[11][12][13] Yarmuk was founded as a unit of around 30 Balkars and Kabardinians led by Muslim Atayev (Emir Sayfullah), which trained at the Chechen warlord Ruslan Gelayev's camp in Pankisi Gorge, Georgia.

[7][11][12][14] Mounting pressure from a continued crackdown led the group's leader, Mussa Mukozhoyev (Musa Mukozhev), to join the underground.

Radical Chechen commander Shamil Basayev maintained close ties with the local Salafis, living in the town of Baksan for more than a month in 2003, before narrowly escaping a police raid.

A turning point came in December 2004, when Yarmuk members conducted a raid on the office of the federal drug control agency in Nalchik, during which they seized large quantities of weapons and ammunition.

[11] Yarmuk was the main force involved in the botched raid by around 100–200 mostly untrained militants on the capital Nalchik in 2005, during which more than 140 people, including 95 alleged insurgents, were killed.

The group went on to perpetrate two high-profile bombings: a blast at the Nalchik hippodrome that injured two ministers during May Day festivities and a sabotage attack on the Baksan hydroelectric power station that inflicted significant economic damage in July.

[9][16][17] The Vilayet KBK fighters began to simultaneously act as a Taliban-style morality police, targeting alleged "dens of vice".

[1] In September 2011 Alim Zankishiev (aka Emir Ubaidallah) became the new leader of the rebels,[19] he was killed by Russian security forces in March 2012.

[21][22] Ruslan Baryrbekov (also using the Nom de guerre Amir Khamza) briefly became leader before being killed in September 2012 when Khasanbi Fakov became emir.