page_title: Caucasus Emirate
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Caucasus Emirate / Organizational structure / Overview
context_page_description: The Caucasus Emirate, also known as the Caucasian Emirate or Emirate of Caucasus, was a terrorist Jihadist organisation active in rebel-held parts of Syria and previously in the southwestern region of the Russian Federation. Its intention was to expel the Russian presence from the North Caucasus and to establish an independent Islamic emirate in the region. Caucasus Emirate also refers to the state that the group seeks to establish. Partially a successor to the secessionist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, it was officially announced on 7 October 2007, by former President of Ichkeria Dokka Umarov, who became its first emir.
  By late 2015 the group no longer had a visible presence in the North Caucasus region, as most of its members defected to the local ISIL affiliate, Vilayat Kavkaz.
context_section_description: The Caucasus Emirate is claimed to be composed of the following Vilayats (provinces):
  Vilayat Nokhchicho (Chechnya)
  Vilayat Galgaycho (Ingushetia and North Ossetia)
  Vilayat Cherkessia (Adygea and southern part of Krasnodar Krai)
  Vilayat Dagestan (Dagestan)
  Vilayat Iriston (North Ossetia) was abolished in 2009 in a decree issued by Umarov that subsumed it into Vilayat Galgaycho
  In August 2008 Movladi Udugov, an ideologue and a spokesman for the Caucasus Emirate, said that "as Dokka Umarov very accurately observed, this Islamic state does not yet have any borders. It’s not correct to say that we want to build some sort of enclave on the territory of these North Caucasus republics. No, today many Muslims living in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Buryatia, Russians from the most widely differing regions of Russia who have accepted Islam, swear an oath of allegiance to Dokka Umarov as the legitimate leader of the Muslims. And wherever he is – in Moscow, Blagoveshchensk, Tyumen – when a Muslim swears that oath, he becomes a fighting unit. Just because these people are not visible in their cities just now and are not active, that doesn’t mean that they won’t become active in the future."
  In a May 2011 interview posted on the pro Caucasus Emirate Kavkaz Center website, Umarov stated "Now we know that we should not secede, but must unite with our brothers in faith. We must recapture Astrakhan, Idel-Ural, Siberia and indigenous Muslim lands."
caption: Proposed divisions of the Caucasus Emirate