BACKGROUND: Despite Uzbek efforts to convince their American interlocutors otherwise, Central Asian terrorists are seeking to undermine President Islam Karimov not because he is a U.S. ally, but because he opposes their efforts to establish a Taliban-like regime in the region’s most important country. In an August 1999 communiqué, IMU leaders clearly promulgated their objective of overthrowing Karimov’s authoritarian regime and establishing an Islamic republic. They believe that Uzbekistan’s transformation along fundamentalist lines would resonate among neighboring states in the traditional pattern of falling dominoes. The IMU has had extensive connections with al-Qaeda and the Taliban since its founding in 1998 in Taliban-controlled Kabul. The IMU fought alongside Taliban forces and their al-Qaeda allies during the Afghan civil war and the subsequent American-led occupation. Its military leader Juma Namangani died in Afghanistan in November 2001, but many IMU members, including Yuldeshev, fled to neighboring countries to regroup. On February 16, 1999, IMU operatives detonated six car bombs in Tashkent in a failed effort to assassinate Karimov. The explosions killed 13 and wounded 128 people. The following year, IMU guerrillas based in neighboring countries invaded southern Uzbekistan and penetrated as close as 60 miles to Tashkent before being driven back. In April 2003, construction workers found a probable improvised explosive device in a Tashkent hotel. The explosives were reportedly similar to those used in the 1999 car bombings. In general, Uzbek authorities have been sufficiently strong to suppress most IMU activities (as well as other forms of dissent) within their frontiers, so IMU leaders have tended to reside and operate elsewhere. The IMU’s membership roster includes a large number on non-Uzbeks, and the organization has been militarily active in much of Central Asia. American officials have become increasingly concerned about the IMU’s activities. In September 2000, the State Department designated the IMU a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and in 2001, President Bush explicitly linked the IMU to al-Qaeda, identifying both groups as terrorist threats to the US. The State Department issued a warning in April 2003 (renewed in October) that the IMU might be planning attacks against U.S. citizens in Uzbekistan. Although the United States has not offered explicit security guarantees to Tashkent, the U.S.-Uzbek joint strategic declaration of March 2002 states that Washington \"would regard with grave concern any external threat to the security and territorial integrity of the Republic of Uzbekistan.\" Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has visited the country three times in the past two years. Approximately 1,000 U.S. Air Force and Special Forces personnel have been deployed since late 2001 at the former Soviet Khanabad airbase in southwest Uzbekistan. Soon after the troops’ arrival, rumors of an impending terrorist attack against them began to spread.

IMPLICATIONS: The explosions and fighting in Uzbekistan that began on March 29 represent the largest IMU-led operations since the 1999 Tashkent bombings. At least 47 people died and a larger number were injured in a five-day spree of unprecedented urban violence. (Over half of those killed were IMU militants. Unlike in 1999, they apparently took care on this occasion to avoid hurting civilians, focusing their attacks on the police.) Although the explosive devices involved resemble those employed in 1999, IMU militants, some of whom were women, for the first time operated as suicide bombers on at least four occasions. The use of suicide bombers of either sex is a new practice for the IMU, which previously had favored planted bombs and small-scale insurgency operations, and had not been employed by any other armed group in Central Asia. But this technique has been increasingly adopted by terrorist groups in the Middle East and Chechnya, whose actions may have inspired their Uzbek colleagues. In addition, the IMU appears to have gained new recruits among dissatisfied young people to replace those lost in Afghanistan or imprisoned in Uzbekistan. Pakistani authorities claim to have wounded IMU leader Tahir Yuldashev during last month’s military operations in Waziristan in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Press accounts also indicate that Pakistani forces encountered many fighters of Uzbek nationality during the campaign. Although some have speculated that the IMU operations in Uzbekistan were somehow related to this incident, the attacks appear to have been planned months in advance of the Pakistani crackdown. Indeed, the fighting only started after what appears an accidental explosion at a bomb-making factory in Bukhara, which apparently exposed the entire operation prematurely. The attacks suggest that like al Qaeda, the IMU may have decentralized much command and control to local autonomous cells. Its militants now seem to have both the capacity and the will to launch operations largely on their own initiative. The Uzbek government’s anti-terrorism efforts remain sufficiently robust to counter the new IMU offensive. Although seemingly caught off guard during the initial onslaught, the Uzbekistan National Security Service rebounded rapidly and soon suppressed the latest attacks. In effect, the outcome is repeating the pattern seen in 1999. On that occasion, IMU operatives were able to plan, coordinate, and launch a series of deadly strikes, but the offensive quickly petered out after the security forces responded vigorously. The main risk now is that the Uzbek government will react too forcefully and repress even further all its perceived opponents, thereby alienating members of the nonviolent opposition and supportive foreign governments such as the United States. American policy-makers already are finding it difficult to sustain Congressional support for State Department aid programs to the Karimov government because of its human rights abuses—particularly its failure to establish multiparty elections, press freedoms, a torture-free prison system, or an independent judiciary. The initial efforts of Uzbek officials to blame the recent terrorist incidents on members of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami (“The Party of Islamic Liberation”), an influential but nonviolent opposition group that the American government and other outside observers have explicitly declined to identify as a terrorist organization, does not bode well in this regard.

CONCLUSIONS: The recent bombing campaign in Uzbekistan shows that the IMU is alive but not well. Despite years of vigorous government repression and widespread international support for cracking down on Central Asian terrorism, IMU operatives were able to launch a surprisingly extensive terrorist campaign in the heart of downtown Tashkent. On the other hand, Uzbek security authorities were able to repress the campaign in only a few days. This outcome, which repeats the pattern seen after the 1999 bombings, suggests that the IMU likely will remain a disruptive but manageable force in Central Asia for some time to come.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Richard Weitz, Ph.D., Senior Staff Member, The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1725 DeSales Street, Suite 402, Washington, DC 20036.