Are Central Asian militants being pushed out of Pakistan and returning home?

Several articles have appeared this week asking if the Islamic Movement of Uzebkistan (IMU) and the offshoot Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) have been uprooted from their longtime hideouts in the Pakistani tribal areas thanks to the Pakistani military campaigns there and are coming home to mount attacks.

You can read those at Euraisanet here and those at Radio Free Europe here.

I have a few quibbles with this.

As some analysts have already pointed out, these groups lack the infrastructure in Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian countries to carry out attacks. They also do not enjoy either popular support or the lax security environment they flourished in in Pakistan.

Some have also posited the theory that the attacks were actually part of a dispute with or between members of organized crime or the security establishment. Such incidents are always possible in this part of the world.

And another thing; why come home and immediately start blowing sh*t up? Especially if they do not currently have a safe have to retreat to and plan attacks from? The IJU has been known to claim attacks it has not actually carried out before.

It would make sense for Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to build up their military/police presence in the Ferghana Valley and other sensitive regions if militants are indeed trying to return, which they may be. However I think it would be unlikely that they would immediately start attacking government personnel before they are reestablished. Or does this mean they were already established there and laying low until the time is right? I doubt it, and it seem like the timing would have been more opportune when the Pakistani Taliban seemed to have the upper hand there.

These militants have been fighting alongside Al Qaeda and the Taliban for over a decade now, and with the build-up of US forces in Afghanistan and the military campaign threatening their safehaves in Pakistan, it seems their energies would be much better spent on pushing back these enemies rather than opening new fronts and wasting precious man power and resources.

The military campaigns in Pakistan may indeed be pushing Central Asian militants back to their homelands, and this is a serious security concern in a restive area, particularly the densely populated and impoverished Ferghana Valley. However these groups are unlikely to be able to carry out a sustained insurgency for the time being.

UPDATE: The IMU has been increasingly active in Tajikistan in the first quarter of this year, however this long predates the military push into the tribal areas of Pakistan. The government there, corrupt it may be, keeps a tight hold on the domestic security situation.