Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

Terrorism in Uzbekistan is more prevalent than in any other Central Asian state. Prior to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) posed the greatest threat to the Karimov administration. In 2002 the IMU was reclassified as terrorist by the United States. Since the invasion the IMU has been greatly weakened due to US military actions which cut off its supply of resources and killed its leader, Juma Namangani.

The largest terrorist attacks were the 1999 Tashkent bombings, the IMU invasions of 2000-2001, and the Tashkent attacks of March and July 2004.The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU, Uzbek: Ўзбекистон Исломий Ҳаракати/Oʻzbekiston Islomiy harakati) is a militant Islamist group formed in 1998 by the 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 to create an Islamic state under Sharia; however, in subsequent years, it reinvented itself as an ally of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.It also became a strong supporter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Operating out of bases in Tajikistan and Taliban-controlled areas of northern Afghanistan, the IMU launched a series of raids into southern Kyrgyzstan in 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. Since then, the IMU has focused on fighting Pakistani forces in the Tribal Areas, and NATO and Afghan forces in northern Afghanistan.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 war in Afghanistan (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.