The Azam Warsak area of South Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan has been the scene of violent attacks by sections of the local tribals on the Uzbeks living in the area following the alleged murder of a local tribal personality by an Uzbek resident of the area. The attacks started on March19, 2007. The Uzbeks retaliated and in the ensuing clashes nearly 100 persons have beenkilled—about 70 Uzbeks and the remaining locals mainly belonging to the Darikhel and the Tojikhel sub-tribes. The Yargulkhel sub-tribe led by Noor Islam and his brother Haji Omar, two important pro-Taliban military commanders who had once fought in Afghanistan, have been supporting the Uzbeks in their fight against the Darikhels and the Tojkhels. Some Yargulkhels have also been killed.The Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao has claimed that 84 Uzbek militants and 30 local tribesmen, including nine civilians, have been killed so far and another 83 Uzbeks captured, but there is no confirmation of his figures.
This is the second time the Uzbeks, supported by the Yargulkhels, have recently clashed with the Darikhels and the Tojhkhels. In the previous clash on March6, 2007, 19 persons were killed—Uzbeks as well as Darikhels. Among the Darikhels killed were the son and two brothers of Malik Saidullah Khan, a respected elder of the Darikhel tribe. Since then, the Darikhel tribe, supported by the Tojhkhels, has been looking for an opportunity to avenge the death of the son and two brothers of Saidullah Khan.
The intervention of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of Jallaluddin Haqqani, a senior military commander of the Neo Taliban, Mulla Dadullah Akhund, another senior commander of the Neo Taliban, and Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the local Taliban in the South Waziristan area, has not succeeded in bringing about a ceasefire. The fighting between the Uzbeks and the local tribal groups suits the Pakistan Army, which has been facing pressure from the US,China and Iran to act against the Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs active in this area. It has, therefore, not intervened to stop the killing, despite the fact that many pro-Government tribals have also been killed. Lt.Gen.(Retd) Hamid Gul, Lt.Gen.(retd) Javed Nasir and Lt.Gen. (retd) Mahmood Ahmed, all the three former Directors-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence, have been unsuccessfully trying to stop the fighting. Despite their intervention, sporadic clashes are continuing.
A large number of Uzbeks—from Afghanistan as well as Uzbekistan— have settled down in the South Waziristan area for many years. Many of them have married local women. The Afghan Uzbeks are largely former supporters of Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek leader of Afghanistan. They used to serve in the Afghan Army of Najibullah in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan. When Dostum, instigated by the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),deserted Najibullah in 1991 and joined hands with the the CIA-trained Mujahideen, these Uzbek soldiers deserted from Najibullah's army and settled down in the South Waziristan area.
This area also has many Uzbeks from Uzbekistan belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which is a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front(IIF). As reported by me in my paper of August2, 2004, in December 1991, some unemployed Muslim youth seized the Communist Party headquarters in the eastern Uzbek city of Namangan, to protest against the refusal of the local Mayor to permit the construction of a mosque. The protest was organised by Tohir Abdouhalilovitch Yuldeshev, a 24-year-old college drop-out, who had become aMullah, and Jumaboi Ahmadzhanovitch Khojaev, a former Soviet paratrooper who had served in Afghanistan and returned from there totally converted toWahabism.
Yuldeshev and Khojaev, who later adopted the alias Juma Namangani, after his hometown, became members of the Uzbekistan branch of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP). Following the IRP's reported refusal to support their demand for the establishment of an Islamic State in Uzbekistan, they formed their own party called the Adolat (Justice) Party, which was banned by President Islam Karimov. They then fled to Tajikistan. While Namangani fought in the local civil war, Yuldeshev went to Chechnya to participate in the jihad there. In1995, he went to Pakistan, where the jihadi organisations gave him shelter in Peshawar. From there, he re-named the Adolat Party as the IMU and was allegedly in receipt of funds from the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. After Osama bin Laden shifted to Jalalabad from Khartoum in Sudan in 1996,he crossed over into Afghanistan.
After the end of the civil war in Tajikistan, Namangani settled down for a while as a road transportoperator. He was also allegedly involved in heroin smuggling from Afghanistan. Subsequently, he too crossed over into Afghanistan and joined the IMU and became its leader. The IMU allegedly earns a major part of its revenue from heroin smuggling.
After the Taliban captured Kabul in September,1996, Namangani and Yuldeshev held a press conference at Kabul at which they announced the formation of the IMU with Namangani as the Amir and Yuldeshev as its military commander. In 1998, the IMU joined the IIF. bin Laden was reportedly greatly interested in the IMU because he was hoping to use it for getting nuclear material and know-how from Russia and other constituent States of the erstwhile USSR.
The IMU's initial goal was described as the overthrow of Uzbek President Islam Karimov and the establishment of an Islamic State in Uzbekistan.It reportedly changed its name to the Islamic Party of Turkestan (IPT) in June 2001, and called for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and China's Xinxiang province. It has been recruiting members from all these areas, including Uighurs from Xinjiang. Initially, its recruits were trained by the Arab instructors of Al Qaeda in the training camps in Afghan territory and after 9/11 by Chechen and Pashtun instructors of the Taliban in the South Waziristan area of Pakistan. Despite its 2001 change of name as the IPT, it continues to be known in Uzbekistan as the IMU. The name IPT is not widely known.
After the reported death of Namangani in a US air strike in Afghanistan post-9/11, Yuldeshev took over the leadership of the IMU and crossed over with the surviving members of the IMU into South Waziristan where he and his Uzbek/Chechen instructors were reported to have set up a training camp for training jihadi terrorists. Among those reportedly trained in this camp were the members of the Jundullah (Army of Allah), a newly-formed Pakistani jihadiorganisation.
In an operation launched by the Pakistani security forces in South Waziristan in March-April, 2004, to smoke out the members of the Al Qaeda, Yuldeshev was reported to have been injured, but he managed to escape. There are no reliable reports of the number of Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs in South Waziristan. Some Pakistani journalists, who had visited the South Waziristan area in March-April,2004, had estimated the total number of foreigners, who had been given shelter there by the local tribals , as about 600, about 200 of them Uzbeks and the remaining Chechens, Uighurs, Arabs and others. Other reports place the number of Uighurs as about 100. The presence of Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs in the Taliban and in Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizbe Islami now operating in Afghanistan has also been reported. Their number is not known. Latest reports about the current fighting estimate the total number of Uzbeks in South Waziristan as between 1000 and 2000. This appears to be an over-estimate.
The Uighurs trained by the IMU were suspected of involvement in the explosion in Gwadar in Balochistan in the beginning of 2004 in which some Chinese engineers were killed and in the explosions on July 31,2004, at the same town in which no casualties were reported. Following an unsuccessful attempt to kill Lt-Gen Ahsan Saleem Hyat, who was then the Karachi Corps Commander, on June 10,2004, the Pakistani authorities arrested eight persons for their involvement in the attack. They claimed that they belonged to a new organisation called the Jundullah (the Army of God), which had been trained in the IMU training camp in SouthWaziristan. While the Pakistani Interior Minister described the eight arrested persons, including theirleader, Ata-ur-Rehman as of Central Asian origin, the Karachi Police described them as Pakistanis belonging to Karachi.
Interestingly, after the arrests in Karachi, the Pakistani authorities announced the end of the joint operations by the Army and the Air Force against the members of Al Qaeda and the IIF in the South Waziristan area with effect from June 14, 2004. According to official accounts, the operations, which started on June 8, had resulted in the death of 55 suspected terrorists and 19 members of the security forces. The Pakistani officials projected those killed and captured as of Central Asian origin. Other reports of the intense fighting in the area also spoke of the involvement of Uighurs from the Xinjiang province of China in the fighting against the Army..According to Police sources, about 50 to 100 Uighurs from the Xinjiang province trained by Uzbek and Chechen elements of the IIF have joined hands with the Uzbeks and Chechens in their fight against the Pakistan Army.
Two Chinese engineers working in a hydel project in the South Waziristan area were kidnapped in October,2004, allegedly by some Pakistani members of the Jundullah,three Uzbeks of the IMU and some tribal followers of Abdullah Mehsud, who was released by the US authorities from detention in their Guantanamo Bay detention camp in March,2004. The kidnappers demanded the release of some Jundullah members in custody. One of the Chinese engineers was killed during a rescue operation mounted by the Pakistan army. The other was rescued.
The involvement of the Jundullah was also suspected in a suicide car bomb explosion near the US Consulate in Karachi on March 2, 2006, in which a US diplomat was killed. This explosion took place on the eve of the visit of President George Bush to Pakistan.Maitur Rehman, a 29-year-old Pakistani, from Multan in Punjab, was then reported to be the Amir of the Jundullah. He had previously served in the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), an anti-Shia terrorist organisation, and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami(HUJI).
On February 15, 2007, the Karachi Police raided a house and arrested three suspected suicide bombers identified as Muhammad Shahid alias Kashif, Muhammad Farhan alias Nasir and Ghani Subhan alias Rashid. The police also seized three hand grenades, two pistols, one AK-47 assault rifle and a suicide jacket from them.The Police said that the three suspects belonged to a group headed by Al Qaeda leader Qari Zafar and they had been especially sent to Karachi from South Waziristan to carry out suicide attacks. According to the Police, Shahid and Farhan belonged to Hyderabad in Sindh while Ghani Subhan was from South Waziristan.The police subsequently arrested 10 others with suspected links to the IMU. They said that the arrested persons named Maulvi Abbas, Commander Javed and Qari Zafar as operators of their group and said that their headquarters were located in South Waziristan. All of them were trained in a training camp in South Waziristan where the instructors were Pakistanis, Uzbeks and East Africans.
The Daily Times of Lahore reported as follows on these arrests:
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"Investigations into the three alleged Al Qaeda suspects who were arrested in Karachi Friday have revealed that the influence of Uzbek extremists has grown on Al Qaeda inWana. 'An unspecified number of Uzbek mujahideen are still present in Wana. They are conceiving and planning most of the terroristactivities," a senior Crime Investigation Department (CID) police officer told Daily Times, requesting anonymity. "We have found that compared to Arab-origin extremists, the Uzbeks are more anti-state and hence moreanti-Pakistan." Shahid (alias Kashif alias Mohammad) joined the anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba in 1993. Following this, he went to Khost, Afghanistan, where he trained at the Khalid bin Waleed camp. He met the AlQaeda's Qari Zafar there. After fighting in Afghanistan, Shahid went to Indian-held Kashmir where he spent four months in 2003 at a camp of the Harkatul Mujahideen, one of the militant groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. From Kashmir he went to Wana (in South Waziristan) where he learnt how to make explosives. More than 15 terrorist cells are working in different cities across Pakistan and all of them are linked in some way or another to Qari Zafar inWana, the police believe."
There has recently been a number of terrorist incidents in the Iranian Baloch territory by an organisation, which also calls itself the Jundullah. Initially, the Iranian authorities had alleged that these attacks were part of the USA's destabilisation operations and that the perpetrators were trained by the US in Pakistani territory. Now, they seem to believe that they were actually trained by the IMU in its training camps in South Waziristan. Thus, there has been pressure on Pakistan to act against the Uzbeks. This pressure has come from Uzbekistan, China, Iran and the US. The Pakistani authorities themselves have been showing signs of concern, over the involvement of Uzbeks in terrorism in Pakistani territory outside FATA. The ISI and the Pakistan Army have been encouraging the anti-Uzbek tribals to keep up their attacks on the Uzbeks, without the Pakistan Army itself gettinginvolved.
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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
