Vilayat Dagestan, formerly known as Shariat Jamaat, is an Islamist jihadist group based in the Russian republic of Dagestan. Shariat Jamaat was founded in 2002 by Rasul Makasharipov, and its goal was to create an independent Islamic state in Dagestan ruled by sharia law. The Jamaat targeted police and security officials in a terrorist insurgency during the 2000s and 2010s, and it even targeted civilians such as loyalist Muslim imams and Russian Orthodox Church clerics. On 7 October 2007, the group became a part of the Caucasus Emirate as "Vilayat Dagestan", declaring itself a province of the hypothetical emirate. The Vilayat plunged Dagestan into near-civil war, and it threatened to carry out a guerrilla war of attrition across the entire Russian Federation (including Moscow and Saint Petersburg) if the Russians did not withdraw their troops from Dagestan and open peace talks.