Khalilov first became well known after the January 18, 2002, bombing of a Russian military truck, which killed seven Interior Ministry soldiers in the capital of Dagestan, Makhachkala.
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In 1944 his ancestors were forcibly resettled from the mountains to the territory of a gorge in Aukhovsky (Novalaksky) District in the then-Chechen-Ingush ASSR, which was vacated following the deportation of the Chechens to Siberia and subsequently became part of the Dagestan ASSR.
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Khalilov came to the attention of the authorities in 1998 when he married the sister of the foreign mujahideen commander Ibn al-Khattab's ethnic Dargin wife; he moved to her home village of Karamakhi, which acquired notoriety in the summer of the same year, when its residents introduced Sharia law and declared an Islamic state.