Afghan Arabs

Afghan Arabs (also known as Arab-Afghans) are Arab and other Muslim Islamist mujahideen who came to Afghanistan during and following the Soviet–Afghan War to aid the war efforts of native Muslims in the DRA.^[1] Despite being called "Afghan" they were not from Afghanistan nor legally citizens of Afghanistan.

Estimates of the volunteers number are 8,000^[2] to 35,000.^[3]^[4] The late Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the first Arab journalist from a major Arabic media organization to cover the Afghan jihad, estimated their numbers to be at around 10,000.^[5] Within the Muslim Arab world they achieved near hero-status for their association with the defeat of the Soviet Union, and on returning home had considerable significance waging jihad against their own and other governments. Their name notwithstanding, none were Afghans and some were not Arabs, but Turkic or Malay, among others. In the West, the arguably most famous among their ranks was Osama bin Laden.

^ Mohammed M. Hafez (March 2008). "Jihad After Iraq: Lessons from the Arab Afghans Phenomenon" (PDF). CTC Sentinel. Vol. 1, no. 4. Archived from the original on 2011-05-08.
^ Kepel, Gilles (2021). Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. London: Bloomsbury. p. 134. ISBN 978-1-3501-4859-8.
^ Commins, David (2006). The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia. London: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd. p. 174. In all, perhaps 35,000 Muslim fighters went to Afghanistan between 1982 and 1992, while untold thousands more attended frontier schools teeming with former and future fighters.
^ Rashid, Ahmed, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, 2000), p. 129.
^ Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader, Simon and Schuster (2006), p. 41

[CTCSentinel2008-03-1] Mohammed M. Hafez (March 2008). "Jihad After Iraq: Lessons from the Arab Afghans Phenomenon" (PDF). CTC Sentinel. Vol. 1, no. 4. Archived from the original on 2011-05-08.

[2] Kepel, Gilles (2021). Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. London: Bloomsbury. p. 134. ISBN 978-1-3501-4859-8.

[Commins-174-3] Commins, David (2006). The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia. London: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd. p. 174. In all, perhaps 35,000 Muslim fighters went to Afghanistan between 1982 and 1992, while untold thousands more attended frontier schools teeming with former and future fighters.

[rashid-129-4] Rashid, Ahmed, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, 2000), p. 129.

[Laden_I_Know_2006_p._41-5] Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader, Simon and Schuster (2006), p. 41

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