A Political Portrait of Doku Umarov, Russia’s Most Wanted Man
CRIA » From Racketeer to Emir: A Political Portrait of Doku Umarov, Russia’s Most Wanted Man
Introduction: Formative experiences and accusations of criminality
Emil Souleimanov, a Chechen political scientist, perhaps put it best when he described Doku Umarov as a man with a “rather unclear past”.1 We know that he was born in the town of Kharsenoi in Chechnya’s Shatoisky district in April 1964.2 Practically nothing is known about Umarov’s childhood experiences. By Umarov’s own account, his family were members of Chechnya’s intelligentsia.3 The first substantial information relating to his formative experiences concerns his graduation from the construction faculty of the Oil Institute in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital city, where he reportedly secured a degree in engineering.4
Assuming that Umarov was approximately twenty-one years of age on graduating from the Oil Institute, this would suggest that his studies were completed in either 1984 or 1985. This was a difficult time for any young Chechen graduate to make a gainful, honest living. Chechnya’s economy
became evermore dichotomised during the Brezhnev era. The republic’s highly profitable oil industry, centred on Grozny and its surrounds, was dominated by ethnic Russians and the recruitment of Chechens and Ingush into this sector was actively discouraged.5 With job opportunities scarce in the republic’s most lucrative economic sector, a majority of Chechens found themselves confined to their overpopulated home villages.6 The options facing this unwanted labour force were threefold: seek low-wage employment in Chechnya’s agricultural sector; emigrate to another part of the USSR in search of seasonal, or permanent, work; or try to carve out a niche in Chechnya’s shadow economy.
Not long after graduating, Umarov chose to emigrate and fetched up in central Russia. It is not certain whether the motivation behind this decision was economic or something altogether more untoward. According to certain sources, Umarov became involved in criminality during the early nineteen-eighties. One account holds that he was arrested in 1982 on charges of “hooliganism” and sentenced to three years imprisonment.7 A second account details how Umarov was charged and convicted of “reckless homicide” in 1980, when he would have been just sixteen.8 While a third account claims that he was convicted of “manslaughter” in 1981.9 If we are to read anything into these accounts then Umarov must have spent a considerable amount of time in prison between the years 1980 and 1984 – in other words the approximate period during which he is supposed to have attended the Oil Institute in Grozny.
Regardless of whether he spent these years in college or in prison, Umarov certainly left Chechnya sometime in the mid-1980s. By the early 1990s he had established himself as a businessman in Siberia, in the city of Tyumen to be exact. Here, Umarov reportedly worked as the commercial director of the so-called Tyumen-Agda F4 enterprise.10 Umarov secured this job by virtue of certain family connections. The managing director of the company was another Chechen, one Musa Atayev, Umarov’s cousin.
Sources close to Russia’s security establishment claim that Umarov’s time in Tyumen was cut short by a violent episode he became embroiled in during the summer of 1992.11 Following an altercation with a group of local teenagers, the exact details of which are unclear, Umarov and Atayev gained forcible entry to a house in the Patrushayevo district of Tyumen. The house belonged to a Mr. Alexander Subotin, whose son was one of the youths who had somehow aggravated the Chechen cousins. Umarov and Atayev conducted themselves belligerently and demanded of Mr. Subotin that he turn over his son immediately. When Subotin asked for an explanation as to the two intruders’ interest in his son, he was shot and left for dead (Subotin survived his wounds). The Chechen duo then allegedly executed a second family member, as well as a visitor to the household, before helping themselves to some of the Subotins’ belongings and making good their escape. By the time murder charges were brought against them in July 1992,12 Umarov and Atayev had returned to Chechnya, which by this time had declared its independence from the Russian Federation. Chechnya thus represented a safe haven for fugitives from Russian justice such as Umarov and Atayev.
Naturally, a degree of circumspection is required when dealing with source material furnished by Russia’s military-security complex. It is possible that the Subotin affair, as well as the other accusations that have been made against Umarov, are parts of an “active measure” by Russia’s Federal Security Service designed to discredit him. However, even one of Umarov’s intimates, the Islamic theologian Sheikh Said Buryatsky, has acknowledged that Umarov was involved in racketeering during an earlier stage of his life.13
A celebrated Islamic scholar, Buryatsky was inspired by Umarov’s establishment of the Caucasus Emirate and travelled to the region in 2008 to take part in the insurgency.14 Buryatsky became personally acquainted with several of the Emirate’s leaders, including Umarov, and documented his experiences on rebel websites such as Kavkazcenter.com and Hunafa.com. In a series entitled “An inside view of Jihad”, Buryatsky detailed the exploits of the Caucasus mujahedin in their battles against pro-Russian forces.15
Before his death at the hands of Russian security forces in March 2010, Buryatsky stated forthrightly that Umarov had been a racketeer in Moscow prior to the outbreak of the first Russo-Chechen war in 1994. “That’s no secret”, Buryatsky noted rather dismissively, as though this were a matter of fact long in the public domain.16 Buryatsky’s candid references to Umarov’s background would seem to confirm suspicions that the latter was involved in organised crime prior to his return to Chechnya, probably sometime in mid-1992. “He, like everyone else, has made mistakes, from which nobody is safe, but such is their insignificance when compared to his positive qualities that I ask Allah to forgive him,” wrote Burystsky.17 Whether Burystsky is referring here to Umarov’s involvement in racketeering, or something more sinister, such as the Subotin affair, we cannot be certain. It is also possible, though unlikely, that Buryatsky may be alluding to Umarov’s involvement in the hostage-taking industry that flourished in Chechnya during the inter-war years, 1997–1999. This period in Umarov’s career will be covered in more detail later.
It is difficult to conceive of a reason why Sheikh Buryatsky would misrepresent Umarov’s past life. It should also be noted that nobody in the Emirate’s leadership, least of all Umarov, has sought to refute Buryatsky’s assertions. This, of itself, would seem to confirm the veracity of Buryatsky’s reportage. Nor should it necessarily surprise one that someone with Umarov’s social profile might have participated in organised crime in the early 1990s. The sociologist Georgi Derluguian has described vividly the challenges facing young Chechen males such as Umarov who emigrated to Russia in search of work during the 1980s:18
Some village lads […] proved ill prepared for the university and flunked out. Or they could not find the desired jobs because the construction industry and agriculture, which were the traditional Chechen occupations for previous generations, had grown highly competitive with the mass influx of newly impoverished migrant workers from republics such as the Ukraine and Moldova. Instead of sinking into penury or returning home as miserable failures, these Chechen youths found or fought their way into the dangerous but fabulously lucrative and romanticized arena of violent entrepreneurship. The traditions of clan solidarity, Chechen masculinity, and ritualized violence surely played a big role in enabling them to do this, providing a ready set of skills that were advantageous in the criminal underworld.19
In these labour market conditions, Umarov’s engineering degree would have counted for little. Racketeering in Tyumen, and later in Moscow, may have seemed the only option available to him. Possibly he could have eschewed the criminal lifestyle and returned to Chechnya, but the tradition of “Chechen masculinity”, referred to by Derluguian above, would have militated against his choosing such a course of action. As Emil Souleimanov explains:20
Since the Chechens have almost never in their history struggled with a priori fixed statutes, nor with class or economy-based social hierarchies, a constant battle for prestige and a higher position in the flexible social scale has been underway within their society. At the same time, the primary stimulator and indicator of the struggle for a higher position in this informal social hierarchy has been the community; that is, public opinion – how one is “viewed in the eyes of the people”.
Had he returned to Chechnya penniless, having failed to procure gainful employment in the Russian heartland, Umarov would have been painfully self-conscious of his own status as a “failure” in the eyes of many of his contemporaries. Quite possibly, it was this consideration that led him to go into business with Musa Atayev in Tyumen.
This fear of failure may also have contributed to the career paths of other young Chechens seeking to make a living in Russian cities during this period. Shamil Basayev, later to be Umarov’s vice-president, was resident in Moscow during the late-1980s and early-1990s.21 Basayev had initially arrived in the Russian capital in pursuit of a third-level education but finished up dabbling in the black market, trading in foreign computers.22 Ruslan Gelayev, an important influence in the early portion of Umarov’s political-military career (as will be explained below), left Chechnya as an uneducated young man in the late 1970s before reportedly taking up residence in Omsk Oblast, Siberia. Contemporaries remember Gelayev as an “odd-jobber” who married a local Russian woman.23 It has also been reported that Gelayev spent time in prison during this part of his life.24
The preponderance of young Chechens, as well as migrants from other parts of the Caucasus, presented a recruitment bonanza for Russia’s organised crime networks during these years. Indeed, according to the late Paul Klebnikov, an American journalist who specialised in reporting on organised crime in Russia, criminals of Chechen nationality were at the forefront of the racketeering industry in Moscow from the late 1980s onwards.25
Participation in the First Russo-Chechen Conflict
While Umarov was to some extent a party to this broad sociological trend, he was but a footnote in the annals of Chechen organised crime during this period and had seemingly yet to amass any great wealth by the time he returned to his homeland. Buryatsky, who makes no direct references to the Subotin affair, tells us how on returning to Chechnya, Umarov went directly to his relative, Ruslan Gelayev, an influential Chechen paramilitary leader. For many years, certain in the knowledge that Umarov fought under Gelayev’s command during the first Russo-Chechen war, observers believed that Umarov was absorbed seamlessly into Gelayev’s paramilitary structures shortly after his return to Chechnya. Recent evidence suggests that this was not the case. Again, it is Sheikh Said Buryatsky who casts fresh light on the embryonic relationship between Gelayev and Umarov. Buryatsky quotes directly from a conversation he had with Umarov, wherein the latter related the following sequence of events:26
When war began I arrived in Chechnya after heeding Dudayev’s call [Djokhar Dudayev, the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria]. Khamzat Gelayev was my distant relative and so I immediately went to him. I arrived in a Mercedes, wearing shoes, with a cigarette in my mouth and offered my assistance, to participate in the Jihad with him. Gelayev looked at me and asked did I perform namaz [ritual prayer]? I answered that I did not, but that if I must do I would learn. He did not immediately want to take me on himself and directed me to another Emir. But he later made inquiries about me and drafted me into his force.
Firstly, it should be pointed out that Umarov did not return to Chechnya “when war began”. As we have established, Umarov returned to his homeland in the summer of 1992, almost two and a half years prior to the commencement of military hostilities between Dudayev’s regime in Chechnya and the Russian state. Regardless of the correct chronology involved, it seems credible that Umarov would have presented himself to Gelayev as described by Buryatsky. This meeting may not have taken place until 1993, however, at which time Gelayev had returned to Chechnya from Abkhazia.27 The two men were related and it would have made sense for Umarov to waylay relatives in search of employment, just as he had done with Musa Atayev in Tyumen.28
By mid-1992, Ruslan Gelayev was allied with Chechnya’s nationalist leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former General in the Soviet airforce. Following his election as president, Dudayev proceeded to declare Chechnya’s independence from the Russian Federation. This decision ushered in a period of Cold War between Grozny and Moscow which lasted until December 1994 when Russian tanks finally moved into the rebellious republic as part of an attempt to “restore constitutional order”.29
Men like Gelayev, as well as the aforementioned Shamil Basayev, functioned as the military backbone of the Dudayev regime. Abetted by Russia’s military and intelligence services, Gelayev and Basayev had fought against Georgian nationalist forces in Abkhazia in 1992–93.30 Basayev had come a long way from the aspiring student who spent the latter half of the 1980s peddling foreign computers and flirting with the world of organised crime. It was in Abkhazia, that he discovered a talent for war-making, as well as a certain flair for cruelty that would continue to manifest itself throughout his long career. Gelayev also found his niche in Abkhazia. In addition to honing his military talents, some reports suggest that Gelayev’s involvement in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict was notable for the cruelty he showed towards captured Georgian soldiers.31 Similar reports abound in relation to Basayev’s treatment of Georgian prisoners of war.32
Their exploits in Abkhazia bestowed a certain prestige on these two men. On returning to Chechnya they were feted as war heroes; Basayev’s “Abkhaz Battalion”, in particular, caught the public’s imagination.33 Both Basayev and Gelayev positioned themselves as supporters of Dudayev and his nationalist agenda, although neither seemed to feel any great personal enthusiasm for the General. It was against this political backdrop that Doku Umarov appeared on Gelayev’s doorstep seeking his relative’s patronage.
One can readily speculate as to why Gelayev might have snubbed his plaintive kinsman so perfunctorily. For one thing, Gelayev had just returned from a particularly exacting, not to mention austere, period of existence on the battlefields of Abkhazia and may have taken umbrage at Umarov arriving at his home looking like a dilettante. Gelayev was also (re)discovering his Islamic faith at this stage of his life and would not have been impressed by Umarov’s candid admission that he did not know how to perform certain basic religious rites.
The poor first impression he made on Gelayev was not to the detriment of Umarov’s career in the long-term. The commander Umarov was directed to by Gelayev was Daud Akhmadov, an important figure within President Dudayev’s notoriously corrupt inner circle.34 Akhmadov seems to have been the natural point of contact between Dudayev and Gelayev for he had the distinction of being on good terms with both men. This responsibility was more challenging than it might have seemed at first glance, for Gelayev and Dudayev were never on the greatest of terms. Indeed, in March 1994, scarcely eight months before the commencement of hostilities with Russia, Gelayev and Basayev were allegedly contemplating a coup d’état to unseat Dudayev.35
As a member of Akhmadov’s network Umarov’s reputation began to flourish. By way of cementing his relationship with his new patron, Umarov married Akhmadov’s daughter.36 His career prospered under wartime conditions and at some point during the hostilities he was drafted into Gelayev’s paramilitary outfit. As a member of Gelayev’s “Borz” battalion, Umarov would likely have participated in the defence of Bamut, a village in south-western Chechnya. Bamut became a symbol of resistance for the Chechen rebels and Gelayev would later be decorated with the “Order of Ichkeria” for his participation in these events.37 Many of the villagers hailed from the same clan as Umarov, the Mulkoi,38 and these bonds, as well as his membership of the Borz battalion, mean that it is likely that he participated in the defence of Bamut.
Post-War Responsibilities
Umarov emerged from the war in a position of some political influence, with a military rank of “Brigadier-General”,39 as well as two prestigious commendations for bravery in combat.40 In August 1996, the so-called Khasavyurt accords were signed between Russian and Chechen representatives giving Chechnya the status of a de facto independent state.41 In January 1997 presidential elections were held and Aslan Maskhadov, a well-known wartime field-commander, was returned as president, replacing Dudayev who had been killed during the war.42
Sources indicate that Umarov left Gelayev’s unit sometime between September 1996 and January 1997. It is unclear whether this decision was prompted by a falling out between the two men.43 Regardless, Umarov sought out and received the patronage of another paramilitary leader, Akhmed Zakayev.44 It may well have been Zakayev who recommended Umarov to Maskhadov as a candidate for the chairmanship of Chechnya’s new Security Council. Maskhadov duly confirmed Umarov’s growing political influence by appointing him to this post in June 1997.45
Perhaps the most serious challenge facing Umarov in his new capacity as secretary of Chechnya’s Security Council was the increased political and social instability engendered by the increasingly widespread practice of hostage-taking within the new state. In June 2008, Umarov explained the situation he found himself in as follows46:
[…] we know that after the first war there was no unity among the Mujahideen like in the old days, and [that] the Mujahideen were organizing into groups. Since I had my group under my command, and since I had a military training base, it was impossible to remain outside politics back at that time, so even if you wanted to remain outside politics, they wouldn't let you do that, and the President of that time, Aslan Maskhadov, may Allah have mercy on him, appointed me Secretary of Security.
Paramilitary groups independent of government authority now emerged, as Umarov would later put it, “like mushrooms after rain”.47 In hindsight, the calculations behind Maskhadov’s appointment are easy to discern: Umarov was known to be on good terms with many of the major players in Chechnya’s hostage-taking industry, among them Arbi Barayev, Balaudi Tekilov and the Akhmadov brothers. Barayev, a field-commander of some renown during the first Russo-Chechen conflict, hailed from the same clan and geographical location as Umarov.48 It has since been claimed that Umarov used his new role as secretary of the Security Council as cover for entering into a freelance hostage-taking enterprise with Barayev, but this speculation has never been confirmed.49
Umarov was also on good terms with Baludi Tekilov, an opportunistic former racketeer and pimp who emerged as one of the main point-men in Chechnya’s hostage-taking industry during the late 1990s.50 Like Umarov, Tekilov returned to Chechnya in the early 1990s as a fugitive from Russian justice; he too sought to advance his political career through courtship, eventually marrying the sister of Salman Raduyev, a famous Chechen field-commander.51 Raduyev’s resourceful new brother-in-law quickly caught his eye and he soon appointed Tekilov as his chief-of-staff. Tekilov used this influential position to carve out a niche for himself in Chechnya’s thriving hostage-taking industry.52 Under Chechnya’s post-war government, Tekilov was appointed head of the so-called Commission for the Liberation of Missing or Detained Persons.53
Umarov has since claimed that it was his necessary association with the likes of Barayev, Tekilov and Akhmadov that led to him being accused of participation in the hostage-taking trade. In an interview with Andrei Babitsky in 2005, Umarov flatly denied any involvement in such activities:54
Because of these contacts, I began to be accused of this [hostage-taking]. But I always – when these accusations reached this level, when Maskhadov said at the Security Council that I had been accused – I said, "Here is my statement, but a person's guilt can only be established in court. If I am guilty, I will not lift a finger to defend myself. Prove it and that's all. But what people say – that is slander, and it isn't for me. Just give me a fact. Without facts, a person can say, looking at a horse, “there is a goat”.
Umarov is correct in stating that there is no concrete evidence of his direct involvement in the hostage-taking industry. However, in 2007, Umarov did little to enhance the case for his defence by posthumously honouring Barayev, a well-known hostage-taker, promoting him to the rank of “Brigadier-General”.55 Indeed, this decision was especially strange given Barayev’s known collaboration with Russia’s intelligence agencies.56 Barayev had been stripped of this rank by President Maskhadov in July 1998 following a violent altercation in Gudermes, Chechnya’s second largest city.57
It is difficult to ascertain the extent to which Umarov was involved in Chechnya’s inter-war hostage-taking business.58 It can be said with certainty, however, that from the end of the first war, Umarov was consorting openly with several known participants in the hostage trade. Barayev, for example, is described by Souleimanov as “the nation’s most notorious ruffian and kidnapper”.59 The Akhmadov brothers, meanwhile, were an influential presence in the Urus-Martan District of Chechnya during the inter-war years60 and must have been known to Umarov.
Umarov’s association with such individuals does not, of course, prove his direct involvement in the hostage-taking industry. It should be noted, however, that one need not have personally kicked down doors and hauled innocent people off into captivity to have been an active participant in the hostage trade. Referencing a conversation he had with Alexander Mukomolov, a member of General Alexander Lebed’s “peacemaking mission” to Chechnya, Valeri Tishkov, a leading Russian ethnologist, has explained how kidnappings were usually the work not of individuals but rather of loosely formed groups of field-commanders who would haggle with one another over their share of the ransom, sometimes even trading hostages with one another.61 As secretary of the Security Council, therefore, Umarov need not have involved himself directly in the act of abducting ordinary Chechens, ethnic Russians, foreigners, journalists and other targets. Instead, he could have used this office as a means of offering protection and legal validation to associates who were involved precisely in these activities. Incidentally, these were the very grounds on which Maskhadov relieved Umarov of his official duties in mid-1998.62
While the hostage-taking phenomenon represented the most immediate challenge to Umarov in his capacity as Security Council secretary, the refusal of so many field-commanders to recognize Maskhadov’s lawful authority was another trend that demanded his attention. Many of these dissidents were war-heroes who had distinguished themselves during the conflict with the Russians. Most of them were receptive to the ideology of radical Islam and took a dim view of President Maskhadov’s policies, above all his efforts to establish a normative relationship with Moscow. Well-known field-commanders like Basayev, Raduyev and Barayev openly presented themselves as paragons of Islamic virtue.
Barayev renamed his paramilitary unit the “Special Purpose Islamic Brigade”. Regarded throughout Chechnya as a “Wahhabi”, the colloquial designation for a follower of radical Islam, Barayev was collaborating closely with like-minded field-commanders such as Abdul-Malik Mezhidov, head of the so-called Sharia Guard movement.63 He was also known to enjoy the patronage of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a leading figure among the radicals.64 In July 1998, paramilitary forces belonging to Barayev and Mezhidov clashed in Gudermes with forces loyal to the Yamadayev family, the de facto custodians of the city. In his capacity as Security Council Chairman, Umarov was obliged to intercede in this conflict. Umarov would later describe his role in these events as that of a “referee”, explaining that he had felt little enthusiasm for his official duties as Security Council chief.65 After a two-day-long melee that claimed scores of lives, Barayev and Mezhidov were forced to abandon their positions in Gudermes. Maskhadov announced that both Barayev’s and Mezhidov’s forces were to be disbanded and forbade members of these bodies from bearing arms.66
This was a particularly difficult period for Maskhadov and his supporters. The events in Gudermes represented merely the latest in an increasingly long line of violent clashes between Wahhabi forces and government militiamen. Against this backdrop, and in the light of Umarov’s close relationship with Barayev and other known Wahhabis, Maskhadov might have deemed it politically prudent to dismiss his Security Council secretary. Apart from his compromising ties to Barayev, in any case Umarov had failed to stabilise the security situation throughout Chechnya during his tenure as Security Council chief. Therefore, while we cannot satisfactorily answer the question of whether Umarov abetted the worsening security situation by partaking in Chechnya’s lucrative hostage-taking industry, we can conclude that he failed to fulfil his official mandate of providing a favourable security environment in the new state.
Toward A Renewed Russo-Chechen Conflict
Read the full article here: CRIA » From Racketeer to Emir: A Political Portrait of Doku Umarov, Russia’s Most Wanted Man
Introduction: Formative experiences and accusations of criminality
Emil Souleimanov, a Chechen political scientist, perhaps put it best when he described Doku Umarov as a man with a “rather unclear past”.1 We know that he was born in the town of Kharsenoi in Chechnya’s Shatoisky district in April 1964.2 Practically nothing is known about Umarov’s childhood experiences. By Umarov’s own account, his family were members of Chechnya’s intelligentsia.3 The first substantial information relating to his formative experiences concerns his graduation from the construction faculty of the Oil Institute in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital city, where he reportedly secured a degree in engineering.4
Assuming that Umarov was approximately twenty-one years of age on graduating from the Oil Institute, this would suggest that his studies were completed in either 1984 or 1985. This was a difficult time for any young Chechen graduate to make a gainful, honest living. Chechnya’s economy
became evermore dichotomised during the Brezhnev era. The republic’s highly profitable oil industry, centred on Grozny and its surrounds, was dominated by ethnic Russians and the recruitment of Chechens and Ingush into this sector was actively discouraged.5 With job opportunities scarce in the republic’s most lucrative economic sector, a majority of Chechens found themselves confined to their overpopulated home villages.6 The options facing this unwanted labour force were threefold: seek low-wage employment in Chechnya’s agricultural sector; emigrate to another part of the USSR in search of seasonal, or permanent, work; or try to carve out a niche in Chechnya’s shadow economy.
Not long after graduating, Umarov chose to emigrate and fetched up in central Russia. It is not certain whether the motivation behind this decision was economic or something altogether more untoward. According to certain sources, Umarov became involved in criminality during the early nineteen-eighties. One account holds that he was arrested in 1982 on charges of “hooliganism” and sentenced to three years imprisonment.7 A second account details how Umarov was charged and convicted of “reckless homicide” in 1980, when he would have been just sixteen.8 While a third account claims that he was convicted of “manslaughter” in 1981.9 If we are to read anything into these accounts then Umarov must have spent a considerable amount of time in prison between the years 1980 and 1984 – in other words the approximate period during which he is supposed to have attended the Oil Institute in Grozny.
Regardless of whether he spent these years in college or in prison, Umarov certainly left Chechnya sometime in the mid-1980s. By the early 1990s he had established himself as a businessman in Siberia, in the city of Tyumen to be exact. Here, Umarov reportedly worked as the commercial director of the so-called Tyumen-Agda F4 enterprise.10 Umarov secured this job by virtue of certain family connections. The managing director of the company was another Chechen, one Musa Atayev, Umarov’s cousin.
Sources close to Russia’s security establishment claim that Umarov’s time in Tyumen was cut short by a violent episode he became embroiled in during the summer of 1992.11 Following an altercation with a group of local teenagers, the exact details of which are unclear, Umarov and Atayev gained forcible entry to a house in the Patrushayevo district of Tyumen. The house belonged to a Mr. Alexander Subotin, whose son was one of the youths who had somehow aggravated the Chechen cousins. Umarov and Atayev conducted themselves belligerently and demanded of Mr. Subotin that he turn over his son immediately. When Subotin asked for an explanation as to the two intruders’ interest in his son, he was shot and left for dead (Subotin survived his wounds). The Chechen duo then allegedly executed a second family member, as well as a visitor to the household, before helping themselves to some of the Subotins’ belongings and making good their escape. By the time murder charges were brought against them in July 1992,12 Umarov and Atayev had returned to Chechnya, which by this time had declared its independence from the Russian Federation. Chechnya thus represented a safe haven for fugitives from Russian justice such as Umarov and Atayev.
Naturally, a degree of circumspection is required when dealing with source material furnished by Russia’s military-security complex. It is possible that the Subotin affair, as well as the other accusations that have been made against Umarov, are parts of an “active measure” by Russia’s Federal Security Service designed to discredit him. However, even one of Umarov’s intimates, the Islamic theologian Sheikh Said Buryatsky, has acknowledged that Umarov was involved in racketeering during an earlier stage of his life.13
A celebrated Islamic scholar, Buryatsky was inspired by Umarov’s establishment of the Caucasus Emirate and travelled to the region in 2008 to take part in the insurgency.14 Buryatsky became personally acquainted with several of the Emirate’s leaders, including Umarov, and documented his experiences on rebel websites such as Kavkazcenter.com and Hunafa.com. In a series entitled “An inside view of Jihad”, Buryatsky detailed the exploits of the Caucasus mujahedin in their battles against pro-Russian forces.15
Before his death at the hands of Russian security forces in March 2010, Buryatsky stated forthrightly that Umarov had been a racketeer in Moscow prior to the outbreak of the first Russo-Chechen war in 1994. “That’s no secret”, Buryatsky noted rather dismissively, as though this were a matter of fact long in the public domain.16 Buryatsky’s candid references to Umarov’s background would seem to confirm suspicions that the latter was involved in organised crime prior to his return to Chechnya, probably sometime in mid-1992. “He, like everyone else, has made mistakes, from which nobody is safe, but such is their insignificance when compared to his positive qualities that I ask Allah to forgive him,” wrote Burystsky.17 Whether Burystsky is referring here to Umarov’s involvement in racketeering, or something more sinister, such as the Subotin affair, we cannot be certain. It is also possible, though unlikely, that Buryatsky may be alluding to Umarov’s involvement in the hostage-taking industry that flourished in Chechnya during the inter-war years, 1997–1999. This period in Umarov’s career will be covered in more detail later.
It is difficult to conceive of a reason why Sheikh Buryatsky would misrepresent Umarov’s past life. It should also be noted that nobody in the Emirate’s leadership, least of all Umarov, has sought to refute Buryatsky’s assertions. This, of itself, would seem to confirm the veracity of Buryatsky’s reportage. Nor should it necessarily surprise one that someone with Umarov’s social profile might have participated in organised crime in the early 1990s. The sociologist Georgi Derluguian has described vividly the challenges facing young Chechen males such as Umarov who emigrated to Russia in search of work during the 1980s:18
Some village lads […] proved ill prepared for the university and flunked out. Or they could not find the desired jobs because the construction industry and agriculture, which were the traditional Chechen occupations for previous generations, had grown highly competitive with the mass influx of newly impoverished migrant workers from republics such as the Ukraine and Moldova. Instead of sinking into penury or returning home as miserable failures, these Chechen youths found or fought their way into the dangerous but fabulously lucrative and romanticized arena of violent entrepreneurship. The traditions of clan solidarity, Chechen masculinity, and ritualized violence surely played a big role in enabling them to do this, providing a ready set of skills that were advantageous in the criminal underworld.19
In these labour market conditions, Umarov’s engineering degree would have counted for little. Racketeering in Tyumen, and later in Moscow, may have seemed the only option available to him. Possibly he could have eschewed the criminal lifestyle and returned to Chechnya, but the tradition of “Chechen masculinity”, referred to by Derluguian above, would have militated against his choosing such a course of action. As Emil Souleimanov explains:20
Since the Chechens have almost never in their history struggled with a priori fixed statutes, nor with class or economy-based social hierarchies, a constant battle for prestige and a higher position in the flexible social scale has been underway within their society. At the same time, the primary stimulator and indicator of the struggle for a higher position in this informal social hierarchy has been the community; that is, public opinion – how one is “viewed in the eyes of the people”.
Had he returned to Chechnya penniless, having failed to procure gainful employment in the Russian heartland, Umarov would have been painfully self-conscious of his own status as a “failure” in the eyes of many of his contemporaries. Quite possibly, it was this consideration that led him to go into business with Musa Atayev in Tyumen.
This fear of failure may also have contributed to the career paths of other young Chechens seeking to make a living in Russian cities during this period. Shamil Basayev, later to be Umarov’s vice-president, was resident in Moscow during the late-1980s and early-1990s.21 Basayev had initially arrived in the Russian capital in pursuit of a third-level education but finished up dabbling in the black market, trading in foreign computers.22 Ruslan Gelayev, an important influence in the early portion of Umarov’s political-military career (as will be explained below), left Chechnya as an uneducated young man in the late 1970s before reportedly taking up residence in Omsk Oblast, Siberia. Contemporaries remember Gelayev as an “odd-jobber” who married a local Russian woman.23 It has also been reported that Gelayev spent time in prison during this part of his life.24
The preponderance of young Chechens, as well as migrants from other parts of the Caucasus, presented a recruitment bonanza for Russia’s organised crime networks during these years. Indeed, according to the late Paul Klebnikov, an American journalist who specialised in reporting on organised crime in Russia, criminals of Chechen nationality were at the forefront of the racketeering industry in Moscow from the late 1980s onwards.25
Participation in the First Russo-Chechen Conflict
While Umarov was to some extent a party to this broad sociological trend, he was but a footnote in the annals of Chechen organised crime during this period and had seemingly yet to amass any great wealth by the time he returned to his homeland. Buryatsky, who makes no direct references to the Subotin affair, tells us how on returning to Chechnya, Umarov went directly to his relative, Ruslan Gelayev, an influential Chechen paramilitary leader. For many years, certain in the knowledge that Umarov fought under Gelayev’s command during the first Russo-Chechen war, observers believed that Umarov was absorbed seamlessly into Gelayev’s paramilitary structures shortly after his return to Chechnya. Recent evidence suggests that this was not the case. Again, it is Sheikh Said Buryatsky who casts fresh light on the embryonic relationship between Gelayev and Umarov. Buryatsky quotes directly from a conversation he had with Umarov, wherein the latter related the following sequence of events:26
When war began I arrived in Chechnya after heeding Dudayev’s call [Djokhar Dudayev, the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria]. Khamzat Gelayev was my distant relative and so I immediately went to him. I arrived in a Mercedes, wearing shoes, with a cigarette in my mouth and offered my assistance, to participate in the Jihad with him. Gelayev looked at me and asked did I perform namaz [ritual prayer]? I answered that I did not, but that if I must do I would learn. He did not immediately want to take me on himself and directed me to another Emir. But he later made inquiries about me and drafted me into his force.
Firstly, it should be pointed out that Umarov did not return to Chechnya “when war began”. As we have established, Umarov returned to his homeland in the summer of 1992, almost two and a half years prior to the commencement of military hostilities between Dudayev’s regime in Chechnya and the Russian state. Regardless of the correct chronology involved, it seems credible that Umarov would have presented himself to Gelayev as described by Buryatsky. This meeting may not have taken place until 1993, however, at which time Gelayev had returned to Chechnya from Abkhazia.27 The two men were related and it would have made sense for Umarov to waylay relatives in search of employment, just as he had done with Musa Atayev in Tyumen.28
By mid-1992, Ruslan Gelayev was allied with Chechnya’s nationalist leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former General in the Soviet airforce. Following his election as president, Dudayev proceeded to declare Chechnya’s independence from the Russian Federation. This decision ushered in a period of Cold War between Grozny and Moscow which lasted until December 1994 when Russian tanks finally moved into the rebellious republic as part of an attempt to “restore constitutional order”.29
Men like Gelayev, as well as the aforementioned Shamil Basayev, functioned as the military backbone of the Dudayev regime. Abetted by Russia’s military and intelligence services, Gelayev and Basayev had fought against Georgian nationalist forces in Abkhazia in 1992–93.30 Basayev had come a long way from the aspiring student who spent the latter half of the 1980s peddling foreign computers and flirting with the world of organised crime. It was in Abkhazia, that he discovered a talent for war-making, as well as a certain flair for cruelty that would continue to manifest itself throughout his long career. Gelayev also found his niche in Abkhazia. In addition to honing his military talents, some reports suggest that Gelayev’s involvement in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict was notable for the cruelty he showed towards captured Georgian soldiers.31 Similar reports abound in relation to Basayev’s treatment of Georgian prisoners of war.32
Their exploits in Abkhazia bestowed a certain prestige on these two men. On returning to Chechnya they were feted as war heroes; Basayev’s “Abkhaz Battalion”, in particular, caught the public’s imagination.33 Both Basayev and Gelayev positioned themselves as supporters of Dudayev and his nationalist agenda, although neither seemed to feel any great personal enthusiasm for the General. It was against this political backdrop that Doku Umarov appeared on Gelayev’s doorstep seeking his relative’s patronage.
One can readily speculate as to why Gelayev might have snubbed his plaintive kinsman so perfunctorily. For one thing, Gelayev had just returned from a particularly exacting, not to mention austere, period of existence on the battlefields of Abkhazia and may have taken umbrage at Umarov arriving at his home looking like a dilettante. Gelayev was also (re)discovering his Islamic faith at this stage of his life and would not have been impressed by Umarov’s candid admission that he did not know how to perform certain basic religious rites.
The poor first impression he made on Gelayev was not to the detriment of Umarov’s career in the long-term. The commander Umarov was directed to by Gelayev was Daud Akhmadov, an important figure within President Dudayev’s notoriously corrupt inner circle.34 Akhmadov seems to have been the natural point of contact between Dudayev and Gelayev for he had the distinction of being on good terms with both men. This responsibility was more challenging than it might have seemed at first glance, for Gelayev and Dudayev were never on the greatest of terms. Indeed, in March 1994, scarcely eight months before the commencement of hostilities with Russia, Gelayev and Basayev were allegedly contemplating a coup d’état to unseat Dudayev.35
As a member of Akhmadov’s network Umarov’s reputation began to flourish. By way of cementing his relationship with his new patron, Umarov married Akhmadov’s daughter.36 His career prospered under wartime conditions and at some point during the hostilities he was drafted into Gelayev’s paramilitary outfit. As a member of Gelayev’s “Borz” battalion, Umarov would likely have participated in the defence of Bamut, a village in south-western Chechnya. Bamut became a symbol of resistance for the Chechen rebels and Gelayev would later be decorated with the “Order of Ichkeria” for his participation in these events.37 Many of the villagers hailed from the same clan as Umarov, the Mulkoi,38 and these bonds, as well as his membership of the Borz battalion, mean that it is likely that he participated in the defence of Bamut.
Post-War Responsibilities
Umarov emerged from the war in a position of some political influence, with a military rank of “Brigadier-General”,39 as well as two prestigious commendations for bravery in combat.40 In August 1996, the so-called Khasavyurt accords were signed between Russian and Chechen representatives giving Chechnya the status of a de facto independent state.41 In January 1997 presidential elections were held and Aslan Maskhadov, a well-known wartime field-commander, was returned as president, replacing Dudayev who had been killed during the war.42
Sources indicate that Umarov left Gelayev’s unit sometime between September 1996 and January 1997. It is unclear whether this decision was prompted by a falling out between the two men.43 Regardless, Umarov sought out and received the patronage of another paramilitary leader, Akhmed Zakayev.44 It may well have been Zakayev who recommended Umarov to Maskhadov as a candidate for the chairmanship of Chechnya’s new Security Council. Maskhadov duly confirmed Umarov’s growing political influence by appointing him to this post in June 1997.45
Perhaps the most serious challenge facing Umarov in his new capacity as secretary of Chechnya’s Security Council was the increased political and social instability engendered by the increasingly widespread practice of hostage-taking within the new state. In June 2008, Umarov explained the situation he found himself in as follows46:
[…] we know that after the first war there was no unity among the Mujahideen like in the old days, and [that] the Mujahideen were organizing into groups. Since I had my group under my command, and since I had a military training base, it was impossible to remain outside politics back at that time, so even if you wanted to remain outside politics, they wouldn't let you do that, and the President of that time, Aslan Maskhadov, may Allah have mercy on him, appointed me Secretary of Security.
Paramilitary groups independent of government authority now emerged, as Umarov would later put it, “like mushrooms after rain”.47 In hindsight, the calculations behind Maskhadov’s appointment are easy to discern: Umarov was known to be on good terms with many of the major players in Chechnya’s hostage-taking industry, among them Arbi Barayev, Balaudi Tekilov and the Akhmadov brothers. Barayev, a field-commander of some renown during the first Russo-Chechen conflict, hailed from the same clan and geographical location as Umarov.48 It has since been claimed that Umarov used his new role as secretary of the Security Council as cover for entering into a freelance hostage-taking enterprise with Barayev, but this speculation has never been confirmed.49
Umarov was also on good terms with Baludi Tekilov, an opportunistic former racketeer and pimp who emerged as one of the main point-men in Chechnya’s hostage-taking industry during the late 1990s.50 Like Umarov, Tekilov returned to Chechnya in the early 1990s as a fugitive from Russian justice; he too sought to advance his political career through courtship, eventually marrying the sister of Salman Raduyev, a famous Chechen field-commander.51 Raduyev’s resourceful new brother-in-law quickly caught his eye and he soon appointed Tekilov as his chief-of-staff. Tekilov used this influential position to carve out a niche for himself in Chechnya’s thriving hostage-taking industry.52 Under Chechnya’s post-war government, Tekilov was appointed head of the so-called Commission for the Liberation of Missing or Detained Persons.53
Umarov has since claimed that it was his necessary association with the likes of Barayev, Tekilov and Akhmadov that led to him being accused of participation in the hostage-taking trade. In an interview with Andrei Babitsky in 2005, Umarov flatly denied any involvement in such activities:54
Because of these contacts, I began to be accused of this [hostage-taking]. But I always – when these accusations reached this level, when Maskhadov said at the Security Council that I had been accused – I said, "Here is my statement, but a person's guilt can only be established in court. If I am guilty, I will not lift a finger to defend myself. Prove it and that's all. But what people say – that is slander, and it isn't for me. Just give me a fact. Without facts, a person can say, looking at a horse, “there is a goat”.
Umarov is correct in stating that there is no concrete evidence of his direct involvement in the hostage-taking industry. However, in 2007, Umarov did little to enhance the case for his defence by posthumously honouring Barayev, a well-known hostage-taker, promoting him to the rank of “Brigadier-General”.55 Indeed, this decision was especially strange given Barayev’s known collaboration with Russia’s intelligence agencies.56 Barayev had been stripped of this rank by President Maskhadov in July 1998 following a violent altercation in Gudermes, Chechnya’s second largest city.57
It is difficult to ascertain the extent to which Umarov was involved in Chechnya’s inter-war hostage-taking business.58 It can be said with certainty, however, that from the end of the first war, Umarov was consorting openly with several known participants in the hostage trade. Barayev, for example, is described by Souleimanov as “the nation’s most notorious ruffian and kidnapper”.59 The Akhmadov brothers, meanwhile, were an influential presence in the Urus-Martan District of Chechnya during the inter-war years60 and must have been known to Umarov.
Umarov’s association with such individuals does not, of course, prove his direct involvement in the hostage-taking industry. It should be noted, however, that one need not have personally kicked down doors and hauled innocent people off into captivity to have been an active participant in the hostage trade. Referencing a conversation he had with Alexander Mukomolov, a member of General Alexander Lebed’s “peacemaking mission” to Chechnya, Valeri Tishkov, a leading Russian ethnologist, has explained how kidnappings were usually the work not of individuals but rather of loosely formed groups of field-commanders who would haggle with one another over their share of the ransom, sometimes even trading hostages with one another.61 As secretary of the Security Council, therefore, Umarov need not have involved himself directly in the act of abducting ordinary Chechens, ethnic Russians, foreigners, journalists and other targets. Instead, he could have used this office as a means of offering protection and legal validation to associates who were involved precisely in these activities. Incidentally, these were the very grounds on which Maskhadov relieved Umarov of his official duties in mid-1998.62
While the hostage-taking phenomenon represented the most immediate challenge to Umarov in his capacity as Security Council secretary, the refusal of so many field-commanders to recognize Maskhadov’s lawful authority was another trend that demanded his attention. Many of these dissidents were war-heroes who had distinguished themselves during the conflict with the Russians. Most of them were receptive to the ideology of radical Islam and took a dim view of President Maskhadov’s policies, above all his efforts to establish a normative relationship with Moscow. Well-known field-commanders like Basayev, Raduyev and Barayev openly presented themselves as paragons of Islamic virtue.
Barayev renamed his paramilitary unit the “Special Purpose Islamic Brigade”. Regarded throughout Chechnya as a “Wahhabi”, the colloquial designation for a follower of radical Islam, Barayev was collaborating closely with like-minded field-commanders such as Abdul-Malik Mezhidov, head of the so-called Sharia Guard movement.63 He was also known to enjoy the patronage of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a leading figure among the radicals.64 In July 1998, paramilitary forces belonging to Barayev and Mezhidov clashed in Gudermes with forces loyal to the Yamadayev family, the de facto custodians of the city. In his capacity as Security Council Chairman, Umarov was obliged to intercede in this conflict. Umarov would later describe his role in these events as that of a “referee”, explaining that he had felt little enthusiasm for his official duties as Security Council chief.65 After a two-day-long melee that claimed scores of lives, Barayev and Mezhidov were forced to abandon their positions in Gudermes. Maskhadov announced that both Barayev’s and Mezhidov’s forces were to be disbanded and forbade members of these bodies from bearing arms.66
This was a particularly difficult period for Maskhadov and his supporters. The events in Gudermes represented merely the latest in an increasingly long line of violent clashes between Wahhabi forces and government militiamen. Against this backdrop, and in the light of Umarov’s close relationship with Barayev and other known Wahhabis, Maskhadov might have deemed it politically prudent to dismiss his Security Council secretary. Apart from his compromising ties to Barayev, in any case Umarov had failed to stabilise the security situation throughout Chechnya during his tenure as Security Council chief. Therefore, while we cannot satisfactorily answer the question of whether Umarov abetted the worsening security situation by partaking in Chechnya’s lucrative hostage-taking industry, we can conclude that he failed to fulfil his official mandate of providing a favourable security environment in the new state.
Toward A Renewed Russo-Chechen Conflict
Read the full article here: CRIA » From Racketeer to Emir: A Political Portrait of Doku Umarov, Russia’s Most Wanted Man
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