authority”. And now I have not sat down. Because of them."

There are other claims - first of all, imposing on the majority, their own idea of ​​how to live - often with the use of force.

“Why, if I want to celebrate a wedding, I can’t do it the way it has always been customary for us? Why did they forbid us to celebrate holidays, for example, New Year, May 1st, March 8th? "

Wahhabism is a trend in Islam that seeks to cleanse it of centuries-old layers and deformations, does not recognize the separation of secular and spiritual power. In those areas of Dagestan where Wahhabism had been developing for many years (for example, in Tsumadinsky), peaceful coexistence of the traditional and Wahhabite communities, their dialogue and even reconciliation was still possible. But the Wahhabis came to Karamakhi from outside, and more recently, as a closed and aggressive sect. At first, gradually, and then - more and more decisively, they began to take power in the village into their own hands, in the end - they drove out the militia, and began to arrange a righteous life according to their own understanding. Only an active minority of the Karamakhis resisted the innovations. The majority of the villagers, accustomed to submitting to any whims of the Soviet regime, at first perceived the "reforms" as insignificant, but, in the end, unexpectedly for themselves, woke up under the conditions of Sharia rule, where practically all the customs they observed (and not only on May 1 and March 8) turned out to be outlaw.

A separate topic is the activities of the Sharia court. This court, which consisted of residents of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, introduced into practice the widespread use of corporal punishment in relation to its fellow villagers. The usual sentence is 40 blows with sticks. The list of offenses for which such a punishment could follow was quite large. Most often - drunkenness or disorderly conduct. But there could have been another “crime”. For example, in June of this year, a resident of Karamakhi was punished with sticks for daring to participate in an anti-Wahhabism event organized by the Makhachkala administration. However, the court also punished for serious crimes. During the rule of the Wahhabis in Karamakhi, there was one murder, and it was committed by a member of the Wahhabite community. In a domestic quarrel, he shot his neighbor with a machine gun. The Sharia court sentenced the murderer to a fine and expulsion from the village. They say that the convict went to Chechnya. In the opinion of all our interlocutors, the court was biased, as a result of which it passed a too lenient sentence.

"Why are the Karamakhians expressing their discontent only now?" we asked. "And where did you get this? We protested, some of us even staged a demonstration in Makhachkala. They demanded that the authorities put things in order in our villages. But they did not listen to us. At that time, it was not profitable for the authorities to contact the Wahhabis. And the journalists who came to our villages , they surrounded with special attention and did not even let them talk to us "- about these were the answers.

The Wahhabite community itself was closed to the outside world, in particular, to the majority of the population of the villages. Now the villagers could not in any way influence the relations of the new Wahhabi government with the regional, Dagestani and other leadership - and did not have any information about these connections.

In general, the main surprise for us was the tragic split among the villagers. Not only that, almost everyone with whom we talked both in the village and outside it spoke about their fellow Wahhabis with varying degrees of disapproval. In the end, this was to be expected given the defeat of the fundamentalists. But many spoke directly and without condemnation about the cases when the villagers pointed out the Wahhbits to the federals. One of our interlocutors admitted that he himself pointed out to the officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs his uncle.

This is how the filtration was carried out when residents fleeing the villages. In the Kadar zone, the detention of those suspected of involvement in the "Wahhabi" detachments did not take on an indiscriminate (and therefore massive) character, as was the case during the "sweeps" during the last war in Chechnya. Refugees told us that when checking all the men on the roads leading from Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, the police checked their documents with some lists, and in the absence of documents showed someone invisible, sitting inside an armored vehicle, at the viewing slots, or behind dark glass of the car. As a result, the number of detainees was small - in mid-September there were about 80 people, including those who were brought directly from the villages.

When the assault on Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi began, the vast majority of the five thousand inhabitants living in them were able to leave them. Perhaps the statement of the officer, to whose story A. Gorshkov refers, that “before the battles, no more than five hundred civilians left there” is true. But the next thing - “The majority understood that they had nowhere to go, and preferred to go to the mountains or perish defending their homes” - is clearly far from reality. Indeed, the villagers were not warned about the upcoming start of the military operation - neither the rural Wahhabi elite, actively preparing for defense, nor the republican or federal authorities. Early in the morning of August 28, they were informed of the start of the operation by a Grad volley that struck a field in the vicinity of the village of Kadar, and automatic rounds, which were used to meet the internal troops entering the village. Following this, during the morning and first half of the day, a mass exodus of residents began. Nobody - neither the defenders nor the attackers - prevented the residents from leaving. This was stated by all our interlocutors. Most of them took the highway in their own cars. Artillery and aviation did not hit either the village or the highway during the first day of the fighting. “If we knew that the artillery would not hit the whole day, we would have taken at least something from the property, loaded the cattle into trucks. And so they all left. Now there is even nothing to wear for the winter ”- this is the main and, of course, fair claim of the majority of refugees to the federals. Apart from the "Wahhabi" families who hid in shelters, only a few remained in the village.

For example, the parents of our driver (who lived in Makhachkala, but was from Karamakhi), elderly people, did not want to leave their home in old age: they could not believe that the battles would be so long and cruel. During the first visit to the village, the driver could not find out anything about their fate. But by the time of our second trip to the village, he was beaming with joy: my parents were alive! Their house was destroyed, his mother's collapsed wall broke her ribs, but they survived the shelling, “cleansing”, and now were in Makhachkala.

The families of the Wahhabis had a harder time. There were victims among women and children. Whether only from shelling - we do not know. But we know that at least some of them survived. There are many witnesses to how one of the groups of these families left.

One day, when the “cleansing” of the villages was coming to an end, a terrible procession proceeded through Karamakhi. Ahead of the APC, on which the soldiers were carrying the body of their deceased comrade, they drove a group of several dozen women and children. According to eyewitnesses, they were clearly in shock - their faces did not show any emotions at all. Behind the armored vehicle, three male corpses were dragged along the ground, tied to it by ropes by the legs. On that day, the soldiers discovered one of the shelters in which four militants and the families of the participants in the defense of the village were hiding. The soldiers released the women and children. In the ensuing skirmish, one Russian soldier and three militants were killed. The women and children were escorted for questioning and released the next day. We tried to talk to these women in Makhachkala, but, unfortunately, they declined to meet.

So the opinion that all living things were destroyed during the cleansing is far from reality. Although cruel reprisals (similar to the one described in the article by A. Gorshkov) certainly were. And, probably, there were many such cases. In any case, we recorded one case of torture and subsequent murder.

A local militia led us to a concrete post in the square. There were bloody streaks on the pillar, and a large pool of dried blood next to it on the ground. According to the militia, later confirmed by other residents of the village, two days before our arrival, soldiers of the internal troops seized a sleeping man in one of the houses from whom they found a grenade. Some of the Karamakhians who were in the village identified him as a member of the local Wahhabi community. The soldiers handed the detainee over to the officers of the Makhachkala riot police who took part in the “cleansing” operation. The riot policemen immediately started interrogating - they were interested in where the militants were hiding. The detainee either did not know or did not want to answer. They tied him to a post, shot first one and then the other leg, cut his ear, and finally killed him. The militiamen, for all their dislike of the Wahhabis, were shocked by the massacre - extrajudicial, cruel, public.

In general, the Karamakhi militias extremely disapproved of various special detachments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - OMON, SOBR, special forces. At the same time, they always clarified that such an attitude does not apply to the military personnel of the Ministry of Defense and the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Here is another example of the "arts" of such special forces. We were told about the arson of houses that had taken place on the eve of our arrival - not only told, but also shown smoking conflagrations.

According to the Karamakhites, a detachment of some special forces entered the village. For some reason, the militias were forced to start "cleaning" one of the streets again, on which there were still whole or only partially damaged houses. Then they were ordered to leave this area of ​​the village, and the special forces entered there. "And suddenly we see how smoke rises from one house, then another, the third caught fire. And the houses are not Wahhabis. They set fire to the house of our militia. Well, they are robbing, why set fire to it after that !?" At the same time, they burned down the miraculously preserved Wahhabi madrasah, and several families who were left homeless intended to settle in it for the winter.

This is the sad result of "establishing constitutional order" in the villages of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi.

Was it necessary to use military force there? We believe that the state not only can, but is obliged in certain cases to use force to protect the rights and freedoms of its citizens. But for some reason, force is often used in our country when it is too late to use anything other than bombs and shells, and instead of a police operation, a military operation is being carried out. And in this case, the state did not fulfill its duty - to suppress the illegal activities of the group, imposing its will on other citizens. State authorities, both federal and Dagestani, preferred to “ignore” for a long time what was happening in the Kadar zone. And then tanks, planes, special forces and "cleansing" operations were needed.

October 1999

Ctrl Enter

Spotted Osh S bku Highlight text and press Ctrl + Enter

The invasion of militants into Dagestan (1999)

Exactly 20 years ago, on August 7, 1999, militants led by Shamil Basayev and Khattab invaded the territory of Dagestan. For more than a month, the fighting continued in the republic. And only this year, Russia signed a law granting the militias from Dagestan, opposing the militants, the status of war veterans.

Background

After the signing of the Khasavyurt agreements in 1996 and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya, Salafi Islam (Wahhabism) was rapidly turning into a noticeable military and political force in the republic. This was facilitated by the course of the President of Ichkeria, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, towards the accelerated Islamization of the Chechen state.

Not all Chechen leaders welcomed this course. In particular, Aslan Maskhadov, who served as prime minister during Yandarbiev's rule, was against the hasty declaration of Islam as the state religion. However, at the beginning of 1999, Maskhadov himself, being in the presidency and striving to strengthen his position, introduced "full Sharia rule" in Chechnya.

In April 1998, the Congress of the Peoples of Ichkeria and Dagestan was held in Grozny ( CNID, ), whose chairman was elected the famous Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev. The purpose of the organization was declared to be "the liberation of the Muslim Caucasus from the Russian imperial yoke." And it was under the auspices of the Congress ( the organization is recognized as terrorist in Russia, its activities are prohibited by the court - approx. "Caucasian Knot"), armed formations were created, which became the main striking force in the invasion of Dagestan.

In Dagestan itself, attempts to dissociate itself from Russia under Islamist slogans were made a year before the raid of militants from Chechnya.

In the spring of 1998, the Islamic Shura of Dagestan was created. It includes representatives of Salafi jamaats, several alims and imams of mosques in mountainous Dagestan, belonging to the supporters of "traditional" Islam.

V In August 1998, local Salafis in Karamakhi, Chabanmakhi and Kadar (Buinaksk region) announced that these villages were being united into an independent community, whose life was regulated by a Sharia court and a shura. A checkpoint was set up on the road leading to Chabanmakhi, and a green Muslim flag was posted on one of the mountains. A shield was set up nearby with a warning: "Sharia laws are in force in this area." Thus,in the Kadar gorge was createda Wahhabi autonomous enclave known as the Kadar zone.

One of the leaders of the Dagestani Islamists, Bagautdin Kebedov (Magomedov), expressed the opinion that the government of Dagestan was in a state of "shirk" (paganism) and called itself an adherent of the Islamic state. The prototype of such a state, from the point of view of the "Wahhabis", was a separate Islamic territory in the Kadar zone.

In September 1998, Russian Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin held talks with Islamist leaders. Having visited the village of Karamakhi, the minister said: "I would warn everyone against labeling" Wahhabis "," extremists. "We have freedom of religion. ... we will all help you peacefully, I give you my word of honor. Nobody will fight with the civilian population." Stepashin promised not to take forceful actions against the community in exchange for the surrender of their weapons.The weapons were not surrendered, but until August 1999 the authorities did not take any measures to suppress the enclave.

On August 1, 1999, a week before the large-scale invasion from Chechnya, Sharia rule was also announced in the villages of Echeda, Gakko, Gigatli and Agvali, Tsumadinsky District.

The start of the invasion

The massive penetration of Chechen militants into Dagestan began on August 7, 1999. On this day, over a thousand armed fighters from Chechnya entered the republic. The villages of Ansalta, Rakhata, Shodroda and Godoberi of the Botlikh region were immediately captured, and over the next few days - other settlements in the Botlikh and Tsumadinsky regions.

The core of the illegal armed group was made up of foreign mercenaries and fighters "Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade", created under the auspices of CNID ( the organization is recognized as terrorist in Russia, its activities are prohibited by the court - approx. "Caucasian Knot") and associated with al-Qaeda. The group was led by Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev and an Islamist military leader from Saudi Arabia known as Khattab. (Khattab himself lived for some time in the village of Karamakhi in the mid-1990s. A native of the village, Darginka Fatima Bidagova was one of his wives.)

On August 10, the Islamic Shura of Dagestan circulated an Appeal to the Chechen State and People, an Appeal to the Parliaments of Muslims of Ichkeria and Dagestan, a Declaration on the Restoration of the Islamic State of Dagestan and a Resolution in Connection with the Occupation of the State of Dagestan. The documents spoke about the formation of an Islamic state on the territory of the republic.

Appointment of Vladimir Putin as head of government

On August 8, Dagestan was visited by the head of the Russian government S. Stepashin. He was dismissed the next day. At a meeting of the Presidium of the Cabinet of Ministers on the day of his resignation, Stepashin said: "The situation is very difficult, perhaps we can really lose Dagestan."

Stepashin's place as head of government was taken by FSB Director Vladimir Putin. On August 9, appointing Putin as acting Prime Minister, President Yeltsin expressed the hope that this particular person will be elected the new head of state in a year.

Expulsion of militants to Chechnya

On August 11, a military operation began to push the militants out of Dagestan. At the same time, not only the Russian security forces, but also the Dagestani militias took the side of the federal center. Led by the militia of the deputy chairman of the government of Dagestan Gadzhi Makhachev. The militia involved the militarized Avar organization "People's Front of Dagestan named after Imam Shamil" led by Makhachev.

Artillery and aviation were used against the militants. The first messages were received on August 12the information about the air bombing of illegal armed groups in Chechnya, and a day later - about the short-term deployment of columns of Russian armored vehicles to Chechen territory.

On August 12, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation I. Zubov said that a letter was sent to the President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Maskhadov with a proposal to conduct a joint operation with the federal troops ontiv Islamists in Dagestan. He also suggested to Maskhadov "to resolve the issue of eliminating bases, storage and resting places of illegal armed formations, from which the Chechen leadership in every possible way denies itself."

On August 16, Maskhadov introduced a state of emergency on the territory of the republic. And on the same day, at a rally in Grozny, he said:"We have nothing to do with what is happening in Dagestan, and we regard it as a purely internal affair of Russia." The rally's resolution stated that "neither the leadership nor the people of Chechnya are responsible for the actions of individual volunteers," and Russia was accused of striving to use Dagestan "as a springboard for unleashing a bloody war in Chechnya."

On August 24, the command of the United Group of Forces in the North Caucasus reported that federal troops had liberated the last villages captured by the militants - Tando, Rakhata, Shodroda, Ansalta, Ziberkhali and Ashino. Shamil Basayev left for Chechnya with the surviving militants.

On August 25, the Russian Air Force bombed Chechen villages near Grozny for the first time, where, according to intelligence, Basayev and Khattab bases were located.

Liquidation of the enclave in the Kadar zone

On August 29, after the end of the fighting in the Botlikh region, a military operation began to liquidate the Wahhabi enclave in the Kadar zone. The operation was led by the commander-in-chief of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Colonel-General V. Ovchinnikov, and the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Dagestan, Major-General A. Magomedtagirov.

On August 31, the villages of Karamakhi, Chabanmakhi, Kadar, Durangi, adjacent farms and Mount Chaban were blocked by federal units. Since the mountain heights and approaches to the villages were mined by militants, the area was cleared with the involvement of artillery and aviation of the federal forces. Both sides of the conflict suffered losses. ...

As a result of the operation in the Kadar zone, 1,850 houses of local residents were completely destroyed.

Fights in Novolaksky district

On September 5, about 2 thousand militants under the command of Basayev and Khattab again crossed the Chechen-Dagestan border and occupied villages and dominant heights in the Novolaksky district of Dagestan.

Internal troops and armored vehicles were deployed to the combat zone, and the Russian Air Force flew a series of combat missions to the Nozhai-Yurt region of Chechnya, where, according to the military, they bombed only militant formations heading for help in Dagestan.

On September 7, federal troops, Interior Ministry forces and Dagestani militias stopped the militants' advance 5 km from the city of Khasavyurt.

On September 14, federal forces recaptured the village of Tukhchar, Novolaksky district. A clean-up of the Novolakskoye regional center, the villages of Shushiya and Ahar was carried out.

According to eyewitnesses, operating in the Novolaksky district, the federal forces relied on the support of the population and felt themselves liberators. In this regard, the situation was different from the Kadar zone. Indeed, in the enclave of "Wahhabis" the security officials felt themselves "not liberating their own territory, but rather occupying hostile territory."

End of the campaign in Dagestan

On September 15, Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev reported that the territory of Dagestan was completely liberated.

After the displacement of militants from Dagestan, Russian troops continued to fight in Chechnya.

On September 29, 1999, negotiations between the Chairman of the State Council of Dagestan Magomedali Magomedov and the President of Chechnya Aslan Maskhadov were to take place in Khasavyurt. However, the meeting was disrupted. According to the official version, the negotiations did not take place due to the fact that local residents blocked the road in the Khasavyurt area and the Dagestan-Chechen border, preventing both the Chechen delegation and Magomedali Magomedov's motorcade from entering the regional center. The protesters opposed such negotiations, stating that Aslan Maskhadov was supposed to meet with the Dagestan side when Chechen fighters attacked Dagestan.

Magomedali Magomedov himself also condemned the Chechen leader for not expressing his attitude to the militants' attack on the Dagestan regions from Chechnya. However, as a result of the negotiations, Maskhadov was supposed to publicly condemn the act of armed invasion of Dagestan and extradite the Dagestani Islamist leaders Adallo Aliyev, Sirazhutdin Ramazanov, Bagautdin Magomedov (Kebedov) and Magomed Tagaev to law enforcement agencies. In addition, it was planned to discuss measures to organize joint work to combat banditry, terrorism and crime.

Discussing the reasons for the breakdown of the meeting, the media put forward different versions. The picket of local residents, according to some information, was organized with the direct participation of the head of the Khasavyurt administration, Saygidpasha Umakhanov. And either Umakhanov got out of Makhachkala's control, or Magomedali Magomedov himself did not try to get to the meeting due to some unexpected circumstances.

Magomedov went to a meeting with Maskhadov on behalf of Prime Minister Putin, that is, the failed meeting actually became a disruption of the federal center's plans to resolve the situation around Chechnya.

Prior to the incident, the Russian prime minister expressed hope that the Chechen leadership would "show constructivism, a desire for a business dialogue," and also "declare its readiness to free its territory from international bandit formations." However, after the meeting was disrupted, Vladimir Putin's entourage hastened to declare that the leader of Dagestan should have only listened to Maskhadov and received first-hand information, but the powers of Moscow's official representative in negotiations with Grozny were not delegated to him.

Subsequently, in an interview with the Kommersant Vlast magazine, an unnamed Dagestani minister said that the meeting between Magomedov and Maskhadov was thwarted by Akhmat Kadyrov, who was "friends with Umakhanov."

Terrorist attacks

The armed invasion of militants into Dagestan was accompanied by a series of terrorist attacks in Russian cities. As a result of the explosions of residential buildings in September 1999, 315 people were killed.

The first explosion occurred in the early morning of September 4 in the Dagestani city of Buinaksk, in a house where mostly families of servicemen lived (64 dead). The next day, another bomb planted at the Buinaksk military hospital was defused. This was followed by two explosions in Moscow - on Guryanov Street (109 killed) and on Kashirskoye Highway (124 killed). On September 16, a truck filled with explosives was blown up near a residential building in Volgodonsk (18 killed).

In addition, on August 31, 1999, an explosion occurred in an underground shopping complex on Manezhnaya Square in Moscow, in which one person died and several dozen were injured. The explosion, initially declared a criminal showdown, was later re-qualified as a terrorist attack.

On September 22, 1999, in Ryazan, several people were seen laying sacks of RDX in a residential building. According to the official version, these were exercises organized by the FSB.

Aftermath of the invasion

During the Dagestan campaign, 275 Russian soldiers and officers were killed and 937 were wounded. In addition, 37 militias were killed and over 720 were injured. The losses of the militants amounted to about 2,500 people.

On September 19, 1999, in Dagestan, the law "On the prohibition of Wahhabist and other extremist activities on the territory of the Republic of Dagestan" was adopted, which banned the propaganda of the ideology and practice of Wahhabism in the republic. Similar regulations were also adopted in Ingushetia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Chechnya. However, none of these legislative acts contains specific mention of the signs of Wahhabism.

Three months after the liberation of Dagestan, on December 19, 1999, regular elections of the State Duma deputies were held in Russia. The Unity party, supported by Vladimir Putin, took second place in them (23% of the votes), only slightly behind the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (24%). On December 31, 1999, President Yeltsin left office ahead of schedule. On March 26, 2000, in the presidential elections, Vladimir Putin won in the first round.

The last president of Ichkeria, Doku Umarov, in 2007 announced the creation of an Islamic state "Caucasus Emirate" in the North Caucasus. Dagestan and Chechnya became part of this self-proclaimed entity. In Russia and the United States, the "Caucasus Emirate" organization is recognized as terrorist.

The counter-terrorist operation (CTO) in Chechnya continued in its active phase until the summer of 2000. The pro-Russian administration created in the republic was headed by Akhmat Kadyrov. The CTO regime was completely abolished in Chechnya only in April 2009. In some localities of Dagestan, the CTO regime is sometimes introduced to this day.

According to a Levada Center poll conducted in 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2010, most Russians believe that the militants' invasion of Dagestan in 1999 became possible because of those who wanted to “profit” from this war.

Dagestani militias sought the status of war veterans in court. Thus, in 2013, the Kazbekovsky District Court satisfied the claim of nineteen residents of Dagestan, who asked to recognize their status as war veterans.

Such a bill was adopted only in 2019. On July 23, the State Duma adopted the draft amendments to the law on veterans, and on July 26, the Federation Council. The original draft law envisaged only non-material benefits, but during the discussion in the State Duma, it was supplemented with provisions on material benefits. On August 3, it was signed by the President of Russia.

Notes (edit)

1. Kudryavtsev A.V. "Wahhabism": problems of religious extremism in the North Caucasus // Central Asia and the Caucasus. - No. 9. - 2000.
2. Shermatova S. So-called Wahhabis // Chechnya and Russia: Societies and States. M .: Polinform-Talbury, 1999.
3. Islamic revolution in Dagestan // Kommersant, 18.08.1998.
4. Wahhabism // Caucasian Knot.
5. Vesti // RTR, 03.09.1998. (Quoted from: A. Cherkasov. Tango over the abyss // Political.ru, 09/07/2004.)
6. From Dagestan to Moscow through Grozny // Kommersant Vlast, 02.08.2004.
7. From Dagestan to Moscow through Grozny // Kommersant Vlast, 02.08.2004.
8. Terrorist Organization Profile // National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland.
9. Roshchin M. Fundamentalism in Dagestan and Chechnya // Otechestvennye zapiski, No. 5 (14), 2003.
10. The riddle of the black Arab // Interlocutor, No. 40, 10/14/1999.
11. From Dagestan to Moscow through Grozny // Kommersant Vlast, 02.08.2004.
12. ITAR-TASS, 09.08.1999.
13. The program "Today" // NTV, 09.08.1999.
14. During the invasion of the militants, Gadzhi Makhachev was appointed special envoy of the State Council and the government of the Republic of Dagestan for the Botlikh region. (Gadzhi Makhachev was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Republic of Dagestan - RIA "Dagestan", 09/23/2013)
15. From Dagestan to Moscow through Grozny // Kommersant Vlast, 02.08.2004.
16. Dagestan: who and when // Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
17. Chechnya declared a state of emergency // ORT, 08.16.1999.
18. From Dagestan to Moscow through Grozny // Kommersant Vlast, 02.08.2004.
19. Temporary press center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in Dagestan, 1999.
20. From Dagestan to Moscow through Grozny // Kommersant Vlast, 02.08.2004.
21. Homeland of War // Izvestia, 05/29/2003.
22. Press center of the RF Ministry of Defense, 09/07/14.
23. Dagestan: Chronicle of the Conflict // Independent Military Review, 09/18/1999.
24. Press conference of representatives of the "Memorial" society: "The invasion of Dagestan and its consequences: humanitarian aspects", 27.09.1999.
25. From Dagestan to Moscow through Grozny // Kommersant Vlast, 02.08.2004.
26. Thus, the planned content of the failed meeting was described in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. () Similar information was reported by the Kommersant newspaper. (The Chechen "peaceful landing" in Dagestan was met fully armed // Kommersant, 09/30/1999.) The Lenta.ru edition outlined the expected agenda of the negotiations in a slightly different form. According to the materials of Lenta.ru, at the meeting, Maskhadov was supposed to ask three questions: "1. Recognition of the fact of aggression from Chechnya; 2. Extradition of bandits, regardless of their nationality - Chechen or Dagestani; 3. Joint measures to ensure the security of the administrative border." (The meeting between the leaders of Dagestan and Chechnya fell through // Lenta.ru, 09/29/1999.)
27. Magomedov did not meet with Maskhadov // Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 30.09.1999.
28. Magomedov did not meet with Maskhadov // "Nezavisimaya Gazeta", 30.09.1999.
29. The meeting between the leaders of Dagestan and Chechnya fell through // Lenta.ru, 09/29/1999.
30. Magomedov did not meet with Maskhadov // "Nezavisimaya Gazeta", 30.09.1999.
31. Magomedov did not meet with Maskhadov // "Nezavisimaya Gazeta", 30.09.1999.
32. "Magomedali Magomedovich cannot remove me" // "Kommersant Vlast", 30.08.2004.
33. Chronicle of Terror // Memorial Human Rights Center website.
34. Newsletter No. 28. The war in Chechnya and its echoes. Chronicle of Terror // HRC Memorial website.
35. For the period August 2 - September 20, 1999 (Dagestan: Chronicle of Terror (1996-2014) // Caucasian Knot.)
36. Data from the regional public organization "Union of Persons Who Participated in the Protection of the Constitutional System" Dagestan-1999 "(RPO" Dagestan-1999 ").
37. Data of the General Staff of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Losses in Dagestan and in the border zone for the period from August 2, 1999 to May 4, 2000. (Losses of Russian troops and militants in Chechnya // "Kommersant Vlast", 05/10/2000.)
38. From Dagestan to Moscow through Grozny. - "Kommersant Vlast", 02.08.2004.
39. "Why did the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen militants in August 1999, which triggered the second" Chechen war ", become possible?" // Levada Center website.

Publicity helps solve problems. Send a message, photo and video to the "Caucasian Knot" via messengers

Photos and videos for publication must be sent exactly through Telegram, while choosing the "Send file" function instead of "Send photo" or "Send video". Telegram and WhatsApp channels are more secure for transferring information than regular SMS. The buttons work when Telegram and WhatsApp are installed. The number for Telegram and WhatsApp is +49 1577 2317856.

Note Padalko Yu.D. for thinking readers

Pay special attention to the text in large red.

Compare the information of these texts with the information of the scattered media about the atrocities of the Nazis coming out on the territory of the rebellious Novorossia, which, it turns out, well, completely, are unacceptable for the power of the Jewish-parasha, which the Jewish-poo personally, as a piezident of all suppression, officially recognized as legal after vybogofff of the piezident

"Pinwheel" dived into the gap between the mountains and sat down on a potato field soggy from the rains. No sooner had the wheels of the old Mi-8 touched the ground than a healthy man, hung with weapons, jumped into the cabin. Behind him, two trembling human bodies were dragged into the helicopter, hiding their bloody, short-cropped heads in the collars of tattered quilted jackets.

Special Forces of the Internal Troops have just captured these Wahhabi militants, determined to save their lives and trying to infiltrate the ring of federal troops surrounding the valley. The prisoners fall to their knees, their foreheads are pressed to the floor, like Muslims at prayer, trembling with fear, and the helicopter immediately soars into the air. A few minutes later, one of the unlucky "fighters for Islamic jamaats" tries to raise his head, but the heavy boot of a gunner falls on his neck.

Soon, we land on another potato field, the ground of which is churned with tracks and wheels of armored vehicles so much that it resembles whipped cream. Immediately behind the helipad, the chaos of KShMok (command and staff vehicles), antennas, tents, trucks, tractors and armored personnel carriers begins. The humid air smells of the smoke of field kitchens and burnt-out artillery powder, and dozens of wires run across the earth, packed with hundreds of soles, criss-cross. Somewhere further, on the very crest of the mountain, a spacious trench was dug, over which a camouflage net was stretched. It is here that the main command post of the grouping of federal troops that surrounded the Kadar zone.

"Kadar zone" - this is how the lands of the small Wahhabi theocratic republic of "Islamic jamaats", which arose several years ago on the territory of the Buinaksky district of Dagestan, are now called. A paradise valley striking with its fertility, where different climatic zones coexist on a small "patch" of land and literally everything grows: from apricots and cherry plums to cabbage and potatoes, where there are always green alpine meadows for grazing numerous livestock. The valley was densely populated. Four villages - Kadar, Vanashimakhi, Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi - practically merge with each other.

But peaceful life ended here several years ago. Chechen bandits and international terrorists have found refuge in the villages, which have become strongholds of religious fanatics. Here the Jordanian sadist-mujahid Emir Al-Khattab married and built his house on Russian soil.

In the Kadar zone, experienced instructors from Turkey and Arab states trained saboteurs and terrorists to fight the hated Russians. In special workshops, equipped with the latest technology, the Wahhabis produced their weapons - mortars and even heavy sniper rifles of 12.7 mm caliber. However, weapons came here also from abroad - for example, from nearby Azerbaijan. Part of it settled in local arsenals, the rest was sent further north - to Chechnya.

The Wahhabis of the Kadar zone were engaged not only in actively promoting their views in the surrounding villages, but also intensively preparing for a defensive war. They dug a multi-kilometer network of communication tunnels, built many concrete bunkers, and equipped dozens of firing points. In the caves on the slopes of Mount Chaban, they built almost impregnable shelters, command posts, weapons and ammunition depots.

And what they had been preparing for so long finally happened. The war has come to the Kadar zone.

The KP offers a breathtaking beauty view of the villages of Kadar and Karamakhi, starting right at the foot of the mountain, and of the surrounding mountain ranges. Chabanmakhi and Vanashimakhi are practically hidden behind a rocky ridge cutting through the valley. Columns of smoke rise from there, deaf explosions are heard. A firefight is also roaring in the relatively close Karamakhi. Silence is only on the streets of Kadar, who surrendered at the very beginning of the operation. Even the houses in Kadar are intact, only there are no glasses - they flew out from nearby ruptures. And Karamakhi is a picturesque heap of ruins, some houses are burning and, apparently, for a long time.

A few steps away, a Dagestani militiaman and a tall, gray-haired vevish general are interrogating one of the newly brought prisoners. Then they lead him under a camouflage net, and he sticks to the eyepieces of military optics for a long time, points his hand at the houses lying below, explains something - he directs our artillery to the location of his recent comrades-in-arms. The 152-mm self-propelled guns "Akatsia" on the left and the tanks of the 242nd regiment of the Ministry of Defense located to the right of the command post immediately begin to hit the targets indicated by the militant.

“I handed over all my own,” says one of the staff officers: “I showed them where the wounded were, where the women were. The militants themselves were no more than seventy people left, and they would have surrendered, but Khachilaev and Khairulla are mercilessly shot for any inclinations of this kind.” ...

We introduce ourselves to General O. (I do not give my last name, since the general was afraid that his wife would find out what kind of business trip he was on), and he indicates the places of the main battles and the location of the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs storming the Wahhabi enclave. The question of our losses makes him frown. “The losses are considerable,” he replies. “You see what they shoot with,” and takes out a hefty cartridge for a large-caliber rifle from a spacious pocket of his jacket. “Yesterday a soldier from the 22nd brigade was killed like that through a thick brick wall.”

However, in general, the mood of those at the checkpoint is high. After two weeks of heavy fighting, the offensive operations of the special forces units are developing quite successfully, and the resistance of the militants has dramatically weakened. All as one talk about the "turning point" of the situation. That victory is near.

Of course, the Dagestani Wahhabis hoped that the federal leaders and commanders would behave in the same way as they did in Chechnya. They hoped that their long and fierce resistance, as well as serious losses of federal troops, would force the Russians to negotiate. And even then it will be possible to bargain for any concessions from the Moscow peacekeeping officials, and even receive a multimillion-dollar "compensation".

The Wahhabite commanders did not think that Russian generals, disdaining "considerations of humanity," would calmly and openly use aviation and artillery in populated areas. Apply as much as necessary to save the lives of Russian soldiers to the maximum. They miscalculated.

Towards dusk, a tanned daughter appears at the command post, in whom we recognize an old acquaintance from Chechnya - the commander of one of the special forces detachments. He is concerned - today he has two wounded in his detachment, who must be urgently taken to Makhachkala.

NIGHT AT KP

Between ten and eleven o'clock in the evening, self-propelled guns suddenly began to beat frequently. Staff officers were huddled under the command post's camouflage net. At a distant altitude, where the very center of the Chabanmakhi aul, the 17th special forces detachment of the internal troops and the Dagestan OMON are fighting a heavy battle. In the dark, tracers and breaks flash. Occasionally, the almost treeless mountain ranges are illuminated by the pale light of powerful flares.

It turns out that the militants, pressing our fire from machine guns and sniper rifles, approached the positions at a distance of throwing a hand grenade. Some even jumped shouting "Allahu Akbar!" into the trenches and blew themselves up along with the soldiers.

KP helps with its artillery fire. "Utes" (this is the commander's call sign) requires helicopters to take out the wounded, and is looking for doctors lost somewhere. The battle subsides in forty minutes, but the federal artillery guns "work" for several more hours. Our troops in Chabanmakhi were forced to leave the hill occupied by the day.

As it turned out later, that night a detachment of 60-70 Wahhabis managed to break through the positions of the federal troops and escape through the unblocked Chaban Mountain into the dense "greenery" on its reverse slope.

A few days later, an incident brought us together with a soldier of the 17th special forces detachment of the Internal Troops, who was still acutely experiencing the past battle, in which he was directly involved. Finding grateful listeners in us, the soldier spoke hastily and fervently, as if fearing that we would suddenly disappear, never having listened to his story about the exploits of his fallen comrades.

On September 11, the 17th detachment stormed and captured part of Chabanmakhi, climbing into the very upper part of the village and a little short of reaching the heart of the enemy defense, the central mosque. But at night the Wahhabis launched a desperate counterattack, apparently intending to cover the retreat of the main group into the mountains or hoping, in case of a major success, to break through.

Among the trenches and destroyed buildings, in the dense bushes covering the steep slopes, a stubborn battle broke out. The opponents fired at each other almost point-blank. But the frenzied attack by the Mujahideen was crowned with only partial success. The soldiers of the 17th detachment were thrown back from the ridge, however, very close. The losses of the special forces in this battle amounted to 6 killed and about 20 wounded. The reconnaissance platoon suffered the most, being at the very spearhead of the enemy attack.

The losses of the attackers were 3-4 times higher. Only killed militants were counted at least two dozen. A significant part of them fell at the hands of corporal Ruslan Chesnikov, who until the last covered the retreat of his comrades. Surrounded on almost all sides, Ruslan fired back until a suicide bomber with grenades in his hands rushed at him from the slope. Another fighter, corporal Igor Klevtsov, with his lungs torn apart by fragments, refused to leave the position, fought to the end and fell from a sniper's bullet already during the retreat. Both had only a few days left before demobilization ... When they filled out the award lists, the fallen were considered worthy only of the medals "For Courage" (posthumously).

The operation to destroy the Wahhbi enclave, which began on August 29, was attended by 4.5 thousand soldiers and officers of the federal troops. But direct battles with the militants on the slopes of Mount Chaban and in the villages of Chabanmakhi and Karamakhi were fought only by the 17th, 20th and 8th detachments of the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (the combat strength of each was about a hundred people), the 22nd brigade of the special forces of the internal troops (combat composition of about 300 people) and small (from 10 to 30 people in each) professional special forces like the Tula OMON, Dagestan OMON, Moscow SOBR, special forces of the GUIN from Kabardino-Balkaria, Krasnodar Territory, Chelyabinsk, etc.

Therefore, it turned out that the ratio between our fighters on the front line and the Wahhabi militants was almost one to one instead of one to four in the tactics textbooks in favor of the attackers.

The superiority of the federal forces was achieved mainly due to the actions of aviation and artillery (tanks and self-propelled guns, mortars, etc.). The troops of the Ministry of Defense, under the command of Lieutenant General Troshev, mainly carried out blocking the area of ​​operation and provided fire support to the special forces fighting in the enclave. Of course, the "specialists" in this operation were not used "by profile", but simply as good infantry. The reason for this "generosity" of the federal command is that there are almost no ordinary good infantry in the Russian army.

IN CHABANMAKHI

The next morning the weather cleared up. The crystal purity of the mountain air seems to bring closer the houses and tops of the mountain ranges standing in the valley. But the general pastorality of the picture is disturbed by the white haze of ruptures swelling over the remains of Karamakhi. This time, tanks standing next to the command post are hitting the village.

Soon, the already familiar turntable arrives, on the smoky side of which, over the past night, the inscription "For the Motherland" was added "Glory to Russia". However, on the other side of the helicopter is "Sex mashine". From the headquarters, the "air workers of the war" should fly to the valley for the wounded - it seems, to Karamakhi. We jump on board, brushing off the warnings from the command staff: "there is indiscriminate fire." The commander of the crew is stern and focused: "I will sit down literally for a second, so jump up, do not linger."

At the landing site, which was just a relatively flat hill on the very outskirts of Karamakhi, of course, no one met us. Having loaded up bags with various camping belongings, we moved along a broken road, along which large stone houses and outbuildings, almost unaffected by the war, were scattered over the hills and lowlands.

Around, not paying attention to the close cannonade, the cattle abandoned by the owners calmly graze, chickens roam. Finally, in the courtyard of one of the buildings we notice a typical "military" bustle - from here a combined detachment of special forces of the Penitentiary Service (Penitentiary Directorate) of the Ministry of Justice of Kabardino-Balkaria with attached sniper groups of the Penitentiary Service of the Kaliningrad and Kirov regions is going to go to clean up the village of Chabanmakhi.

Negotiations with soldiers and commanders are short-lived and practical in a business-like manner - the commandos without delay agreed to take us with them.

A special forces unit of the UIN got into the Kadar zone "quite by accident". Recruited exclusively from volunteers and numbered about two dozen fighters, it was intended in advance to strengthen the protection of the facilities of the penitentiary institutions and "zones" on the territory of Dagestan. There was no question of any involvement in hostilities when sent on a business trip. Before leaving, even the under-barrel grenade launchers were going to be taken away from the personnel, arguing this intention with the "uselessness" of such weapons for the protection of prisoners. Only when they were in the combat zone, the commandos received machine guns, sniper rifles, and hand grenades. However, the detachment did not have much to complain about the armament. All polls (with the exception of the attached "Kaliningraders" and "Kirovtsy") were equipped with AKM assault rifles (7.62 mm) - the object of deep envy of the special forces of the internal troops, equipped in the overwhelming majority with "AK-74" bullets of 5.45 mm caliber. Pistols "TT" and "APS", well-fitted unloading vests, reliable heavy "armor" favorably distinguished the special forces of the UIN from many other units involved in the operation.

While waiting for the release, the soldiers ate pre-cooked meat, stewed meat with appetite, drank tea steeply brewed and flavored with condensed milk. They performed without haste, without much haste and fuss. At the next command post (this headquarters, headed already by Colonel-General Kalinin, "autonomously directed" all the units of the Ministry of Justice), the unit was put on an armored personnel carrier and sent directly to Chabanmakhi.

The overloaded armored personnel carrier first "hovered" along a steep and extremely dirty slope into the gorge, then, strainingly rumbling, crawled for a long time along the rocky bed of a mountain stream and, finally, slowly climbed up the bempashka and the armored personnel carrier managed to turn over). Having overcome the climb with great difficulty, we got almost to the forward positions. The last section of the route was crossed on foot, with panting pulling boxes and boxes with ammunition, food rations and other military equipment on their shoulders.

The Kabardino-Balkarians had a legitimate reason to boast of their endurance - well-trained fighters, accustomed to mountain conditions, easily climbed upwards with a load of 50-60 kilograms. Unfortunately, the special forces of the UIN did not have any other reasons to be proud of their training.

When, after a long stop in a house occupied by the Dagestani OMON, a detachment set out to clean up a group of houses in the lower part of the village of Chabanmakhi, the lack of real combat training and experience of participation in such operations completely affected. Thank God, except for a few bullets fired by a distant sniper and whistling high overhead, the enemy did not offer any resistance in the cleared part of the village. Otherwise, the special forces of the Ministry of Justice, who crowded in any open space and were frankly lost on the approach to each next "cleaned" house, would inevitably suffer heavy losses. And if the actions of individual fighters were still meaningful, then the command of the detachment was below any criticism. The head of the detachment, Colonel N., in the past - the commander of a regiment of the Soviet Army and a responsible employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kabardino-Balkaria - was unlikely to be drawn to corporal stripes by his commanding abilities. God forbid to get into a real battle with such a "military leader"!

And still the cleanup ended quite well. All seven houses with adjoining outbuildings were pelted with grenades and searched and burned. In pillars of flame and puffs of smoke, the material well-being of the "true followers of the Prophet" rose to the sky. In one fire, the hats of mountain elders and Japanese washing machines, expensive carpets, crystal chandeliers and mountains of Islamic literature, half-disassembled stolen KamAZ trucks and long-term reserves of oats, potatoes, and animal feed were burnt in the same fire. The commandos did not find corpses in the buildings, although their heavy smell carried from the earthen embankments in almost every courtyard.

Scattering of machine-gun cartridges, shots to hand grenade launchers and a lot of other military junk thrown by the defending Wahhabis were also sent into the fire.

Loaded beyond usual with teapots, thermoses and carpets (taken for the night), the UIN fighters stretched out for the night. As a "particularly valuable trophy" behind the detachment, as if tied, ran a hefty white goat , which was untied in one of the sheds and released into the wild. Grateful for the release, she, most likely, experienced a passionate love for armed men instilled by her former owners and stubbornly ignored attempts to drive herself away. By itself, her presence with the detachment caused a sea of ​​salty soldier jokes the personnel of all neighboring units.

As usual, the most suitable for lodging houses have already been burned , and for spending the night, the Uinovites chose a half-bombed building, the defense of which in the event of a night attack left little hope of success. Fortunately, there was no one to attack. And although the shooting continued throughout the night, it was already just "shooting just in case" by the sentries of the detachments stationed in the village. The night also brought with it a strong cold rain, which, however, failed to extinguish numerous fires.

Despite all this, I would like to say a few kind words to our comrades from the Kabardino-Balkarian special forces. It is not their fault that the command is going to use them completely for other purposes. Be that as it may, while many other similar units remained in the Makhachkala area or stood at checkpoints around the Kadar zone, the detachment entered Chabanmakhi and completed the assigned task.

The participation in hostilities of a huge number of small units makes it extremely difficult for elementary coordination of actions between them. For a considerable time, the authors had a chance to observe how the most experienced special forces officer was constantly confused in all his three radios, for which there was always a lack of batteries, and in an infinite number of call signs (remember all these "Cobras", "Taimyrs", "Cliffs" and "Blows" ...).

In addition, small spetsnaz units either did not possess their own heavy equipment at all, or received it in clearly insufficient quantities. But even worse, they often had no connection with aviation, which in some cases was fraught with losses from their own.

TOP CLEANING

For the third hour, a detachment of special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs stomped to the upper part of Chabanmakhi on foot, since its worn-out armored personnel carriers did not master the steep roads of the Wahhabite auls. The soldiers resembled pack horses - full RD-shki and heavy body armor, machine guns and rifles, grenade launchers and machine guns, ammunition for them and heavy packages of two "Bumblebees" - all this fell on the shoulders, with rare exceptions, not too tall and healthy soldiers from workers 'and peasants' families, children of hungry perestroika times. The soldiers climbed up, if necessary, pulling up their comrades by the outstretched barrels of machine guns, trampled the lush Wahhbi fields, smashed vigorous juicy pumpkins and cabbage heads into small crumbs with heavy boots.

Finally a halt. With equal relief, soldiers, warrant officers and officers flop into the mud of a chicken coop shattered by shells, between the crumbling beams of which the silhouette of the mosque minaret pierced through by a shell is visible , next to which the main stronghold of the Wahhabi militants is located.

Gone a little ahead squad leader looks back at his breathless fighters and swears softly ... He knows that today his detachment needs to be at that distant mosque. This is the task set by "Utes", the commander of the operation, General Labunets. And he also understands very well that if his soldiers go to storm the summit without thorough reconnaissance, tired, "on cotton feet", then serious losses cannot be avoided. The only hope is that the militants, having understood the senselessness of resistance, have already left Chabanmakhi, leaving only suicide bombers as a barrier.

The commander of the Dagestani OMON comes up with a leisurely gait - actions must be coordinated with him. These Dagestanis, unlike other local units that do not take part in battles at all, fight well, at least bravely enough - they avenge their dead comrades (17 killed, about 60 wounded). However, today the commander of the Dagestanis is not eager to fight. “We are your reserve,” he insists.

And at this time the radio comes to life again. The Cliff requires a progress report and requires immediate action. “Are you special forces or who?” He asks a rhetorical question. "Spetsnaz," the commander confirms and sends one of the groups to the ridge (the special forces of the Internal Troops are divided not into companies, but into groups).

Extremely negatively on the course of hostilities is the fact that the special forces often belong to different departments (some are subordinate to the GUIN, others to the internal troops, the third to the Ministry of Defense, the fourth to the FSB, and the fifth to almost Rushailo himself ...). A kind of departmental feudalism often leads to the fact that commanders tend to take care of "their" units and subunits, sometimes forgetting or even "substituting" "strangers".

The situation is complicated by the presence in the combat zone of a truly huge number of various generals, many of whom do not so much command the troops, but coordinate and coordinate something there (that is, they get underfoot when translated into Russian).
Only in the so-called Kadar zone, the authors managed to count as many as seven generals, three of whom wore colonel-general shoulder straps.

BANNER

We watch how the soldiers with a heavy step climb the slope to the highest part of Chabanmakhi. So they reached the ridge, moving in dashes, hitting somewhere with machine guns. The detachment's reconnaissance rushes to the aid of the group: four soldiers, four warrant officers and an officer.

On a broken mountain road creeps up to us a strange-looking tracked vehicle armed with only two long missiles ... She goes a little forward, after which over the ruins of a mosque and houses, in the very heart of Chabanmakhi, for a moment, a huge fireball rises. A powerful explosion, the air wave from which is very noticeable even at a distance, resembles the atomic characteristic shape of a smoky mushroom.

"This is natural Allah-pi ... ts!", - the deputy commander of the detachment yells into the radio ... "Just put the next one a little to the left," he asks. And again we see how a rocket soars over the ruins of the Wahhabi stronghold, this time hitting right on target. This is how the UR-77 works - a demining installation, each charge of which carries one and a half tons of explosives. The only pity is that the maximum firing range is only 500 meters.

Having done its job, the car crawls back, and the scouts return with it. On the armor is the body of a soldier of the 17th detachment, which was cut four days ago by the enemy AGS. Then, in the turmoil of the battle, his comrades could not get him out. The scouts also bring a hand grenade launcher, which the Dagestani riot police recognize as their property. In general, the Chabanmakhi are literally inundated with "nobody's" military property.

Now the whole detachment is going upstairs - to the place where the ruins of the houses of Khattab and the "military emir" of the Wahhabis, a certain Mukhtar, are still smoking. Throughout the village, grenade explosions and short bursts of machine gun fire are clapping. The insurgents' resistance is broken, and The "cleanup" was in full swing ... The happy special officer of the detachment bends under the weight of a huge bag - he has collected many valuable documents. A photograph of Khattab himself is walking around - a smiling bandit in wide snow-white robes posing against the backdrop of the surrounding mountains. There is also the passport of his wife, whom the cheerful riot policemen try to evaluate as a woman from the photograph.

Meanwhile the squadron's soldiers find a well-mined house surrounded by a network of underground passages. The flamethrower strikes right through the window, and the powerful brick building folds up like a house of cards.

The militants clearly fled from the center of Chabanmakhi in panic, throwing not only the unburied bodies of the dead (which they usually try to do), but also a weapon - a heavy machine gun "Utes", which is cleverly controlled on a bicycle wheel, several AGSs and even sniper rifles.

Night is approaching, and special forces and OMON detachments that are cleaning up Chabanmakhi are slowly pulling towards the center of the village. Everyone knows that the commander, Colonel-General Labunets, is about to arrive. Soon he appears - unshaven, in a cap pulled over an eyebrow, accompanied by a small retinue and an entavash operator - "for history." The general solemnly raises a three-color banner over the ruins of a shed at the highest point of Chabanmakhi. He congratulates all the fighters on a successful cleanup and victory. Victory! To celebrate, riot police fired into the air from all trunks.
However, the general urges everyone to be vigilant. Just in the Karamakhs located just below, which also seem to be cleared of the enemy, four riot policemen were killed by the bullets of a lone sniper.

But everyone already understands that the night can bring many unpleasant surprises. After all, those militants who escaped from the villages last night can return today. Unit commanders fear a typical Chechen scenario, when bandits, firing at closely spaced positions of federal troops, provoke them into mutual firefights. Everyone is in a hurry to occupy more or less whole houses, organize a perimeter defense and negotiate cooperation with neighbors.

The general says goodbye to the troops and walks away to the helipad. And the lingering operator in a black suit scaredly rushes among the burned-down houses, causing unkind grins of soldiers and officers. However, the entertainment ends soon - the TV man is "rescued" by the staff colonel.

NOT THE END YET

Intelligence service settled, of course, the best. She, walking in front of the squad, as usual, managed to take a liking to and occupy a Wahhabi prayer house that was almost not destroyed ... There is no furniture inside, but the carpets are in four layers. We had to wrap up in them in the morning - the nights in the mountains are cold.

In the meantime, together with the experienced Krasnodar Uinovtsi and army mortarmen who have lost ours, we cook soup from the “trophy” chickens left to us by the Dagestan riot police who have left for other positions, drink a small dose of vodka brought from the batteers and, as usual, complain about the service zeal of the generals, always striving to as soon as possible to report to the high political authorities about “complete victory”.

The night passed relatively calmly - there was a little shooting, although near our window, prudently heaped up with boards and carpets, a “stray” hand grenade blew off once. The morning of September 13 was cloudy. Shooting was still fired in the vicinity, and the radio reported on the elimination of small groups of militants recovered from the "caches" in Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi.

It turned out that near the place where Labunets hoisted the Russian flag yesterday, today there was a bunker with five Wahhabis was found. At first they refused to leave, promising to blow up the women who were with them “if something happened”, but when they realized that their “threats” didn’t bother anyone, they jumped out with machine guns in their hands and fell under fire from soldiers from the 17th detachment. One of the killed mujahideen turned out to be a citizen of independent Uzbekistan.

By the middle of the day, units of the internal troops stormed the village began to descend to their field camps, where old armored vehicles, sleeping bags and dry rations were waiting for them. The detachments passed by burning solid houses and fields littered with rotting cow carcasses. The commandos dreamed that the damned Wahhabi enclave would be wiped off the face of the earth by vacuum bombs or at least burned to the ground so that no one wants to return here. We had no doubt that the riot police remaining in the villages would try to fulfill this desire.

The morale of the Russian military is as high as ever, and the overwhelming majority of privates are not only ready, but even eager to fight the Chechens and Wahhabis, trying not only to avenge their fallen comrades, but also to wash away the common grievance "for the state" with blood.

It is no secret that for many ordinary soldiers, the outbreak of the war became an incentive to realize their own national identity and to form ideas about the historical mission of the Russian people.

The junior and middle officer corps are also significantly more "adequate to the situation" than the Russian officer corps at the beginning of the war with Chechnya. Many officers, starting from the level of company commanders, have real experience of combat operations on the territory of "Ichkeria".

However, it should be noted that, on the whole, the very successful actions of the federal troops in Dagestan are taking place in relatively greenhouse conditions. These include: the support of the majority of the local population, which almost excludes the threat to communications; limited theaters of military operations, allowing you to easily supply the belligerent units and subunits with everything necessary and to maneuver them; proximity to supply bases and, finally, relatively favorable weather, which makes it possible to realize air superiority.

If in the near future federal troops enter Chechnya, all these conditions will turn into their opposites.