Mujahideen
[1][2][3] In its post-classical meaning, jihad refers to an act that is spiritually comparable in reward to promoting Islam during the early 600s CE.
[5] The first known use of the word mujahideen to refer to insurgent Islamic extremism (what has neologically been called jihadism) was supposedly in the late 19th century, in 1887, by Thomas Patrick Hughes (1838–1911).
Arguably the best-known mujahideen outside the Islamic world are the various, loosely aligned Afghan opposition groups who initially rebelled against the government of the pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) during the late 1970s.
Osama bin Laden, originally from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, was a prominent organizer and financier of an all-Arab Islamist group of foreign volunteers; his Maktab al-Khadamat funnelled money, arms, and Muslim fighters from around the Muslim world into Afghanistan, with the assistance and support of the Saudi and Pakistani governments.
After several years of devastating fighting, in a small Pashtun village, a mullah named Mohammed Omar organized a new armed movement with the backing of Pakistan.
In 1974, Turkey led a land invasion of Northern Cyprus with the aim of protecting the Turkish minority population after a Greek-inspired coup brought a threat of union of the island with Greece.
Since then there has been no major fighting on Cyprus and the nation continues to be an independent country, though strongly linked with Turkey militarily and politically.
[1] The group has taken part in multiple well-known conflicts in the region, and has been at odds with the conservative government of the Islamic Republic of Iran since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
[28] The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was established by University of the Philippines professor Nur Misuari to condemn the killings of more than 60 Filipino Muslims and later became an aggressor against the government while the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a splinter group from the MNLF, was established to seek an Islamic state within the Philippines and is more radical and more aggressive.
[32] El Mujahid members claimed that in Bosnia they only have respect for Alija Izetbegovic and the head of the Bosnian Army Third Corps, Sakib Mahmuljin.
[36][better source needed] They came from various places such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories; to quote the summary of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia judgment:[37] The evidence shows that foreign volunteers arrived in central Bosnia in the second half of 1992 with the aim of helping Muslims.
The foreign volunteers differed considerably from the local population, not only because of their physical appearance and the language they spoke, but also because of their fighting methods.
The ICTY acquitted Amir Kubura and Enver Hadžihasanović of the Bosnian 3rd Corps of all charges related to the incidents involving mujahideen.
He was sentenced to three years of imprisonment for his failure to prevent or punish the cruel treatment of twelve captured Serb soldiers by the Mujahideen.
[39] Some individuals of the Bosnian Mujahideen, such as Abdelkader Mokhtari, Fateh Kamel, and Karim Said Atmani, gained particular prominence within Bosnia as well as international attention from various foreign governments.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent Chechen declaration of independence, foreign fighters began entering the region and associating themselves with local rebels (most notably Shamil Basayev).
The mujahideen also made a significant financial contribution to the separatists' cause; with their access to the immense wealth of Salafist charities like al-Haramein, they soon became an invaluable source of funds for the Chechen resistance, which had few resources of its own.
In 1999, foreign fighters played an important role in the ill-fated Chechen incursion into Dagestan, where they suffered a decisive defeat and were forced to retreat back into Chechnya.
In the last months of 2007, the influence of foreign fighters became apparent again when Dokka Umarov proclaimed the Caucasus Emirate being fought for by the Caucasian Mujahadeen, a pan-Caucasian Islamic state of which Chechnya was to be a province.
This move caused a rift in the resistance movement between those supporting the Emirate and those who were in favour of preserving the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
The Weekly Standard claimed, "Indian intelligence believes the Indian Mujahideen is a front group created by Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami to confuse investigators and cover the tracks of the Students Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI, a radical Islamist movement with aim to establish Islamic rule over India.
Most noticeable of these groups are Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Hizbul Mujahideen and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM).
Alawites, the sect to which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad belongs, are considered to be heretics in Sunni Muslim circles.
[52] In May 2012, Syria's U.N. envoy Bashar Ja'afari declared that dozens of foreign fighters from Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Britain, France elsewhere had been captured or killed, and urged Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to stop "their sponsorship of the armed rebellion".
[55] When asked if the United States would arm the opposition, Hillary Clinton expressed doubts that such weapons would be effective in the toppling of the Syrian government and may even fall into the hands of al-Qaeda or Hamas.
[58] On 23 April, one of the leaders of Fatah al-Islam, Abdel Ghani Jawhar, was killed during the Battle of Al-Qusayr, after he unintentionally blew himself up while making a bomb.
[62] The Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem (MSC) was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. Department of State.
[63] On 12 November 2018, the Department of State blacklisted the Al-Mujahidin Brigades (AMB) over its alleged Hezbollah associations, as well as Jawad Nasrallah, son of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, from using the United States financial system and further naming him a terrorist associated with evidence of his involvement in attacks against Israel in the West Bank.
[69] Fighters from the Persian Gulf and international jihadists were called to join the holy war against the Somali government and its Ethiopian allies.
[72][73] Similarly, recent media reports said that Egyptian and Arab jihadists were the core members of Al-Shabaab, and were training Somalis in sophisticated weaponry and suicide bombing techniques.
