For the duration of the ten-year war, the United States and its allies recruited tens of thousands of Muslim fighters from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America to combat the Soviet occupation. The anti-Soviet recruits, many of whom were inspired by Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist teachings, referred to themselves as mujahideen—those who struggle to defend the Islamic faith. Spearheaded by the CIA, the endeavor was largely funded by the United States and Saudi Arabia. The CIA provided the militants with sophisticated weapons, including shoulder-fired, heat-seeking Stinger antiaircraft missiles that easily circumvented Soviet decoy flares.9 The CIA and the US Army, Navy, and Air Force Special Operations Forces, along with the UK’s Special Air Service, trained and instructed Pakistani officers and mujahideen leaders in guerrilla and terrorist tactics. Pakistan’s intelligence services trained the bulk of the mujahideen forces on the ground and provided critical logistical, intelligence, and military support, while France, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco also helped train and arm the anti-Soviet forces. Iran played a significant but independent role, training both Shi’ite and Sunni militias.
The CIA and Pakistani intelligence countered Iran’s support for Shi’ite militants in Afghanistan by bolstering Sunni organizations such as that of Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi of Yemeni descent whose family had close ties to the ruling Saudi dynasty and had made its fortune in business and finance. Bin Laden’s organization raised funds, recruited, and provided services for the mujahideen, including a hostel for Algerian, Egyptian, Saudi, and other fighters in Pakistan and a camp in Afghanistan. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, some Afghan militants—primarily religious students and mujahideen fighters—reconstituted themselves as the Taliban (Seekers of the Truth) and fought regional warlords and other mujahideen factions for political control. By 1996, the Taliban had seized most of the country, imposing law and order in areas rife with corruption, banditry, and the drug trade. Turning to opium and heroin to finance their operations, the Taliban employed brutal methods to impose their own interpretation of Islamic law.
After the Soviet departure, the foreign fighters carried their terror tactics and sophisticated weapons to new battlegrounds around the globe. Soviet-Afghan War veterans were at the forefront of guerrilla insurgencies in Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Gaza, Kashmir, the Philippines, the West Bank, and Yemen. They engaged in terrorist activities in Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, France, and the United States. CIA-backed drug lords and allies, including Osama bin Laden, funded the new networks, joined by Muslim banks and charities.
One of the most significant terrorist networks was al-Qaeda (The Base), which was established from the core of fighters and other volunteers who had passed through Osama bin Laden’s camps. Founded in 1989 with bin Laden as its primary organizer and patron, al-Qaeda advocated jihad against apostate Muslim regimes and their supporters worldwide.10 Although bin Laden considered Saddam Hussein’s secular Arab nationalist regime in Iraq to be apostate, he opposed military intervention by the US-led coalition during the First Gulf War (1990–91); he also denounced the Saudi government’s decision to allow hundreds of thousands of US and allied troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia, which was home to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Saudi government responded by expelling bin Laden from the country and, eventually, revoking his citizenship. When the Gulf War ended, the United States retained its military bases and thousands of troops on the Arabian Peninsula. The removal of US military forces from the holy land was one of al-Qaeda’s primary objectives. As a result, the United States—bin Laden’s onetime ally—would become an important al-Qaeda target.
The First Gulf War also precipitated the 1991 transfer of al-Qaeda’s headquarters and training camps to Sudan. From there the organization launched a network of cells and allied organizations that radiated into the Greater Horn of Africa, a geographic region that included Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. In May 1996, under pressure from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the UN Security Council, the Sudanese government asked bin Laden to leave. He moved al-Qaeda’s headquarters back to Afghanistan, where the organization allied with the Taliban. Blaming the United States for his ejection from Sudan, bin Laden focused new attention on this distant enemy. In August 1996 he issued a declaration of jihad against US military forces in Saudi Arabia and called on all Muslims to expel Americans and Israelis from Muslim lands.
Al-Qaeda’s September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, were preceded by a number of other assaults against US citizens and infrastructure. These included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as well as thwarted attacks on New York City bridges and tunnels, the UN headquarters, and the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; a failed attempt in 1999 to blow up Los Angeles International Airport; and in 2000, a successful attack on the US Navy destroyer USS Cole, which was docked in Yemen. Although al-Qaeda’s September 2001 attacks opened a new chapter in the war on terror, the United States had been fighting the terrorist organizations it had helped to create since the mid-1990s.
Misconceptions about Islam
If the role of the United States and its allies in fomenting extremist violence is frequently overlooked, the role of Islam in abetting terrorism is often misunderstood. The US-led war on terror has inspired or reinforced many misconceptions about Islam, a religion that originated on the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century and has spread around the world since then. The emergence of modern political movements operating under Islam’s banner has led to considerable debate over appropriate ways to distinguish these movements and the terminology used to describe them. The lack of authoritative consensus has resulted in much confusion. Islamism, a twentieth-century ideology and movement pertaining to social, political, and religious life, has been confounded with Islamic fundamentalism, which pertains to religious doctrine. Similarly, political Islam—one aspect of Islamism—is often conflated with political terrorism, actions that are embraced by only a small minority of Muslims and whose legitimacy is widely challenged in the world Muslim community. Finally, the Arabic word jihad is frequently translated as “holy war” and associated with death by the sword. In Islam, however, there are three meanings of jihad, two of them nonviolent. Although experts continue to debate the precise meaning of these terms, this study has adopted the following definitions as the most appropriate.11
Islam is the name of a world religion, derived from the Arabic word salema, which means peace, purity, submission, and obedience. The name implies submission to Allah’s will and obedience to his law. The two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shi’a, agree on its five pillars: (1) faith in a monotheistic deity, Allah, whose messenger is Muhammad; (2) engaging in prayers five times daily; (3) giving alms to the poor; (4) fasting during the holy month of Ramadan; and (5) making a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once, if physically and financially able.
Islamic fundamentalism refers to Islamic beliefs that reject religious innovation or adaptation in response to new circumstances. Practitioners of fundamentalism, more generally, advocate a return to basic religious principles and the strict application of religious law. Fundamentalism often emerges as a reaction to liberalizing trends within a religion or to secularization in the broader society. It represents a struggle between tendencies within a given religion, rather than a clash between religions. The descriptor “religious fundamentalism” was first associated with late nineteenth-century Protestant Christians in the United States who embraced a literal interpretation of the Bible. Like their Christian counterparts, Islamic fundamentalists promote strict observance of their religion’s basic tenets and laws. Their movements have gained