An al-Qaeda-linked Uzbek militant leader was killed in Pakistan in a US drone missile strike in August, Pakistani intelligence agency officials said yesterday.
Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, was killed in a missile strike in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border, where he had been based for some years, they said.
Yuldashev’s death will be welcomed by governments in central Asia, where he wanted to set up an Islamic state.
His death is also likely to help the Pakistani army if, or when, it launches an offensive against Yuldashev’s Pakistani Taliban allies in South Waziristan.
“The man is dead. He was killed in a drone attack in South Waziristan on Aug. 27,” one Pakistani intelligence agency official said in the city of Peshawar.
Another Pakistani security official said Yuldashev’s colleagues had tried to keep his death secret.
Pakistan’s military spokesman was not available for comment.
A close ally of both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Yuldashev was a leader in an Islamist militant underground opposed to the communist government in Uzbekistan before and after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
He later fled to the safety of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and fought on the Taliban side in Afghanistan’s civil war.
He moved to Waziristan after US-led forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001.
Yuldashev shot to prominence in March 2004, when Pakistani forces surrounded his base in South Waziristan, but he escaped while his fighters mounted a fierce defense.
No one knows how many Uzbek militants are based in northwest Pakistan, but there are believed to be up to 1,000.
The army said in June it had received unconfirmed reports Yuldashev had been wounded in a Pakistani military air strike in South Waziristan.
Yuldashev’s death came weeks after Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a similar attack by a missile-firing US drone aircraft.
Yuldashev’s tough fighters often gave his allies a decisive advantage in clashes and his death would be a blow to Mehsud’s followers, analysts said.
The government ordered the army to launch an offensive against Mehsud and his men in South Waziristan in June.
The security forces have limited their action to air strikes and occasional shelling, while moving in troops, blockading the region and trying to split off factions.
“If you lose the top leader there are serious problems with the organization, especially it he’s a strong leader,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a veteran Pakistani journalist and expert on the Afghan border.
“That could be one result, some disarray in the ranks,” Yusufzai said. “This is going to help the Pakistani government in the long term.”
Yuldashev was accused of a series of bomb attacks in the Uzbek capital Tashkent in 1999 and was sentenced to death in absentia.
By that time he was thought to have fled the region for the safe haven of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
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