A Mosaic of IMU Leaders, Killed or Captured in Afghanistan

A Mosaic of IMU Leaders, Killed or Captured in Afghanistan

The Afghan newspaper Arman-e-Malli carried one of the first reports about members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) operating in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province in August, 2009. In January 2010, Kunduz governor Mohammad Omar, who was assassinated seven months later in a bombing at a mosque in Takhar province, confirmed these reports when he said that the Taliban and al-Qaeda were setting up bases in Kunduz and other north-eastern provinces to prepare for attacks in Central Asia. NATO confirmed both these reports in April, 2010 when it announced that its forces had captured an unnamed IMU leader and two other IMU fighters in Kunduz. 

It has become increasingly clear in 2012 that the IMU is entrenched in northern Afghanistan. There have been more than 25 operations by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan army to capture IMU leaders in the country’s northern provinces in the first nine months of 2012. This article profiles ten IMU leaders who have been captured or killed in northern Afghanistan since 2011.  

IMU leaders 

1. Qari Yahya was the IMU leader responsible for carrying out improvised explosive device (IED) attacks in Kunduz province, which were the cause of nearly half of ISAF soldier deaths in the first of half of 2012 throughout Afghanistan. In addition, Qari Yahya maintained communications and logistics ties between senior IMU leaders and Taliban leaders in Qal-al-ye Zal district, Kunduz. He was killed in a joint military operation carried out by Afghan and ISAF forces in Kunduz on September 19, 2012 (Khaama Press [Kabul], September 20). 

2. Nurullah Bai was an IMU leader who, like Qari Yahya, specialized in IED attacks on Afghan officials. He also ran the drug trafficking networks between Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakshan province and Tajikistan. He was killed by ISAF forces in a raid on January 25, 2011 in Takhar province (ISAF News [Kabul], January 27, 2011). 

3. Bilal Konduzi was the senior IMU leader and liaison between the IMU and the Taliban in Kunduz. He was killed in an ISAF air strike in Samangan province on March 11, 2011 along with Shad Mohammad, the IMU leader for Samangan (ISAF News, March 11, 2011). 

4. Shad Mohammad was the IMU leader for Samangan. He was killed in an ISAF air strike in Samangan on March 11, 2011 along with Bilal Konduzi. 

5. Makdum Nusrat was the highest-ranking IMU leader in Afghanistan and was responsible for attacks on Afghan and ISAF forces in northern Afghanistan beginning in mid-2011. Before his death, he was plotting the assassination of an Afghan Parliament member in Kabul. He was killed in a battle with ISAF and Afghan army in the Shirin Tagab district of Faryab province on March 26, 2012. (ISAF News [Kabul], March 27). 

6. Osmani Sahib was appointed leader of the IMU after the death of Makdum Nusrat on March 26, 2012, but was killed by ISAF and Afghan forces only two weeks later on April 7 in a battle in Almar district, Faryab province, together with a number of other IMU fighters.  

7. Ammar Sahib was responsible for providing weapons, ammunition, and equipment to IMU fighters in northern Afghanistan and for recruiting suicide bombers from IMU networks in Pakistan for attacks against Afghan officials. He was believed to have orchestrated the 2006 bombing of a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Faryab province that killed two civilians and two members of the PRT and an April 4, 2012 suicide bombing in Maimanah, Faryab province that killed three NATO soldiers from the Ohio National Guard. He was killed a week later on April 12 in a joint ISAF and Afghan army raid in Faryab province. He had worked closely with Makdum Nusrat and Osmani Sahib (ISAF News [Kabul], April 12). 

8. Ilhom was an IMu leader in Taloqan district, Takhar province, who was responsible for training suicide bombers, including the suicide bomber who carried out a December 25, 2011 attack that killed an Afghan member of parliament, Abdul Mutalib Baig, and 20 other Afghans at a funeral in Taloqan. Ilhom was captured on January 29, 2012, after his fighters attacked Afghan and ISAF forces with fragmentation grenades in Taloqan (ISAF News [Kabul], February 3)

9. Mullah Anwar was the senior IMU military leader in Burkah district, Baghlan province, and was responsible for the assassination of the Ishkamish district mayor on August 13, 2012 (Central Asia Online [Takhar], August 17). On the same day, he also orchestrated an IED attack claimed by the Taliban that killed a representative of the Afghan High Peace Council, which is responsible for negotiations with the Taliban (Pajhowk Afghan news, [Kunduz], August 13). He was killed in air strike in Takhar on August 16, 2012. 

10. Qari Hamza (Khadim) was an explosives expert responsible for recruiting and training IMU fighters for suicide attacks on Afghan and Coalition forces in northern Afghanistan. He was killed by special operations forces in the Chahar Darah district of Kunduz on July 23, 2012 (ISAF News [Kabul], July 24). 

There have also been several unnamed IMU leaders who have been killed or captured in northern Afghanistan, southern Afghanistan and southern Tajikistan, but whose areas of responsibility included operations in northern Afghanistan. 

• An IMU commander was captured in Helmand, southern Afghanistan on February 3, 2012. He had been appointed by the Taliban to direct operations, including weapons distribution and tax collection, in Badghis and Faryab provinces in northern Afghanistan (ISAF News [Kabul], February 3). 
• On March 21, 2012, Afghan and ISAF forces captured an IMU leader in Sholgarah district, Balkh province, who was responsible for running IMU training camps and facilitating the movement of IMU fighters to Samangan from training camps in Pakistan (ISAF News [Kabul], March 21). 
• On May 11, 2012, a suspected regional IMU leader Zilmurod Eshonkhonov and two other fighters were arrested in southern Khatlon Province, Tajikistan, which borders Kunduz (RFE/RL [Dushanbe], May 11, 2012). 

The IMU leaders in northern Afghanistan are working in coordination with the Taliban and, in many cases, on the orders of the Taliban. The operations of IMU leaders in northern Afghanistan show that the IMU is furthering the Taliban’s goals in the region, in particular by assassinating Afghan government officials and attacking ISAF and Afghan forces. The Taliban is dominated by Pashtun militants and its bases and main areas of support are in southern Afghanistan, which has a majority Pashtun population. Thus, the IMU’s Tajik, Uzbek and other Central Asian fighters may help the Taliban project power in the ethnically Tajik and Uzbek areas of northern Afghanistan where Pashtun fighters face greater resistance from the local population than they do in southern Afghanistan. [1] 

The IMU’s main leadership is still based in Pakistan, including the IMU’s mufti (Islamic scholar) Abu Zar al-Burmi and Usman Ghazi, the current IMU leader who replaced Usman Odil in August 2012 (for al-Burmi, see Militant Leadership Monitor, November 2011; for Odil, see Militant Leadership Monitor Briefs, August 2012). These leaders do not appear to have responsibilities in Central Asia, despite the IMU’s founding goal to overthrow the regimes of Central Asia, with Islam Karimov’s regime in Uzbekistan as the priority, before establishing a Central Asian Islamic Caliphate. The group has mounted large-scale operations in Pakistan, such as the Bannu prison break in May, 2012 that freed Adnan Rashid, a former member of the Pakistan air force who was on death row for allegedly plotting to assassinate then-President Pervez Musharraf in 2004. With the shift of leaders to northern Afghanistan, especially those with recruiting and funding networks in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan, a number of IMU cells are returning to northern Afghanistan where they were based before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the months following September 2011. 

Given the IMU’s “indigenization” in Afghanistan, it is unclear whether it will refocus on attacks Central Asia in the near future, or whether the IMU still has the operational connections in Central Asia to launch an insurgency northwards. However, the emergence of an IMU faction in Tajikistan, Jama’at Ansarullah, as well as the emergence of other Central Asian militant groups that share the same objectives as the IMU, such as Kazakhstan’s Jund al-Khilafah, may allow the IMU to remain in northern Afghanistan after 2014 (Asia-Plus [Dushanbe], August 31). An IMU presence in northern Afghanistan would support the Taliban in efforts to retake control of the region following the U.S. withdrawal, while allied militant groups could focus on Central Asia, possibly using IMU bases in northern Afghanistan as a “launching pad.” Most likely, the border between northern Afghanistan and Central Asia will become more fluid following the U.S. withdrawal, with IMU leaders in northern Afghanistan leading operations both in Afghanistan and in Central Asia.

Note

1. A list of IMU martyrs who fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan was posted on furqon.com by the IMU in 2011. It showed that the majority of martyred fighters were Afghans (64), though there were also a number of Tajiks (10), Kyrgyz (6), Uzbeks (4), Tatars (1), Germans (1), and Pakistanis (1). Available at: https://furqon.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=195:-1432-2011-&catid=1:2011-08-26-10-42-51.