HOMO JIHADICUS

Internet 43 . As a result of the brutal antiterrorist measures undertaken by
the Russian security services and Chechnya’s president Ramzan Kadyrov’s
units, as well as the schism which took place on the turn of 2014 and 2015
(renouncing loyalty to the emir and a substantial part of the combat groups
swearing an oath to the leader of Islamic State), the Caucasus Emirate is
currently in a severely weakened state.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Jihad Union
Radical Islamic militants from Central Asia are concentrated around two
international terrorist organisations – the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
created in 1998, and the Islamic Jihad Union, which split from the IMU
in 2004. After the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001 the IMU
resettled to the Pakistani tribal areas, where it regained its strength and integrated
into the network of Islamic terrorist organisations present there.
Both of these organisations possess terrorist infrastructure (leadership,
rear elements, training camps etc.) in Pakistan’s Northern Waziristan 44 ,
they are actively engaged in armed combat on the side of the Taliban in
northern Afghanistan 45 , and in the past have attempted to conduct terrorist
attacks in the United States and Europe 46 . Contrary to most Islamic
terrorist organisations, the IMU does not have a unified religious ideology,
and amongst its members there are also Islamic radicals who do not adhere
to Islam’s fundamentalist currents 47 .
As a result of the civil war in Syria on-going since 2011, the influx of recruits
to the IMU and the IJU has significantly decreased, yet these organisations
still remain a serious security threat 48 .
43
Examples of this are websites such as: http://hunafa.com/, http://vdagestan.com/ or the
targeted at Western audience Kavkaz Center website – http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/
44
As a result of the military operation of Pakistani forces underway since the summer of 2014
and aimed at combating the foreign fighters in the Northern Waziristan, some of the IMU’s
and IJU’s infrastructure was destroyed. Members of these organisations are also relocating
in large numbers to Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, leading to a deterioration in the security
situation in this province. https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/the-next-round-ofthe-tug-of-war-over-kunduz/
45
The Taliban, as a Pashtun movement, were incapable of operating successfully in the northern
parts of Afghanistan, inhabited mostly by Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen. The IMU’s engagement
on the side of the Taliban resulted in a significant deterioration in the security
situation in the previously peaceful north of the country.
46
http://www.rferl.org/content/uzbekistan_united_states_obama_islamic_movement/ 244
-80474.html
47
More in: The radical Islamic, op. cit.
48
As can be seen for example in the IMU’s attack on Karachi airport on 8 th of June 2014. As a result
of the attack 36 people were killed, and the airport itself severely damaged. http://www.
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