With trenches, watchtowers, tunnels and telephone links, it was a well-guarded hideout of Uzbek and Chechen militants -- until it was found by Pakistani troops searching for Osama bin Laden near the Afghan border. After initially retreating in a hail of bullets last Tuesday, Pakistan's army drafted thousands of reinforcements and set up a 40-mile cordon around several hundred militants in desolate mountains near the frontier. Radio intercepts suggest they were close to nabbing a prominent Uzbek or Chechen leader, probably the charismatic leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yuldashev, intelligence sources say. "It was Commander Tahir, but I doubt he is there any more," one intelligence official told Reuters. He either broke out in a bullet-proof car on the first day or vanished through one of the tunnels linking the mud-walled fortresses of the complex under attack in the South Waziristan area of the tribal lands. "There is a possibility that some might have escaped," regional security chief Brigadier Mahmood Shah admitted.
Experts say it had been an open secret for some time that Yuldashev and his central Asian colleagues were sheltering in the area, after fleeing Afghanistan as their Taliban allies were forced from power by the United States in late 2001. "Everybody knew this group was there," said Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid. "There was a kind of official deal."
Yuldashev first emerged in the late 1980s as the founder of the Adolat or Justice movement, a gang of young Muslim vigilantes meting out mediaeval punishment in Uzbekistan's breathtakingly beautiful Ferghana Valley during the Soviet Union's final days. Thieves and prostitutes would be seated on donkeys, face to tail, and paraded around town, others beaten with sticks or tied to poles for passersby to spit in their faces. Precursors to the Taliban, Adolat youths wearing green armbands would drag off any woman daring to wear a short skirt and shave her heads.
| The difference between them and Brownshirts was... what? |
Yuldashev's denouncements of post-Communist President Islam Karimov made him a wanted man, and he left to join like-minded Muslim militants fighting Tajikistan's civil war in the 1990s. He later helped found the IMU, a motley crew including Kyrgyz, Tajiks and even some Uighurs from China's restive Xinjiang province. Their goal was to set up an Islamic state in Uzbekistan and ultimately throughout Central Asia. Blamed for a series of bomb attacks in the Uzbek capital Tashkent in 1999, Yuldashev was sentenced to death in absentia. By this time he is thought to have fled the region for the safe haven of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar were enthusiastic about the IMU's plans to Islamise Central Asia and the movement was welcomed into al Qaeda.
Fighting on the Taliban's side in Afghanistan's civil war, the IMU boasted several thousand fighters. But its base near the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif was bombed by U.S. warplanes in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and Yuldashev's comrade-in-arms Juma Namangani killed. Yuldashev is believed to have joined senior Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan, and is rumoured to have led resistance to U.S. forces during the fierce fighting of Operation Anaconda in the spring of 2002.
Yuldashev's next bolt hole was Pakistan's Waziristan, where he and his gang appear to have won over many conservative tribal people. "Many have settled down, have married and got kids, they speak Pashto and they are completely tuned in," said Rashid. "He recites the Quran very beautifully, very mesmerisingly, which made him very popular in Waziristan." Locals said the tall and well-built Yuldashev was still active in Waziristan, preaching jihad from mosques in the area. A recruitment video received by Reuters this week shows the bearded commander, one end of his black turban draped over his shoulder, passionately exhorting his men in Uzbek and Arabic.
Fighters were taught to clean their guns in lessons conducted on mountain meadows, others were shown treking through steep, verdant hills laden down with rocket-propelled grenades, rifles and backpacks. It was unclear when or where the footage was shot. At some point Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf seems to have decided he could no longer tolerate Yuldashev's men on his soil, either because of American pressure or even because of Chinese concerns about the Uighurs who might be among them. But the army admits it was not expecting the level of resistance it encountered. Yuldashev may have got away but could have been wounded during a dash for freedom. Those of his colleagues still encircled by Pakistan's army show no sign of giving up. "They are really trapped there, and they are going to fight to the death. They have nowhere else to go," said Rashid.
| So kill them all. No great loss, and probably a gain. |
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