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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Uzbek hard boyz head home via Iran, Tajikistan |
| 2005-06-14 |
| They pay off Iranian mobsters and Tajik border guards, buy forged passports and visas for $300 a pop and rely on the whispered advice of an international network of Muslims who help militants slip undetected across borders from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. Former members of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, who gave themselves up in exchange for amnesty, said they used the terrorist trails to return home to Uzbekistan -- routes easily traveled nearly four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Hasan Satimov, 30, used the clandestine network as recently as September 2004 to return from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan via Iran. He first used the Silk Road militant routes when he slipped across the Afghan border to Iran soon after Sept. 11 but within a few months returned to Afghanistan because he ran out of money. He finally went home to Uzbekistan after Uzbek authorities guaranteed him amnesty. Satimov's home is in Namangan, in the religiously conservative Fergana Valley, the most populous region of Central Asia, where Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan meet. Namangan is the native city of the two founding members of the IMU: political leader Tahir Yuldash and Jumabay Khojiyev, known as Juma Namangani after his hometown. He was believed killed in Afghanistan during the 2001 U.S.-led assault on the Taliban. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |