In the Hot Zone.(United States freezes terrorist bank accounts)

He's never given an interview. Few images of him exist. His most detailed biography fits comfortably on a single page. And he moves like a wraith through one of the world's most inaccessible regions. His name is Juma Namangani, and he is the leader of what was, until a few days ago, a little-known Islamist guerrilla group in a remote part of Central Asia. Now, in the wake of the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, Namangani and his men have become prominent targets in the war on terrorism. Last week President George W. Bush announced that he was adding Namangani's group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), to a financial hit list of 27 terrorist organizations and individuals allied with Osama bin Laden. Bush declared that all assets controlled by the groups in question would be frozen or confiscated. "Money is the lifeblood of terrorist operations," Bush said. "Today, we're asking the world to stop payment."

Of course, the IMU operates in a part of the world that gets by just fine without bank accounts. Few of its members have ever seen an ATM. In fact, the group gains most of its income from its involvement in the huge regional trade in Afghan heroin. And that's only one of the ways in which the decidedly low-tech IMU illustrates how difficult it will be for the United States and its allies to try to "drain the swamp" of terrorism in Central Asia.

The IMU presents a target as shadowy and fearsome as its leader. The forces under Namangani's command are small--no more than 2,000 fighters--their political program is vague, and the measure of their popular support hotly disputed. Yet over the past two years the IMU has managed to set the entire region on edge. Namangani's professed goal: to carry a Taliban-style Islamic revolution deep into the heart of formerly Soviet Central Asia, to the republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The countries are soft targets for insurrection. Their economies are beset by poverty, unemployment and dwindling water resources--all cause for tension in a part of the world where ethnic and religious divides are never far from the surface. And Namangani's main target--the populous Ferghana Valley, an isolated basin shared by all three republics--has traditionally been a center of religious fervor.

The key to the IMU's successes, though, can be found to the south, in the equally forbidding landscape of Afghanistan. Namangani fought as a paratrooper with the Soviets during the 1980s Afghan war. He returned to Afghanistan in 1993 a changed man, radicalized by harsh crackdowns on Muslims in his native Uzbekistan. That was when he made the acquaintance of Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, who offered financing and contacts in the world of extremist Islam. After Namangani and his partner Takhir Yuldash formed the IMU in 1998, bin Laden offered the group refuge and support behind Taliban lines. "There is a direct link between them," Kyrgyz national-security adviser Bolot Januzakov told NEWSWEEK last year. "Bin Laden is one of the basic sources of his financing." Earlier this year bin Laden named Namangani one of his deputies and gave him command over a unit fighting on the Taliban's side in Afghanistan's civil war.

Both men are hard-line fundamentalists bitterly opposed to the United States, Russia, Israel--and moderate Muslims. Aleksei Malashenko, a Central Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow, agrees that bin Laden provides the IMU with some direct financial support. But more important, his backing lends Namangani "a higher profile," which has enabled him to attract support from others. Sources in the region agree. Once approved by bin Laden, groups like the IMU have an easier time obtaining money and other assistance from well-wishers in places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The Taliban has allowed ...