Afghan Arabs

(Also Arab-Afghans) Arab fighters who came to Afghanistan during conflicts dating back from the 7th century till the recent Soviet-Afghan War when they assisted fellow Muslims in fighting the Soviets and pro-Soviet Afghans.

First Wave of Arabs into Afghanistan

After decisively defeating the Sassanians in Nihawand, Arabs entered Afghanistan through north-eastern Iran where they stationed a large portion of their army in Herat before advancing toward eastern Afghanistan. During this time, some Arabs settled in the area and married locals while adopting their customs. Other groups and contingents who elected not to settle gradually pushed eastwards and encoutered fierce resistance in Bamiyan. They ultimately reached Kabul where they were subsequently confronted by the Hindu Shahis. Although the details of this battle remains somewhat unknown, the Arabs were nonetheless victorious. A famous religious legacy of this battle remains in Kabul, notably the tomb and the Mosque of the Shah of Two Swords, named after the Arab commander who fought the Hindu Shahis with two swords in his hand until each of his arms were severed. The region consequently underwent a name change to Khorasan, the land of where the sun arises from.

Following the confrontation, Arabs increasingly blended with Afghan locals as the Arabic identity began to undergo a significant change. Arabic contigents settled throughout various parts of Afghanistan including Wardak, Logar, Kabul and Balkh. They adopted local customs and Persian as their main language. Despite maintaining some clothing customs and attire, most of these Afghan-Arabs gradually lost their original tongue of Arabic. This is confirmed in the 15th century work, Baburnama, which notes that the Arabs of Afghanistan have virtually lost the Arabic language and instead speak Persian. Although the exact number of Arab Afghans remains unknown, mostly due to ambiguous claims of descent, an 18th century academic estimated that the number of Afghan-Arabs is at approximately 60,000 families. Currently, some notable descendants of the first wave of Arabs into Afghanistan, include the former President of Afghanistan, Sibghatullah Mojadadi.

File:Sibghatullah Mojaddedi.jpg

Former President of Afghanistan, Sibghatullah Mojadadi

Second Wave of Arabs into Afghanistan

After the Bolshevik Revolution, many Arabs residing in Bukhara and other areas of Central Asia migrated to Afghanistan where they were more able to practice their religion. One estimate indicated that approximately 30,000 Arabs lived in Bukhara during the mid-nineteenth century. The Arabs who entered into Afghanistan during this time still retained some Arabic in contrast to the Afghan Arabs who came during the first wave. Nevertheless, the Arabic they spoke was heavily mixed with Persian and Uzbeki words. Additionally, many Arabs from the second wave were keen to mix with the local population as they adopted the languages of Northern Afghanistan, namely Uzbek, Turkmen, and Persian. Many settled in Kunduz, Takhar and Baghlan provinces. Curently, while they still view themselves as Arab, almost all the Arabs from the second wave have lost their language of Arabic and have completly blended with the local population. Many of these Afghan Arabs work in the agricultural industry, often in growing cotton and wheat.

Third Wave of Arabs into Afghanistan

During the Soviet-Afghan War, many Arabs entered Afghanistan where they achieved near hero-status within the Muslim Arab world for their help in defeating the “godless communists” of the Soviet Union. The most famous among their number is Osama bin Laden.

One supporter of the Afghan Arabs, General Hameed Gul of head of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence, explained the recruitment of Muslims to fight in Afghanistan this way: `We are fighting a jihad and this is the first Islamic international brigade in the modern era. The Communists have their international bridgades, the West has NATO, why can't the Muslims unite and form a common front?`

Sheikh Abdullah Yusuf Azzam (1941–1989) is often credited with creating enthusiasm for the Afghan mujahideen cause in the Arab Muslim and greater Muslim world. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Shaikh Azzam issued a fatwa, Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Faith declaring defense jihad in Afghanistan fard ayn (a personal obligation) for all Muslims. "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." While Jihad in Palestine was more important, for practical reasons, "It is our opinion that we should begin [Jihad] with Afghanistan before Palestine." The edict was supported by other Shiekhs including Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti (highest religious scholar), Abd al-Aziz Bin Bazz.

Sometime after 1980, Adullah Azzam established Maktab al-Khadamat (Services Office) to organize guest houses in Peshawar just across the Afghan border in Pakistan and paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan to prepare international recruits for the Afghan war front. Using financing of Saudi Arabia and a wealthy young Saudi recruit, Osama 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" from the Muslim world. During the 1980s, Azam had forged close links with two of the Afghan mujahideen faction-leaders, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the Pakistan favorite, and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Islamic scholar from Afghanistan whom the Saudis had "sent to Peshwar to promote Wahabbism."

Its estimated that Azzam organizing paramilitary training for more than 20,000 Muslim recruits from about 20 countries around the world. (Abdullah Yusuf Azzam#Life in Pakistan and Afghanistan)

Composition

According to one source, some "35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East," fought for the Afghan Mujaheddin. Tens of thousand more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas in Pakistan and along the Afghan border, that the Pakistan government funded. Eventually "more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad."

One company of the Arabs recruited to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan comprised an estimated 10,000 men, not all of whom saw combat. They included some 2,000 Egyptians, 2,800 Algerians, 400 Tunisians, 370 Iraqis, 300 Yemenis, 200 Libyans, hundreds of Jordanians and other Arabs.

The Mujahideen of Afghanistan were divided into several factions and help by the Afghan Arabs was not equally spread amongst them. Factions led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are described as having good relations with Afghan Arabs. The faction led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, did not.

Anti-Westernism

The Muslim volunteers in Afghanistan were noted for their anti-Westernism. While some thought the many billions of dollars the United States spent to aid the mujahideen in Afghanistan might qualify itself as an ally of Muslims, the jihadis who flocked to Afghanistan saw themselves as opponents of both Communism and the West. French writer Olivier Roy, who spent some time in Afghanistan, and served as a United Nations Office for Coordinating Relief in Afghanistan (UNOCA), has written that they "did not become anti-Western after 1991 -- they had always been so."

All westerners, like me, who encountered the so-called `Arabs` inside Afghanistan during the war of resistance were struck (sometimes physically) by their hostility. The Arabs constantly asked the Afghan mujahedin commanders to get rid of the `infidels` and to choose only good Muslims as supporters, and called for the expulsion of Western NGOs....in many areas the mujahedin had to intervene to prevent physical assaults on westerners.

After the war with the Soviets

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.

After the war, many foreign mujahideen stayed in Afghanistan and took Afghan wives. The Afghan Arabs as the essential core of the foot soldiers of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Others returned "with their experience, ideology, and weapons," to their home countries, often proceding to fight jihad against the government there. The most extreme case was Algeria where jihadis fought the government in a bloody civil war that cost 150,000-200,000 lives.

Also, many of them went to Bosnia to fight against Bosnian Serbs and Croats.

Taliban era

In the mid- and late-1990s, the Afghan Arabs, in the form of Al-Qaeda, became more influential in Afghanistan helping and influencing the Taliban. Several hundred Arab-Afghans participated in the 1997 and 1998 Taliban offensives in the north and helped the Taliban carry out the massacres of the Shia Hazaras there. Several hundred more Arab-Afghans, based in the Rishkor army garrison outside Kabul, fought on the Kabul front against Masud. At the same time the Taliban's ideology changed. Until the "Taliban's contact with the Arab-Afghans and their [the Taliban's] pan-Islamic ideology was non-existent."

By 1996 and 1998, al Qaeda felt comfortable enough in the sanctuary given them to issue a declaration of war against Americans and later a fatwa to kill Americans and their allies. "The Arab-Afghans had come full circle. From being mere appendages of the Afghan jihad and the Cold War in the 1980s they had taken centre stage for the Afghans, neighbouring countries and the west in the 1990s." This was followed by al Qaeda 1998 American embassy bombings in African and the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Following the 9/11 attack, America attacked Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban, ending the heyday of the Afghan Arabs.

During the American campaign in Afghanistan in late 2001, many coherent units of Arab fighters were destroyed by JDAMs. Some Arab fighters have been held by Afghan tribesman for ransom paid by Americans.

See also

• Sayyid
• Siddiqui
• Farooqi
• Hashemi
• Quraishi
• Osmani
• Osama bin Laden
• Abdullah Yusuf Azzam
• Soviet war in Afghanistan
• 055 Brigade

External links

• FAS Article on Arab Afghan War Veterans