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| Central Asia |
| Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan Causing Trouble in Pakistan and Elsewhere |
| 2004-03-09 |
| A spate of recent reports from the region shows ongoing Islamist activity and law-enforcement efforts to contain it. One report details the state of affairs in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. .... Detailed paragraphs about Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan [Many] IMU members fled to Pakistan after the U.S.-led antiterrorist operation smashed the Taliban movement, and with it the IMU’s stronghold in Afghanistan. ... a group of approximately 120 militants has relocated to Pakistan’s northern Baluchistan Province. The group consists of fighters from Central Asia, Tatarstan, ethnic Russian converts to Islam, and people from the Caucasus; many of them are IMU members. Operating in groups of 25-30, they have recently moved to mountainous regions of Pakistan, including the city of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan Province. ... a former IMU member, who said that the IMU’s leaders now reside in Wana, Pakistan. The movement’s leader remains Tohir Yo’ldosh. His first deputy for financial affairs is Dilshod Hojiyev. The military commander is Ulug’bek Holik, nom de guerre Muhammad Ayub. All of the men are originally from Uzbekistan’s Namangan Oblast. The IMU maintains a number of unofficial "daftars," or offices, in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. An office in Karachi handles financial contributions, primarily from Arab countries. According to the main source for the report, a 34-year-old Uzbek native of Navoiy Oblast who recently took advantage of an amnesty offer and returned home from Pakistan, the fighters also earn money on their own "through military operations financed by Pakistani special services against American forces in Afghanistan and through raids in Kashmir." [more] Historian Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution provided a useful summary of the [IMU’s] history and activities ....: "The IMU was a self-proclaimed radical Islamic and political group, which was formed around 1997 by two ethnic Uzbeks from the Ferghana Valley with the express goal of overthrowing the government of President Islam Karimov and establishing an Islamic state in Uzbekistan. Having been expelled from Uzbekistan in the early 1990s, the two founders of the IMU (Juma Namangani, the group’s military leader and a former Afghan veteran, and [Tohir Yo’ldosh], its political leader) followed the pattern of other Islamic militant leaders. They traveled variously and separately in Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates -- as well as to Chechnya -- and established contacts with Islamic movements, financial sources, and intelligence services. After the 1996 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the IMU founders established close relations with Taliban leaders and were reported to have secured the support and financial backing of Osama bin Laden in their creation of the IMU. "From 1997-2001, using the remove mountainous regions of Tajikistan as its base, the IMU carried out kidnappings, assassinations, and other atrocities, including a series of armed raids deep into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan that also targeted foreign visitors and tourists. Eventually, the IMU relocated its base of operations permanently to Afghanistan, extended its mandate to overthrow all regional governments -- changing its name to the Islamic Party of Turkestan [IPT] -- and threw in its lot with the Taliban. President [George W.] Bush named the IMU as one of the terrorist movements linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network in his speech to Congress on 20 September 2001. At this juncture, reports from the region and Western intelligence sources put the numbers of IMU militants at between 3,000-5,000.... [much, much more] |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #1 Good article.. |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-3-9 10:54:41 PM |