IMU, Who?

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) exploded onto the scene, literally, in 1999 with a series of coordinated bombings in Tashkent. The IMU didn’t claim the bombings but Uzbek President Islam Karimov – the target – pointed the finger and in the months and years that followed cracked down on not just those associated with the IMU, but dissidents of all kinds.

The story of the IMU is clouded in conjecture, obfuscated by the very nature of militant organizations and imbued – thanks to its name featuring Uzbekistan – with a perpetual linkage back to Central Asia, the group’s actual activities notwithstanding. Whenever an Uzbek, anywhere, commits an act of terror the resulting news stories nearly always mention the IMU and its birthplace, the Fergana Valley of Uzbekistan.

At the outset, the IMU’s mission was simple, echoing that of jihadist organizations the world over: the overthrow of the secular Karimov regime and the institution of a Shariah-abiding Islamic state.  But the IMU of today is far removed from its original form. It exists as a ghost of its former self. And while some, perhaps, dream of returning to Central Asia, such a prospect is far beyond the group’s means.

The IMU, Then

In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Over the next decade, citizens from Central Asia, conscripts in the Soviet Army, fought on behalf of the communists against the Afghan mujahideen. One, Jumaboi Khojayev, returned to Namangan in the Fergana Valley in what would soon become Uzbekistan a changed man.

Radicalized by the war, Khojayev began associating with local Islamists, including Tohir Yuldashev, a mullah. At first they were members of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), which had been formed in 1990 as a pan-Soviet Union Islamist organization intended to have branches in each of the Central Asian republics. But the IRP’s vision was too modest, and Khojayev – who took on the nom de guerre Juma Namangani – and Yuldashev broke out on their own and formed their own party, Adolat (Justice), with a more revolutionary ideology.

As independence swept Central Asia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Adolat was born. Its leaders, Namangani and Yuldashev, thought the Soviet holdover government of Islam Karimov was not long to stand. But Karimov took seriously the tenuous position of his nascent government. Adolat was never allowed to register as a party and in March 1992, 27 of its members were arrested. Namangani and Yuldashev fled and for a time, their paths diverged.

Yuldashev reportedly fled first to Dushanbe, but when the Tajik civil war broke out he moved on, first to Afghanistan and then Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. Along the way, he made contacts with most of the Islamic parties across the Middle East and South Asia. By the late 1990s, he was set up in Peshawar interacting with not only Pakistani and Afghan Islamists but the “Arab Afghans” who had first come to the region to fight the Soviets and stayed to fight with al-Qaeda.

Namangani also went to Tajikistan, but his Soviet combat experience endeared him to the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), which was led by the Tajik branch of the IRP (the IRPT). Based in the Tavildara Valley, Namangani fought on behalf of the UTO as it fought for control of Tajikistan with the central government, led by Emomali Rahmon after 1992. But the UTO included democrats and Pamiris, and the IRPT espoused a moderate Islamist platform.

When the UTO and the Tajik government settled a peace agreement in 1997 which saw the IRPT legitimized as a political party and its members given position in the government, Namangani settled in Hoit, a small village near Garm in Tajikistan. He reportedly bought a farm and set up a trucking business. In Uzbekistan, Karimov continued his crackdown on Islamists and dissidents, labeling all of them Wahhabis without distinction. Uzbek refugees flocked to Namangani with horror stories. The IRPT no longer could support Namangani, at the risk of losing the peace it had just settled.

According to Ahmed Rashid, Muhiddin Kabiri, the currently exiled leader of the modern IRPT, said of Namangani: “When the IRP leaders said stop the jihad, Namangani said no… His methods of work and aims were only jihad, and he did not have the political flexibility to understand that sometimes compromise is necessary.”

Kabiri had also reportedly said, “[Namangani] is a good person but not a deep person or intellectual in any way, and he has been shaped by his own military and political experiences rather than by Islamic ideology, but he hates the Uzbek government — that is what motivates him above all. In a way, he is a leader by default, because no other leader is willing to take such risks to oppose Karimov.”

When Namangani reunited with Yuldashev in 1998, they formed the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Yuldashev’s Pakistani connections included the Taliban leadership, and by 1998 he had a house in Kabul’s diplomatic district and another in Kandahar.

In February 1999, a series of bombings shook Tashkent. Karimov, ostensibly the target, was unharmed but 16 people were killed and more than 100 injured. The bombings sparked a renewed crackdown, with thousands dragged in for questioning. Karimov blamed the Islamists and the IMU, in particular.

Karimov also lashed out at Tajikistan for “harboring” Namangani. Although Dushanbe had little ability to dislodge Namangani, the Tajiks did allegedly allow him and his followers to cross the Tajik-Kyrgyz border.

In August 1999, a team of about two dozen IMU members kidnapped four local officials and four Kyrgyz soldiers outside of Osh. The IMU demanded a ransom, which the Kyrgyz initially refused, sending in their troops instead. But after an Uzbek air strike mistakenly struck a Kyrgyz village, Bishkek relented and paid the IMU off, to the tune of between $50,000 and $150,000. The hostages were released, but soon after four Japanese geologists and their Kyrgyz interpreter were kidnapped in Kyrgyzstan by the IMU. The Japanese, officially, did not pay a ransom but Tokyo reportedly transferred $3 million in aid to Bishkek for the Batken region where the IMU was operating and the hostages were released.

Namangani had reportedly changed his demand from cash to the release of IMU prisoners in Uzbekistan. Its alleged that the $3 million was pilfered by Kyrgyz and Tajik authorities and instead of payment Namangani was given passage to Afghanistan.

Hostage taking became the IMU’s business through 1999 and into 2000, with the highest activity in the summer season. In the winter in 1999, however, reports surfaced that some 300 IMU members and their families were escorted across the Tajik-Afghan border by Russian troops. The IMU was moving to Afghanistan, where Yuldashev’s Taliban and al-Qaeda friends welcomed them. The bargain was simple: the Taliban would permit the IMU to set up training camps and a base in Afghanistan from which it could attack Uzbekistan; in exchange, the IMU would support the Taliban in its fight against the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud and his Northern Alliance.

In the summer of 2000, Namangani returned to Tajikistan and set his sights once more on Uzbekistan. Ethnic Tajik herdsmen tried to warn the Uzbek government about IMU militants setting up in Surkhandarya Region (now Surxondaryo), which borders Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan, but they were ignored until fighting broke out. Tashkent then accused the herdsmen of harboring the IMU and destroyed their villages.

In August 2000, four Americans were among 10 hikers kidnapped in Kyrgyzstan’s Kara-Suu valley by the IMU. The Americans escaped when one of them reportedly pushed their guard off a cliff. The IMU was officially labelled a Foreign Terrorist Organization in September 2000.

In 2001, Dushanbe finally persuaded Namangani to leave. According to Ahmed Rashid, he was taken to the Tajik-Afghan border on Russian transport helicopters along with 300 men from his base in Tavildara.

The IMU, then based in Mazar-i-Sharif, numbered nearly 2,000. This was the IMU at its height. Osama bin Laden reportedly gave Namangani more than $20 million and bin Laden’s Saudi backers and others provided millions more in equipment. The IMU also derived funds from the opium trade from Afghanistan and through Tajikistan.

Throughout the summer of 2001, IMU militants attacked border posts on the Tajik-Kyrgyz border and stirred trouble in Uzbekistan. But everything changed on September 11, 2001.

As the threads from the attacks in New York and Washington, DC were traced back to Afghanistan and through the Taliban to al-Qaeda, the IMU was pulled in as well. On September 20, U.S. President George W. Bush named the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as linked to al-Qaeda, painting the picture of global jihad.

While the IMU’s original mission had been anything but global, its placement and alliances determined its future. As the Americans roared into Afghanistan, the IMU was decimated alongside the Taliban.

In November 2001, it was rumored that Namangani had been killed in an American airstrike. There were several versions of the story, but Namangani never surfaced again.

The Pakistan Interregnum Begins

In March 2002, in the first large-scale battle of the American war in Afghanistan — called Operation Anaconda — coalition forces targeted Taliban, IMU and al-Qaeda militants in  Shah-i-Kot Valley. The IMU reportedly suffered terrible casualties and those who remained, estimated at 500 to 1,000 people, retreated with Yuldashev into South Waziristan, Pakistan.

By mid-2002, the IMU was farther than ever from Uzbekistan. It was labeled a terrorist group by not only Tashkent, but Washington. Meanwhile, the United States and Uzbekistan were drawing together out of perceived necessity. The Americans largely ignored Islam Karimov’s  crackdowns, writing them off as in the name of national security whether they targeted violent extremists or basement prayer circles.

The IMU’s possibility of returning to either Afghanistan or Central Asia dwindled further with the influx of coalition troops and American-supported counterterrorism initiatives into the region. As the number of American troops in Afghanistan surged, reaching 100,000 by 2010, the IMU remained in Pakistan until late 2014.

Next month, I’ll continue this story with the IMU’s return to Afghanistan and an update on its current status.