Screenshot from a video from a counterterrorism operation in Botlikh, Daghestan, in March 2018 (Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation /YouTube)
For several years, young Daghestani men have been disappearing, reported missing by their families only later to be declared ‘destroyed in counterterrorism operations’. Evidence from the families of many of these men as well as local rights groups and experts, suggest they may have been kidnapped by the authorities, and that faking the war on terror is just another face of Daghestan’s raging corruption.
Four natives of Daghestan have been detained in Moscow accused by the National Antiterrorism Committee of being supporters of the Islamic State.
Police are searching for alleged militants and their accomplices in the Daghestani city Khasavyurt and three villages in the north of the republic. A Counter-Terrorism Operation (CTO) has been declared. The CTO regime was introduced in the morning of 19 March in Khasavyurt, Kizilyurt, and Kazbekovsky districts. 
Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, approximately 200 people from Ingushetia have joined the Islamic State. Of these, about 50 have died and 10 have returned to Ingushetia, according to Ingushetia’s acting Minister of Internal Affairs, Yury Muravyev.
