Said-Magomed Shamaevich Kakiyev (, also spelled Kakiev; born 22 February 1970) is a colonel in the Russian Army, who was the leader of the GRU Spetsnaz Special Battalion Zapad ("West"), a Chechen military force, from 2003 to 2007. Inside Chechnya his men were sometimes referred to as the Kakievtsy. Unlike the other Chechen pro-Moscow forces in Chechnya, Kakiyev and his men are not former rebels and during the First Chechen War were some of the few Chechen militants who fought on the Russian side.

Kakiyev has been declared a Hero of the Russian Federation, has twice received the Order of Courage and was awarded two specially engraved guns by the Russian Minister of Defense. He had been engaged in power struggles for overall military authority with the president of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov and the commander of the Special Battalion Vostok ("East") Sulim Yamadayev. In 2007, having left the post of battalion commander, he was appointed deputy military commissar of Chechnya for military-patriotic education of youth.

Before the First Chechen War

Said-Magomed Kakiyev was born on 22 February 1970 in the village of Ken-Yurt, Nadterechny District, Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. He belongs to the teip Zandakhoy.

After he finished a Grozny vocational school in 1989 he went to serve in the Soviet Army from 1989 to 1991 in a reconnaissance battalion of the Transcaucasian Military District. He was assigned to Nagorno-Karabakh where he witnessed at first hand the devastating aftermath of the Soviet Union collapse. In the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, he acquired the rank of Major.

He came home to a Chechnya in turmoil. Dzhokhar Dudayev had started a rebellion against Soviet, later Russian rule, but the northern part of Chechnya where Kakiyev hailed from was not so enthusiastic about the secession. After allegedly witnessing atrocities, Kakiyev joined the opposition against Dudaev. In 1992, he organized a militia unit on the territory of the Nadterechny District, then headed by , leader of the anti-Dudayev coalition. In 1993 he was seriously hurt when his grenade launcher exploded during an assassination attempt on Dudayev. He lost his left hand, an eye, and his nose and had to have his face reconstructed beyond recognition at a hospital in Moscow. Zapad, unlike other pro-Moscow factions, did not include former rebels.

See also

  • List of Heroes of the Russian Federation

References

  • Land of the warlords - Who's who in the new Chechnya, The Guardian
  • Said-Magomed Kakiyev biography, Caucasian Knot (in Russian)