The hunt for terrorists on Pakistan's frontier appears to be narrowing on an Uzbek terror group that once trained in Afghanistan. The region is the last believed refuge of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, which seeks to overthrow the secular government of the former Soviet republic.
| As a fully-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda, as it happens ... |
IMU militants have become a part of the community in South Waziristan and married local women, said Ahmed Rashid, author of "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia." They have also used the province as a base for assaults across the border on U.S. forces in Afghanistan, he said.
| Makes sense, everybody else does ... |
Rashid said Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, do not use non-Arabs to protect them - making it unlikely that al-Zawahri is in the area, as Pakistani officials had earlier claimed.
| Only members of the Master Race can be trusted, and them not much... |
The presence of the IMU could also explain the ferocity of the fighting, Rashid said, because the group simply has nowhere else to go: U.S. forces are waiting on the border to scoop up fleeing terrorists, Central Asia is too far away and the IMU's links to Pakistani fundamentalist groups who might help them are weak.
| You might want to tell that to the MMA and Hamid Gul, who appear to be quite peeved over this latest turn of events. Think they'll just roll over and give up now that Ayman is out of harm's way? |
The group was once believed to have 1,000 to 1,500 members, but experts and diplomats in the region say they now number only a few hundred at most.
| And ain't nobody gonna mourn their demise ... |
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