The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU; ; ) was a militant Islamist group formed in 1998 by Islamic ideologue Tahir Yuldashev and former Soviet paratrooper Juma Namangani; both ethnic Uzbeks from the Fergana Valley. Its original objective was to overthrow President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and create an Islamic state under Sharia; however, in subsequent years, it reinvented itself as an ally of Al-Qaeda. The group also maintained relations with Afghan Taliban in the 1990s. However, later on, relations between the Afghan Taliban and the IMU started declining.
Operating out of bases in Tajikistan and Taliban-controlled areas of northern Afghanistan, the IMU launched a series of raids into southern Kyrgyzstan in the years 1999 and 2000. The IMU suffered heavy casualties in 2001–2002 during the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. Namangani was killed, while Yuldeshev and many of the IMU's remaining fighters escaped with remnants of the Taliban to Waziristan, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The IMU then focused on fighting the Pakistani military in the Tribal Areas, and NATO and Afghan forces in northern Afghanistan.
In mid-2015, its leadership publicly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and announced that the IMU was part of the group's regional branch. In 2016, it was reported that a new faction of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan emerged after the group became part of ISIS. The new faction retained the group's name and was independent of ISIS. It has also indicated that it is loyal to al-Qaeda and the Taliban and shared their views against ISIS.
Background During the Soviet era, Islam in Central Asia was officially suppressed – mosques were closed, and all contact with the wider Muslim world was severed. This isolation ended with the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), when thousands of conscripts from Soviet Central Asia were sent to fight the Afghan mujahedin. Many of these conscripts returned home impressed by the Islamic zeal of their opponents, and newly aware of the religious, cultural and linguistic characteristics they shared with their neighbours in the South; and which distinguished them from their rulers in Moscow.
Adolat (1991–1992) One such soldier sent to fight in Afghanistan was the Uzbek paratrooper Juma Namangani (born 1969). Following the war, Khojayev returned to his hometown of Namangan in Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley radicalized by his experiences, and became associated with a local Islamic ideologue, Tohir Yuldashev (born 1967). In the period of initial instability that followed Uzbekistan's sudden independence in 1991, Yuldeshev and Khojayev (now adopting the nom de guerre Juma Namangani) established a radical Salafi Islamist group in Namangan which they called Adolat (Justice).They're Only Sleeping – Why militant Islamicists in Central Asia aren't going to go away – The New Yorker, January 14, 2002
Adolat assumed civil authority in Namangan and quickly established a degree of order and security through the imposition of Sharia Law, which was ruthlessly enforced by Adolat's vigilante cadres. Initially tolerated by the newly installed President Karimov, Adolat became increasingly assertive, culminating in a demand that Karimov impose Sharia throughout Uzbekistan. However, by 1992 Karimov had successfully cemented his authority in Tashkent, and was strong enough to outlaw Adolat and re-establish central control over the Fergana Valley region – traditionally one of the most Islamic regions in Central Asia.
Tajik civil war (1992–1997) Evading arrest, Yuldashev and Namagani fled to Tajikistan, where civil war was raging following a bloody but successful coup led by Emomali Rahmonov earlier in 1992. The civil war pitted Rahmonov's neo-communist forces against a loose coalition of democrats and Islamists known as the United Tajik Opposition (UTO). The UTO was led by the widely popular and highly respected Islamist Said Abdullah Nuri, whose Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) advocated a moderate and democratic brand of Islamism.
Namangani's combat experience in Afghanistan saw him entrusted by the IRPT with the command of active units in the field, based out of the remote, mountainous Tavildara Valley region. He enjoyed considerable success in this role. Meanwhile, Yuldashev left Tajikistan on a tour of Afghanistan, Turkey and the Middle East, during which time he developed contacts with numerous Islamist groups. From 1995 to 1998 Yuldashev was based in Peshawar in Pakistan, where he established relations with Osama bin Laden and the Afghan Arabs based there at the time.
IMU formation (1998) In 1997 Rahmonov and Nuri signed a peace agreement which saw Rahmonov agree to sharing power with the IRPT. Disillusioned with the political concessions made by the Tajik Islamists, Yuldeshev and Namangani formed the IMU in 1998 with the aim of creating a militant Islamic opposition to Karimov in Uzbekistan. The IMU began moving towards the Afghan Taliban and away from their former and more moderate IRPT allies, who were in turn partially backing the ethnic-Tajik Ahmad Shah Massoud and his Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
Nevertheless, Namangani maintained his base in Tajikistan's Tavildara Valley, and was able to recruit large numbers of disaffected youth from the Fergana Valley, where economic hardship and religious persecution were continuing under Karimov's authoritarian rule.
History
Initial operations in Central Asia
In 1999 a series of explosions in the capital Tashkent were orchestrated in an unsuccessful attempt on Karimov's life. Karimov placed the blame on the Islamists and the IMU in particular; however this attribution remains disputed, and it is possible the assassination attempt was the work of rival political and regional elites. Irrespective of who was responsible, the result was an escalation in Karimov's suppression of Islam, particularly in the traditionally observant Fergana Valley – a move which only increased the number of those fleeing Uzbekistan to join up with Namangani and the IMU in the Tavildara Valley.
Later that year the IMU conducted its first verifiable operations, with an incursion into the Batken region of southern Kyrgyzstan, a region populated mainly by ethnic Uzbeks that is between Tavildara in Tajikistan and the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan. Insurgents seized the Mayor of Osh (the regional capital) and successfully extorted a ransom from the ill-prepared Kyrgyz government in Bishkek, as well as a helicopter to transport them to Afghanistan. Further incursions into Batken followed, with one raid resulted in a number of Japanese geologists kidnapped. Although denied by Japan, their subsequent release was reported to have followed the payment of a significant ransom.
These raids had a major impact in Central Asia, and resulted in considerable international pressure on Tajikistan, not least from Karimov, to expel the IMU from its base in the Tavildara Valley. The IRPT persuaded their former ally Namangani to abandon Tavildara in late 1999. Controversially, Namangani and his fighters were then flown from Tajikistan to northern Afghanistan in Russian military helicopters, a move which enraged Karimov who claimed the Russians were aiding the IMU in an attempt to undermine Uzbekistan.
Expansion into Taliban-ruled Afghanistan In Afghanistan Yuldeshev was able to exploit the contacts he had made on his earlier travels to negotiate freedom of operation from the Taliban, in return for providing them with assistance in their battle with Massoud's Northern Alliance. The IMU established offices and training camps, and began expanding their recruitment of disaffected Uzbeks.
It is estimated in 2000 that the IMU was approximately 2000 strong, and in the spring they contributed around 600 fighters to the Taliban's offensive against Massoud, participating in the successful siege of Taloqan, where they fought alongside Bin Laden's 055 Brigade. The IMU also provided the Taliban with a useful degree of deniability, under pressure from China to expel Uighur militants the Taliban simply sent them north to the IMU's camps.
By the summer of 2000 Western and CIS intelligence sources claim the IMU were equipped with more advanced weaponry such as sniper rifles and night-vision goggles, and had been supplied with a pair of heavy transport helicopters by Bin Laden. Namangani led IMU fighters back to the Tavildara Valley in Tajikistan, and from there launched multipronged attacks into Batken in Kyrgyzstan, and also into northern Uzbekistan, close to Tashkent.
In August 2000 the IMU also kidnapped four U.S. mountain-climbers (Tommy Caldwell, Beth Rodden, Jason "Singer" Smith, and John Dickey) in the Kara-Su Valley of Kyrgyzstan, holding them hostage until they escaped on 12 August. In response, the United States classified the IMU as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Once again the raids were followed by a strategic retreat to Tavildara, and once again international pressure on the Tajik government saw Namangani agree to him and his men being flown by the Russians back to Afghanistan, where they arrived in January 2001.
By 2001 the connections between the IMU and the Taliban had become more overt, with media reports of Namangani had been appointed Deputy Defence Minister in the Taliban government, which the Taliban did not deny. In the spring the IMU again supplied the Taliban with 600 fighters for a renewed campaign against Massoud, while in Batken in Kyrgyzstan a number of sleepers armed the previous year executed a series of attacks.
Uzbek government maintained contacts with Afghan Talibans during the final months of Taliban rule over Afghanistan. The contacts were aimed at convincing Talibans to hand over militants belonging to Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Overthrow of Taliban rule Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, the IMU was largely destroyed while fighting alongside the Taliban, with Namangani being killed in November 2001 by a U.S. airstrike in northern Afghanistan. In March 2002, Yuldashev and many IMU members are believed to have fought against Coalition forces during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan's Shahi Kot Valley, suffering heavy casualties before retreating to the Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
Members of the IMU began settling down in the region, with some starting families and becoming involved in local business. The group developed close ties with members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda who had also taken refuge in the region, often serving as bodyguards for senior commanders. Tensions grew with some locals however, with the Uzbeks accused by local Taliban leader Maulvi Nazir of disrespecting local customs, killing tribesmen, and involving themselves in local feuds. In early 2007, fighting broke out between Nazir's fighters and the Uzbeks, which resulted in hundreds of casualties on both sides and the expulsion of the IMU from much of South Waziristan.
Many of the retreating IMU members were sheltered by the local militant commander Baitullah Mehsud, and when Mehsud turned against the Pakistani state and formed the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2007, the IMU cooperated closely with him. The alliance between the two groups continued after Hakimullah Mehsud succeeded Baitullah as TTP leader in 2009, the IMU and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan carried out joint attacks on the Pakistani State and eventually formed a combined unit called Ansar al-Aseer, with the goal of freeing militant Islamist prisoners held in Pakistani prisons. Close ties were also formed with the militant Haqqani Network following the August 2009 killing of Yuldashev in a US drone strike, as the IMU's new leadership relocated the group to the Haqqani strongholds of Mir Ali and Miranshah in North Waziristan.
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