Amir Muhannad: The Last of Chechnya’s Arab Volunteers

Amir Muhannad: The Last of Chechnya’s Arab Volunteers

The late Amir Muhannad, the North Caucasus’ recently killed Arab militant leader, hailed from the Medina area in Saudi Arabia’s western Hejaz region. Muhannad, born in 1969, was reportedly shot to death in a clash with security forces in the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt on April 21 (see North Caucasus Analysis, April 22; Kavkaz Center, April 22) following in a long line of Arab militants killed there since the start of the second Chechen conflict in October 1999. His full name is presumably Khaled Youssef Mohammad al-Elitat, but in the Caucasus he is better known by his nom de guerre, Amir Muhannad (alternately spelled Mukhannad or Moganned in Russian). Along with disagreement over the precise spelling of Muhannad’s actual last name—al-Elitat vs. al-Emirate—some Russian language sources claim Muhannad was a Jordanian national, though it is commonly believed that he was a Saudi national (Kavkaz-uzel.ru, April 22; RFE/RL, April 22). 

A graduate with honors from the Islamic Institute in Medina, Muhannad began his activities in Chechnya and its neighboring regions in the early days of Russia’s second military campaign against Chechen separatists. He arrived to participate in that war and tried to pass through Georgia into Chechnya in late 2000. Upon his arrival in the Pankisi Gorge—a small mountainous alluvial valley in northeastern Georgia abutting the Chechen border and populated mostly by ethnic Chechens known as Kists—he waited almost two years for the window to cross into the Chechen Republic. Living there among the Kists and Chechen refugees of the Pankisi Gorge, he passed the time giving lectures on the history of Islam and actively explaining to young people why the traditional Islam of the Chechens is not the religion in its purest form as it should be practiced. It was during this period that Wahabbi influence began to appear in Pankisi. Muhannad is believed to be from an ancient grouping known as the Medina Ansars (supporters of the Prophet), which greatly increased his credibility among the mujahideen. Muhannad finally moved into Chechnya with a group controlled by one of the Akhmadov brothers in 2001.

Muhannad arrived in the Caucasus alongside other notable transnational Arab jihadis, such as Abu Hafs al-Urduni, Abu Atiya, Abu-Rabia and others. [1] These prominent Arab fighters also represented the element within the war who tried to provide financial, military and propaganda assistance to the Chechen fighters and promote the Chechen cause in the Arab world and further afield. [2] This assistance was organized around several high-ranking and influential figures in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. 

The first leader of the foreign volunteers’ unit in the North Caucasus region, specifically in Chechnya, was an ethnic Chechen from Jordan called Fathi al-Jordani. The next figure to hold this post was another ethnic Chechen from Jordan, known as Abdurahman. The latter was killed in 2000, after which the unit was headed by the notorious Amir Khattab, a native of Saudi Arabia. Khattab played a crucial role in the establishment of several Muslim militant centers across Chechnya with a special focus on martial arts and short courses on the fundamentals of Islam. Amir Khattab was killed by Russian security services with a poisoned letter in March 2002 (Rosbalt.ru, July 29, 2010). Khattab was succeeded by Abu Walid al-Saudi who was assassinated in April 2004, and Abu Walid was succeeded by Abu Hafs al-Urduni, who became the leader of the foreign volunteers. Al-Urduni was killed in November 2006. In all probability, it was in this period of time—fall 2006—when Muhannad became the key facilitator connecting the Chechen rebels with the outside Muslim world supporting the Chechen insurgency, specifically in Saudi Arabia, the Levant and the Persian Gulf.

It should be noted that as he was a ranking member of the rebel unit commanded by Aslanbek Vadalov (a.k.a. Amir Aslanbek), Amir Muhannad took part in combat operations, allowing him to speak on an equal basis and make statements not as an outside observer, but as an active participant of the North Caucasus resistance movement. According to different sources, he participated in attacks in 2008 in eastern parts of Chechnya and in 2009 in western Chechnya along the border with Ingushetia.

After the proclamation in September 2007 of the Caucasus Emirate bringing together several ethnic Jamaats (communities) of the North Caucasian republics of  Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, and the Nogai Steppe area of Stavropol Krai, Muhannad ended up as the naib (assistant) to Emirate supremo Doku Umarov, the overall leader of the North Caucasus resistance movement. Holding this high position within the movement, in January 2009 Muhannad spoke out in support of the beleaguered residents of Gaza who were under siege from Israel. [3] When Amir Muhannad announced a new leader of the Dagestani militants, it suggested that his role was not limited to merely being Umarov’s assistant. His Gaza diatribe and his meddling in Dagestan suggests that Muhannad had a bigger say in the Caucasus Emirate’s establishment than some might have first thought considering his foreign origins. Muhannad quickly demonstrated his ability to influence decisions made by Umarov.

To observers of events in the North Caucasus, it was a strange twist to see Muhannad, once an Umarov loyalist, emerge as a conspirator siding with the dissenting rebel troika of Vadalov, Hussein Gakaev and Tarkhan Gaziev, who refused to obey Umarov and attempted to remove him from power in early August 2010. Singling out Muhannad as the chief organizer of this factional dissent, Umarov alleged that the Arab warlord encouraged fighters to come out of the subordination of the Caucasus Amir, and called into question the legitimacy of his authority (Lenta.ru, September 26, 2010). 

According to Muhannad’s own account of the situation, Umarov himself had to obey the decision made by the shura in the first place, and his disobedience of this consensus was the primary reason for some of the most high-ranking commanders—Vadalov, Gakaev and Gaziev—to renounce Umarov as the Amir of the Caucasus Emirate. But the actions of the troika found little, if any, support among the rebels in the republics surrounding Chechnya. Rebels in Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Ingushetia unequivocally condemned the rebel schism and threw their full support behind Umarov. Moreover, Saifullah Gubdenski, the leader of the Dagestani fighters, lashed out at Muhannad with a fierce condemnation accusing him and his foreign predecessors of neglecting the aspirations of local rebel leaders and the outsiders’ selfish desire to install their men in leading positions in traditionally parochial Caucasian Jamaat. [4]

In an effort to curb Muhannad’s power, pro-Umarov ideologues in the Chechen resistance began to seek external theological support to justify their position that despite his brief resignation, Umarov was still the ultimate authority among the North Causcasus’ disparate rebels. The pro-Umarov group appealed to a London-based Syrian Salafi ideologue named ‘Abd Al-Mun’im Mustafa Halima (a.k.a. Abu Basir Al Tartusi) to weigh in on the matter. Al-Tartsui obliged and personally called on Muhannad to “either repent and obey Amir Doku Abu Usman (Doku Umarov) or leave the [North] Caucasus and return home.” [5] Muhannad did not formulate a response to al-Tartusi and failed to make a decision in response to the powerful statement by one of the most influential theologians representing the Salafi trend of the global Islamist movement.

With his death on April 21, Amir Muhannad was truly the last of the Arab fighters to arrive in Chechnya at the beginning of the Second Russo-Chechen war. It is a strange, ironic twist that the leader of what was left of the Chechen Arabs later became embroiled in an inter-Chechen dispute whereby the Arab militant sided against the creator of the Emirate, Doku Umarov and shifted his allegiance to back the nationalist wing of the Chechen separatist movement led by Vadalov, Gakaev and Gaziev. Indeed, while Muhannad may not be the last Arab to ever go to Chechnya, he certainly is the one volunteer who survived the longest and outlasted every known Arab fighter who preceded him and may eventually be recorded in the history of the conflict as the last of Chechnya’s Arab volunteers.

Notes

1. Igor Prokop’evich Dobaev, Trends in the Development of Islamic Movements in Southern Russia (in Russian), Institute of Religion and Policy, 2006, Available at: www.i-r-p.ru/page/stream-exchange/index-5602.html.

2. To view Saifullah Gubdenski’s tract on intra-Muslim discord in regard to Muhannad (in Russian), see: www.kavkazmonitor.com/2010/11/28/52924.shtml.

3. To view Muhannad’s statement endorsing solidarity with Palestinians in the context of the Israeli assault on Gaza in January, 2009 (in Russian), Available at: www.kavkaz.org.uk/russ/content/2009/01/20/63503.shtml.

4. To read about Saifullah Gubdenski’s views regarding the division between indigenous and Arab fighters in the North Caucasus (in Russian), see: kavkazanhaamash.com/facty/18–/444-2010-11-12-03-38-07.html.

5. To view the response by Abu Basir Al Tartusi encouraging Muhannad to fall in line with Doku Umarov (in Russian), see: kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2010/10/04/75622_print.html.