Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The group renamed itself the Islamic Party of Turkestan in 2002.

The IMU is made up of militant Islamist extremists mostly from Uzbekistan, but it also includes other Central Asian nationalities and ethnic groups. Its area of operations includes Afghanistan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It also operates in the Ferghana Valley, where the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan converge.

Prior to June 2001, the group's goal was the overthrow of Uzbek President Islam Karimov and the establishment of an Islamic state in Uzbekistan. Since then, the IMU has expanded its goals into setting up an Islamic state throughout Central Asia.

IMU militants not many years ago numbered about 2,000, but the group's strength was greatly reduced by the fighting in Afghanistan in 2001 and thereafter to an estimated 200 members. Recent statements by Afghan and Pakistani officials have put the number of IMU-affiliated militants in the thousands.

The IMU may receive aid from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida network. U.S. intelligence believes Al-Qaida supplied most of the funding used to set up the IMU. The group was also connected to Afghanistan's former Taliban regime, and is believed to have set up training camps in Afghanistan in 1999.

The IMU may have also received funding from Saudi Arabia through that county's intelligence service and Islamic charities.

Prior to October 2001, IMU mainly targeted Uzbek interests. The group was believed responsible for five car bombings in Tashkent in 1999. The group also took foreigners hostage from 1999 to 2000. Those kidnapped included a group of American tourists, Japanese geologists and Kyrgyz soldiers.

IMU operations were seriously disrupted when some of its leaders and many of its members were killed in Afghanistan fighting alongside the Taliban against coalition forces in 2001 and 2002. The IMU has not been involved in significant military operations since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. With the help of outside training and financing, the group has switched primarily to terrorism. Law-enforcement and counterterrorism actions by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have disrupted IMU operations, led to arrests and prosecutions, and helped weaken the group.

The IMU is also said to be involved in drug-smuggling as a means of financing operations. The group reportedly handles more than half the heroin and opium moving through Central Asia, according to regional security services.

IMU is a coalition of militant Islamic groups from Uzbekistan and Central Asia. The original goal of the movement was to overthrow the secular Uzbek government and replace it with an Islamic state, an objective since expanded.

Tohir Yuldashev and Juma Namangani founded IMU in 1996. Yuldashev had long been involved in the Islamic militant underground. Namangani was a former Soviet paratrooper who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The pair joined the Uzbek branch of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) in the early 1990s. They set up their own splinter group called Adolat (Justice), which called for an Islamic revolution in Uzbekistan.

President Karimov outlawed Adolat in 1992 and arrested more than two dozen of its members. The group's leadership fled to neighboring Tajikistan and sought aid from the local IRP movement.

Yuldashev later moved to Afghanistan and began networking with other Islamic groups. He reportedly made contact with a number of intelligence agencies, including Pakistan's ISI.

While Yuldashev was in Afghanistan, Namangani fought in the Tajik civil war. He made a name for himself as a daring fighter and a charismatic leader.

Yuldashev and Namangani linked up again in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. In Kabul, they announced the creation of the Islamic Movement of Afghanistan in 1996. The Taliban regime gave Yuldashev a home in Kandahar, where Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden were also living at the time.

After 1999, IMU attacked targets in the Ferghana Valley as well as in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. The group also allied itself with the Taliban and fought coalition forces in Afghanistan.

President Karimov has cracked down on the IMU presence in Uzbekistan. Tohir Yuldashev and Juma Namangani were tried in absentia together with 10 other persons accused of terrorism. In November 2000, all defendants were found guilty of bombings that had been conducted in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in February 1999. The court sentenced Yuldashev and Namangani to death and the remaining defendants to prison terms.

Some reports in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan suggest that there has been a regrouping of remnants of the IMU. The introduction of U.S. bases and an increased international presence in Central Asia have offered a new range of potential targets for regional militant groups. On the other hand, several analysts have concluded that the IMU is in decline and poses less of a threat than in the past.

The group has faced a changing battleground. It found a haven for its operations in 2001 in Pakistan's North Waziristan region after the Taliban had been severely weakened by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. However, IMU militants began to attack Pakistani army and government officials in 2006, leading to a fallout with the Taliban. Disputes between IMU and the Taliban contingent forced the IMU to move to South Waziristan. There, the Uzbeks have come more closely affiliated with Al-Qaida.The IMU's increasingly aggressive nature has made it a primary target of U.S. and Pakistan security forces. In August 2009, IMU leader Tohir Yuldashev was killed in a U.S. drone strike.

1996
Tohir Yuldashev and Juma Namangani, then in Kabul, Afghanistan, announced the foundation of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

1997
The IMU moved its base of operations to Afghanistan because of an Uzbek government counter-terrorist offensive.

1999
Feb. 16: The IMU was blamed for a car bombing in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, that left 16 dead.

August: The IMU took hostage four Japanese geologists and eight Kyrgyz soldiers.

2000
Aug 12: The IMU kidnapped four American mountain climbers in the Kara-Su Valley of Kyrgyzstan. They escaped after being held hostage for six days.

2001
October: IMU fighters fought with Al-Qaida and Taliban militants against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

November: Namangani was reportedly killed in a coalition air strike in Afghanistan.

2002
The IMU renamed itself the Islamic Party of Turkestan.

2003
Aug. 21: First Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Kurmanbek Osmonov accused the opposition party Khizb-ut-tahrir of forming ties with the IMU.

2005
IMU members were blamed for two bombings in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe in January and June. One man was killed in the January blast.

2006
April 17: Four members of the IMU were arrested for the 2005 bombings in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Three were citizens of Tajikistan and one was a citizen of Uzbekistan. According to Tajik Interior Minister Khomiddin Sharipov, two other members of the group were on the wanted list.

Aug. 7: Kyrgyz special forces shot and killed three suspected members of the IMU during an operation in the city of Kara-Suu. One of those killed, Mohammed Rafik Kamalov, was a popular imam believed to be a leader of the movement.

Sept. 2: Special operations forces from the Kyrgyz national security service killed IMU leader Rasul Akhonov in an operation in Osh. Akhonov was considered one of the top five members of IMU.

2007
March: Fighting broke out between local groups in Pakistan's western tribal regions and Uzbek militants believed to belong to the IMU.

In mid-2007, seven well-armed IMU militants were arrested while planting a mine on a road used by NATO International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) patrols in northern Afghanistan. The group admitted to carrying out rocket attacks, suicide missions and recruitment activities.

2008
May: Two IMU members in possession of explosives and hand grenades were arrested in Afghanistan. The two admitted to planting mines on a road and providing a base for militant activities.

2009
April 10: Studio Jundullah (Army of God), the media propaganda arm of IMU, released a video criticizing the German government and Jews. The message was timed to coincide with the beginning of a trial in Dusseldorf, Germany, in which three Germans and one Turkish national were charged with planning attacks against U.S. targets in Germany. The four persons on trial were allegedly acting as members of an IMU splinter group, the Islamic Jihad Group.

July 22: Afghan security forces reported that a joint Afghan-German offensive had been initiated to combat the increasing presence of IMU militants in northern Afghanistan due to an increased anti-militant campaign in Pakistan's tribal areas. German forces had been deployed there for some time as part of ISAF.

Aug. 27: IMU leader Tohir Yuldashev was killed by a U.S. drone attack in South Waziristan in Pakistan.

Aug. 29: Security forces in Uzbekistan killed three men during a shootout in Tashkent. Government officials claimed that one of the men was an IMU leader involved in assassinations conducted in summer 2009 and a 1999 bombing in Tashkent. Several other militants were apprehended during the shootout, and later reportedly admitted that they had been trained abroad.

Sept. 12: In a report to the Pakistani Parliament, Habibullah Khan Khattak, an administrator from the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, said that "not less than 5,000" Uzbeks were using North and South Waziristan as safe havens.

Sept. 14: The Afghan National Security Directorate reported that it had detained two militants who admitted to being ordered to Kunduz province by the IMU.

Oct 11: U.S. security forces captured 15 militants in Kunduz. Government officials said the detainees were affiliated with the IMU. The Afghan Ministry of Defense estimated that there were at least 4,000 IMU-affiliated "foreign mercenaries" in northern Afghanistan.

Oct. 18: Tajik police killed four suspected IMU members in a shootout in Isfara, a town near the Kyrgyz and Uzbek borders. The militants were allegedly involved in the September assassination of the Tajik Interior Ministry's top criminal investigator in Isfara.

2010
Feb. 11: In Bannu, Pakistan, eight policemen and seven civilians were killed in a suicide attack. Government officials said the operation was conducted by IMU.