In an otherwise entertaining history of Tohir Yuldashev’s crusade to out-crusade the crusaders, Ferghana.ru lets this drop:
As for Karimov and Salih, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader does not see any difference between them. “They are enemies of our faith. The only difference between them is that one wants an alliance with Russia while the other promotes an alliance with the United States,” he said. “Believe me, US fiasco is nearing. Nobody believed that the Red Empire would ever fall but it did, Allah be praised. A similar lot awaits America now.”
“The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan used to fight Karimov alone once. No more. We are going to war on all enemies of Islam worldwide,” Yuldash said. “The Jews and Christians and other religions of the world have pooled efforts and mounted another Crusade against Moslems.”
In the meantime, some Yuldash’s followers in the Ferghana Valley are convinced that “the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Yuldash promote the interests of the West and first and foremost of the United States.” They believe as well that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is getting hefty sums from across the ocean. Some sources claim that Yuldash’s greed and reluctance to share have already cost him a lot of followers.
Yuldash himself claims that it was first Russia and then the United States that tried to enlist his services against the Uzbek regime. “We have flatly turned them down,” he said. “We are Allah’s warriors, not Russian or American.”
Criticizing Hizb-ut-Takhrir for its passiveness in the jihad, Yuldash once said that the West had established this movement in the first place to divide the Islamic movement. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader calls Usama bin Laden, Hattab, Basayev, and other Chechen ringleaders recognized as terrorists throughout the world, his “brothers”.
“Whoever cannot join the mujahedin should offer the mujahedin or their families financial aid,” Yuldash said. “Allah’s warriors will reach Washington soon.”
Scary stuff. Basically, he thinks everyone wants to work with him, including the U.S. and Russia, while he name-drops Chechens and calls for everyone else’s destruction and/or financial support. That’s certainly one way to run a club with aspirations of international terrorism. There are others, but who am I to judge?
Seriously, at this point all he’s missing is the makeup.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust