Azernews.Az

MOSCOW – The Chechen rebellion was faltering when its new commander, Doku Umarov, dispatched a video by courier from his hideout in southern Russia to his allies abroad.

His message, in late 2007, shocked many Chechens who had been fighting since the early 1990s to free their tiny Caucasus mountain republic from Russian rule. In the video, Mr. Umarov declared he had dissolved Chechnya's borders and created a Caucasus Emirate – an Islamic state spanning a swath of Russia's restive southern border. The enemy, he said, wasn't just Russia but also the U.S., Britain, Israel and "all those who wage war against Muslims."

A pair of conflicting videos last week from Mr. Umarov indicate the shift may be a source of turmoil within the Chechen rebellion.

During the three years Mr. Umarov has led it, the insurgency has shifted from a movement for independence from Moscow to an embrace of global jihad, prompting the U.S. to join Russia in officially declaring him a terrorist.

Terrorists have struck an average of once a day in Russia since Mr. Umarov took over, reaching into its heartland and killing more than 900 people. He has claimed responsibility for the worst attacks, including twin suicide bombings in the Moscow subway in March.

Mr. Umarov says his decision to embrace global jihad was "the will of God" and reflected an Islamist "awakening" that arose among his rank-and-file fighters.

Russia's campaign against the separatists, killing thousands of Chechen fighters and civilians, has hardened the rebels, marginalized moderates and broadened the appeal of Islamic extremism among Muslims in the impoverished region, some independent analysts and human-rights groups say.

In last week's first video, the 46-year-old Mr. Umarov said he was in poor health and retiring in favor of a "younger, more energetic" successor, Aslambek Vadalov.

Although Mr. Umarov didn't say so, Mr. Vadalov is believed to represent a nationalist wing of the movement that favors a renewed focus on independence, opposes attacks on civilians and has no ties to Islamist groups. Mr. Vadalov didn't speak in the video, which appeared on insurgent websites and YouTube.

A few days later, Mr. Umarov in a second video reversed himself. "Given the current situation in the Caucasus, I believe that it is impossible to resign from my post," Mr. Umarov said. He sat alone, his arm resting on the barrel of an automatic rifle. "My health is good, and I will work to kill the enemies of Allah," he said.

Some analysts see the about-face as a sign that Islamic militants who value Mr. Umarov as a figurehead opposed his resignation. At the least, "these colliding statements indicate a split in the underground," says Alexei Malasheknko, a specialist on the Caucasus at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Mr. Umarov joined the violent separatist struggle well before Russian leader Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999 and launched an invasion of Chechnya. As the conflict dragged on, Mr. Umarov evolved from a young field commander who by his own admission didn't know how to pray to the self-proclaimed emir of his notional Islamic state.

Mr. Umarov, born in Chechnya in 1964, trained as a construction engineer.

He was one of the youngest separatist commanders, former rebel officials recall. Akhmed Zakayev – a Soviet-trained Shakespearian actor who was then a senior rebel commander and is now president of the Chechen separatist government in exile – says he saw "absolutely nothing distinguishing" in the young officer but nonetheless recommended him for promotions and medals. "We needed to develop the next generation," he says.

In 1995, the separatists struck outside Chechnya's borders, taking hundreds hostage at a hospital in southern Russia. The Russians killed Chechen seaparatist President Dzhokhar Dudayev in an airstrike but eventually agreed to a peace deal, pulling most troops out in 1996. The republic descended into lawlessness as warlords battled one another.

A split developed between Islamic fundamentalists backed by advisers from the Middle East and less-religious separatists whose primary goal was Chechen independence. Mr. Umarov supported the new separatist president, Aslan Maskhadov, as he struggled to stem the Islamists' growing influence.

Internal divisions were quicklyforgotten when Mr. Putin, then prime minister, ordered Russian troops back into Chechnya in late 1999. The rebels were driven out of Grozny, Chechnya's capital. Mr. Umarov's jaw was shattered as he and other fighters fled the city across a mine field.

The Islamists had been steadily gaining influence, but Mr. Umarov rejected their message, say people who spoke to him at the time. "Umarov said he didn't want Chechnya to be 'the point of the spear aimed at the Christian world' "—a phrase coined by the Islamists, Mr. Zakayev says.

Some in Moscow viewed Mr. Umarov as a moderate.

But room for compromise was diminishing rapidly. Russian forces drove the separatists into the mountains or exile.

The separatists struck deep into Russia with an attack on a Moscow theater in 2002. A rebel siege of a school in Beslan in 2004 killed more than 330 Russians, most of them children, and cemented the Kremlin's refusal to negotiate.

Mr. Maskhadov, the separatist Chechen president who was seeking talks with Moscow, was killed a few months later in a shootout with Russian troops. Abdul-Khakim Sadullayev, an Islamic scholar named to succeed him, said the separatists would make no new peace offers.

Chechen authorities installed by the Kremlin joined in the crackdown. Relatives of the separatists, including Mr. Umarov's wife and infant son, were kidnapped in what human-rights groups called a campaign by security forces to bring about a surrender. Some were released, including Mr. Umarov's wife and son. Others disappeared. The Kremlin-backed Chechen leadership denies involvement in the kidnappings.

Mr. Umarov had distanced himself from the brutal attacks on Russian targets outside Chechnya. But the abductions of his relatives changed things.

"I was naive before," he told Britain's Channel 4 television in an interview from a rebel camp in mid-2005. He said he had lost hope that Western governments would pressure the Kremlin to end the crackdown. As a result, he said, "our tactics will change, the war will change."

In 2006, when Mr. Umarov became president of the separatist government, his first public statement contained no Islamist rhetoric. He vowed to mount attacks in "many regions of Russia" but to target "exclusively military and police institutions."

Russian officials didn't sound especially worried. The underground "has lost almost all of its leaders," Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev said in late 2006.

One year later, Mr. Umarov abandoned his anti-Islamist stance, unnerving Moscow as well as some of his former colleagues. Mr. Zakayev said in an interview in April that he felt betrayed by Mr. Umarov's video declaration that he was forming the Caucasus Emirate and imposing Sharia law.

Mr. Zakayev and other exiled separatist leaders accused Mr. Umarov of treason.

Many separatist fighters have backed Mr. Umarov. A video released by Mr. Umarov in April 2008 showed him sitting in the woods with a group of field commanders, endorsing jihad in a mix of Arabic and Russian as birds chirp in the trees.

In embracing Islamist rhetoric, Mr. Umarov gave up his reservations about targeting civilians. "For me, there is no civilian population in Russia," he said in an interview on a separatist website.

Terror attacks spread soon after Mr. Umarov declared his emirate. Within days, a bomb exploded on a bus in the southern Russian city of Togliatti, killing eight people. Prosecutors attributed the attack to the insurgents.

By last year, suicide bombings had become a fixture of life in the Caucasus.