Dokka Umarov

Dokka Khamatovich Umarov Умаран Хамади кант Докка
Dokka Umarov during a session of the ChRI leaders in 2003
1st Emir of the Caucasus Emirate
In office October 31, 2007 – present
5th President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
In office June 17, 2006 – October 31, 2007
Preceded by	Abdul Halim Sadulayev
Succeeded by	Parliamentary rule
Personal details
Born	(1964-04-13) April 13, 1964 Kharsenoi, Chechen-Ingush ASSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Chechen

Doku (Dokka) Khamatovich Umarov (Chechen: Iумар КIант Доккa; Russian: Доку Хаматович Умаров; he also uses the Arabized name of "Dokka Abu Usman";) (born April 13, 1964) is the Russia's leading Islamic revolutionary. Umarov is the former underground President of the urecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI) between 2006 and 2007 and currently the self-proclaimed Emir of the Russian North Caucasus (as the virtual Islamic state of Caucasus Emirate) since 2007. Although Umarov has publicly rejected violence against civilians, he has stated that he does not believe there are any civilians in Russia. He is currently wanted in Russia for alleged crimes of terrorism, kidnapping, murder and treason.

Early life

Umarov was born to Khamad Umarov of the Malkoy teip (the same clan as the warlord Arbi Barayev and the Chechen ex-foreign minister Ilyas Akhmadov) in April 1964 in the small village of Kharsenoi (Kharsenoy) in Shatoysky District region in southern Chechnya. He has graduated from the construction faculty of the Oil Institute in the Chechen capital Grozny with a higher education degree as a construction engineer.

First Chechen War and interwar period

Althrough Umarov was in Moscow (or in Tyumen Oblast) when the first Russian-Chechen war broke out in December 1994, he returned to Chechnya to fulfill what he said was his patriotic duty to fight. Umarov initially served under the command of Ruslan Gelayev. In 1996, due to disagreements with Gelayev, he left the unit and joined the command of Akhmed Zakayev, who had also left Gelayev's ranks, now heading the special forces unit Borz ("Wolf"). In the course of the war, in which his unit was expanded from a battalion to regiment, Umarov was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and won two prestigious awards for valor: for his bravery he was decorated with Ichkeria's two highest medals: Hero of the Nation (Kyoman Turpal) and Honour of the Nation (Kioman Syi).

Following the Khasav-Yurt Accord that ended the first Chechen war in 1996 and the presidential election of Aslan Maskhadov in January 1997, Umarov was named by Maskhadov to head the Chechen Security Council. In that capacity, he intervened in July 1998 to quash an armed clash between moderates and Islamic radicals in the city of Gudermes. He was however forced to resign when the Council was disbanded, according to some sources because of persistent rumors of Umarov's participation in hostage-taking "business". In 1999, Russian sources accused him of the alleged involvement in the kidnapping of General Gennady Shpigun, the Russian envoy to Chechnya.

Second Chechen War

Umarov began the current war in September 1999 as a field commander, again working closely with Ruslan Gelayev in the siege for Grozny. In early 2000 Umarov sustained a serious wound to his face as he was leaving a surrounded Grozny and was hospitalized in a third country alongside Zakayev. According to the sources in the Georgian intelligence, Umarov led then a force of 130-150 fighters in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge before his return to Chechnya in the summer of 2002.

Back in Chechnya, Umarov became the replacement of Isa Munayev on the post of the commander of Southwestern Front, the rebel military region southwest of Grozny that bordered on Georgia and the Russian republic of Ingushetia; he was seen as having been an ally of Vedeno-based Shamil Basayev. In 2003 Gelayev led his men in the heavy fighting around the town of Shatoy and according to the Russian sources ordered the bombing of the Ingushetia FSB headquarters in the Ingush capital Magas and the attack on electrical infrastructure facalities in the city of Kislovodsk in Stavropol Krai. After death of Gelayev in February 2004, many of his remaining men joined Umarov's command. The next year, together with Basayev, Umarov was one of the leaders of a large-scale raid into neighbouring Ingushetia in the summer of 2004. Through 2005, there were numerous incorrect reports of Umarov's death or grave injury. In January, he was reported having been killed in a gun battle with the Russian special forces near the Georgian border. In March, he was reported as having been seriously wounded by a Spetznaz assassination team. In September, the MVD announced it had found "Umarov's grave" and the following month in October he was once again falsely reported dead in the rebel raid on Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria. In April 2005, Russian special forces destroyed a small guerrilla unit during a battle in a residential area of Grozny after receiving intelligence that Umarov was with them, yet he was not found among the dead. In May 2005, Umarov was reportedly seriously hurt when he stepped on an anti-personnel mine. He was said to have lost a leg in the blast, but turned out to be only lightly injured and participated in an attack on the village of Roshni-Chu three months later. In May 2006, Chechen police discovered his headquarters bunker in the center of the village of Assinovskaya on the border with Ingushetia, however Umarov managed to escape in time. By this time he had already become a vice-president of the separatist government.

Presidency

As vice-president, Umarov was automatically elevated to the position as supreme leader of the ChRI following the death of President of Ichkeria Sheikh Abdul Halim on June 17, 2006. Having become president, Umarov also held such posts as the head of the State Defense Council; Amir of the Madzhlis Shura of the Caucasus; Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria; and finally, Emir of the Mujahideen of the Caucasus. In his first published comments since assuming the role of president, Umarov vowed to expand the conflict to "many regions of Russia", praised his predecessor Sadulayev, indicated that a special unit was being formed to fight Chechnya's "most odious traitors" (a remark believed to refer to the present federal Chechen administration) and stressed that the Chechen rebels would attack only military and police targets within Russia, including in the newly-declared Urals and Volga Region Fronts. On June 27, 2006, Umarov appointed Shamil Basayev to the position of vice-president of the separatist government, simultaneously releasing him from his position as first deputy prime minister. Ichkeria's foreign minister, Usman Firzauli, said that the appointment was meant to force Russia into political negotiations, for if they killed Umarov, then the radical Basayev would have become the official leader of the rebel movement. However, Basayev was killed soon afterward, in July 2006. On March 19, 2007, rebel Kavkaz Center website reported that Umarov has appointed Supyan Abdullayev as the new vice-president of the ChRI. In October 2007, Umarov made another controversial move when he posthumously restored the disgraced notorious field commander Arbi Barayev to the rank of brigadier general, which was stripped of him by Maskhadov in 1998.

On August 18, 2006, Umarov was falsely announced to have surrendered at the Gudermes residence of Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Russian Chechen leader, under a Russian amnesty provision enacted after Basayev's death; however, Russian authorities later reversed it to a claim of surrender of Umarov's "younger brother and former head of body guards" (Umarov maintains he has no younger brother and the later reports identified the allegedly surrendered person as his older brother Akhmad instead; for their part, the Chechen separatists said that the older Umarov disappeared two years before and claimed that the presentation of the Chechen leader's brother was "a PR stunt"). Umarov himself has previously called the amnesty as "a hopeless attempt by the Kremlin regime to shroud the real situation... in lies." On November 23, 2006, large numbers of Russian Defense Ministry and the FSB troops, without the participation of Chechen police, supported by helicopters and artillery barrages, were reported to have surrounded Umarov and his forces in a forest near the village of Yandi-Katar in the Achkhoy-Martanovsky District, on the internal border between Ingushetia and Chechnya. According to Kommersant sources, Umarov has been wounded in the operation but managed to escape the pursuit. He then spent the winter months travelling across the mountains to the nearby republic of Kabardino-Balkaria to meet with local jamaats fighting Russian authorities in the region and consolidate the Caucasian Front, the pan-Caucasian Islamic rebel movement set up by the late President Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev. In April 2007, a group of fighters which might have been personally led by Umarov shot down a Russian troop transport helicopter near Shatoy.

Leader of the Caucasus Emirate

On October 7, 2007, Umarov had proclaimed Imarat Kavkaz (Caucasus Emirate, aimed at uniting Northern Caucasus into a single Islamic state) and at once declared himself its Emir, thereby converting the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria into a vilayat (province) of the new emirate. The move to establish the Emirate was quickly condemned by Akhmed Zakayev, by then until recently Umarov's own minister of foreign affairs. Zakayev, living in exile in London, called upon all separatist fighters and politicians to pledge allegiance directly to the Chechen parliament in an attempt to isolate his former subordinate from power. Zakayev expressed regret that Umarov had caved in to pressure from "provocateurs" and committed a "crime" that undermines the legitimacy of the ChRI. In a one-day period two former senior field commanders, Isa Munayev and Sultan Arsayev, issued statements publicly siding with Zakayev and distancing themselves from Umarov. However, all of the prominent active field commanders in Chechnya, with the sole exception of Amir Mansur (Arbi Evmirzayev), had sided with Dokka Umarov on the decision.

Famous Radio Liberty journalist Andrei Babitsky reported in November 2007 that Umarov had again travelled to the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria to rest and recuperate for the winter months. Babitsky said that Umarov was in a poor state of health after taking a shrapnel wound to his lower jaw (it is possible Umarov received the wound in 2006 when he broke out of a Russian encirclement on the Chechen/Ingush border) and after his leg was injured in a mine explosion. Pro-Moscow Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov offered him medical care if Umarov were to "beg for forgiveness". On May 9, 2009, Ramzan Kadyrov announced that Umarov has been reportedly severely wounded once again (in an interview conducted in July 2009 with Prague Watchdog Umarov maintained that the last time he was wounded was in 1995 during the First Chechen War) and four of his bodyguards has been killed in an operation commanded by Kadyrov's cousin and deputy Adam Delimkhanov (early rumors even claimed that Umarov had even been killed), but this was denied by the rebel sources. On January 19, 2010, Kadyrov announced that he had launched an another Delimkhanov-led special operation in Chechnya’s mountains to find and eliminate Umarov.

Religious beliefs and views

In the beginning Umarov maintained that he practiced traditional Chechen Sufi Islam of the Qadiri Order, as opposed to religious radicalism of the "Wahhabis". Responding to Russian claims that he was an Islamic extremist, he descriped himself as a "traditionalist", and said: "Before the start of the first war in 1994, when the occupation began and I understood that war was inevitable, I came here as a patriot. I'm not even sure I knew how to pray properly then. It's ridiculous to say I'm a Wahhabist or a radical Muslim." Umarov denied that the Chechen separatism is linked to al-Qaeda or any other international jihadist groups, saying that the rebels' priority is liberty and independence from Russia and peace for the Caucasus. However, in the same 2007 statement in which Umarov proclaimed the Caucasus Emirate, he expressed solidarity with "brothers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Palestine" and described "everyone who attacked Muslims" as common enemies of Muslims worldwide. His deputy Anzor Astemirov soon retracted this statement, although saying they still held Israel to be an enemy. Prior to the declaration of the Emirate, Umarov was commonly viewed as a staunch Chechen nationalist and was excepted by many observers to rather curb the pan-Islamist tendencies in the separatist movement.

Accusation of terrorism

Although Umarov has publicly rejected violence against civilians, he is currently federally wanted in Russia for alleged crimes including acts of terrorism. During the September 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis Umarov was repeatedly identified by Russian security services as the leader of the hostage takers, a claim that has never been substantiated in any fashion (the Russian government itself claimed none of Beslan militants have escaped); Umarov also condemned the Beslan act and distanced himself from terrorism. In March 2008, Chechnya's chief prosecutor, Valery Kuznetsov, has launched a criminal case against Umarov for "inciting inter-ethnic hatred and calling for the overthrow of the Russian government on the Internet" (ironically, the penalty for this is only a fine of up to 500,000 rubles and a ban on holding management positions); according to Kommersant, Umarov was earlier on Russia's wanted list but all the previous (much more serious) charges against him were suspended in 2005 (the paper also noted that the ChRI government in exile is investigating Umarov for "attempting to liquidate the independent Chechen state" by declaring the creation of a Caucasus Emirate). On several occasions, Umarov firmly denied any involvement in indiscriminate terrorism and questioned its legitimacy and value. In a June 2005 interview with Andrei Babitsky, he criticized Basayev for ordering the Beslan raid, saying that most of the Chechen resistance does not consider the Beslan hostage taking was a legitimate response to Russian actions in Chechnya ("if we resort to such methods, I do not think any of us will be able to retain his human face"). His controversial appointment of Basayev to the post of prime minister in 2006 was precedeed by a public statement rejecting terrorism against civilians as a tactic. In another statement in 2004 he wrote: "Our targets are the Russian occupation forces, their military bases, command headquarters and also their local collaborationists who pursue and kill peaceful Muslims. Civil objects and innocent civilians are not our targets." However, Umarov has been implicated in numerous attacks against civilians.In 2009 Umarov's organization took responsibility for the second Nevsky Express bombing, which claimed the lives of 27 people, including two government officials, and injured nearly 100 others. The Caucasus Emirate was officially classified by Russia as a terrorist organization a month later. In a July 2009 interview with Prague Watchdog, when asked if people should expect a repetition of events like the Beslan hostage crisis and Moscow theater hostage crisis, Umarov responded: "If that is the will of Allah. Shamil did not have the opportunities I have right now. We are experiencing such an influx of manpower that, if Allah allows me, there will be a result. I think I will even be conducting a slightly larger number of operations." He elaborated: "As far as possible we will try to avoid civilian targets, but for me there are no civilians in Russia. Why? Because a genocide of our people is being carried out with their tacit consent."

Family

Dokka Umarov is married, with six children, the youngest of whom was born in 2006. According to Kavkaz Center, two of Umarov's brothers died in combat. Since 2003 several of Umarov's relatives (as well as many relatives of the other Chechen separatist leaders), including all of his immediate family, have been kidnapped by "unidentified armed men" (presumably government agents); some of them were released but the others disappeared and are feared dead. Shortly after the Beslan hostage-taking raid in 2004, during which Umarov's close relatives were helf for several days at Khankala, Prosecutor General of Russia Vladimir Ustinov suggested the practice of taking rebel leaders' relatives hostage. In 2005, the Russian leading human rights group Memorial blamed pro-Moscow Chechen forces ("Kadyrovtsy") for a policy of abductions of the rebels' relatives. On May 5, 2005, a group of masked attackers kidnapped Umarov's wife, his one-year-old son and his 74-year-old father Khamad; according to the rebel sources, Umarov's family was abducted by the employees of the Oil Regiment (Neftepolk) headed by Chechnya's first deputy prime minister Adam Delimkhanov and held in a Kadyrov's personal prison in the village of Tsentoroi. Few months before that, on February 24, Umarov's brother Ruslan had also been kidnapped by armed men and then allegedly tortured by the FSB at Khankala military base. Umarov's wife and son were later freed, but his father and the younger brother both disappeared and in April 2007 Umarov declared his elderly father has been murdered in captivity. In August 2005 Umarov's sister Natalia (Natasha) Khumaidova was abducted in the Chechen town of Urus-Martan; she was released days later, after local residents protesting for her return rallied and blocked a federal highway, and in 2003-2004 his cousin Zaurbek Umarov and nephew Roman Atayev were also reportedly detained in Chechnya and in Ingushetia but then disappeared. Such cases are not rare in Chechnya.

External links

• Doku Umarov (Russian rebel leader), Encyclopædia Britannica entry
• Template:Ru icon Умаров, Доку: Президент самопровозглашенной республики Ичкерия, Lenta.ru