Ajnad al-Kavkaz have provided a longer biography of the group’s military commander (emir), Khamza Shishani which I have translated below. I wrote a short biography of Khamza here, taken from Ajnad’s previous postings on their social media.

Khamza was 17 in 2004, making him 28 now.

He met Ajnad leader Abdul Hakim Shishani in Turkey in 2009. Both had gone there for treatment after being wounded in Chechnya.

What is unusual about this biography? Usually, I have seen North Caucasian militants in Syria only write biographies after someone has died, as a eulogy. But Ajnad is engaged in a campaign of publicizing and playing up the experience of its leaders in the North Caucasus, a development that has happened as the Caucasus Emirate in Syria has dropped off the radar somewhat, with the mysterious departure of their former emir Salakhuddin.

In 2004 at the age of 17, Khamza began to wage jihad [lit. “went out to jihad”]. His first emir was Khayrullah. In Dagestan at that time there came mujahideen who were under Khayrullah (the emir of the Vedensky sector) for some work. Khamza joined these militants and started to wage jihad with these brothers in the plains. In Dagestan with these brothers Khamza worked only at night.

In summer 2005, the mujahideen started to recruit a group in order to return to Chechnya. After the group was recruited, Khamza and the brothers started the journey from Dagestan. The journey was very hard, as they traveled on foot through the mountains and it was June. They had to go to the Vedensky sector to Khayrullah’s base (the emir of the Vedensky sector).

Because of the long journey they had reduced the food supplies that they took with them. A packet of Rolton [dried noodles, like ramen] had to last two people for a day until they reached the village in Chechnya. From there they jumped under the tarp of a truck and were taken to the Vedensky sector.

And there from summer 2005 Khamza was waging jihad in Chechnya.

Khamza was under Khayrullah until his martyrdom. After him Azamat was appointed amir but he never met him, as Azamat was also martyred. He transferred to be under Selim, Khayrullah’s deputy, until Mukhannad took him into his jamaat on the Eastern Front.

In 2008, near the village of Tsa-Vedeno [see map here https://goo.gl/maps/UfefoPLrAG22 ] when Khamza and the brothers went down to the village in order to send a guy to the plains, they came upon a reconnaissance [mission] of Russian infidels and they clashed. In this clash he got wounded in the thigh, which shattered his bone.

With a shattered leg he spent seven months in the forest, with only dressings and treating the leg to avoid gangrene. In the forest, the leg did not heal properly and was reduced by 10 cm. And only after 7 months did he manage to go down to the plains.

After a year he managed to get to a hospital for treatment, where he had his first operation. At the end of 2009, Khamza left Russia and abroad he had around six or seven operations on his leg, to lengthen it. He had to have another operation to straighten the leg completely but he didn’t want to and it remained shortened by several centimeters.

After treatment he could not find a way to get to the North Caucasus.

He met Abdul Hakim [Shishani, the amir of Ajnad al-Kavkaz] in 2009, who had left Russia before him for treatment after a detonator blew up in his hand. When Khamza could not return to the North Caucasus he went to wage jihad in Syria, where he is continuing to fight on the path of Allah.