Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU; Uzbek: Ўзбекистон исломий ҳаракати, Oʻzbekiston islomiy harakati; Russian: Исламское движение Узбекистана) was a militant Islamist group formed in 1998[4][18] 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 1990s.[7] However, later on, relations between the Afghan Taliban and the IMU started declining.[4]
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)
Tohir Yoʻldosh †
Juma Namangani †
Abu Usman Adil[2] †
Usman Ghazi[3] †
Islamic Jihad Union
Faction which continued the IMU name and activities
Enforcement of Sharia in Uzbekistan and eventually a Central Asian Caliphate[6]
Current:
Islamism
Pan-Islamism
Salafi Jihadism
Anti-Zionism
Historical:
Anti-Islam Karimov
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant[13] (since 2015)
Jundallah
Pakistani Taliban
Turkistan Islamic Party[14]
Caucasus Emirate[15]
Al-Qaeda (until 2015)[4]
Taliban (until 2015)[7][4]
Islamic Movement of Turkestan (The government of Tajikistan claims to be an alias)
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 Pakistan Forces in the Tribal Areas, and NATO and Afghan forces in northern Afghanistan.[19][20]
In mid-2015, its leadership publicly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and announced that the IMU was part of the group's regional branch.[13][21] In 2016, it was reported that a new faction of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan emerged after the group became part of ISIL. The new faction retained the group's name and was independent of ISIL. It has also indicated that it is loyal to al-Qaeda and the Taliban and shared their views against ISIL.[22]
Organization and leadership[edit]
Membership[edit]
While IMU was originally an ethnic Uzbek movement, its recruitment base expanded to include Central Asians (Afghans, Tajiks, Uyghurs and Turkmens) and as well as Arabs, Chechens and Westerners.[49]
Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan received Uyghur recruits from the diaspora in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.[50] The movement's goal is the takeover of Xinjiang and Central Asia.[51] Uyghurs, Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs and other ethnic groups flocked to serve under IMU leader Juma Namangani, who died in November 2001.[52]
A number of the IMU's senior leaders and ideologues have been non-Uzbeks, including its Kyrgyz former military commander, Abbas Mansur, and its Mufti (religious authority), Abu Zar al-Burmi, a Pakistani national of Burmese Rohingya descent.[53][54] In 2011, of the 87 "martyrs" that the IMU listed on its website, only four were Uzbeks from Uzbekistan, while 64 were from Afghanistan, 10 from Tajikistan, six from Kyrgyzstan, and one each from Tatarstan, Germany and Pakistan.[53]
One of the mouthpieces of IMU was Abu Dher al Barmi.[55] He was IMU's mufti, joining and then leaving ISIL in a video called (Muftiy Abu Zar Azzom Davla jamoatidan bezor buldi) (المفتي ابو ذر عزام يتبرأ من تأييد تنظيم الدولة).[56]
Afghan troops liquidated Ammar Sahib.[57] Usman Ghazi, Abu Usman Adil, Tahir Yuldashev, and Juma Namangani were among the commanders of the IMU.[58]
Leadership[edit]
On 30 September 2009, a man claiming to be a bodyguard of Tahir Yuldashev reported that Yuldashev had been killed in a US missile airstrike that occurred shortly after the death of Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.[59]
[60] The next day, Pakistan and US officials confirmed this report.[61] Almost a year later, the IMU website confirmed that Yuldashev had been killed on 27 August 2009 by a US Predator drone strike in South Waziristan, and described him as a Shaheed, or martyr.[62]
On 17 August 2010, the IMU announced that Yuldashev's long-serving deputy, Abu Usman Adil, had been appointed the group's new leader. In his first statement, Adil called on his followers to wage jihad in the southern portion of Kyrgyzstan, in the wake of ethnic violence against the Uzbek minority.[2][62][8] Adil was killed in an April 2012 US drone strike in Pakistan. In August 2012 the group announced that Adil's deputy, Usman Ghazi, was their new leader.[3]
Media[edit]
The IMU's media arm is known as Jundallah Studio. It produces high-quality videos, publishes audio and written statements, and has released newsletters in Uzbek, Russian, Persian, Arabic, German, Burmese, Urdu and Pashto.[33][54] The group also ran an Uzbek-language website called Furqon,[62] which is no longer accessible.
Analysis[edit]
In September 2002, an aide to Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, the Foreign Minister of the Taliban, claimed he had been sent prior to 9/11 to warn the U.S. government of an impending attack and to persuade them to take military action against Al Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan. The aide claimed advance knowledge of the attack came from Yuldashev, which if true would indicate a high degree of cooperation between Al-Qaeda and the IMU.[74]
In his book Terror and Consent, Philip Bobbitt noted that Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a scientist of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, had met Osama bin Laden in Kabul in August 2001. Mahmood is said to have disclosed that bin Laden "insisted that he already had sufficient fissile material to build a [nuclear] bomb, having obtained it from former Soviet stockpiles through the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan."[75]
In 2003, A. Elizabeth Jones, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, testified on the threat of terrorism in Central Asia before the U.S. House of Representatives' subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, arguing that the greatest threats were the IMU, and Hizb ut-Tahrir. Jones said that despite the death of Namangani, the "IMU is still active in the region -- particularly in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan -- and it represents a serious threat to the region and therefore to our interests."[76]
Mahmadsaid Juraqulov, head of the anti-organized crime department in the Interior Ministry of Tajikistan, told reporters in Dushanbe on 16 October 2006 that the "Islamic Movement of Turkestan is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan," and that Uzbek secret services manufactured the change in name. Juraqulov also said that the IMT was not a major security threat to Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan. "Everyone knows that it is in Uzbekistan that [the IMU] wants to create problems. For them, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are just regrouping bases they're trying to reach."[66]
Some analysts have asserted that rather than the image of a unified IMU under Namangani and Yuldeshev, it has always been an organization consisting of two poles: the radical, spiritual (Yuldeshev) and militant, criminal (Namangani).