United Vilayat of Kabarda, Balkaria and Karachay

Kabardino-Balkarian Islamic Jamaat "Yarmuk"
Leaders	Muslim Atayev (Emir Sayfullah) † Rusam Bekanov † Anzor Astemirov (Emir Sayfullah) † Asker Dzhappuyev (Emir Abdullah)
Dates of operation	Since July 2002 (official declaration of the anti-Russian jihad in August 2004)
Active regions	Russian North Caucasus (Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia)
Part of	Caucasian Front (2004-2007) Caucasus Emirate (since 2007)
Opponents	Russian federal and local government
Battles and wars	the Second Chechen War, Insurgency in the North Caucasus

Yarmuk Jamaat (Джамаат Ярмук; full name Kabardino-Balkarian Islamic Fighting Jamaat "Yarmuk") is a militant Islamist jamaat organization connected to numerous attacks against the local and federal security forces in Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in the North Caucasus. Yarmuk became part of the Caucasian Front in 2005 and joined the Caucasus Emirate in 2007.

The group drew most of its early members from the Balkars, a small ethnic minority in the republic, however their long-time leader between 2005 and 2010, Anzor Astemirov (Emir Sayfullah), was a Kabardin; there are also members from the other ethnic groups, including the Karachays and ethnic Russians. The group was named after the 7th Century Battle of Yarmuk.

History

Origins

The group began as a moderate, non-violent organization, named the Islamic Center in 1993, which was later renamed as the Jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria when it has been not allowed to re-register under this name in 1997. However, it gradually changed due to the persecution by Valery Kokov, the long-time ruler of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria (KBR) who labeled all alternatives to the local branch of the Spiritual Board of Russia's Muslims, operating the only official mosque in the republic, as "Wahhabis" and indiscriminately and brutally harassed them.

Mounting pressure from the continued crackdown forced the group's leader, Mussa Mukozhoyev (Musa Mukozhev), to join the underground, while many local young radicals slipped away to join the Islamic Peacekeeping Army that invaded the republic of Dagestan from Chechnya in 1999 or to fight on the Chechen separatist side in the Second Chechen War. Yarmuk was originally founded as a unit of around 30 Balkars and Kabardinians, led by Muslim Atayev (Emir Sayfullah), which trained at the Chechen warlord Ruslan Gelayev's camp in Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, and in 2002 helped Gelayev's forces in the raid of the village of Galashki in the republic of Ingushetia. Upon their return to Kabardino-Balkaria, Atayev and his men launched a recruitment drive among the alienated and radicalized youth.

Radical Chechen commander Shamil Basayev maintained such close ties with the local "Wahhabis" that he even lived in the town of Baksan for more than a month in 2003, before narrowly escaping a police raid. An Ingush would-be suicide bomber Zarema Muzhakhoyeva lived in the republic's capital Nalchik too, before going on a failed suicide mission to Moscow, and a Nalchik resident housed the alleged organizer of the August 2004 bombing in the Moscow metro.

Early militant activities

In August 2004, Yarmuk announced the beginning of military operations in the republic. Their online manifest rejected terrorism and referred to alleged government responsibility for the 1999 Russian apartment bombings ("We are not fighting against women or children, like Russian invaders are doing in Ichkeria. We are not blowing up sleeping people, like FSB of the Russian Federation does"), focusing on the corruption of the "mafia clans" that lead the republic ("These mere apologies for rulers, who sold themselves to the invaders, have made drug addiction, prostitution, poverty, crime, depravity, drunkenness and unemployment prosper in our Republic").

Yarmuk launched its first attack in Kabardino-Balkaria that same month, ambushing policemen in Chegem district. A turning point came in December 2004, when Yarmuk members conducted a raid on office of the federal drug control agency in Nalchik, during which they seized large quantities of weapons and ammunition. The founding leader of Yarmuk, Muslim Atayev, was soon killed when the police stormed an apartment in Nalchik in January 2005, however his organization has continued to operate, periodically staging attacks under the leadership of his successor, Rustam Bekanov, until his was killed three months later and replaced by Anzor Astemirov, a former deputy director of the Islamic Center. The group's base of operations was Nalchik as well as Balkarian enclave around Mount Elbrus (the highest peak in Europe).

The Nalchik raid and its consequences

Yarmuk was the main force involved in the botched large-scale raid by around 100-200 mostly untrained militants on the capital Nalchik, during which more than 140 people, including 95 alleged insurgents, were killed in 2005; scores of suspect were also detained after the attack and 52 were put on trial (ongoing as of 2010). The Jamaat apparently lost most of its members, including the deputy leader Ilyas Gorchkhanov. Its survivors retrenched following the Nalchik debacle, and in late 2007 were subsumed into a larger fighting unit that would operate not only in Kabardino-Balkaria but also in the neighboring republic of Karachay-Cherkessia after the destruction of its native Karachay Jamaat. The number of attacks attributed to Yarmuk at that time has been relatively low, compromised mostly of targeted assassinations like this of Anatoly Kyarov (one major exception was shooting of a group of nine Russian hunters in November 2007), however the militants systematically kept recruiting new fighters and gathering weapons.

Resurgence

In 2010, following the death of Astemirov in March, the leadership was assumed by the far more aggressive, Baksan area-based young commander Emir Abdullah (Asker Dzhappuyev), who then apparently regroupped Yarmuk and changed its tactics. Since then, the group perpetrated two high-profile bombings (a blast at the Nalchik hippodrome that injured two ministers during May Day festivities and a sabotage attack in the Baksan hydroelectric power station that inflicted significant economic damage in July) and a large number of near-daily attacks directed against members of security forces. According the Russian fedeal Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev in November 2010, "the highest level of the terrorist threat in the North Caucasus is in the republics of Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria", allegedly eclipsing even Chechnya and Ingushetia, as the KBR saw six time more gun attacks and nearly five times more explosions in 2010 so far than in the same period of 2009.

The Yarmuk fighters also began to simultaneously acting as a sort of the Taliban-style morality police, targeting alleged "dens of vice".