The warlord Doku Umarov, who until then occupied the post of vice-president – named to that post by Sadulayev on June 16, 2005 – nonetheless sees himself as constitutionally charged with the presidency of pro-independent Chechnya. Structurally, the succession should change absolutely nothing for the separatist fighting.

It is certainly possible that the successive and frequent disappearances of symbolic resistance figures weaken the heat and intensity of the fight, but they will not make them disappear. The political sense of engagement for each new recruit may lose its pertinence, but these repeated blows remove nothing from the motivations of the young fighters who join the ranks of resisters. They will fight no matter who the pro-independence leader is. Their cause is above all personal: they take up arms due to rage, a desire for vengeance or a lack of alternatives. In the end, and increasingly so, the political reference interests them little.

The Chechen guerilla movement, which has always been a resistance movement, has for several years aimed to transform itself from carrying out individual reactions against a dilapidated political and socio-economic state where the arbitrary and the illegal reign under the brutal and incompetent authority of pro-Russian Chechens. The Russian authorities could eliminate all of the Chechen leaders, both established and emerging from the resistance, but as long as the security of goods and people has no real meaning in Chechnya, the sources of the guerilla movement will not dry up. They may become exhausted, but they will not perish and will instead heighten the risks of kamikaze and terrorist initiatives.

The resistance today, however, still presents an historical and well-known point of reference. Along with Shamil Basayev, Umarov is one of the last two warlords to fight since the first Russo-Chechen war in 1994.

Assuring the survival of the Chechen resistance

At 42, this man of action, more fighter than politician, led the Chechen Security Council from 1997 to 1999 under Maskhadov’s presidency. In that capacity he had to intervene against the Islamist opposition movements, provoking the Gudermes clashes in July 1998. He is not known to have any prior criminal involvement related to the kidnapping of foreigners.

At the beginning of the second Chechen war, Umarov seems to have evolved an association with Ruslan Gelaev. When the latter was killed in Dagestan during the winter of 2003-2004, Umarov retook command of his group. Like Maskhadov and Gelaev, and unlike Basayev, Umarov has always been opposed to terrorist methods. However, he has supported attempts at the armed exportation of Chechen instability to the neighboring republics.

What importance do these former choices and positionings have? Could it still be a question of political rivalries, contradictory influences, or Islamist sponsorship within the resistance? Doubtful. The obstinate refusal of the Kremlin to consider the reopening of negotiations with President Maskhadov has rendered null and void all political debate on the Chechen side.

The point then was no longer to decide whether or not it was necessary to establish a caliphate in Chechnya, to take the war to Russian soil, whether or not to destabilize Ingushetia, Dagestan, or Kabardino-Balkaria. The same priority for Maskhadov and especially for Sadulayev has been, and remains today for Umarov, to militarily preserve the Chechen resistance. That is why Maskhadov, during his time, took no measures against Basayev, who claimed responsibility for the majority of Chechen terrorist acts. He had no other choice but to ensure above all, the military survival of the resistance by low intensity and even terrorist action.

Doku Umarov, like his predecessors, has no other political program but to ensure the perpetuation of the fight. The political orientation of a leader, like the Islamist ideology, is no longer at the heart of the Chechen resistance. It has become useless to consider, judge or evaluate the political evolution of the Chechen guerilla movement. It does not evolve, or change – it survives. Islamism in Chechnya has only a technical pertinence, in the sense that it offers a fully coherent frame of ideological motivation for engagement, mobilization and connection with parallel resistance movements which are already organizing in other North Caucasian republics, particularly in Ingushetia with the group Sharia led by a certain Khabibula, and in Dagestan under the authority of Rappani Khalilov. Considering the blaze of the North Caucasus as a whole, there is no Chechen ideological ambition, but rather a tactical instrument having to make the link between different resistance groups.