The 1999 war in Dagestan, also known as the Dagestan incursions, was an armed conflict that began when the Chechen-based Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade, an Islamist group led by Shamil Basayev, Ibn al-Khattab, Ramzan Akhmadov and Arbi Barayev, invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan on 7 August 1999, in support of the Shura of Dagestan separatist rebels. Wikipedia