Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

Formed in December 1991, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is an insurgency based on Salafist religious doctrines, allied with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Like the Taliban, it wants to enforce sharia "not as a way of creating just society but simply as a means to regulate personal behavior and dress code for Muslims - a concept that distorts centuries of tradition, culture, history, and even the religion of Islam itself." Its existence is one of the reasons that the government of Uzbekistan has cooperated with the U.S. in the Afghanistan War (2001-).

It started as an activist spinoff, called Adolat (or Justice), of the Uzbekistan branch of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), which participated in politics but was not fully committed to turning the nation into an Islamic state. The triggering incident was the seizure of the Communist Party offices in the eastern city of Namangan, after the mayor refused to give a group of unemployed young Muslims land to build a mosque. Their leaders were Tohir Abdouhalilovitch Yuldeshev, and Jumaboi Ahmadzhanovitch Khojaev. Yuldeshev, a mullah in the Islamic underground movement, while Khojaev was a former Soviet paratrooper who had served in Afghanistan with the mudjaheddin, who had revitalized his religious fervor.

Uzbekistan president Karimov banned Adolat in March 1992, arresting some of its members, with the leadership escaping to Tajikistan, enlisting with its IRP there. When civil war started in Takikistan, Yuldeshev traveled through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, building contacts with both Islamist movements and intelligence services.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence gave such support; he lived in Peshawar from 1995 to 1998. There were reports he also received support frokm intelligence services and Islamic charities in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey. Yuldeshev met with leaders in the first Chechen war of 1994-96. He set up cells of of the Adolat party throughout Central Asia which would be activated in the subsequent IMU campaigns.