Central asia's militant Islamists have been popping up in some unusual places. Pakistani officials say that Uzbek fighters have numbered among those captured and killed in the government's offensive to retake the Swat Valley. One Pakistani newspaper claims that local Taliban forces include up to 4,000 foreign fighters, most of them members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who hail from the former Soviet Union. The Pakistani Taliban have not been driving just south toward Islamabad, but also northward to Malakand and Kohistan, leading some experts to fret that militants are aiming to expand their influence towards the China-Pakistan border and even farther afield to the mountains of Tajikistan, one of the IMU'S old stomping grounds.
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