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2 unusual facts about Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan


Beth Rodden

On a climbing trip to Kyrgyzstan's Kara Su Valley in August 2000, Rodden, then-boyfriend Tommy Caldwell, and fellow climbers, Jason "Singer" Smith and photographer, John Dickey, were held hostage for six days by rebels from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

Later that year the IMU conducted its first verifiable operations, with an incursion into the Batken region of southern Kyrgyzstan – a region populated mainly by ethnic Uzbeks, and lying between Tavildara in Tajikistan and the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan.


Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan barrier

The 1999 Tashkent bombing in February 1999 which were blamed on foreign Islamic militants and the subsequent incursion of the Kyrgyz region of Batken by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, who were based in Tajikistan and opposed to Uzbek President Islam Karimov, led to Uzbekistan sealing its border and commencement constructing a barbed wire fence around long sections of its border with Kyrgyzstan in the Ferghana Valley.


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