Amir Abu al-Walid
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Abu al-Walid (1967 - April 16, 2004) was the leader of Arab fighters who operated against the Russians in Chechnya in 2002-2004. A native of southern Saudi Arabia, his real name was 'Abd al-Aziz al-Ghamidi. In 1987, al-Walid left for Peshawar, the transit point for Arab volunteers heading into Afghanistan. There, he would have received training and support from the Mukhtab al-Khidmat, an organization run by Dr. Abdullah Yusuf Azzam and funded by Osama bin Laden. As the Afghan war wound down, al-Walid made a short trip home before volunteering for new jihad operations in Bosnia in 1993.
In June of 2002, the London-based Saudi newspaper al-Majallah published an interview with al-Walid's family in Saudi Arabia. According to his family, al-Walid was pious but religiously moderate, one of eleven sons, and once had a taste for acting. Al-Walid's family had little to say about his days in Afghanistan in the interview.
In Bosnia, al-Walid may have served alongside some 300 veterans of the Afghanistan war. While they proved effective fighters, they were joined by hundreds of other foreign Muslims whose military skills were questionable, and whose religious fanaticism antagonized tolerant Bosnian Muslims. Many of the "Afghans" were organized as part of the regular Bosnian Army's 7th Battalion under the command of Abu 'Abd al-Aziz 'Barbaros', an Indian Muslim with experience in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
When the Dayton Accords made the mujahidin presence in Bosnia politically uncomfortable, several hundred of the "Afghans" began transferring to Chechnya in late 1995.
Al-Walid may have served with Ibn al-Khattab in Chechnya as early as March 1995, planning and participating in some of the war's most successful actions against Russian convoys. In the role of Khattab's naib (deputy), he joined the 1999 attack on Dagestan that contributed to sparking the current war. In April 2000 he led a successful attack on the Russian 51st Paratroop regiment. In May 2002 came reports that al-Walid was holding the captured crew of an Mi-24 helicopter hostage, threatening to kill them if the Russians did not release 20 jailed Chechens.
There are allegations that al-Walid was variously an agent of Saudi intelligence, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Bin-Laden's al-Qaeda. The FSB claims that al-Walid organized the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, planned bacteriological attacks on Russia, and was behind the May 2002 Kaspiysk bombing in Daghestan. In March 2002 al-Walid took over leadership of Arab fighters in Chechnya after the death of Amir Khattab. He was himself killed on April 16, 2004 during the bombing of his military base by Russian forces and was replaced by Abu Omar al-Seif.
