Afghan Arabs
Afghan Arabs were the Arab Muslims who immigrated to Afghanistan and joined the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. The term does not refer to the Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan who are an ethnic Arab minority group living in the north western parts of the country. Despite being referred to as Afghans, they originated from the Arab world and did not hold Afghan citizenship.
It is estimated that between 8,000 and 35,000 Arabs immigrated to Afghanistan to partake in what much of the Muslim world was calling an Islamic holy war against the Soviet Union, which had militarily intervened in Afghanistan to support the ruling People's Democratic Party against the rebelling jihadists. The Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was the first Arab journalist from a major Arabic-language media organization to cover the Soviet–Afghan War, approximated that there were 10,000 Arab volunteer fighters in Afghanistan during the conflict. 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. Their name notwithstanding, none of them were Afghans, and some who were grouped with the community were not even Arabs. A number of the foreign jihadists in Afghanistan were Turkic or Malay, among other ethnicities, or non-Arabs from Arab countries, such as Kurds.
To the Western world, the most notorious Afghan Arab fighter was Osama bin Laden, who immigrated to Afghanistan from Saudi Arabia and founded al-Qaeda, which carried out the September 11 attacks against the United States in 2001, prompting the American invasion of Afghanistan a month later. Bin Laden then took refuge in Pakistan 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.
History
Origin
Pakistani military officer Hamid Gul, who led the Inter-Services Intelligence 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. The Communists have their international brigades, the West has NATO, why can't the Muslims unite and form a common front?"Role of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam
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. Upon the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, Azzam issued a fatwa declaring that jihad against the Soviet Union was fard 'ayn for every able-bodied Muslim man: "Whoever can, from among the Arabs, fight jihad in Palestine, then he must start there. And, if he is not capable, then he must set out for Afghanistan." 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 with Afghanistan before Palestine." The edict was supported by other prominent sheikhs, including the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd Allah Al Baz.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. During the 1980s, Azzam had forged close links with two of the Afghan mujahideen's faction leaders: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was favoured by the Pakistani government; and Abdulrab Rasul Sayyaf, who was receiving close support from Saudi Arabian authorities for the purpose of spreading Wahhabism throughout Afghanistan.
Azzam toured not only the Muslim world, but also the United States in search of funding and young Muslim recruits. 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.
Estimates of the number of Afghan Arab that came from around the world to fight in Afghanistan include 8,000, 10,000, 20,000 and 35,000.
In the camps of the foreign volunteers, Azzam was said to be "able to exercise a strong influence on the unpredictable jihadists". His slogan was "Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues." He emphasized the importance of jihad: "those who believe that Islam can flourish be victorious without jihad, fighting, and blood are deluded and have no understanding of the nature of this religion," and that Afghanistan was only the beginning:
This duty shall not lapse with victory in Afghanistan, and the jihad will remain an individual obligation until all other lands which formerly were Muslim come back to us and Islam reigns within them once again. Before us lie Palestine, Bukhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines, Burma, South Yemen, Tashkent, Andalusia...
Sometime after August 1988, Azzam was replaced by Bin Laden as the leader of the Arab Afghans in Peshawar. 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 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.
Later foreign volunteers
While there was generous financial aid to Afghan guerillas throughout the 1980s, most foreign Muslim fighters did not arrive in Afghanistan until the mid-1980s. By 1986, the Soviet Union had begun contemplating a military withdrawal from Afghanistan. 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. Consequently, a significant amount of Arab jihadists arrived in Afghanistan when they were least needed; the late arrivals were reportedly twice the number of those who partook in the fighting against the Soviets at the height of the conflict.Many of the later volunteers were different than the early "Afghan" Arab volunteers, who were inspired by Azzam, and have been criticized for being less serious:
Some Saudi tourists came to earn their jihad credentials. Their tour was organized so that they could step inside Afghanistan, get photographed discharging a gun, and promptly return home as a hero of jihad.
As the conflict continued, many Arab volunteers became sectarian and undisciplined in their violence, including in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, which served as the mujahideen's chief staging area and the centre of Afghan Arab activity.
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. While the first Arab Afghans were "for the most part" welcomed by native Afghan mujahideen fighters, by the end of the conflict with the Soviets, there was a great deal of mutual antagonism between the two ethnic groups. The Afghan mujahideen resented "being told they were not good Muslims" and called the expatriate volunteers "Ikhwanis" or "Wahhabis" as a pejorative, and this resentment is thought by some to have played a role in the relative ease with which the United States toppled the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Salafi influence
In the "great gathering" of international Islamists—Arabs, Afghans, and others—at camps and training centers around Peshawar, ideas were exchanged and "many unexpected ideological cross-fertilizations" took place, particularly a "variant of Islamist ideology based on armed struggle and extreme religious vigour" known as Salafi jihadism.Globalization
After the Soviet withdrawal
The departure of the Soviets led to the start of the Afghan Civil War between Afghan Government forces and the so-called "Interim Afghan Government", Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda participated in the failed Battle of Jalalabad, Bin Laden personally led 800 Arabs to immobilize the 7th Sarandoy regiment but failed to do so leading to many casualties. At least 300 Arabs were killed by Afghan Forces during the Battle. The President of Afghanistan, Mohammad Najibullah was highly critical of Arab involvement in Afghanistan, claiming Wahabi Arabs would destroy Afghan values and culture and lead to an American invasion in the future. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Najibullah Government lost its most important trading partner. The new Russian government under Boris Yeltsin cut exports to Najibullah's Government and in 1992 President Najibullah was removed from power by 4 of his Generals and the Homeland Party government in Kabul ceased to exist in April 1992. After this, some foreign mujahideen stayed in Afghanistan participating in the following Civil War caused by the power vacuum left behind from the dissolved Afghan Military. These Arab foreign fighters served as the essential core of the foot soldiers of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, bin Laden being seen, according to journalist Lawrence Wright, as "the undisputed leader of the Arab Afghans" by fall of 1989.Others returned "with their experience, ideology, and weapons," to their home countries, often proceeding to fight jihad against the government there. However minimal the impact of the "Afghan" Arabs on the war against the Soviets, the return of the volunteers to their home countries was often not. In Foreign Affairs Peter Bergen writes:
The foreign volunteers in Afghanistan saw the Soviet defeat as a victory for Islam against a superpower that had invaded a Muslim country. 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. The jihadists gained legitimacy and prestige from their triumph both within the militant community and among ordinary Muslims, as well as the confidence to carry their jihad to other countries where they believed Muslims required assistance. When veterans of the guerrilla campaign returned home with their experience, ideology, and weapons, they destabilized once-tranquil countries and inflamed already unstable ones.