GULF: Fallout from the Afghan Jihad?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Dilip Hiro

LONDON, Nov 20 1995 (IPS) - Whereas two militant Islamic Egyptian groups claimed responsibility for the suicide bomb explosion at Egypt’s embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Sunday, which killed 16 people, no organisation owned up the car bomb blast in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Nov 13 which killed five people.

But aside from this minor difference, the two explosions have much in common.

They are the deeds of radical, non-Afghan Islamic organisations whose members acquired the skills for sabotage, assassinations and handling of arms and explosives during the jihad conducted primarily by the Afghan Mujahedin (i.e. Holy Warriors) against Soviet forces and the local leftist regime from 1980 to 1992.

They proudly advertise their participation in the successful jihad by attaching ‘al Afghani’ to their last name.

This jihad was primarily funded by the United States and Saudi Arabia. And the leading role in training the Afghan and non-Afghan volunteers was performed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in conjunction with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The guerrilla training was accompanied by ideological education. The main thrust of it was that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology, that holy Islam was being violated by the atheistic Soviet troops, and that the Islamic people of Afghanistan should reassert their independence by overthrowing the leftist Afghan regime propped up by Moscow.

It is estimated that some 30,000 young, non-Afghan Islamists travelled to Pakistan in the 1980s from all over the Muslim world – from Indonesia to Morocco – to undergo this educational and guerrilla training, funded and supervised by the CIA.

The Afghan jihad ended in victory in April 1992 when the leftist regime of Dr Muhammad Najubullah fell. The victorious seven-party alliance of the Afghan Mujahedin took power, but was unable to maintain unity.

Having performed their religious duty of participating in a jihad, which succeeded, most of the non-Afghan Mujahedin returned to their countries of origin – including Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt – with a heightened religio-political consciousness.

What did they find there ?

They discovered that rulers in such countries as Egypt and Saudi Arabia were far from being truly Islamic, and that they were corrupt, and as dependent on Washington as the regime of Najibullah had been on Moscow.

The non-Afghan Muhahedin had been trained, ideologically and militarily, to fight for an independent Islamic existence, thanks largely to the largesse of the United States of America and Saudi Arabia.

Now, back in their own countries, they put their political consciousness and guerrilla expertise to work. Hence from the summer of 1992 the terrorist actions of the radical Islamist groups in Egypt and Algeria escalated sharply.

There was the expected severe backlash from the state in these countries. However, in Algeria the military regime decided to hold a presidential election on Nov. 16, which seems to have lowered the temperature.

In Egypt, on the other hand, the regime of President Hosni Mubarak has gone all out to exclude even the moderate, parliamentary Islamists, functioning under the banner of the Muslim Brotherhood, from the forthcoming poll to the National Assembly.

Hence militant Islamic group(s) in Egypt seemed to have decided to hit Egyptian targets abroad. With many of their members still resident in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan or in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan, they were in a position to carry out the terrorist act they did in Islamabad.

Their message to the Egyptian regime was: if we cannot hit you at home, we will do so abroad.

Such a clandestine group in Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, had to choose its target in such a way as to capitalise on the popular feeling against Americans in their midst. Hence their car bomb exploded in a building serving as the headquarters for the Americans training the officers of the Saudi National Guard.

Taking an overview, it is hard to de-link the current actions of these militant Islamist groups from the origins and funding of their guerrilla training by Washington and Riyadh for more than a decade.

However, it would not be the first time, or the last, that political groups have bitten the hand that fed them.

GULF: Fallout from the Afghan Jihad?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Dilip Hiro

LONDON, Nov 20 1995 (IPS) - Whereas two militant Islamic Egyptian groups claimed responsibility for the suicide bomb explosion at Egypt’s embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Sunday, which killed 16 people, no organisation owned up the car bomb blast in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Nov 13 which killed five people.
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