Commander Khattab.. Emir of the "Arab Mujahideen" who defeated the Russians in Chechnya

"We are not the kind of men who kill unarmed peaceful civilians, especially sleeping ones."

Leader Khattab speaking to the Chechen press after the Russian intelligence service accused the "Mujahideen" in Chechnya of the 1999 bombings inside Russia

The sixteenth of April 1996 was an eventful day of victory that filled the occupied Chechnya and the surrounding Caucasus Mountains with joy, despite the large number of Muslim blood that was shed successively on that day. In an attempt to obscure the disappointment of what happened to their comrades in the morning at the hands of the "Arab Mujahideen" who came to the land of Chechnya from faraway countries to support its people against the Russian occupation that began in December 1994. However, those voices of death did not prevent the Chechens from pretending to celebrate with some joy despite their anxiety;

Even the bereaved among them who lost their children and their families, and whose homes were destroyed and razed to the ground, they had their own reasons for evading and postponing grief, for not all the wounded at that hour were their wounds, nor the wreckage were all their wreckage, nor the tragedy belonged to them alone.

Hours before the bombing that turned the capital into volcanoes exhaling shrapnel, 50 kilometers south of the capital's mountains, the road between the city of "Shatoy" and the headquarters of the Russian battalion outside the city turned into a cemetery containing nothing but corpses and debris.

Here, an entire battalion of 50 vehicles was wiped out, and the corpses and blood of more than a hundred Russian soldiers were scattered around it, and only a few of them survived, who exchanged looks in disbelief of what happened, while only three of the 43 men who carried out the striking attack fell from the Mujahideen. .

The "Amir of the Mujahideen" in that operation, which took place on the sixteenth of April 1996, was a young man of only twenty-seven years old, with an Arab face, a thick beard, a broad body, and wavy hair that reached his back.

This was not the young man's first battle, but rather his history was replete with battles he fought against the Russians for eight years in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya.

But that moment captured by the camera in the ruins of the "Chateui" ambush was a special moment by all accounts, because it was the first operation that he led himself, although it soon slipped behind his subsequent confrontations with the Russians, who would know him from then on and would pursue him until they succeeded in killing him.

Operation Château ambush

Samer Al-Suwailem, better known as Khattab, walked among the wreckage of tanks and the corpses of Russian soldiers, shouting “God is great.” Before darkness fell over the valley, the hum of the sky bore news of another battle about to begin.

Abu Bakr Aqidah, an Egyptian engineer who fought with Khattab in Afghanistan and Chechnya, attended that operation with him, and wrote his memories in the book “Hot Narratives from the Land of Chechnya,” that the process of evacuating the wounded and martyrs was extremely dangerous, but it succeeded, and a “group of The Mujahideen" from the rugged area without the angry planes or heavy artillery shells succeeding in targeting them, so that the "Mujahideen" succeeded in pulling out the bodies of two of their dead, and buried them away from the eyes of the enemy.

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At a time when the Mujahideen were preparing to leave and return with their victory, the news reached the Russian President "Boris Yeltsin", the first president of the Russian Federation after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The man found himself in a difficult situation in front of the generals of his army, and he did not hesitate to publicly blame the Elite him in front of parliament and on television, and even stripped a number of them of their titles.

Yeltsin had come to power elected and carried on the shoulders of a sweeping popular that put its hopes in the new president to heal the wounds of the harsh years since the fall of the communist state and the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, but the calculations of Igor Glidar, the acting prime minister who designed the Russian economic reform plan, soon It proved wrong, Yeltsin lost his popularity in a short period of time, and unemployment, poverty, and inflation reached unprecedented levels.

With the secession of Chechnya in late 1994, led by a former Soviet intelligence officer and Chechen politician,

Not all was quiet even within the Russian army itself.

Unexpectedly, a large number of recruits refused to come for service, and the low defense budget, constant weapon malfunctions, and the victories of the "Mujahideen" caused the erosion of the myth of a "new Russia" open to its emerging republics and its diverse ethnicities.

And with the humiliation of the army in the "Shatoi" ambush operation, only the assassination of Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev himself, about one week after the operation, was not sufficient to save Russia's reputation. Russia itself, known as the "Special Mujahideen Units".

A Saudi who was not dazzled by the lights of the West

Samer Al-Suwailem, known as the Leader Khattab.

(communication Web-sites)

On April 14, 1970, a child was born to a Bedouin Saudi family living in the border city of Arar, in the north of the Kingdom.

The country had not yet left the hardships of living for the luxury of oil, despite the first beginnings of its discovery in the thirties.

With the dominance of conservative religious values ​​in society, Samer grew up in an atmosphere dominated by religiosity.

The child loved that his family and companions call him “Ibn Al-Khattab”, influenced by the companion Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, who was famous for justice, strength, and fairness to the weak.

In order to understand this nature that formed the mentality of "Ibn Al-Khattab" and drew some of his features, his brother "Nasser" says in a press interview that their father used to take them every week to the mountainous areas, and ask them to fight and wrestle, so that these events formed the young man who worked for a long time later In receiving and training the "Mujahideen" in Afghanistan.

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The child "Khattab" also grew up in an atmosphere surrounded by political variables on every side, as Saudi Arabia took confident steps towards wealth due to extensive discoveries of oil fields, and allied itself with the United States, and this made it an opponent of the Nasserist regime in Egypt, whose nationalist and socialist tendencies were not acceptable in Riyadh .

Then Saudi Arabia received (unofficially) the enemies of the Nasserite regime, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood, and in a few years, "Samer" the child received an education formulated by the Brotherhood leaders fleeing from Cairo.

Khattab, like many of his generation, was not separated from his Islamic surroundings in which he grew up, and when he was ten years old, the Soviet war broke out on Christmas Eve 1979, and that scene was reflected in Saudi society when Riyadh decided to participate in supporting the "Afghan mujahideen" in that war.

In the midst of this moment, and the talk of jihad, revolution, and reform fills the air, the child grew up and developed intense anger against injustice inside him. His brother says about him that he used to cry for the slightest reason, and he was blamed by family and friends because of the problems he put himself in as a result of the victory over a weak person whom he did not know.

Khattab's eyes were also opened to the aspirations of a new generation in conjunction with the oil boom. He aspired to create a distinguished career path after obtaining a 94% average in the Saudi secondary school, joining Aramco, and then traveling to the United States, whose lights dazzled him like any young Saudi at the time.

But at the end of 1987, Khattab decided to give up his studies and a generous salary at the age of seventeen to join the ranks of the Arab mujahideen in Afghanistan, in order to support its oppressed people, as always.

In an interview with the Saudi newspaper, Arab News, his older brother Mansour tells the story of his younger brother's transformation, his abandonment of his dreams of traveling to Washington and owning a large house with a garage sufficient for five cars, and his decision to go to Afghanistan and live in the mountains to join the training camps.

The path to jihad

"When I saw the Chechen groups wearing bandanas with the words 'There is no god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God' written on them, and they were shouting 'Allahu Akbar', I knew that there was jihad in Chechnya, and I decided that I had to go to them."

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"Samer Al-Suwailem" arrived in Afghanistan in late 1987, after the war was about to end (the Soviets withdrew in 1989), and he had not yet achieved his dreams of jihad to be "the son of Al-Khattab."

The Saudi youth hid himself in the guise of a TV reporter, and moved between towns to reach his main destination in the "Mujahideen Camp" in the city of Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan. He did not tell anyone about his purpose before his arrival, for fear that his young age would cause him to return again to his country.

One of his comrades, who recorded his testimony in the "Memories of the Arab Mujahideen" blog, says: "The training camp near Jalalabad was filled daily with brothers going to and coming from the front. At that time we were preparing for a major operation against the Russians. At this time a new group of volunteers arrived, and I noticed There was a young boy, no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, who went to the commander begging him to send him to the front lines, and of course the camp commander refused.

Khattab stayed in Afghanistan between 1987-1994, and participated in several battles after joining the ranks of the "Mujahideen" in the tasks of support and siege, leading to the brigades of special units and "qualitative operations."

Samer Al-Suwailem hid his injury for fear of being excluded at that time.

After the Soviets withdrew, a large number of volunteers returned home, while others remained in Afghanistan.

In the winter of December 1994, Russian forces launched an attack on the capital, Grozny, to deter it from the decision to secede from the Russian Federation, and the war was led by Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev, along with Chechen leaders led by Shamil Basayev and Salim Khan. And "Aslan Maskhadov", then soon "Arab Mujahideen" who came from Afghanistan, including Khattab, joined them.

Former Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev.

(communication Web-sites)

Despite the great losses inflicted by Russia on Chechnya, it soon fell into a quagmire, as Russian President Yeltsin was forced to sign a cease-fire agreement in a scene described as humiliating to him and his country.

Chechen President Salim Khan, who took over after the killing of Dudayev, insisted that Yeltsin sit across from him, and not at the head of the table as the latter wanted, in a sign that the Chechens wanted to convey that they do not follow anyone, and that they have their own independent entity.

After the Russians withdrew from Chechnya, Khattab became a national hero, and he was officially honored by the leaders of the resistance who came to power. He was also awarded the rank of Major General and the Medal of Courage.

However, the Saudi youth became Russia's most dangerous enemy during that period, after an operation he led among 100 "Mujahid" against a tank battalion inside Russia in December 1997, which caused the destruction of 300 Russian vehicles, according to testimonies, and then prompted Russia to set a financial reward for monitoring the man. and pressure to put his name on terrorist lists.

The incident, despite its ferocity, was not the heaviest thing that the Russians got from Khattab. In late 1999, Khattab led about two thousand fighters to invade Dagestan, which belonged to Russia at the time, with the aim of establishing a larger Islamic republic in the North Caucasus.

Despite the failure of the operation after controlling three towns, the danger of Khattab remained present in the minds of the leaders in Moscow, especially after the Russian intelligence service accused him of the bombing of Russian residential neighborhoods, but the Arab leader denied targeting civilians at the time.

The attempt to establish an Islamic Republic in Dagestan was a motive for the Russians to re-invade Chechnya shortly after, but the war intensified with the assumption of "Vladimir Putin" as prime minister in 2000, as the former intelligence officer decided to take revenge on the "Mujahideen", and the Federal Security Service adopted an assassination mission. Mujahideen" one by one, leading to changing his political and military strategy on the ground by leveling cities to the ground, bribing and co-opting politicians at home.

This strategy seemed more effective with the Chechen cleric "Ahmed Kadyrov", who turned from an enemy to a friend of the Kremlin, and then became the head of the government that Russia appointed to end the war. After his assassination, his son, the current president, "Ramadan Kadyrov", who is now described as Putin's spoiled child, assumed power .

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

(Reuters)

Russia took control of Chechnya, and managed to assassinate and hunt down all the leaders of the resistance, such as Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev.

In 2002, Russian intelligence succeeded in targeting Khattab by a Dagestani agent, in a process that took six months to prepare, and they poisoned him in a letter sent to him by his father, so he died immediately after that. A year later, by the "Mujahideen", who took revenge for Khattab's death.

However, many of the supporters of the "Mujahideen" in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and some of the supporters of the Afghan and Chechen resistance are among their opponents as well, and many of the general Muslims around the world;

They still see Khattab as a rare hero who rushed to the aid of the oppressed and resisted the occupation, even though the Russians eventually got him.

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