Ibn al-Khattab
Ibn al-Khattab (ابن الخطاب) (born Saudi Arabia, 1969, died March 20, 2002), more commonly known as Emir Khattab (also transliterated as Emir Khattab and Ameer Khattab), and also known as Habib Abdul Rahman, was a Sunni warlord and financier working with Chechen fighters in the First Chechen War and the Second Chechen War.
The origins and real identity of Khattab remained a mystery to most until after his death, when his brother gave an interview to the press [1]. Khattab's given name is Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem, and he was born in 1969 in Saudi Arabia to an Arab father and an Adyghe mother.
Biography
Central Asia
At the age of 17, Khattab left Saudi Arabia to partipate in the fight against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. During this time, he permanently incapacitated his right hand and lost several fingers after an accident with homemade explosives.
From 1993-1995, Khattab left to fight alongside Islamic fundamentalist opposition in the Tajikistan Civil War.
First Chechen War
According to his brother, he first heard about the Chechen conflict on an Afghan television channel in 1995; that same year he entered Chechnya, posing as a television reporter.
During the First Chechen War, Khattab participated in fighting Russian forces and acted as an intermediary financier between foreign Islamist funding sources and the local fighters. To help secure funding and spread the message of resistance, Khattab was frequently accompanied by a crew of two cameramen who videotaped fighting and subsequent executions of captured contract soldiers. Sometime in the course of the war, Khattab met Shamil Basayev and became his closest ally. He was also associated with Zelimkhan Yanderbiyev.
Khattab gained early fame and a great notoriety in Russia for his April 1996 ambush of a Russian military armored column in a narrow gorge of Yaryshmardy near Shatoy in the southern Chechen mountains. The attack killed 53 servicemen and wounded 52, according to the official Russian figures. According to the other sources, about 100 soldiers of the 245th Motorized Rifle Regiment were killed, and some estimates range as high as 223 dead, including 26 "senior officers." According to Khattab only four members of the 50-men ambush force died in the attack. A grisly video of the aftermath of the ambush, with Khattab walking triumphantly down a line of blackened Russian corpses, was soon available for sale in Grozny market.[1]
After the conclusion of the First Chechen War, Khattab became a prominent warlord and commanded the Islamic Regiment, his own private army with a backbone of a small group of Arabs and other foreign fighters who had come to participate in the war. Khattab set up a network of paramilitary camps in the republic that trained not only Islamic fundamentalists from the North Caucasian republics, but Georgian supporters of Zviad Gamsakhurdia and even, according to some reports, Muslims from Central Asia.[citation needed]
Dagestan
On 22 December, 1997, over a year after the signing of the Khasavyurt treaty and the end of the First Chechen War, the Islamic Regiment and a group of Dagestani rebels raided the base of the 136th Armoured Brigade of the 58th Army of Russian Army in Buinaksk, Dagestan, burning vehicles and killing soldiers. Figures for this raid vary. Chechen sources reported destruction or damage to 300 vehicles, while Russian sources reported only 10 destroyed and 15 damaged.
In 1998, along with Shamil Basayev, Khattab created the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade (IIPB) group (also known as the Islamic Peacekeeping Army) which in 2003 was put on the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations.[2] In August-September 1999, they led the IIPB's incursions into Dagestan, effectively starting the Second Chechen War.
Second Chechen War
During the course of the war, Khattab participated in leading his militia against Russian forces in Chechnya and managing the influx of foreign fighters and money (and, according to the Russian officials, also planning of terrorist attacks in Russia). On February 29, 2000, insurgents under the leadership of Khattab's deputy Amir Abu al-Walid attacked a VDV 51st Paratroop Regiment company from Pskov near the village of Ulus-Kert; the battle lasted almost three days, ultimately resulting in 86 of the Russian paratroopers being killed in action. [3] On March 29, 2000, Khattab led an attack on the OMON convoy near Zhani-Vedeno, killing 34 troops, while 9 were taken prisoner and later executed.[2]
Death and legacy
Khattab later survived a heavy-calibre bullet wound to the stomach, a landmine explosion and a grenade which detonated in his hand. He was killed on a night of March 19-20, 2002, when a Dagestani messenger hired by the Russian FSB gave Khattab a poisoned letter.
He was succeeded in his role as financier-mediator by Amir Abu al-Walid, who was killed in 2004.
1999 Moscow bombings
An FSB investigation named Khattab as the mastermind behind the Russian apartment bombings which occurred in early September 1999.
However, on September 14, Khattab told the Interfax news agency in Grozny that he had nothing to do with the Moscow explosions; he was quoted as saying, “We would not like to be akin to those who kill sleeping civilians with bombs and shells.” [3]
It has been widely speculated that the FSB itself was in fact actually behind the bombings.[4]
References
- ^ http://www.islamawareness.net/Persecution/Chechnya/khattab.html
- ^ http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=23&issue_id=1776&article_id=17158
- ^ http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=94
- ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings#Theory_of_FSB_involvement
External links
- Obituary: Chechen rebel Khattab BBC News
- AMIR KHATTAB Kavkaz Center in Russian
- RED CROSS: CRIMINAL CASE NO. 96620018 From files of Prosecutor's Office of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria RIA Novosti
- Sobaka Dossier: Khattab Sobaka Magazine
- The Rise and Fall of Foreign Fighters in Chechnya The Jamestown Foundation