Dagestan
The Russian Republic of Dagestan has oil and gas reserves.
It is next door to Chechnya.
Some suspect that the CIA uses Moslem militants to stir up trouble in Dagestan.
BBC map According to the BBC (BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Country profiles | Regions.),
1. Chechen warlords have led armed operations in Dagestan on several occasions.
2. In 1995 and 1996 Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduyev crossed from Chechnya into Dagestan and seized hundreds of hostages in hospitals in the Dagestani towns of Budennovsk and Kizlyar. Scores died.
3. The Muslims of Dagestan have generally been keen to avoid the conflict that has afflicted Chechnya.
4. In the latter part of the 1990s there were reports that more radical and militant elements, said to be linked with Wahhabism, were acquiring influence.
5. There was violence in 1999 when an Islamic body was reported to have declared an independent state in parts of Dagestan and Chechnya and called on Muslims to take up arms against Russia in a holy war.
Chechen fighters crossed into Dagestan. The rebels were silenced but this incident contributed to the Russian decision to send troops back into Chechnya.
6. In 1996 and 1999, in Dagestan, scores were killed in Kaspiysk and Buynaksk when bombs went off near blocks of flats housing Russian officers. Dozens more died in 2002 when bombers targeted a Russian military parade in Kaspiysk.
In 2005, at least 10 died in a bomb blast in the capital, Makhachkala. In 2006, several people were killed in multiple explosions and shootings.
Dagestan The CIA appears to have been active in Chechnya.
According to Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, ( Cached )
"The main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan...
"Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan.
"Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin."
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Karl Schwarz, on 11 August 2008, at rense.com , writes about Operation Dagestan
Schwartz refers to reports that in the Georgian attack on South Ossetia :
1. some tanks were driven by Ukrainian soldiers and that the Russians have dead Ukrainians as evidence.
2. American mercenaries may have been used.
Schwartz writes that the USA, Israel and UK want to control the Russian Republic of Dagestan.
One route from Kazakhstan to Georgia and the Black Sea is across Dagestan.
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