The Caucasus Emirate

**Currency** | * Ruble

The Caucasus Emirate was officially formed on 7 October 2007 from the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria secessionist movement, which had in previous decades been involved in a series of bitter wars with the Russian Federation.

The First Chechen War in December 1994 resulted in victory for the secessionists. Although the Chechen Republic had gained independence from the Federation, the devastated infrastructure and various armed factions resulting from the war saw Chechnya devolve into a corrupted and criminal state, plagued by armed gangs, an epidemic of kidnappings-for-ransom and the rise of radical Islam over the next three years. In 1997, the Chechen Republic adopted sharia law and began carrying out public executions, declaring itself an Islamic republic.

The Second Chechen War in late 1999 commenced as Russian forces moved into the region to reestablish federal control as a direct response to the war in Dagestan and a series of apartment bombings in Russia. Separatist forces engaged the Russians in open and urban combat, culminating in a winter siege of the Chechnen capital, Grozny, the aftermath of which lead to the United Nations declaring Grozny to be "the most destroyed city on Earth" in 2003. Grozny had been converted into a fortress city by the separatists, and the fighting turned out to be brutal and costly for both sides.
With the capital taken by the Russians, the Chechen republic was forced into exile, and armed resistance moved from military to insurrection. Rebel fighters were driven underground and continued to resist the Federation with irregular terrorist attacks over the next decade. The leader of the rebels would declare the formation of a Caucasus Front against Russia in 2005. After his death that next year, his successor would declare a jihad to establish an Emirate in the North Caucasus. The declaration became official in 2007, combining religious extremist groups from neighboring Dagestan, Ingushetiya, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia. The Republic of Ichkeria, the officials of which were still operating in exile in Europe at the time, was abolished by extremist leaders, with the region instead becoming a province of the Caucasus Emirate. Terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus would increase substantially between 2007 to 2010.

In 2013, the leader of the Caucasus Emirate died to poisoning. The ensuing leadership dispute saw his successor and subcommanders swear allegiance to a larger group fighting a war in the middle east. Combined with pressures of counter-terrorism operations from Russia taking their toll on extremist leadership, much of the energy behind the Caucasus Emirate was depleted.

The alien invasion of 2014 gave the religious extremists the opportunity to begin to rebuild their power base, taking advantage of the fear and confusion to establish their control, quickly overtaking the now headless government by the end of 2014 and spilling over into neighboring regions similarly destabilized. By then end of 2015, the Caucasus Emirate had become a reality; a Salafist state in the underbelly of Russia eager to spread its control.

Although the 2014 invasion and the "Kursk Incident" proved to be a vital lifeline for the then nearly extinguished movement, pushing their influence further north would prove difficult, as the secularly-motivated revolutionaries mixed poorly with the religious extremism of the Emirate, and the Saratov and Volgogorad Oblasts farther north still possessed significant Federal military presence. The region north of the Caucasus has as a result become a bloody battlefield between these three groups, with intensity rising and falling with the seasons but never truly subsiding.