Jumma Kasimov
| Juma Namangani | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Jumaboi Ahmadjonovich Khodjiyev |
| Nickname(s) | Jumma Hakim, Jumma Kasimov, Tojiboy |
| Born | 1968 Namangan, Uzbek SSR |
| Died | November 2001 (aged 32–33) Afghanistan |
| Allegiance |
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| Wars | |
Jumaboi Ahmadjonovich Khodjiyev (1968 – November 2001), better known by the nom de guerre Juma Namangani, was an Uzbek Islamist militant with a substantial following who co-founded and led the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and received substantial Taliban patronage, allowed to operate freely in northern Afghanistan.
Namangani was born in Namangan, located in the Fergana Valley, in 1968. He fought in the Soviet–Afghan War as a paratrooper in the Soviet Army, into which he had been conscripted in the late 1980s. He was radicalised by his experiences in Afghanistan and, following the war, returned to Namangan. There, he associated with local Islamists of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) and the local Islamic revolutionary party Adolat (English: Justice), including Tohir Yoʻldosh, a mullah who sought the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law) in Uzbekistan.
Namangani fled to southern Tajikistan in 1992, following a crackdown on Adolat by the government of Islam Karimov, with a group that included roughly thirty Uzbek fighters and a few Arab intermediaries between Adolat and Saudi Arabian financiers. There, he recruited Uzbeks fleeing the crackdown, commanding about two hundred within a few months, as well as Arabs disillusioned with the infighting among Mujahideen forces in Afghanistan.
With support from the IRP, which supplied Tajik fighters, Namangani's group established a base of operations in the Tavildara Valley and fought in the Tajikistani Civil War in support of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), temporarily occupying the town of Tavildara on two occasions. Namangani opposed the peace agreement signed between the UTO and the government of Emomali Rahmon in June 1997, but eventually demobilized most of his fighters while sustaining a core group of supporters in his Tavildara Valley stronghold. He bought and operated a farm in the village of Hoit and also owned lorries that transported goods to the Tajik capital, Dushanbe; he is also alleged to have trafficked heroin from Afghanistan through Tajikistan to European markets.
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