South Waziristan Special:
Leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), was killed on August 27, 2009 in South Waziristan, where he had been based for some years. Yaldashev first emerged in the late 1980s as the founder of the Adolat, or Justice, movement, a gang of young Muslim vigilantes meting out mediaeval punishments in Ferghana Valley, a breathtakingly beautiful region in Central Asia spreading across eastern Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, when the Soviet Union was on its last legs. Fighting on the Taliban’s side in Afghanistan’s civil war, the IMU boasted several thousand fighters. But its base near the town of Mazar-e-Sharif was bombed by US warplanes in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Yaldashev’s next bolthole was Waziristan, where he and his gang won over many conservative Pashtun tribesmen. Many Uzbeks settled down in Waziristan, learning the Pashto language, marrying and having children there. Yaldashev shot to prominence in March 2004, when Pakistani forces surrounded his base in South Waziristan, but he escaped while his fighters mounted a fierce defence.
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| Wednesday, February 10, 2010
