In August 1999 armed formations led by Shamil Basayev and the commander known as Ibn al-Khattab crossed from Chechnya into the Botlikh and Tsumada districts of western Dagestan and proclaimed an Islamic state; a second incursion followed in September into the Novolak district, alongside fighting for the Kadar-zone villages of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, which had asserted autonomy from the republican authorities. Russian federal forces, Dagestani police and locally raised volunteer militias expelled the fighters by mid-September, using heavy air and artillery bombardment that destroyed much of several highland villages. Federal authorities announced 275 servicemen killed, 15 missing and about 937 wounded; insurgent losses were put by Russian sources in the high hundreds to low thousands, and the number of civilians killed was never compiled. Roughly 32,000 civilians were displaced. The invasion, together with the apartment bombings in Russian cities that month, was the immediate trigger for the second Russian campaign in Chechnya recorded separately in this atlas; the displaced population of Novolakskoye, itself a district resettled by Laks after the 1944 deportation of the Chechen-Akkins, was caught in a longer-running dispute over land and return.
Armed groups from Chechnya seized villages in western Dagestan; Russian federal forces and Dagestani militias drove them out with air and artillery attacks
Russian official estimates put Dagestan's population at about 2.12 million in 1999 (2002 census: 2,576,531). The districts directly emptied — Botlikhsky, Tsumadinsky, Novolaksky and the Buinaksk highland villages — held on the order of 100,000 people between them, so the displacement affected roughly a third of the immediate war zone.
The range combines announced federal losses of 275 dead with Russian estimates of several hundred to about two thousand insurgents killed; it is uncertain chiefly because insurgent losses were claimed by the side that inflicted them and because civilian deaths, which both sides largely ignored, were never counted.
The destruction of houses in Botlikh, Karamakhi, Chabanmakhi and Novolakskoye by air and artillery attack was reported by Russian and international media and by Dagestani local authorities compensating residents.
Russia