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114-543: It was created from smaller armed groups following the 1992 military coup and arrest and internment of thousands of officials in the Islamist Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party after that party won the first round of parliamentary elections in December 1991. It was led by a succession of amirs (commanders) who were killed or arrested one after another. Unlike the other main armed groups,

228-707: A fatwa ( Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Faith ) declaring that jihad against the Soviet Union was fard 'ayn (a personal obligation ) for every able-bodied Muslim man: "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." Although waging a jihadist struggle against Israel

342-705: A "variant of Islamist ideology based on armed struggle and extreme religious vigour" known as Salafi jihadism . The departure of the Soviets led to the start of the Afghan Civil War between Afghan Government forces and the so-called "Interim Afghan Government" , Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda participated in the failed Battle of Jalalabad , Bin Laden personally led 800 Arabs to immobilize the 7th Sarandoy regiment but failed to do so leading to many casualties. At least 300 Arabs were killed by Afghan Forces during

456-487: A 30-year-old black marketer with no education beyond primary school, became GIA amir. Violence escalated under Djafar, as did the GIA's base of support outside of Algeria. Under him, the group named and assassinated specific journalists and intellectuals (such as Tahar Djaout ), saying that "The journalists who fight against Islamism through the pen will perish by the sword." The GIA explicitly affirmed that it "did not represent

570-613: A Pakistani city near the Afghan border , as well as jihadist training camps in Afghanistan to prepare international recruits for confrontations with the Soviet Armed Forces . With financing from Saudi Arabia, including from 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" who had come from all over

684-597: A fatwa giving the MIA his blessing. In March 2006, Abdelhak Layada was released from prison, amnesty measures provided for in the Charter for Peace and Reconciliation launched by the president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika , even offering himself as a mediator to seek a truce between the government and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat . On August 21, 1993, Seif Allah Djafar, aka Mourad Si Ahmed, aka Djafar al-Afghani,

798-587: A genuinely populist expression of democratic aspirations… Yet when the army overturned the whole democratic experiment in January 1992, the United States willingly accepted the results… In short, a democratically elected Islamist government hostile to American hegemonic aspirations in the region… was considered unacceptable in Washington." Arguments against this line include that Washington's influence

912-529: A gun, and promptly return home as a hero of jihad. As the conflict continued, many Arab volunteers became sectarian and undisciplined in their violence, including in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, which served as the mujahideen's chief staging area and the centre of Afghan Arab activity. These later expatriate volunteers included many sectarian Salafists and Wahhabists who alienated their hosts with their aloof manner and particular disdain for Sufism , which

1026-484: A pejorative, and this resentment is thought by some ( Marc Sageman ) to have played a role in the relative ease with which the United States toppled the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan . In the "great gathering" of international Islamists —Arabs, Afghans, and others—at camps and training centers around Peshawar, ideas were exchanged and "many unexpected ideological cross-fertilizations" took place, particularly

1140-550: A population explosion among the poor or a pious middle class that most Muslim countries had. The Afghan Arab veterans formed a El-Mudzahidun regiment in August 1993 but hurt the Bosnian image internationally with "photographs of grinning Arab warriors brandishing the freshly severed heads of 'Christian Serbs'". The volunteers also took upon themselves Hisbah ("commanding right and forbidding wrong") and also attempted to impose

1254-432: A population explosion without jobs or housing to accommodate it, rhetoric of Third World socialism solidarity by the party and government masking "corruption on a grand scale" (and discrediting the "vocabulary of socialism"), a concentration of power and resources by the military and FLN party elite originating from the east-side of Algeria. The ruling FLN ( National Liberation Front (Algeria) ) "banned all opposition" but

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1368-524: A presence outside Algeria, in France, Belgium, Britain, Italy and the United States, and launched terror attacks in France in 1994 and 1995 . The "undisputed principal Islamist force" in Algeria in 1994, by 1996, militants were deserting "in droves", alienated by its execution of civilians and Islamist leaders. In 1999, a government amnesty law motivated large numbers of jihadis to "repent". The remnants of

1482-503: A protective canopy over the Muslim warriors in Afghanistan. Estimates of the number of Afghan Arab that came from around the world to fight in Afghanistan include 8,000, 10,000, 20,000 and 35,000. In the camps of the foreign volunteers, Azzam was said to be "able to exercise a strong influence on the unpredictable jihadists". His slogan was "Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues." He emphasized

1596-406: A social transformation within Algeria. The state, in the eyes of the GIA, was an enemy of Islam. There was a rhetoric that the state was the incarnation of taghout. In order to destroy it, they would use a strategy of organized rural and urban guerrillas. The society backed fighters would have the capabilities to overthrow the state and create a new regime based on Sharia law. In order to destabilize

1710-481: Is equivalent to sedition". He also believed jihad in Algeria was fard ayn , or an individual obligation of adult male Muslims. Layada threatened not just security forces but journalists ("grandsons of France") and the families of Algerian soldiers. From its inception on, the GIA called for and implemented the killing of anyone collaborating with or supporting the authorities, including government employees such as teachers and civil servants. Layada did not last long and

1824-479: Is held in high regard in Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent . While the first Arab Afghans were "for the most part" welcomed by native Afghan mujahideen fighters, by the end of the conflict with the Soviets, there was a great deal of mutual antagonism between the two ethnic groups. The Afghan mujahideen resented "being told they were not good Muslims" and called the expatriate volunteers " Ikhwanis " or "Wahhabis" as

1938-472: Is why Hekmatyar is one of the suspects for his demise alongside KhAD . Afghan Arabs have been described as strongly motivated by hopes for martyrdom. Rahimullah Yusufzai , the Peshawar bureau chief for the Pakistani daily News , remarked on his amazement that one camp of Arab Afghans pitched white tents on the front lines, where they were easy marks for Soviet bombers, then attacking the camp. When he asked

2052-643: The Islamic Armed Movement (MIA) of Mustafa Bouyali , were freed from prison, but was not acted on due to the spectacular electoral political success of the FIS. Embracing Sayyid Qutb's Takfir (excommunication) of secular governments and assertion that engaging in armed Jihad against Jaahili societies was mandatory; GIA leaders condemned the FLN regime as apostates and called upon Algerians to rise up, pledge allegiance to them and violently overthrow

2166-586: The Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War . The term does not refer to the history of Arabs in Afghanistan before the 1970s. Despite being referred to as Afghans , they originated from the Arab world and did not hold Afghan citizenship. It is estimated that between 8,000 and 35,000 Arabs immigrated to Afghanistan to partake in what much of the Muslim world was calling an Islamic holy war against

2280-574: The Algerian legislative election in December 1991 with twice as many votes as the ruling FLN . The FIS had made open threats against the ruling pouvoir , condemning them as unpatriotic and pro-French, as well as financially corrupt. Additionally, FIS leadership was at best divided on the desirability of democracy, and some Algerian non-Islamists expressed fears that a FIS government would be, as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian put it, "one person, one vote, one time." A secret meeting

2394-663: The Far East ," fought for the Afghan Mujahideen. 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." The Mujahideen of Afghanistan were divided into several factions and

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2508-600: The First Intifada ; the Egyptian Islamic Jihad , with whose leader Ayman al-Zawahiri he had an emerging rivalry; or Afghanistan's KhAD , possibly to cause infighting among the jihadist cause during the Soviet–Afghan War. While there was generous financial aid to Afghan guerillas throughout the 1980s, most foreign Muslim fighters did not arrive in Afghanistan until the mid-1980s. By 1986,

2622-939: The Mouvement Islamique Arme (MIA) and later the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS), in its pursuit of an Islamic state the GIA sought not to pressure the government into concessions but to destabilise and overthrow it, to "purge the land of the ungodly". Its slogan inscribed on all communiques was: "no agreement, no truce, no dialogue". GIA's ideology was inspired by the Jihadist writings of the Egyptian Islamist scholar Sayyid Qutb . The group desired to create "an atmosphere of general insecurity" and employed kidnapping , assassination , and bombings, including car bombs and targeted not only security forces but civilians. Between 1992 and 1998,

2736-568: The Philippines , Burma , South Yemen , Tashkent , Andalusia ... Sometime after August 1988, Azzam was replaced by Bin Laden as the leader of the Arab Afghans in Peshawar. In November 1989, Azzam was assassinated by a roadside bomb in an attack that is variously suspected to have been organized by one of three (or four) actors: Israel's Mossad and the United States' Central Intelligence Agency , owing to his ties with Hamas during

2850-494: The Soviet Union , which had militarily intervened in Afghanistan to support the ruling People's Democratic Party against the rebelling jihadists . The Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi , who was the first Arab journalist from a major Arabic-language media organization to cover the Soviet–Afghan War, approximated that there were 10,000 Arab volunteer fighters in Afghanistan during the conflict. Among many Muslims ,

2964-677: The United Kingdom and the United Nations ,. The GIA remains a Proscribed Organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000 . Canada once listed GIA as a terrorist entity until 18 June 2024. According to Algerian veterans of the Afghan jihad who founded the GIA, the idea of forming an armed group to fight jihad against the Algerian government was developed not after the coup but in 1989 after leaders of

3078-453: The socialist government in pursuit of establishing an Islamic state in Algeria. Support base of the GIA mainly consisted of the educationally and economically underprivileged classes of the Algerian society. Early in 1992, Mansour Meliani , a former aid to Bouyali, along with many " Afghans ", broke with his former friend Abdelkader Heresay and left the MIA ( Islamic Armed Movement ), founding his own Jihadi group around July 1992. Meliani

3192-624: The Afghan Arabs jihadis who flocked to Afghanistan, however, saw themselves as opponents of the West every bit as much as of Communism . French writer Olivier Roy , who spent some years in Afghanistan, and served with the United Nations Office for Coordinating Relief in Afghanistan (UNOCA), has written that the jihadis "did not become anti-Western after 1991 – they had always been so." All westerners, like me, who encountered

3306-403: The Afghan Arabs achieved near hero-status for their association with the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1989 , and it was with this prestige that they were later able to exert considerable influence in mounting jihadist struggles in other countries, including their own. Their name notwithstanding, none of them were Afghans, and some who were grouped with the community were not even Arabs—a number of

3420-470: The Afghan Arabs helped some factions much more than others. Factions led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are described as having had good relations with Arab foreign fighters, Bin Laden would personally finance the 1990 Afghan Coup attempt by Hardline Communist Khalqists and Gulbuddin's Hezbi Islami . The faction led by Ahmad Shah Massoud , had good relations with Abdullah Azzam which

3534-508: The Afghan Arabs in Afghanistan as a fighting force has been scoffed at, called a "curious sideshow to the real fighting," Estimates are there were about 2000 Arab Afghans fighting "at any one time", compared with about a 250,000 Afghan fighters and 125,000 Soviet troops. Marc Sageman , a Foreign Service Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987 to 1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan's Mujahideen, says Contemporaneous accounts of

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3648-531: The Afghan refugees." In contrast according to former British Defence Secretary Michael Portillo , late Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto told him said Osama bin Laden was initially pro-American. According to Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, on the one occasion he met and talked to Osama bin Laden, bin Laden thanked him for his "efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against

3762-824: The Afghans, neighbouring countries and the west in the 1990s." This was followed by al Qaeda 1998 American embassy bombings in African countries and the September 11, 2001 attacks . Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 , America invaded Afghanistan , deposing 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. Perhaps

3876-644: The Algerian embassy in Paris.' According to Ahmed, "Joseph's testimony has been corroborated by numerous defectors from the Algerian secret services." (Ahmed also claims that the "British intelligence believed the Algerian Government was involved in atrocities, contradicting the view the Government was claiming in public".) However, according to Andrew Whitley of Human Rights Watch , "It was clear that armed Islamist groups were responsible for many of

3990-522: The Algerian secret service', and 'General Smain Lamari', head of 'the counter intelligence agency' and ... 'In 1992 Smain created a special group, L'Escadron de la Mort (the Squadron of Death)... The death squads organized the massacres ... ' including 'at least' two of the bombs in Paris in summer 1995. That operation was (allegedly) 'run by Colonel Souames Mahmoud, alias Habib, head of the secret service at

4104-443: The Arab Afghans" by fall of 1989. Others returned "with their experience, ideology, and weapons," to their home (or other Muslim) countries, often proceeding to fight jihad against the government there. However minimal the impact of the "Afghan" Arabs on the war against the Soviets, the return of the volunteers to their home countries was often not. In Foreign Affairs Peter Bergen writes: The foreign volunteers in Afghanistan saw

4218-535: 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

4332-436: The Arabs why, they replied: "We want them to bomb us! We want to die!" Bin Laden himself has said: "I wish I could raid and be slain, and then raid and be slain, and then raid and be slain." The Afghan resistance "had been considerably romanticized in the American press and had made tours through American churches, where they were lauded for their spiritual courage in the common fight against Marxism and godlessness". Some of

4446-589: The Battle. The President of Afghanistan, Mohammad Najibullah was highly critical of Arab involvement in Afghanistan, claiming Wahabi Arabs would destroy Afghan values and culture and lead to an American invasion in the future. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Najibullah Government lost its most important trading partner. The new Russian government under Boris Yeltsin cut exports to Najibullah's Government and in 1992 President Najibullah

4560-641: The Coptic Christian minority , and by 1992 had broadened their targets to police and tourists, causing serious harm to Egypt's economy. Violence in Egypt reached its peak in the November 1997 Luxor massacre of 60 people most of whom were tourists. In the mid- and late-1990s, the Afghan Arabs, in the form of the Wahhabi -oriented Al-Qaeda , became more influential in Afghanistan helping and influencing

4674-510: The French language, liquor stores, video shops, enforcing sharia law in general -- however popular, were unlikely to be much help against Algeria's long-term problems; that while the Islamists were very much in favor of the opportunity to gain power through democratic elections, that doesn't mean they would have surrendered power after elections later on, and statements by its leaders before

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4788-480: The GIA 1999–2002 The 1992 Algerian coup d'état took place on 11 January 1992. Concerned by the FIS ( Islamic Salvation Front ) victory in the first round of the 1991 parliamentary election , the army took action and cancelled the electoral process to prevent the forming of an Islamic state in Algeria . The army forced president Chadli Bendjedid to resign and brought in the exiled Mohamed Boudiaf to serve as

4902-516: The GIA and GSPC leadership continue to proclaim their rejection of President Bouteflika's amnesty, but in contrast to the GIA, the GSPC has stated that it avoids attacks on civilians. Zouabri was himself killed in a gun battle with security forces 9 February 2002. The GIA, torn by splits and desertions and denounced by all sides even in the Islamist movement, was slowly destroyed by army operations over

5016-468: The GIA conducted a violent campaign of civilian massacres , sometimes wiping out entire villages in its area of operation (notably those in Bentalha and Rais ). It attacked and killed other Islamists who had left the GIA or attempted to negotiate with the government. It also targeted foreign civilians living in Algeria, killing more than 100 expatriate men and women in the country. The group established

5130-582: The GIA proper were hunted down over the next two years, leaving a splinter group the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which announced its support for Al-Qaeda in October 2003. The extent to which the group was infiltrated and manipulated by Algerian security services is disputed. The GIA is considered a terrorist organisation by the governments of Algeria , France , the United States , Argentina , Bahrain , Japan , New Zealand ,

5244-536: The GIA reached its "high water mark", and became the "undisputed principal Islamist force" in Algeria. In May, Islamist leaders Abderrezak Redjam (allegedly representing the FIS), Mohammed Said , the exiled Anwar Haddam , and the MEI's Said Makhloufi joined the GIA; a blow to the FIS and surprise since the GIA had been issuing death threats against the three since November 1993. This was interpreted by many observers as either

5358-535: The GIA was heavily infiltrated at top level by agents of Algerian intelligence such as the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), who drove the organisation towards excessive violence against civilians in order to undermine its popular support. According to Heba Saleh of BBC News, Algerian opposition sources allege that the group may have been manipulated at times by elements within ruling military and intelligence circles. A series of massacres in

5472-431: The GIA was the assassination of Abdelkader Alloula, a theater director in Algeria and Cheb Hasni the most popular Raï music singer. In 1999, following the election of a new president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika , a new law gave amnesty to most guerrillas, motivating large numbers to "repent" and return to normal life. The violence declined substantially after Antar Zouabri was killed in 2002, Rachid Abou Tourab succeeded him and

5586-511: The GIA). A week earlier the AIS insurgents announced it would declare a unilateral truce starting in October. These events marked the end of "organized jihad in Algeria," according to one source (Gilles Kepel) Although Zouabri was seldom heard of after this and the jihad exhausted, massacres "continued unabated" through 1998 led by independent amirs with added "ingredients of vendetta and local dispute" to

5700-525: The GIA, claiming that the GIA had deviated from Islam and that this "Caliphate" was an effort by Mohammed Said to take over the GIA, and Haddam soon afterwards denied ever having joined it, asserting that this Caliphate was an invention of the security services. The GIA continued attacking its usual targets, notably assassinating artists, such as Cheb Hasni , and in late August added a new one to its list, threatening schools which allowed mixed classes, music, gym for girls, or not wearing hijab with arson . He

5814-549: The Islamist movement lost popular support and the government prevailed. Bosnia was a major issue in the Muslim World which saw it as an aggression of Christians against Muslims and proof of Western double standards on human rights. About 4000 Jihadists from Peshawar and new international recruits went to fight in Bosnia, but their calls for Jihad and re-Islamization often fell on deaf ears among Bosnian Muslims which lacked

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5928-486: The Muslim world, but also the United States in search of funding and young Muslim recruits. He inspired young Muslims with stories of miraculous deeds: mujahideen who defeated vast columns of Soviet troops virtually single-handed, who had been run over by tanks and survived, who were shot and still unscathed by bullets; while angels were said to ride into battle on horseback, and falling bombs were said to be intercepted by birds, which raced ahead of Soviet fighter jets to form

6042-447: The Muslim world. During the 1980s, Azzam had forged close links with two of the Afghan mujahideen's faction leaders: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar , who was favoured by the Pakistani government; and Abdulrab Rasul Sayyaf , who was receiving close support from Saudi Arabian authorities for the purpose of spreading Wahhabism (a stream of Islamic revivalism that originated in 18th-century Saudi Arabia) throughout Afghanistan. Azzam toured not only

6156-703: The Sadat assassination, Ibrahim el-Mekkawi , maintained training camps and other bases near the Afghan-Pakistan border and directed the Islamic campaign in Egypt from Pakistan according to authorities in Cairo. Egypt's institutions had more political strength and religious credibility than Algeria's, and hundreds rather than thousands were killed in the terror campaign before it was crushed in 1997–8. Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya militants harassed and murdered members of

6270-489: The Soviet Union had begun contemplating a military withdrawal from Afghanistan. As it became increasingly clear that the mujahideen's fight against the Soviet military was succeeding, it achieved more popularity with Muslims worldwide and thereby attracted more foreign volunteer fighters. Consequently, a significant amount of Arab jihadists arrived in Afghanistan when they were least needed; the late arrivals were reportedly twice

6384-422: 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

6498-584: 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 General Ahmad Shah Massoud . At the same time the Taliban's ideology changed. Until the "Taliban's contact with

6612-412: The armed wing of the FIS", and issued death threats against several FIS and MIA members, including MIA's Heresay and FIS's Kebir and Redjam. About the time al-Afghani took power of GIA, a group of Algerian jihadists returning from Afghanistan came to London. Together with Islamist intellectual Abu Qatada , they started up a weekly magazine, Usrat al-Ansar as a GIA propaganda outlet. Abu Qatada "provided

6726-456: The atheists, he said the communists." Robin Cook , former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, wrote in The Guardian on Friday, July 8, 2005, Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database",

6840-442: The civilian attacks hurt the GIA—not because of any evidence" to support it. Abrahms describes the proliferation of false flag conspiracy theories, such as 9/11 conspiracy theories , as a commonplace reaction to the generally counterproductive effects of terrorist violence, but notes that it is a fallacy to assume that the perpetrators and beneficiaries of terrorism must be the same. Abrahms cites Mohammed Hafez, an academic expert on

6954-416: The communique and two days later (September 29) announced the end of his support and the closure of the bulletin, cutting off GIA's communication with international Islamist community and the rest of the outside world. In Algeria, the slaughters drained the GIA of popular support (although evidence showed security forces cooperated with the killers preventing civilians from escaping, and may even have controlled

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7068-424: The confidence of government supporters. Conversely, the morale of the mujahideen involved in the attack slumped and many local commanders of Hekmatyar concluded truces with the government. Over 300 Arab foreign fighters were killed by Afghan Forces during the Battle. According to one source, some "35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East , North and East Africa , Central Asia and

7182-493: 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. Three countries where Afghan Arabs had the biggest impact immediately following the war were Bosnia-Herzegovina , where they fought against Bosnian Serbs and Croats , Algeria and Egypt , where they fought

7296-419: The coup, as well as the killings of hundreds of civilians, foreign and domestic, by Islamist guerillas in the subsequent bloody and destructive civil war do not inspire confidence that it would have, if the coup had never happened. Afghan Arabs Afghan Arabs ( Arabic : أفغان عرب ; Pashto : افغان عربان ; Dari : عرب های افغان ) were the Arab Muslims who immigrated to Afghanistan and joined

7410-447: The end of 1993 26 foreigners had been killed. In November 1993 Sheik Mohamed Bouslimani "a popular figure who was prominent" in Hamas party of Mahfoud Nahnah was kidnapped and executed after "refusing to issue a fatwa endorsing the GIA's tactics." Djafar was killed by French security forces February 26, 1994 during the raid on Air France flight 8969 . Cherif Gousmi , aka Abu Abdallah Ahmed, became amir March 10, 1994. Under him,

7524-451: The end of the 1990s the group was spent, somewhere between 40,000 and 200,000 lives had been lost, and the once broad and enthusiastic support by voters for the anti-government Islamism was replaced "with a deep fear of instability". Algeria was one of the few in the Arab world not to participate in the Arab Spring . In Egypt, "fundamentalists fighting the government in the 1990s included "several hundred 'Afghan' guerrillas". The main group

7638-467: The first major victory of the Civil War. The battle was an international embarrassment for the Pakistanis whom had supported the "Interim Afghan Government" causing the sacking of ISI head Hamid Gul In the words of Brigadier-General Mohammed Yousaf, an officer of the ISI, "the jihad never recovered from Jalalabad". Contrary to American and Pakistani expectations, this battle proved that the Afghan Army could fight without Soviet help, and greatly increased

7752-496: The foreign jihadists in Afghanistan were Turkic or Malay , among other ethnicities. To the Western world , the most notorious Afghan Arab fighter was Osama bin Laden , who immigrated to Afghanistan from Saudi Arabia and founded al-Qaeda , which carried out the September 11 attacks against the United States in 2001, prompting the American invasion of Afghanistan a month later. Bin Laden then took refuge in Pakistan (with alleged Pakistani support ) until May 2011, when he

7866-637: The government in the Algerian Civil War after the army intervened to prevent the leading Islamist party from winning elections scheduled for January 1992. Sief Allah Djafar, aka Djafar al-Afghani, spent two years in Afghanistan and in 1993 became "amir" of the GIA. Providing doctrinal justifications for the GIA and a "steady stream of pro-GIA publicity" for Muslims outside Algeria (until June 1996 when GIA atrocities became too much) were two other Afghan veterans, Abu Mousab (a Spanish Syrian) and Abu Qatada (a Palestinian). The GIA slogan—"no agreement, no truce, no dialogue"—echoed that of Abdullah Azzam. The group

7980-408: The group into the dead end of mass murder" Another source, journalist Nafeez Ahmed claims that 'Yussuf-Joseph'—an anonymous 14-year "career secret agent" in Algeria's sécurité militaire who defected to Britain in 1997 and claims to have had access to "all the secret telexes"—told Ahmed that GIA atrocities were not the work of 'Islamic extremists', but were 'orchestrated' by 'Mohammed Mediane, head of

8094-550: The importance of jihad: "those who believe that Islam can flourish [and] be victorious without jihad, fighting, and blood are deluded and have no understanding of the nature of this religion," and that Afghanistan was only the beginning: This duty [i.e., jihad] shall not lapse with victory in Afghanistan, and the jihad will remain an individual obligation until all other lands which formerly were Muslim come back to us and Islam reigns within them once again. Before us lie Palestine , Bukhara , Lebanon , Chad , Eritrea , Somalia ,

8208-521: The intellectual and ideological firepower" to justify GIA actions, and the journal became "a trusted source of news and information about the GIA for Islamists around the world." The GIA soon broadened its attacks to civilians who refused to live by their prohibitions, and then foreigners living in Algeria. A hostage released on 31 October 1993 carried a message ordering foreigners to "leave the country. We are giving you one month. Anyone who exceeds that period will be responsible for his own sudden death." By

8322-482: The killings of both civilians and security force members that had been attributed to them by the authorities. According to the Shadow Report on Algeria , Algerians such as Zazi Sadou, have collected testimonies by survivors that their attackers were unmasked and were recognised as local radicals - in one case even an elected member of the FIS. According to Max Abrahms , "the false flag allegation arose because

8436-479: The major contribution of the more serious Afghan Arab volunteers was humanitarian aid —- the setting up of hospitals around Peshawar and Quetta and providing funds for supply caravans to travel to the interior of the country. Abdullah Anas, himself one of the most famous of these Afghan-Arabs fighters, said that "90 percent were teachers, cooks, accountants, doctors [over the border in Pakistan]." The effectiveness of

8550-542: The modern era. The Communists have their international brigades, the West has NATO , why can't the Muslims unite and form a common front?" The Palestinian jihadist Abdullah Yusuf Azzam , who was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, is often credited with creating enthusiasm for the Afghan mujahideen cause in Arab countries and throughout the broader Muslim world. Upon the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, Azzam issued

8664-403: The new president. The military argued that they had done this to "safeguard Algeria's republican institutions from political and radical Islamists" and to prevent Algeria from turning into a theocratic state. Preceding the coup were social-political-economic problems such as a 1986 collapse of oil prices (at the time 95% of Algerian exports and 60% of the government budget came from petroleum),

8778-402: The next few years; by the time of Antar Zouabri's death it was effectively incapacitated. In Algeria, the desire to have a violent and armed version of Islamism wasn't the primary mode of action for the GIA. There was no idea to use violence as a notion of sacrifice or martyrdom, which is quite common in other Islamist groups. In this case, the GIA used violence as an instrument of change to have

8892-420: The number of those who partook in the fighting against the Soviets at the height of the conflict. Many of the later volunteers were different than the early "Afghan" Arab volunteers, who were inspired by Azzam, and have been criticized for being less serious: Some Saudi tourists came to earn their jihad credentials. Their tour was organized so that they could step inside Afghanistan, get photographed discharging

9006-584: The oil money used to pacify the population had been decimated. On 4 October 1988, massive riots and destruction by the urban poor was met with "ruthless" police response killing hundreds. In 1989, the FIS was founded. It was influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood and quickly gained popularity in Algeria. It won control of many local governments in the June 1990 municipal elections, and won the first round of

9120-405: The others". The 26-year-old activist was a "close confidant" of Zitouni and continued his policy of "ever increasing violence and redoubled purges". Zouabri opened his reign as emir by issuing a manifesto entitled The Sharp Sword , presenting Algerian society as resistant to jihad and lamented that the majority of the people had "forsaken religion and renounced the battle against its enemies," but

9234-400: The poor, leaving many young people no hope for the future. The GIA was able to act as a place for young men to feel a part of something larger. Leveilley was replaced in January 1993 by Abdelhak Layada , who declared his group independent of the FIS and MIA and not obedient to its orders. It adopted the radical Omar El-Eulmi as a spiritual guide, and Layada affirmed that "political pluralism

9348-400: The putative jihad against the government. Armed groups "that had formerly belonged to the GIA" continued to kill, some replacing jihad with simple banditry, others settling scores with the pro-government "patriots" or others, some enlisting themselves in the services of landowners and frightening illegal occupants off of property. In 1999 the "Law on Civil Concord" granting amnesty to fighters

9462-469: The remains back to the besieged city in a truck with the message that this would be the fate awaiting the infidels. Despite apologies and assurances of safety from Afghan resistance leaders, the Communists ended their negotiations of surrender, spurred them on to break the siege of Jalalabad launching over 400 Scud Ballistic Missiles at Mujahedeen(Interim Afghan Government) positions leading them to win

9576-409: The respective governments. According to Compass, 2,000 Egyptians and 2,800 Algerians were trained for combat in the Pakistan border area though not all of these volunteers saw action in Afghanistan. Several hundred had recently returned home by 1992. In Bosnia the war ended with peace accords and American peacekeeping troops rather than sharia law. In both Algeria and Egypt after much blood letting

9690-543: The result of intra-FIS competition or as an attempt to change the GIA's course from within. On 26 August, the group declared a " Caliphate ", or Islamic government for Algeria, with Gousmi as Commander of the Faithful , Mohammed Said as head of government, the US-based Haddam as foreign minister, and Mekhloufi as provisional interior minister. However, the very next day Said Mekhloufi announced his withdrawal from

9804-614: The so-called "Arabs" inside Afghanistan during the war of resistance were struck (sometimes physically) by their hostility. The Arabs constantly asked the Afghan mujahideen 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 mujahideen had to intervene to prevent physical assaults on westerners. Author Gilles Kepel writes that in Peshwar Pakistan, some Afghan Arabs attacked "Europe and American humanitarian agencies ... trying to help

9918-552: The state, the GIA instigated terror throughout the country. Using acts of violence such as planned assassinations, vehicle bombings, kidnappings. They often attacked members of the Algerian army and the police force. As time passed the GIA did not limit their violence to only stately officials. They used violence as a means of social control on the civilian population as well. They would commit theatrical assassinations in front of large groups of people so they could spread fear and have people support their cause. Two notable assassinations by

10032-442: The subject who concluded: "The evidence does not support the claim that security forces were the principal culprits behind the massacres, or even willing conspirators in the barbaric violence against civilians. Instead, the evidence points to the GIA as the principal perpetrator of the massacres." 1992 Algerian coup d%27%C3%A9tat Coup succeeded Escalation 1994–1996 Massacres and reconciliation 1996–1999 Defeat of

10146-571: The summer of 1997 - in which many hundreds of people were killed - took place near Algerian army barracks, but no-one came to the help of the victims. Fouad Ajami writing in The New Republic in 2010: called the GIA "a bastard child of the encounter between the Islamists and the security services of the regime." John Schindler in The National Interest stated, "Much of GIA's leadership consisted of DRS agents, who drove

10260-401: The suspension of the second round of the election. On 11 January 1992, the army took power and forced president Chadli Bendjedid to resign. Chadli appeared on national television and announced his resignation in a quiet voice: "Given the difficulty and gravity of the current situation, I consider my resignation necessary to protect the unity of the people and the security of the country". He

10374-493: The territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina and were replaced by NATO peacekeeping forces, a "bitter experience" for Afghan Arab jihadist-salafists. According to Gilles Kepel as of 2003, the only thing left of their presence are "a few naturalized Arab subjects married to Bosnian women." Several veterans of jihad in Afghanistan were important in the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria or GIA—one of two insurgent groups fighting

10488-449: The veil on women and the beard on men and in addition engaged in causing disturbances in the ceremonies of [Sufi] brotherhoods they deemed to be deviant, ... smashing up cafes, and ... [organizing] sharia marriages to Bosnian girls that were not declared to the civil authorities. After the 1995 Dayton Agreement (which gave Bosniaks control of 30% of the Bosnia and Herzegovina) were signed, all foreign volunteers were invited to leave

10602-522: The villages of Rais , Bentalha , Beni Messous. Pregnant women were sliced open, children were hacked to pieces or dashed against walls, men's limbs were hacked off one by one, and, as the attackers retreated, they would kidnap young women to keep as sex slaves. The GIA issued a communiques signed by Zouabri claiming responsibility for the massacres and justifying them—in contradiction to his manifesto—by declaring impious ( takfir ) all those Algerians who had not joined its ranks. In London Abu Hamzu criticised

10716-748: The war against the Afghan Marxist government following the Soviet withdrawal. The March 1989 the Pakistani/American sponsored Battle for Jalalabad , was supposed to be the beginning of the end for the Afghan Communist government forces , the PDPA Government began negotiations with the "Interim Afghan Government" . Unfortunately, radical non-Afghan salafists became involved, executing some 60 surrendering Communists, cutting their corpses into small pieces, and sending

10830-478: The war do not even mention [the Afghan Arabs]. Many were not serious about the war. ... Very few were involved in actual fighting. For most of the war, they were scattered among the Afghan groups associated with the four Afghan fundamentalist parties. One instance where the foreign volunteers did participate in the fighting is reported to have backfired disastrously, hurting the Afghan resistance by prolonging

10944-679: Was assassinated by U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six , though the American-led War in Afghanistan against the Taliban continued until August 2021. Pakistani military officer Hamid Gul , who led the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1987 to 1989, stated of his country's role in recruiting Muslim volunteer fighters in Afghanistan: "We are fighting a jihad and this is the first Islamic international brigade in

11058-469: Was allegedly killed by close aides in July 2004. He was replaced by Boulenouar Oukil. By 2004, GIA membership had dwindled, and they only had around 30 members left. On 7 April 2005, the GIA was reported to have killed 14 civilians at a fake road block. Three weeks later on 29 April, Oukil was arrested. Nourredine Boudiafi was the last known "emir" of the GIA. He was arrested sometime in November 2004, his arrest

11172-408: Was announced by the Algerian government in January 2005. A splinter group of the GIA that formed on the fringes of Kabylie (north central coast) in 1998, called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), rejected the amnesty. It dissociated itself from the previous indiscriminate killing of civilians and reverted to the classic MIA-AIS tactics of targeting combatant forces. This break away

11286-566: Was appointed the new president of Algeria. He arrived from Morocco after an official absence of 28 years in exile. He was chosen to give the regime a fresh image and an enhanced sense of legitimacy to attract popular support for the regime, but was assassinated several months later in June. The army then rounded up tens of thousands of FIS supporters and put them in camps in the middle of the Algerian Desert . According to John Enteils, "the Arab world had never before experienced such

11400-420: Was arrested in July and executed in August 1993. Meliani was replaced by Mohammed Allal, aka Moh Leveilley, who was killed on 1 September 1992 by the Algerian military when they attacked a meeting held to unify command of the jihad. The economic state of Algeria was in a dire situation, where the majority of the young people were unemployed. In Algeria, there was no middle class, there were the rich and there were

11514-650: Was arrested in Morocco in May 1993. Besides the GIA, the other major branch of the Algerian resistance was the Islamic Armed Movement (MIA). It was led by the ex-soldier "General" Abdelkader Chebouti, and was "well-organized and structured and favored a long-term jihad" targeting the state and its representatives and based on a guerrilla campaign like that of the War of Independence. From prison, Ali Benhadj issued

11628-609: Was careful to deny that the GIA had ever accused Algerian society itself of impiety ( kufr ). Convinced of Zouabri's salafist orthodoxy, Egyptian veteran of the Afghan jihad Abu Hamza restarted the Al-Ansar bulletin/magazine in London. During the month of Ramadan (January–February 1997) hundreds of civilians were killed in massacres some with their throats cut. The massacres continued for months and culminated in August and September when hundreds of men women and children were killed in

11742-496: Was committed to overthrowing the "impious" Algerian government and worked to prevent any compromise between them and the Islamist FIS party . Under Djafar, the GIA broadened its attacks to include civilians who refused to live by their prohibitions, and then foreigners living in Algeria. By the end of 1993 26 foreigners had been killed. In November 1993 it kidnapped and executed Sheik Mohamed Bouslimani "a popular figure who

11856-430: Was held in December 1991 to discuss the options available to the military, attended by all senior generals including Khaled Nezzar , Abdelmalek Guenaizia , leaders of the navy, gendarmerie and security services. They agreed that the FIS's path to victory should be blocked by using constitutional mechanisms rather than by physical force. They also decided that president Chadli Bendjedid had to resign because this would force

11970-404: Was killed in combat on September 26, 1994. Cherif Gousmi was eventually succeeded by Djamel Zitouni who became GIA head on October 27, 1994. He was the responsible for carrying out a series of bombings in France in 1995 . He was killed by a rival faction on July 16, 1996. Antar Zouabri, was the longest serving "emir" (1996–2002) was nominated by a faction of the GIA "considered questionable by

12084-488: Was led by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Shawky al-Istambouli—brother of the army lieutenant who led the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in October 1981. Al-Istambouli established a base in Jalalabad , in eastern Afghanistan, during the war. (The Islamist terror group al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya still had about 200 men there in 1994.) A former army colonel and "prominent fundamentalist" who fled Egypt after

12198-490: Was led by Hassan Hattab . In October 2003, they announced their support for Al-Qaeda and in 2006, Ayman al-Zawahiri announced a "blessed union" between the two groups. In 2007, the group changed its name to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb . It has focused on kidnapping for ransom as a means of raising funds and is estimated to have raised more than $ 50 million from 2003 to 2013. Various claims have been made that

12312-399: Was likely limited with Algeria's ruling party, the anti-capitalist, anti-secular, anti-European culture, pro-Islamic identity third world socialist FLN ; that after its massive 1990 municipal elections victory, the FIS was praised for its virtue in governance, but the solutions it offered to Algeria's problems -- forced hijab, separate swimming areas, banning French culture and any use of

12426-451: Was officially rejected by the GIA but accepted by many rank-and-file Islamist fighters; an estimated 85 percent surrendered their arms and returned to civilian life. The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat ( GSPC ) splinter faction appears to have eclipsed the GIA since approximately 1998 and is currently assessed by the CIA to be the most effective armed group remaining inside Algeria. Both

12540-663: Was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. However the notion that the CIA had any contact with non-Afghan mujahideen and specifically bin Laden is disputed by a number of sources. According to Peter Bergen of CNN the story that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden—is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and

12654-571: Was prominent" in the moderate Islamist Algerian Hamas party who refused "to issue a fatwa endorsing the GIA's tactics." Djafar was killed February 26, 1994, but GIA continued to escalate violence, massacring whole villages of peasants for their alleged apostasy from Islam manifested by their failure to support GIA's jihad. Though the "undisputed principal Islamist force" in Algeria in 1994, by 1996, militants were deserting "in droves", alienated by its execution of civilians and Islamists leaders and believing it to be infiltrated by government agents. By

12768-616: Was regarded with the most importance in the Arab world, for practical reasons, "it is our opinion that we should begin [jihad] with Afghanistan before Palestine ." The edict was supported by other prominent sheikhs , including the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (the country's highest religious authority) Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd Allah Al Baz . Sometime after 1980, Azzam established the Maktab al-Khidamat to organize guest houses in Peshawar ,

12882-618: Was removed from power by 4 of his Generals and the Homeland Party government in Kabul ceased to exist in April 1992. After this, some foreign mujahideen stayed in Afghanistan participating in the following Civil War caused by the power vacuum left behind from the dissolved Afghan Military . These Arab foreign fighters served as the essential core of the foot soldiers of Osama bin Laden 's Al Qaeda , bin Laden being seen, according to journalist Lawrence Wright, as "the undisputed leader of

12996-415: Was replaced with a High Council of State . The army then moved onto the streets of Algiers the next day as tanks and troops guarded important locations in the city, and suspended the electoral process. The High Council of State announced the appointment of a HCE as a collective successor to Chadli, comprising Khaled Nezzar , Ali Kafi , Tijani Haddam, Ali Haroun and Mohamed Boudiaf . Mohamed Boudiaf

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