Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Larry P. Goodson, Afghanistan’s End-

less War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of 

the Taliban (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 

2001); Ahmed Rasheed, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and 

Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, Conn.: 

Yale University Press, 2001).

Afghan mujahidin

The Afghan mujahidin (warriors) are bands of 

Muslim guerrillas who fought against the Soviet 

occupation of a

Fghanistan

 in 1979–89 and then 

turned against each other in a bloody civil war 

that resulted in the creation of the t

aliban

 regime 

in 1996. Informal Islamist parties began appearing 

in Afghanistan in the mid-1960s, at a time when 

the radical ideologies of s

ayyid

  q

Utb

 (d. 1966) 

and a

bU

 

al

-a

la

 m

aWdUdi

 (d. 1979) were becom-

ing a strong presence in neighboring Pakistan. 

Afghan Islamist parties at the time began adopting 

the call for 

Jihad

, which was central to Qutb’s and 

Maududi’s programs. It was only with the Soviet 

invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, however, that 

these calls were seriously heeded.

Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation com-

prised many different elements, including national-

ist parties, pro-China communists, and Islamists. It 

was the latter group, however, that dominated the 

fight to expel the Soviets. Based in Afghan refugee 

camps in Peshewar, Pakistan, Islamist resistance 

groups, called the mujahidin, quickly began receiv-

ing money and arms from s

aUdi

  a

rabia

 and the 

U

nited

  s

tates

. The dominant force among the 

Afghan resistance was the Hezb-e-Islami (Islamic 

Party), led by g

UlbUddin

  h

ekmatyar

 (b. 1947?), 

one of the earliest and most conservative Afghani 

Islamist activists. Early disunity among as many as 

seven different Afghan mujahidin groups slowed 

the progress of the fight against the Soviets, but 

with foreign assistance, they were able to operate 

effectively on the battlefield. During this time, the 

Afghan mujahidin were treated favorably in the 

Western media as “freedom fighters.”

The Afghan guerrillas were not alone in their 

fight against the Soviet occupation. Islamists from 

the entire Muslim world traveled to Afghanistan 

under the banner of Islam and 

Jihad

. Among these 

Islamists were U

sama

 

bin

  l

adin

 (Saudi Arabia), 

Ayman Zawahiri (e

gypt

),  U

mar

  a

bd

 

al

-r

ahman

(Egypt), Abdullah Azzam (Palestine), and legions 

of young men from countries around the Mus-

lim world. The resulting hybrid, transnational 

network of Islamists advocated an active jihad 

against foreign powers and a reconstruction of 

Afghanistan according to an extremely conserva-

tive interpretation of Islam. Together, the Afghan 

and Arab mujahidin forced the Soviet withdrawal 

in 1989. Hekmatiyar’s Hezb-e-Islami and Burhan-

uddin Rabbani’s Jamiat-i-Islami (Islamic Soci-

ety, based in northern Afghanistan) emerged as 

the strongest mujahidin groups after the Soviet 

K  16