Munayev was a police officer in the city of Grozny before the outbreak of hostilities with Russia. At the beginning of the Second Chechen War in 1999, the Chechen leader, Aslan Maskhadov, appointed him as a military commandant of Grozny. During the Battle of Grozny (1999–2000), Munayev organized ambushes, car bombs and mine explosions against the Russian forces. In October 2000, the Russian authorities erroneously reported that he had been killed when a group of rebels tried to blow up a military truck. After the Chechen forces withdrew from the capital to the mountains, Munayev was made a brigadier general and commander of the Southwestern front early in 2001. Having sustained a serious injury during fighting, he was forced to leave Chechnya in 2004 or 2005. He was granted political asylum in Denmark, where he became the organizer of the public political movement "Free Caucasus", which was founded in 2009.