He was a member of the Uzbek Lakai tribe in Eastern Bukhara and led an organized resistance against the Soviet military in the early 1920s.

A religious conservative and loyal to the ousted Emir of Bukhara he had little dealings with "reformist" basmachi who had jadids in their ranks.

Despite being a capable guerrilla leader, Ibrahim was essentially a relic of an older time and was to find his increasingly sophisticated military tactics out of step with the political nature of the Russian Civil War.

[1][2] Bek and his Basmachi were engaged and defeated by Red Army units of the Turkestan Military District under the command of Mikhail Frunze in the spring of 1925.

[3] Bek was eventually forced to flee south into Afghanistan, from where he along with Faizal Maksum led several cross-border raids back into the newly organized Soviet Socialist Republic of Tajikistan.