Ibrahim Bek (1889 – 31 August 1931) was a leader of the

Basmachi movement The Basmachi movement (russian: Басмачество, ''Basmachestvo'', derived from Uzbek: "Basmachi" meaning "bandits") was an uprising against Russian Imperial and Soviet rule by the Muslim peoples of Central Asia. The movement's roots ...

. He was a member of the Uzbek Lakai tribe in Eastern

Bukhara Bukhara ( Uzbek: /, ; tg, Бухоро, ) is the seventh-largest city in Uzbekistan, with a population of 280,187 , and the capital of Bukhara Region. People have inhabited the region around Bukhara for at least five millennia, and the city ...

and led an organized resistance against the Soviet military in the early 1920s. A religious conservative and loyal to the ousted

Emir of Bukhara The Emirate of Bukhara ( fa, , Amārat-e Bokhārā, chg, , Bukhārā Amirligi) was a Muslim polity in Central Asia that existed from 1785 to 1920 in what is modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. It occupied the lan ...

he had little dealings with "reformist" basmachi who had jadids in their ranks. He actively fought against

Enver Pasha İsmail Enver, better known as Enver Pasha ( ota, اسماعیل انور پاشا; tr, İsmail Enver Paşa; 22 November 1881 – 4 August 1922) was an Ottoman military officer, revolutionary, and convicted war criminal who formed one-third ...

during his brief time in Central Asia. Despite being a good 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 {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...

. Bek and his Basmachi were engaged and defeated by

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

units of the

Turkestan Military District The Turkestan Military District (russian: Туркестанский военный округ (ТуркВО), ''Turkestansky voyenyi okrug (TurkVO)'') was a military district of both the Imperial Russian Army and the Soviet Armed Forces, with it ...

under the command of Mikhail Frunze in the spring of 1925. The Soviets asserted that Bek had been provided assistance by

British intelligence The Government of the United Kingdom maintains intelligence agencies within three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These agencies are responsible for collecting and analysing foreign and d ...

services. Bek was eventually forced to flee south into

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...

, from where he along with

Fazail Maksum Faizal Maksum was one of the leaders of an anti-Soviet group known as the Basmachi and led an organized resistance against the Soviet military occupation of Central Asia in the 1920s. Maksum was loyal to the ousted Emir of Bukhara and operated pr ...

led several cross-border raids back into the newly organized Soviet Socialist Republic of Tajikistan. Bek was subsequently turned in to Soviet authorities by Tajik villagers, and eventually executed in 1931. By mid-1931, the Basmachi had been largely defeated by the Red Army.Krivosheev, p. 42.

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