AFGHAN VETERANS

The war in Afghanistan officially came to an end after the communist government of Major General Najibullah was ousted by the Muslim rebels in 1992. Volunteers coming from the whole Muslim world played a major role in that victory. Once back home, most of these veterans joined local Islamic fundamentalist armed groups and participated in clandestine and violent campaigns aimed at overthrowing governments in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and other predominantly Muslim states.

The irony is that the Afghan mujahidin received for many years billions of dollars of clandestine aid, essentially from the United States and Saudi Arabia. Historically it was the second time that the United States clearly and undoubtedly funded Islamic fundamentalist activists: at the turn of the 1950's the CIA helped the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in order to use them to undermine Nasser's regime.

When the Afghan conflict came to an end the U.S.A. stopped their financial aid to the foreign Muslim fighters and their families back home, and the former found themselves inactive and penniless. And so the United States indirectly brought trained combatants into one of the most unstable parts of the world. An amazing amount of arms - some sophisticated like Stinger anti-aircraft missiles - supplied to the rebels in Afghanistan in the eighties also found their way to other countries, part of which the Americans have once tried to buy back on the black market at the highest prices.

Iran and - it can be assumed - some other countries employed some of those easily found and cheap mercenaries. Veterans went to training camps in various countries (for example the Sudan) and gradually returned to their home states, essentially Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. It is impossible to know exactly what happened between their departure from Afghanistan and their return to their respective countries.

An interesting example is that of Algeria, where these veterans, trained in the arts of guerrilla warfare, terrorism and sabotage, were active in the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) . Four years ago, its Vice-Presidents were both Afghan veterans: Kamreddine Kherbane, who presided over the Bureau of the Arab mujahidins in Peshawar (Pakistan) during the Afghan conflict, and Abdallah Anas who used to be the military counsellor of commander Massoud, head of one of the most important Afghan factions. Still in Algeria the majority of the chiefs of the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) , specialized in slaughters and bomb attacks against civilians, took part in the Afghan war. One of its most famous commanders (now dead), Mourad Sid Ahmed carried a very explicit war-name: Djaafar el-Afgani. GIA fighters are called the "Afghanis".

Although it is probable that the rise of the Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Arab world would exist without their presence, it is clear that the Afghan war veterans, with their skills and commitment to a radical ideology of political Islam, play an important part in the violence which destabilizes a number of Arab countries.

More recently, a coalition of several Islamic fundamentalist armed groups - the International Islamic Front - suspected in bomb attacks against US interests around the world seems to be strongly linked with former Afghan veterans.

See also: Islamism and Osama Bin Laden.

(August 1998)