What’s Left of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan?

Sherzod Boltaev bashfully walked through the door and sat on a chair facing a stale, yellowing wall. A table lamp standing on a shabby desk illuminated a tiny Afghan flag with obtrusive white light, making the small room in the prison run by the National Directorate for Security – Afghanistan’s main security and intelligence agency – all the more grim. Boltaev, a 38-year old lanky Uzbek with a patchy beard, looked anxious and reserved. He spoke with a voice so soft and quiet that it was barely discernible even amid the deep silence of the room. 

Unlike many other detainees in the high security prison, Boltaev had willingly decided to abandon his fight. After Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, promised mercy to those members of the Islamic State - Khorasan Province who turn themselves in, Boltaev felt that that it was the right moment to quit. He was tired, hungry, and unsure of what was to come. 

It was autumn 2019 and in Afghanistan the Islamic State was losing its last stronghold in the mountains of Nangarhar, close to the Pakistani border. Many of its members fled or went into hiding; others were captured or killed by the advancing Afghan and American armies. Boltaev turned himself in at the beginning of November 2019. His pregnant wife and five children were taken separately, put onto a bus, and driven in an unknown direction. Boltaev has not heard from them since. 

Boltaev, who was known as Najibullah Abdul Rahim – a nom de guerre he took when he joined the jihad – is one of hundreds of Uzbek nationals who over the years have passed through Afghanistan as part of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Their fight, which began in the 1990s in their homeland, saw them ally over the years variously with the Taliban, al-Qaida, and the Islamic State; splinter into factions; and finally sink into oblivion. 

But while the IMU itself might no longer be an important player in the complex landscape of international jihad or pose a serious threat to Central Asian governments, it may yet be too soon to portend its total demise either.

Chaos

It was 1990, and the Soviet Union was reaching its final days, when a group of religious young men from the Uzbek city of Namangan in the Fergana valley formed Adolat – an organization that aimed to restore justice in the increasingly chaotic times. Its leaders, a young mullah named Tahir Yuldashev and a former Soviet paratrooper, Juma Namangani, built a new mosque and soon began patrolling the streets, enforcing Shariah. They gradually took over the role of law enforcement and demanded that Uzbekistan become an Islamic state. 

The authorities were slow at first in responding to growing religiosity in the Fergana valley. Only in 1992 was Adolat was banned and a crackdown began. A number of its members fled the country. Namangani joined the Tajik civil war, where he fought alongside the more radical Islamist factions, while Yuldashev toured the Islamic world. When the Tajik civil was reaching its end in 1997, Namangani opposed the peace accords and abandoned his Tajik allies who had embraced the chance at peace. At the time, the Uzbek government of Islam Karimov was cracking down on Islamic groups in the Fergana valley, causing an outflow of disillusioned religious youth looking for a purpose abroad. 

The IMU was officially established in 1998 with Yuldashev as its main religious ideologue and Namangani, who at the time was already involved in a profitable drug trafficking business and maintained closed contacts with the Taliban in Afghanistan, as the group’s main guerrilla leader. Their ultimate goal was to overthrow the Uzbek and Kyrgyz governments and establish an Islamic state in the Fergana valley, which both countries, plus Tajikistan, share. At the time, the group was switching between bases in Tajikistan, just out of its civil war, and Afghanistan, a few years into Taliban rule.

In early 1999, Tashkent experienced a series of bomb explosions for which the IMU was blamed, although it is unclear if they were the actual perpetrators. In the following years, the IMU made incursions into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, taking hostages for ransom, operating in the Uzbek-Kyrgyz-Tajik borderlands. They made money on drug trafficking and reportedly received funding from al-Qaida, their Afghanistan-based ally. 

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan put the IMU on a new path. 

From then on, it focused on fighting coalition forces and came into closer collaboration with al-Qaida and the Taliban. In November 2001, Namangani was killed and soon after the group moved into what was then the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan – specifically Waziristan – near the Afghan border, where they established contacts with local tribes and periodically clashed with Pakistani forces. In 2004, the IMU took credit for a series of attacks in Tashkent, where by that time, the war against Islam was well underway. 

In 2009, Yuldashev died in a drone strike and in the following years the organization splintered and changed leaders. It also became increasingly committed to international jihad. 

Searching for a Home

Sherzod Boltaev grew up in a village in the Sirdarya region in eastern Uzbekistan, close to the Tajik border. His family was far from religious. They practiced Islam in his village, Boltaev says, but not properly. People called themselves Muslim, but they did not read namaz – the Persian term for salah, the second of the five pillars of Islam, the daily obligatory prayers devout Muslims perform five times a day. All the sins of the modern world were in the village: vodka, prostitutes, cigarettes. Boltaev converted to Islam in 2008 following his younger brother, who encouraged his search for God. 

Soon after, Boltaev got married and the problems began.

At the time, the campaign against pious Muslims in Uzbekistan was in full swing. Those who followed scriptural Islam, wore beards, and prayed five times a day became targets of the omnipresent security services. Religiosity could land one in prison, including the infamous Jaslyk, known for the widespread use of torture, where people could disappear for years if not forever. Boltaev’s wife was not free to wear the hijab. His brother spent several months behind bars. 

“My friends who were put in prison by the security service of the Sirdarya region were forced to drink vodka and were not allowed to read namaz. When they were freed, the security services would say they had videos of them drinking vodka. That was the situation in Uzbekistan,” Boltaev says.

When his brother got out of prison, the two families decided to leave for Moscow. But it soon became clear that Russia, too, was not the promised land the brothers were looking for. Boltaev worked in Russia handing out leaflets and newspapers, but fear persisted. Ultimately, religious Muslims were a target there as well. They had to find a new home. 

“My brother got in touch with a friend from our region via the internet. He said that there is a jamaat [community] in Afghanistan, you can live according to Shariah, there is a war every day and you can read namaz. And my brother went to Afghanistan,” Boltaev says. “My brother said, he does not like to fight and die for nothing. But at least there is a small madrasa [an Islamic school], where he can cook, help, wash the dishes. There is true religion in Afghanistan. So we also decided to do hijra [migration]. My brother said that if we do not leave, we will end up in jail sooner or later.”

Jihad

In 2012, Boltaev and his wife, plus their two small children, left Russia. Through Azerbaijan and Iran, they made their way to Afghanistan and from there to the tribal areas of Pakistan close to the Afghan border, where many Uzbek fighters were based. They stayed there two years. Boltaev says that he helped to distribute groceries to the Uzbek mujahideen, who at the time fought alongside local Islamists against the Pakistani army. 

The Diplomat could not independently verify Boltaev’s version of events.

In 2014, after numerous terrorist attacks that shook Pakistani cities, the country decided to deliver a final blow to those groups based in the increasingly lawless tribal areas. The fighting left 1 million people displaced. Thousands of fighters and their families escaped the country and found safe haven in neighboring Afghanistan. Most of them settled in Nangarhar, where they slowly began rebuilding their communities among their Taliban brothers. 

As Obaid Ali, an expert from the Afghanistan Analysts Network explains, the IMU rejoined the fight alongside the Taliban mainly in the north of the country. Others, including Boltaev, flocked to Zabul, where they received land and shelter from the local Taliban. But cracks in the relationship between the IMU and their local hosts had already appeared. 

“By 2014, IMU’s late leader Usman Ghazi published on their website a statement raising a few points. One of them was that the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, had disappeared. Ghazi said that it has been a few years that no one had seen Mullah Omar and that it violated religious norms. If you have not seen a leader for a long time, you do not answer to them, fight alongside them, and support them,” Ali says. “That created a lot of problems for the IMU because the Taliban did not follow them and disarmed many IMU commanders in the north of the country.”

In 2015, the Taliban admitted that Mullah Omar was not only no longer alive, but had been dead since 2013, and appointed Mullah Akhtar Mansour as their new leader. This caused a number of disagreements and led to a split within the movement. The situation further deteriorated after that.

The Islamic State - Khorasan Province

The Taliban’s hospitality for the newcomers in Nangarhar soon reached its limits. In 2015, many of the Pakistani fighters in the area swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, who in June the previous year had announced the creation of a caliphate on the territories of Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State - Khorasan Province (ISKP) was thus born, named after the broad northeastern region of the Persian Empire of Hellenistic times. With its main base in Nangarhar province, the new group was soon joined by many disgruntled local Taliban commanders. 

As it promised to extend its fight onto the whole region, including China’s Xinjiang, Iran, and Central Asia, ISKP provided a perfect cause for foreign fighters based in Afghanistan and new recruits from abroad. It also slowly began to take over new areas in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, including profitable mines and important trade routes to Pakistan.

The IMU thus found a new ally. While many members of the IMU, which over the years has become much more international in its makeup, flocked to the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, many of them have since returned to Afghanistan. 

But not everyone was happy with the new alliance. When in July 2015, Usman Ghazi, the IMU’s leader, announced his group’s support for ISKP, some of its members decided to stay with the Taliban instead.

In Zabul, the situation became tense. Local Taliban commanders tried to negotiate with their Uzbek guests, but the IMU refused to support the new Taliban leader. This left the Taliban with no choice but to fight their former allies. As Ali explains, a number of IMU leaders and commanders were killed in a ruthless bout of bloodshed; others were disarmed and detained. Some managed to flee the area with their families and joined the new stronghold of the Islamic State in Nangarhar. 

“They had two options to stay alive: either join the ISKP in Nangarhar or support the appointment of the Taliban’s second leader. Some of them did support him and remained in their positions in some parts of the country, mainly in the north,” Ali says. 

Boltaev’s group was among the lucky ones that survived the Zabul massacre. His unit handed over their weapons and gave their word that they would not join the Islamic State. They never intended to keep that promise. Soon after, they moved to the ISKP stronghold in Nangarhar. When asked what life looked like under the Islamic State, Boltaev does not provide many details. 

“People studied. We could have a normal life for two months with peace and quiet, nothing happening and then a bombing would begin,” he says. “There was one photocopy center, I looked after the printers so that people could print stuff out. I also prepared meals.”

It is impossible to know if that was indeed the case. 

Defeat

Boltaev says he spent three years in the Islamic State as one of 200 Uzbeks, although he does not specify the exact location. Then, in 2018, fighting against the Taliban erupted again. 

“They started bombing and everyone left toward Waziristan. We lived there for 1.5 years. There are trees, cones, precious stones. We collected them, made firewood. Many people lived there. Then the Taliban launched an attack again. It continued for a number of months. We gradually began to leave again,” Boltaev says. “It was hard without food and with the children. Other families were left without husbands. Each man had about 10 wives. My wife stayed there sick with five children. I was on the run and ill for eight months. There was no food.”

That was when Boltaev heard that those who surrendered would be granted amnesty. ISKP was losing in Nangarhar against the Afghan and U.S. armies, a local uprising, and the Taliban. In the end, some of the group’s members moved to Pakistan or Kunar province; others escaped; some were killed and others detained. Together with his wife, they decided there was no other option but to surrender. Their jihad had failed. Boltaev turned himself in to Afghan authorities together with other fighters. 

If he could turn back time, Boltaev says, he would not go to Afghanistan at all. He does not like to fight; he just wanted to live with his wife and kids and practice Islam. If he is ever free again, he will go to Europe, Turkey, or Russia, he says, anywhere he can find peace. He wants to reunite with his family and his brother, who was last seen fighting in Syrian Kurdistan. 

That may never happen. Despite the promise, ISKP fighters who surrendered were not pardoned. The IMU, too, has failed. 

“The movement is over. There are some small [Uzbek] groups who fight alongside the Taliban, but on their own, they are worthless,” Boltaev says. 

Those Who Stayed

According to the agreement that the Taliban signed with the United States in February this year – aiming to end almost 20 years of war – the group promised that in exchange for U.S. withdrawal, they would not allow for any terrorist activities on Afghanistan’s territory. 

A trip to the picturesque mountains of Badakhshan sheds some doubts on the Taliban’s compliance. 

In the sleepy Khostak valley a group of Central Asian fighters continues their fight. While, as Ali says, their numbers are unclear and they depend on the local Taliban, they are reportedly affiliated with al-Qaida, the very organization that drew the United States onto Afghan soil after the 9/11 attacks. As he explains, the group has been there for years. It is unlikely that there are many more fighters who survived the Zabul massacre, however. And they have too many grievances against the Taliban to reconcile.

Isan, a 27-year old former Taliban fighter, meets me in a quiet office in Fayzabad, the capital of Badakhshan province. He left the group three years ago as he grew disillusioned with their fight. Ever since, he has been living with his parents in a village close to the city. He recently got engaged. 

“The Khostak valley in Badakhshan’s Jurm is a safe place for foreign terrorists. The number of Uyghurs is very high, then Tajiks and Uzbeks. Every summer there is a military offensive. They have been there for six, seven years. Every year new foreigners are joining them from Pakistan and other places,” he explains. “The people of Khostak are unhappy with the foreigners – they are afraid of them. Sometimes they demand food, cars, or attack them.”

According to Ali, apart from Badakhshan, some Uzbek fighters still operate in Takhar, Kunduz, and Baghlan provinces. And as noted in a July report by the United Nations’ Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, the IMU’s membership in Afghanistan has recently grown to 140 people, including families, who are mainly based in Faryab province. 

ISKP is still present in the country and despite losing much of its territory, it is still capable of launching high casualty attacks. The UN Monitoring Team estimates that there are currently around 2,200 ISKP fighters in Afghanistan. It is unclear, however, how many of them are of Uzbek descent. 

“One thing is clear,” Ali says. “As long as the Taliban are strong enough, there won’t be space for any other militant group to operate independently in Afghanistan. Most areas where those groups are based are under Taliban control. The government has no access to those places.”