Afghanistan At the age of 17, Khattab left Saudi Arabia to participate in the fight against forces of the
Republic of Afghanistan and the
Soviet Union during the
Soviet–Afghan War and the following
Afghan Civil War. During this time, he lost the majority of his right hand after an accident with
IEDs. He never visited the hospital, and he healed it by himself using
honey, as per the
Prophetic medicine. He would participate in the botched
Battle of Jalalabad in 1989. Khattab, while the leader of
Islamic International Brigade, publicly admitted that he spent the period between 1989 and 1994 in Afghanistan and that he had met
Osama bin Laden and
Zawahiri. In March 1994, Khattab arrived in Afghanistan and toured
fighter training camps in
Khost province. He returned to
Afghanistan with the first group of
Chechen militants in May 1994. Khattab underwent training in Afghanistan and had close connections with
al-Qaeda. Several hundred Chechens eventually trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Bosnia–Herzegovina Armenian sources claim that in 1992 he was one of many Chechen volunteers who aided
Azerbaijan in the embattled region of
Nagorno-Karabakh, where he allegedly met
Shamil Basayev. However, the Azerbaijani
Ministry of Defense denied any involvement by Khattab in the
First Nagorno-Karabakh War. From 1993 to 1995, Khattab left to fight alongside
Islamic opposition in the
Tajikistan Civil War. Before leaving for
Tajikistan in 1994, al-Khattab gave
Abdulkareem Khadr a pet rabbit of his own, which was promptly named Khattab. In an interview, Khattab once mentioned he had also been involved in the
Bosnian War. The fragment of this interview in which he makes this statement can be found in the 2004
BBC documentary
The Smell of Paradise, though he did not specify his exact role or the duration of his presence there.
Russia First Chechen War According to Khattab's 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. He was credited as being a pioneer in producing video footage of Chechen rebel combat operations in order to aid
fundraising efforts as well as international recruitment, and he himself achieved notoriety in 1996 when he himself filmed an ambush he led against a Russian armored column in
Shatoy. Not long after his arrival he married an ethnic
Lak woman from Dagestan, the sister of
Nadyr Khachiliev, an Islamist and leader of the Union of the Muslims of Russia, which has been seen as a way to already internationalize the Chechen struggle. During the
First Chechen War, Khattab participated in fighting Russian federal forces and acted as an intermediary financier between foreign
Muslim funding sources and the local fighters. To help secure funding and spread the message of resistance, he was frequently accompanied by at least one cameraman. Also, during the First Chechen War, Khattab frequently used the Saudi Arabian flag to represent himself, and continued to view himself a Saudi citizen while fighting under the leadership of
Dzhokhar Dudayev. He received financial support from Saudi sources, and his activities were recognised by prominent Saudi religious scholars, including former Grand Mufti
Ibn Baz,
Al-Uthaymin, and
Ibn Jibrin. His units were credited with several devastating
ambushes on Russian columns in the Chechen mountains. His first action was the October 1995 ambush of a Russian
convoy which killed 47 soldiers. Khattab gained early fame and a great notoriety in Russia for his April 1996
ambush of a large armored column in a narrow gorge of Yaryshmardy, near
Shatoy, which killed up to 100 soldiers and destroyed some two or three dozen vehicles. In another ambush, near
Vedeno, at least 28 Russian troops were killed. In 1996 on the order from Aslan Maskhadov
President of Chechnya, Khattab was appointed as the Chief of Military Training Center of the Central Front of the
ChRI Armed Forces. In the course of the war,
Shamil Basayev became his closest ally and personal friend. He was also associated with
Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who gave Khattab two of the highest Chechen military awards, the Order of Honor and the Brave Warrior medal, and promoted him to the rank of
general in 1997. A senior Chechen commander by the name of Izmailov told press how Khattab urged restraint, citing the
Quran, when at the end of the war the Chechens wanted to shoot those they considered traitors.
Activity in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria After the conclusion of the war, Khattab, by then wanted by
Interpol on Russia's request, became a prominent
warlord and commanded the
Chechen Mujahideen, his own
private army with a group of Arabs, Turks, Chechens, Kurds, and other foreign fighters who had come to participate in the war. He set up a network of
paramilitary camps in the mountainous parts of the
republic that trained not only Chechens, but also
Muslims from the
North Caucasian Russian republics and
Central Asia. On 22 December 1997, over a year after the signing of the
Khasav-Yurt treaty and the end of the first war in Chechnya, the mujahideen and a group of Dagestani rebels raided a
Russian Ground Forces base in
Buinaksk,
Dagestan. The base was home to the
136th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade.
War in Dagestan In 1998, along with
Shamil Basayev, Khattab created or reorganized the Mazhlis ul Shura of the United Mujahids (Consultative Council of United Holy Warriors), the Congress of the Peoples of Dagestan and Ichkeriya, the
Special Purpose Islamic Regiment (SPIR), the
Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade (IIPB) (also known as the Islamic Peacekeeping Army) and a group of female suicide bombers, the
Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Shahids. In August–September 1999, they led the
IIPB's incursions into Dagestan, which resulted in the deaths of at least several hundred people and effectively started the
Second Chechen War.
1999 Russian apartment bombings A
Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) investigation named Khattab as the mastermind behind the September 1999
Russian apartment bombings. However, on 14 September 1999, Khattab told the Russian
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." Some journalists and historians, both western and Russian, have claimed that the bombings were in fact a "
false flag" attack
perpetrated by the FSB in order to legitimize
the resumption of military activities in Chechnya. Among them are
Johns Hopkins University scholar
David Satter, historians
Yuri Felshtinsky,
Amy Knight and
Karen Dawisha, and former FSB officer
Alexander Litvinenko who was believed to be
poisoned by Russian agents in London. However, the invasion of Dagestan in August 1999 was the first and the main casus belli for the Second Chechen War.
Second Chechen War During the course of the war in 2000, Khattab took over the leadership of the
Chechen Mujahideen and participated in leading his militia against Russian forces in Chechnya, as well as managing the influx of foreign fighters and money and also planning of attacks in Russia. He led or commanded several devastating attacks during this year, such as
the mountain battle, which killed at least 67
Russian paratroopers, and the
attack on the OMON convoy near Zhani-Vedeno, which killed at least 3 Russian Interior Ministry troops. During the war, he produced the
Russian Hell video, which showcases the torture and execution of Russian soldiers and would later become popular among Islamist militants internationally. Khattab later survived a heavy-calibre bullet wound to the stomach and a
landmine explosion. == Death and legacy ==