Pakistan: Who are the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) ?

Operating from Pakistani territory since more than a decade, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) has fought shoulder to shoulder with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

But they began as a semi-criminal group, under the name Adolat, led by Juma Namangani, a soldier of the USSR army, and a firebrand cleric named Tahir Yuldashev. Both men sought to use religion to justify their organisation’s existence but sustained themselves through extorting businessmen and traders in Uzbekistan.

As Uzbekistan gained independence from the former Soviet Union on September 1, 1991, both Namangani and Yuldashev believed in a different direction of nationhood and statecraft than held by the country’s first president, Islam Karimov. They wanted their hardline views imposed on the country while Karimov, a dictator in the Soviet mold, saw the need for a more secular nation.

Namangani and Yuldashev thus attacked Karimov and his regime, prompting a ruthless retaliation from the government against their organisation. In 1992, the IMU was banned, its cadres decimated, and Namangani and Yuldashev both, fled to Afghanistan.

Of course groups such as what later became the IMU had been encouraged as strategic assets during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was still intact. As argued by Brigadier (retd) Mohammad Yousaf, author of The Bear Trap, the Quran as well as jihadist propaganda was translated into Uzbek in 1984 and smuggled into Central Asia as an ideological counterweight to Communism. After the disintegration of the USSR, Islamic extremism in Central Asia began to take root and burgeon — till Karimov chucked the IMU out of Uzbekistan.

But Yuldashev and his warriors weren’t going to remain restricted to Afghanistan; soon, IMU warriors would cross into Pakistan, and find ideological allies in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

In Pakistan, the Uzbeks were recognised as fierce fighters and fiercely loyal – they were part of the inner circle of al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, also serving as their personal bodyguards. Their ideological bent was rabidly Anti-Shia – something that worked for them as they went about making alliances with other like-minded Islamist groups.

Political developments and a ceasefire agreement in Central Asia meant that the Uzbeks lost their allies, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) led by Said Abdullah Nuri. The IRPT would later support Ahmad Shah Masood’s forces in Afghanistan. This sparked the formation of the IMU in 1998, as a force that was insistent on imposing its brand of Islam in Uzbekistan.

In 1999, the IMU became allies of the Taliban, but suffered the loss of Namangani in November 2001. The United States had attacked Afghanistan in the wake of the 9-11 attacks on America; one of the attacks killed Namangani but Yuldashev managed to join the warring resistance.

Yuldashev became sole commander of the IMU in late 2001/early 2002, as the organisation moved to and settled in South Waziristan. In a state of being permanently homeless and permanently at war since 1992, the IMU appeared to have weakened.

But South Waziristan afforded an opportunity for the IMU to regroup, reorganise, and even build a semblance of a life for themselves. Local tribes took in members of the IMU as guests; some even offered their daughters’ hand in marriage to the Uzbek warriors.

The IMU’s alignment with the Taliban meant that the Uzbek warriors periodically clashed with Pakistani armed forces. These clashes, in turn, sparked a reaction from the tribes hosting the Uzbeks, who bore the brunt of counterattacks from Pakistani forces.

In 2007, the IMU was evicted from South Waziristan by Taliban warlord Maulvi Nazir, in part because he believed that Uzbek fighters offended local customs and acted like an “occupation force” in Pashtun land.

As they moved to other territories, they soon found patronage from Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. “When the IMU joined Baitullah Mehsud’s faction of the Taliban, it had to accept Mehsud’s priorities, foremost of which was fighting the Pakistani state,” writes Jacob Zenn, in his paper The Indigenization of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

The Uzbeks would also find legitimacy from faith-based parties in Pakistan. Under the guise of protecting the “ummah,” Sunni Takfiri groups welcomed the Uzbeks, providing them with relief and funds.