Jumaboi Ahmadjonovich Khodjiyev (1968 or 1969 – 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 (IMU) with Tohir Yo'ldosh.
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.
[3] During the Civil War, Namangani was an effective commander due to his first-hand knowledge of both Soviet Army and Afghan Mujahideen tactics,[5] which were practised by the Tajikistani military and Russian forces based in the country.
According to various IRP leaders, Namangani was "a tough disciplinarian and good speaker who could mobilize people" and held the loyalty of his fighters; however, he was also described to be "erratic, temperamental, and authoritarian", and frequently ignored orders from the party's political leadership.
The IRP persuaded their former ally Namangani to leave in late 1999, and in November approximately three hundred IMU fighters, and their families, were escorted by Russian troops to the border with Afghanistan, where they were welcomed by the Taliban and lodged in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Namangani and Yoʻldosh frequently visited Kandahar to meet Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar "to plan strategy and negotiate for arms, ammunition, and money".
However, following intense pressure from Karimov and the international community, members of the Tajikistani government once again convinced him to return to Afghanistan, which he did again in January 2001—this time through an airlift conducted by Russian transport helicopters.
[3] The IMU resumed offensive operations in the summer of 2001, with locally based sleeper cells attacking two military posts on the Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan border and a Kyrgyz television transmitter in late July.
[17] However, a report by the National Security Council of Kyrgyzstan in July 2002 stated that Namangani "had recovered from wounds sustained the previous winter and was gathering forces in the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan".