The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was set up in 1996, with the aim being to build an Islamic state in the Fergana Valley. It is on the U.S. State Department's list of international terrorist organizations.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan brought together former activists of a whole number of Uzbek Islamist organizations outlawed by President Islam Karimov in 1992 and 1993. As an anti-Islamic campaign was launched in Uzbekistan in the early 1990s, many of them fled to Afghanistan and Tajikistan (more than 2,000 Uzbek nationals resettled here in the '90s). In August 1999, 1,000-strong Islamic Movement units infiltrated into southern Kyrgyzstan, crossing over the Tajik border.
The leadership of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan cooperates closely with a number of international and regional Islamist organizations and movements, such as Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hizb-uy-Tahrir, and Ihvan al-Muslimun, to name just a few. Its operations in and outside Central Asia are bankrolled by the international Islamist Movement and affluent Uzbek expatriates based in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
