For several years, Astemirov headed the local terrorist group Kabardino-Balkarian Jamaat, eventually becoming the main ideologist of the pan-Islamist militant organization Caucasus Emirate, as well as its wali (governor) of Kabardino-Balkaria.

[1] His key position as the Emirate's chief Sharia Islamic law qadi (judge) made him the third in Caucasian insurgent hierarchy, after Dokka Umarov and his military deputy Akhmed Yevloyev.

In December 2004, Astemirov gained notoriety when he led a rebel raid against a Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) headquarters in Nalchik, where several of his associates killed four officers, looted the armory and set the building on fire.

In this position, along with Basayev and Ilyas Gorchkhanov, Astemirov was one of the masterminds behind the unsuccessful large-scale raid, in which more than 140 people, mostly alleged insurgents, died in the series of assaults against Russian government building and security forces across Nalchik on 13–14 October 2005.

According to her 2007 public complaint to Vladimir Putin and the other top Russian federal officials, although her five-year marriage to him had been legally dissolved by a court in 2005, she has been exposed to harassment and prosecution by employees of power agencies of Kabardino-Balkaria, including the arrest of her new husband.