Afghan Arabs

[5] Among many Muslims, the Afghan Arabs achieved near hero-status for their association with the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1989, and it was with this prestige that they were later able to exert considerable influence in mounting jihadist struggles in other countries, including their own.

Bin Laden then took refuge in Pakistan (with alleged Pakistani support) until May 2011, when he was assassinated by U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six, though the American-led War in Afghanistan against the Taliban continued until August 2021.

Pakistani military officer Hamid Gul, who led the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1987 to 1989, stated of his country's role in recruiting Muslim volunteer fighters in Afghanistan: "We are fighting a jihad and this is the first Islamic international brigade in the modern era.

"[6] The Palestinian jihadist Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, who was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, is often credited with creating enthusiasm for the Afghan mujahideen cause in Arab countries and throughout the broader Muslim world.

Although waging a jihadist struggle against Israel was regarded with the most importance in the Arab world, for practical reasons, "it is our opinion that we should begin [jihad] with Afghanistan before Palestine.

Sometime after 1980, Azzam established the Maktab al-Khidamat to organize guest houses in Peshawar, a Pakistani city near the Afghan border, as well as jihadist training camps in Afghanistan to prepare international recruits for confrontations with the Soviet Armed Forces.

With financing from Saudi Arabia, including from Bin Laden, Maktab al-Khadamat paid for "air tickets and accommodation, dealt with paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihad fighters" who had come from all over the Muslim world.

He inspired young Muslims with stories of miraculous deeds: mujahideen who defeated vast columns of Soviet troops virtually single-handed, who had been run over by tanks and survived, who were shot and still unscathed by bullets; while angels were said to ride into battle on horseback, and falling bombs were said to be intercepted by birds, which raced ahead of Soviet fighter jets to form a protective canopy over the Muslim warriors in Afghanistan.

Before us lie Palestine, Bukhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines, Burma, South Yemen, Tashkent, Andalusia ...[18]Sometime after August 1988, Azzam was replaced by Bin Laden as the leader of the Arab Afghans in Peshawar.

[citation needed] In November 1989, Azzam was assassinated by a roadside bomb in an attack that is variously suspected to have been organized by one of three (or four) actors: Israel's Mossad and the United States' Central Intelligence Agency, owing to his ties with Hamas during the First Intifada; the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, with whose leader Ayman al-Zawahiri he had an emerging rivalry; or Afghanistan's KhAD, possibly to cause infighting among the jihadist cause during the Soviet–Afghan War.

[24] As it became increasingly clear that the mujahideen's fight against the Soviet military was succeeding, it achieved more popularity with Muslims worldwide and thereby attracted more foreign volunteer fighters.

[26] These later expatriate volunteers included many sectarian Salafists and Wahhabists who alienated their hosts with their aloof manner and particular disdain for Sufism, which is held in high regard in Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent.

Estimates of the number of foreign fighters who fought in Afghanistan begin in the low thousands; some spent years in combat, while others came only for what amounted to a jihad vacation.

[41][42] The volunteers also took upon themselves Hisbah ("commanding right and forbidding wrong") and also attempted to impose the veil on women and the beard on men and in addition engaged in causing disturbances in the ceremonies of [Sufi] brotherhoods they deemed to be deviant, ... smashing up cafes, and ... [organizing] sharia marriages to Bosnian girls that were not declared to the civil authorities.

[43] After the 1995 Dayton Agreement (which gave Bosniaks control of 30% of the Bosnia and Herzegovina) were signed, all foreign volunteers were invited to leave the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina and were replaced by NATO peacekeeping forces, a "bitter experience" for Afghan Arab jihadist-salafists.

[47] In November 1993 it kidnapped and executed Sheik Mohamed Bouslimani "a popular figure who was prominent" in the moderate Islamist Algerian Hamas party who refused "to issue a fatwa endorsing the GIA's tactics.

[49] By the end of the 1990s the group was spent, somewhere between 40,000 and 200,000 lives had been lost, and the once broad and enthusiastic support by voters for the anti-government Islamism was replaced "with a deep fear of instability".

[51] Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya militants harassed and murdered members of the Coptic Christian minority, and by 1992 had broadened their targets to police and tourists, causing serious harm to Egypt's economy.

[54] Perhaps the major contribution of the more serious Afghan Arab volunteers was humanitarian aid —- the setting up of hospitals around Peshawar and Quetta and providing funds for supply caravans to travel to the interior of the country.

[56] Marc Sageman, a Foreign Service Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987 to 1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan's Mujahideen, says Contemporaneous accounts of the war do not even mention [the Afghan Arabs].

Unfortunately, radical non-Afghan salafists became involved, executing some 60 surrendering Communists, cutting their corpses into small pieces, and sending the remains back to the besieged city in a truck with the message that this would be the fate awaiting the infidels.

[58] Contrary to American and Pakistani expectations, this battle proved that the Afghan Army could fight without Soviet help, and greatly increased the confidence of government supporters.

"[65] In contrast according to former British Defence Secretary Michael Portillo, late Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto told him said Osama bin Laden was initially pro-American.

"[67] Robin Cook, former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, wrote in The Guardian on Friday, July 8, 2005, Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies.

Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.

Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently.The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.

[69]Bergen quotes Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran ISI's Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987: It was always galling to the Americans, and I can understand their point of view, that although they paid the piper they could not call the tune.

[70] According to Peter Beinart, Vincent Cannistraro, who led the Reagan administration's Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987, puts it, "The CIA was very reluctant to be involved at all.

So the Agency tried to avoid direct involvement in the war, ... the skittish CIA, Cannistraro estimates, had less than ten operatives acting as America's eyes and ears in the region.

Eagerness to claim absolute victory in Afghanistan, bureaucratic inertia, lack of concern and expertise, overconfidence in the Saudi and Pakistani security services ... all explain why nobody in Washington cared.