The group united various rebel Jamaat groups across the
North Caucasus, including the
Ingush Jamaat,
Shariat Jamaat,
Yarmuk Jamaat and
Kataib al-Khoul, to fight the Russian rule not only in Chechnya but also in the rest of the Caucasus. It was led by a
Chechen commander
Shamil Basayev until his death in July 2006 and since then by
Ali Taziev. In October 2007 the Caucasian Front later became the
Caucasus Emirate, a self proclaimed
emirate. While the anti-Russian local insurgencies in
North Caucasus started even before the formal creation of the Caucasian Front, two months after
Aslan Maskhadov's death, the new Chechen leader
Abdul-Halim Sadulayev officially announced that they had formed a Caucasus Front within the framework of "reforming the system of military-political power." The movement had taken on a new role as the official ideological, logistical and, probably, financial hub of the new insurgency in the North Caucasus. Increasingly frequent clashes between federal forces and local rebels continued in
Dagestan and
Ingushetia, while sporadic fighting erupts in the other southern Russia regions. Before the declaration of the
Caucasus Emirate, the movement had conducted two-large scale attacks, the
2004 Nazran raid in Ingushetia and the
2005 Nalchik raid in Kabardino-Balkaria. The movement also launched many smaller attacks such as the
2006 Avtury ambush &
2007 Zhani-Vedeno ambush. ==Fronts of the Caucasian front==