Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU, aka Islamic Party of Turkestan) is a coalition of fundamentalist Islamic militants from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries that oppose President Islom Karimov's secular government and work to establish an Islamic theocracy.

Founded in 1999, the IMU seeks to destabilize both the country of Uzbekistan and the surrounding region. Although it is not the only group to oppose the current government of Uzbekistan, it is the only group that has resorted to terrorism to achieve its goals. The change of name to the Islamic Party of Turkestan in June 2001 may have indicated an expansion of the original goal of establishing an Islamic state in Uzbekistan to the creation of Islamic states throughout Central Asia. The group has been active throughout Central Asia, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan. IMU, as well as its offshoot, Islamic Jihad Union, has cooperated with the radical Islamic organizations al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The IMU initially conducted only small-scale armed attacks—car bombings and hostage taking—and initially it operated only in the Ferghana Valley on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border. However, it soon [Page 309]became active in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and throughout Uzbekistan. IMU members have been known to carry out their attacks in the open, withdrawing to villages and disguising themselves as locals rather than retreating to the mountains following an attack. The group is considered responsible for at least five car bombings in Uzbekistan in February 1999 and a number of hostage takings in 1999 and 2000. Among those taken hostage were four U.S. mountain climbers, four Japanese geologists, and eight Kyrgyzstani soldiers.

In November 2000, Uzbek courts sentenced the IMU leaders Tahir Yuldashev and Juma Namangani to death in absentia for the February 1999 bombings. Both Yuldashev and Namangani fled the country in 1999 for Afghanistan, where they recruited and trained militants under shelter of the Taliban. Namangani was killed in Afghanistan in 2001, and Yuldashev was killed in a U.S. drone strike in southern Waziristan in August 2009.

In the wake of Yuldashev's death, Abu Usman Adil emerged from a power struggle within the IMU to take over as its leader. Since then, IMU forces have concentrated on fighting U.S. forces and their allies in Afghanistan, working in concert with al Qaeda and the Taliban. Security officials believe that the IMU continues to control the drug trade between Afghanistan and Central Asia, using the profits to finance its operations. The group also receives support from other fundamentalist Islamist groups throughout Central and South Asia.

In the spring of 2004, an offshoot of the IMU, Islamic Jihad Union (originally Islamic Jihad Group), conducted a series of suicide bombings in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, that killed more than 45 people. Three years later, German authorities arrested three members of Islamic Jihad Union on charges of plotting a massive bomb campaign against U.S. interests in Germany; a fourth would-be bomber was later arrested in Turkey. All four confessed their role in the plot in 2009.