Afghan Arabs

The term Afghan Arabs (also known as Arab-Afghans) refers mostly to Arab and other Muslim Islamist mujahideen who came to Afghanistan during and following the Soviet-Afghan War to help fellow Muslims fight Soviets and pro-Soviet Afghans.

Estimates of the volunteers number are 20,000 to 35,000. Observers and journalists covering the war have cast doubt on their significance as a fighting force in Afghanistan, but within the Muslim Arab world they achieved near hero-status for their association with the defeat of the militant atheist, anti-religious Communist superpower that was 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, Malay or from some other Muslim ethnicity. In the West, the arguably most famous among their ranks was Osama bin Laden.

Apart from the entering Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Arabs entered the area today known as Afghanistan in earlier centuries in two distinct waves. During the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan, many Arabs settled throughout the region, while another wave arrived during the Bolshevik Revolution. "Afghan Arabs" who entered Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War began arriving in the early 1980s.

One supporter of the Afghan Arabs, General Hameed Gul, the former 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 brigades, the West has NATO, why can't the Muslims unite and form a common front?`

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Wikipedia