Education: Construction engineering, Grozny Oil Institute.

1994-1996: Fought under warlords Ruslan Gelayav and later Akhmed Zakayev in the First Chechen War. Under Zakayev, Umarov headed the Borz, or "Wolf," special operations battalion and later led a regiment.

1997: Appointed head of the Chechen Security Council by Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov

1999-2000: Rebel commander during the Second Chechen War, participating in the siege of the Chechen capital Grozny. He was seriously wounded in 2000.

2002: Became a commander of the rebel Southwestern Front, a force believed to have been about 1,000-strong. Over the next few years, authorities accused Umarov's forces of being behind a string of attacks throughout the region, including a siege at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in 2004 that left more than 380 dead. Umarov denied involvement the attack.

2006-2007: President of Ichkeria, the unrecognized secessionist government of Chechnya. Umarov's rise to the top of the rebel hierarchy was expedited by the deaths of his predecessors Aslan Maskhadov in 2005 and Khalim Saydullayev in 2006. Shamil Basayev, the mastermind of the Beslan siege, also died in 2006.

October 2007-present: President of the self-proclaimed Caucasus Emirate. With his October 2007 declaration, Umarov become the first Chechen leader to link the separatist movement to Islamist rebels worldwide. The Islamic "state" spans several southern Russian republics including Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria. Echoing the rhetoric of al-Qaida, Umarov also declared that the West was the enemy of all Muslims and called for the introduction of Sharia law in the region. Akhmed Zakayev and many other former rebels and members of the Chechen government-in-exile decried the radicalization of the secessionist movement, which has caused an ideological split among secessionists.

2009: Umarov resurrected the suicide battalion Riyadus-Salikhin, or "Garden of Martyrs," a group once led by Shamil Basayev. (Suicide bombing had been a rare tactic prior to 2000 and for several years before 2009.)

November 2009: Claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Nevsky Express passenger train that left at least 28 dead

March 2010: Claimed responsibility for a double suicide bombing in Moscow's metro that left nearly 40 dead. He called the attacks retribution for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's "repression" of the Chechen people and promised more.

January 2011: Claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the arrivals hall of Domodedovo Airport, Moscow's largest, that killed 37 and injured 180

Umarov is married and has six children. Several members of his immediate family have been killed and/or kidnapped — usually by unidentified forces — including his sister, cousin, nephew, two of his brothers and his father, who has been missing since 2007. His wife and 6-month-old son were taken hostage in 2005, but were later released.

Umarov has been declared dead on several occasions by Russian security services and media, most recently in April 2011.