Having been the First Secretary of the Yalta Communist Party before the war, he served as the commissar of a partisan formation during the war before being exiled the Uzbek SSR as a Crimean Tatar, where he went on to hold leadership positions in the Ministry of Agriculture of the Uzbek SSR and become one of the original organizers of the Crimean Tatar civil rights movement, for which he received reprimand from party organs.

From 1937 to May 1939 he served as secretary of the Komsomol committee, from then to September he headed the district land department before being drafted into the Red Army later that month.

There, he worked in the political department of the Transcaucasian railway before returning to Crimea in January 1942 to take part in the Kerch-Feodosia landing and the subsequent liberation of Kerch.

There, Selimov helped establish contact with other communists, conducted counter-propaganda efforts, and organized partisan cells in various Crimean villages.

In his notes, he remembered various Crimean Tatars such as Memet Appazov, Asan Mamutov, Vaap Dzhemilev, and Seitamet Islyamov were accomplished partisans.

[3][4][5] Despite his high position in the regional government and service to the Soviet Union during the war, Selimov was subject to deportation from Crimea as a Crimean Tatar on 18 May 1944.

Initially he lived in Bekabad, and in April 1945 he became director of the Central Asian branch of the All-Union Research Institute of Wine and Viticulture.