ISLAMABAD: The Waziristan-based Islamic Jehad Union (IJU) has come under the FBI scanner for its alleged links with Tamarlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, two brothers of the Chechen descent who allegedly carried out the deadly bombings in Boston on April 15, killing three people and injuring over 180 others.
Rooted in Central Asia and primarily based in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan, the al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked Islamic Jehad Union is an offshoot of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which was founded by the late Uzbek commander, Tahir Yuldashev.
Going by the American media reports, the alleged contacts of the Boston bombers with the IMU have come under intense scrutiny of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation which has already admitted having missed vital clues in 2011 that could have prevented the Tsarnaev brother from conducting the Boston attack. The FBI has admitted having interrogated Tamarlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of a foreign government, most likely Russia, which was concerned that he was a follower of radical Islam. The FBI said it did not find any terrorism activity and appears not to have had any further contact with him since.
However, following the Boston bombing, the FBI sleuths are investigating a six-month visit to Russia in 2011 by 26-year-old Tamarlan Tsarnaev, during which he stayed with his father in Dagestan besides visiting his family’s home of Chechnya. The American intelligence sleuths are trying to ascertain, as reported by the American media, whether Tamarlan had visited his parents or received some kind of terror training in Degestan, Chechenya or at any other place.
His YouTube Channel has already been found to be linked to jehadi films such as “The Black Flags from Khorasan”—a musical tribute to the black jehadi flag that will supposedly be carried when the jehadis conquer Khorasan—an area comprising Pakistan Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
As the investigation into the jehadi links of the Tsarnaev brothers and their possible ties abroad continues, the American media says the FBI believes that the two Chechen brothers were linked to the Islamic Jehad Union which has recruited Chechen, Uzbeks, Europeans and the Arab Muslims to fight with them against the US forces in Afghanistan.
That the Islamic Jehad Union is headquartered in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan is a general knowledge thing for most of the terrorism experts in Pakistan. The IJU was initially known as Islamic Jehad Group (IJG), which was founded in March 2002 by two Uzbek rebels of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan—Najmuddin Jalolov alia Abu Yahya and Suhael Buranov alias Abu Huzaifa.
Banned by the US State Department in 2005 as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the IJU is committed to toppling Uzbek President Islam Karimov and fights alongside al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan which has been active in Pakistan’s tribal areas for many years, split several years ago, leading to the creation of the Islamic Jehad Union. While the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan remained based in South Waziristan, the IJU set up its headquarters in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan.
Islamic Jehad Union maintains close ties with the North Waziristan-based leadership of al-Qaeda and the Haqqani militant network. Central Asians, including Chechens and Uzbeks, and Turks and Germans make up a significant portion of the Union which was little known until April 2004 when it had first claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings around Tashkent and Bukhara, killing 47 people. On July 30, 2004, the IJG carried out simultaneous bomb attacks on the American and the Israeli embassies in Tashkent, killing two people. The attacks were highly sophisticated, and cemented the IJG’s status as a potential terrorist threat in Central Asia.
On May 25, 2005, the US State Department designated Islamic Jehad Group as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Group. The United Nations shortly followed suit. Besides Pakistan, the IJU is also active in Afghanistan, where the group operates alongside the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani militant network.
The IJU, which has had particular success in recruiting several German nationals, achieved international notoriety in 2007 when three terrorists who were planning to attack the Frankfurt International airport and the US-Military installations such as the Ramstein Air Base, were arrested in Germany. In 2008, two more IJU members were arrested at Germany’s Cologne Bonn Airport aboard a KLM flight bound for Amsterdam. The men, who had connecting flights to Uganda, were thought to have continuing itineraries on to Pakistan, where they were supposed to be imparted training in terrorism.
Following the Lal Masjid operation in the heart of Islamabad, the IJU released a video in September 2008 which condemned the bloody episode besides depicting child soldiers getting training at an IJU camp in North Waziristan. In 2009, the IJU released the video of ‘German Taliban villages’ in Waziristan.
Its fighters were seen training at camps and conducting military operations. The video claimed that besides Germans and Britons, the Americans have also joined the Islamic Jehad Union. Two American Jehadis, Abu Ibrahim Al Amriki and Sayfullah al Amriki, were featured in the propaganda video that was released by the IJU which has been the target of several US air strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Tahir Yuldashev, the ameer of IJU-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, was killed in a US drone attack on August 27, 2009, in South Waziristan. Najmuddin Jalolov, the central ameer of Islamic Jehad Union, was killed almost a month later in another drone strike in North Waziristan on September 14, 2009. Several Turkish members of the IJU were killed along with an al-Qaeda commander in yet another US predator hit in North Waziristan on June 19, 2010.
On March 4, 2010, a German court in Dusseldorf had convicted four German militants belonging to the Islamic Jehad Union for their involvement in a plot to unleash a series of bomb attacks against the American army facilities in Germany. Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider, both German converts to Islam, and Adem Yilmaz and Attila Selek, both Turkish citizens, were popularly referred to as the “Sauerland Cell,” part of a larger group known as the IJU. All the four men were reported to have been trained in camps in Waziristan. These convictions were followed by the Western intelligence reports of a possible al-Qaeda plot to attack European capitals by European nationals who had been trained by the IMU in the Waziristan region.
Three key Chechen commanders who continue to operate from the Waziristan region on the Pak-Afghan tribal belt include Abu Haneefa, the commander of the Chechen, Turkish Kurds and Bosnians militants; Abu Akash, who commands the Uzbek, Tajik and other Central Asians militants and Abu Nasar, who is the central commander of the Uighur militants.
These facts clearly endorse the Western intelligence agencies’ claims that the Waziristan-based al-Qaeda network continues to recruit foreign militants who could carry out terrorist attacks in the West. Therefore, the American CIA is ruthlessly using deadly drones to dismantle the network of foreign jehadis in Waziristan region.
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