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The Arabs at War in Afghanistan
A former senior mujahidin figure and an ex-counter-terrorism analyst cooperating to write a book on the history and legacy of Arab-Afghan fighters in Afghanistan is a remarkable and improbable undertaking. Yet this is what Mustafa Hamid, aka Abu Walid al-Masri, and Leah Farrall have achieved with the publication of their ground-breaking work.
The result of thousands of hours of discussions over several years, The Arabs at War in Afghanistan offers significant new insights into the history of many of today's militant Salafi groups and movements. By revealing the real origins of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the jostling among the various jihadi groups, this account not only challenges conventional wisdom, but also raises uncomfortable questions as to how events from this important period have been so badly misconstrued.
The result of thousands of hours of discussions over several years, The Arabs at War in Afghanistan offers significant new insights into the history of many of today's militant Salafi groups and movements. By revealing the real origins of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the jostling among the various jihadi groups, this account not only challenges conventional wisdom, but also raises uncomfortable questions as to how events from this important period have been so badly misconstrued.
- GenresHistoryMiddle EastWar
340 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 25, 2015
This is a pretty remarkable historical achievement; a dialogue between an ex-mujahideen and an ex-CT official on the history of the Arab-Afghans from just before the Soviet-invasion through 9/11. The Arab-Afghans, a relatively small group of Arabs who traveled to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, ended up having an incredibly outsize history on world events. Mustafa Hamid, the co-author of this book, was a close acquaintance of Osama Bin Laden, one of the most famous of these individuals. While he was never himself a part of Al Qaeda, and opposed OBL's plans to attack the United States (as did most of the senior leadership of AQ at the time), he nonetheless had a front row seat to the history of Bin Laden's activities up to the 2001 invasion.
The book fills in many historical blanks from this period and clarifies a lot of the nature of what Al Qaeda was and how it operated. The organization went through many complete transformations, and experienced its formative moments at the Battle of Jaji, where it was victorious against the Soviets, and the Battle of Jalalabad, where it was defeated. The latter battle gave birth to the splinter groups of far more extreme jihadist groups, from which groups like IS today can directly trace their lineage. Bin Laden himself comes across as idealistic, hardheaded and foolish, self-assured in all his actions but lacking any realistic strategic vision. His entire circle, save for Dr. Zawahiri, begged him against the 9/11 attacks, yet he pressed ahead, imagining he would simply draw the U.S. into a repeat of the Battle of Jaji (a limited engagement in the Afghan mountains) and prevail again. He green-lighted the attacks at great cost to the Muslim world, not in the least his Afghan hosts who had similarly begged him not to commit any action which would draw the world against them (they were unaware of 9/11, but had criticized him for his threats against America).
Among the interesting insights contained are the facts about Al Qaeda's relatively marginal influence and disorganization throughout its history. It was never a particularly successful or influential group (in its global jihad iteration) and at the time of the 9/11 attacks boasted only perhaps 150 members. Nonetheless it was foolishly cast as representing a civilizational threat by the United States in the aftermath; one of many misguided counterreactions which have actually inflated its importance. The level of aloofness of the organization was in fact such that it didn't even know about the 1998 embassy bombings specifically, just that its operatives would be doing "something" in that region.
The spirit of mutual dialogue and peaceability in which this book is written is quite inspiring. Hamid, an Islamist, is harsh towards the Salafi-Wahhabi Islamism of our time and its role in hijacking the revolutions of the Arab Spring, as well as its general harshness towards the people it claims to be liberating. He is someone who appears to see Islam as a tool to help liberate and bring dignity to the peoples of Asia and Africa, rather than an end of itself, or as a vehicle to power. Furthermore he correctly identifies the elitist version of "jihad" today, a Blackwater-esque private venture focused purely on violence rather than the legitimate mass social movement it is intended as, and which the popular revolutions at one point embodied.
He and Farrall engage in a sincere and at times moving dialogue on these issues from their respective vantage points across civilizations. Must read for those with an interest in this hugely fateful historical period, as well as those looking to demystify the state of the Muslim world as it exists today.
The book fills in many historical blanks from this period and clarifies a lot of the nature of what Al Qaeda was and how it operated. The organization went through many complete transformations, and experienced its formative moments at the Battle of Jaji, where it was victorious against the Soviets, and the Battle of Jalalabad, where it was defeated. The latter battle gave birth to the splinter groups of far more extreme jihadist groups, from which groups like IS today can directly trace their lineage. Bin Laden himself comes across as idealistic, hardheaded and foolish, self-assured in all his actions but lacking any realistic strategic vision. His entire circle, save for Dr. Zawahiri, begged him against the 9/11 attacks, yet he pressed ahead, imagining he would simply draw the U.S. into a repeat of the Battle of Jaji (a limited engagement in the Afghan mountains) and prevail again. He green-lighted the attacks at great cost to the Muslim world, not in the least his Afghan hosts who had similarly begged him not to commit any action which would draw the world against them (they were unaware of 9/11, but had criticized him for his threats against America).
Among the interesting insights contained are the facts about Al Qaeda's relatively marginal influence and disorganization throughout its history. It was never a particularly successful or influential group (in its global jihad iteration) and at the time of the 9/11 attacks boasted only perhaps 150 members. Nonetheless it was foolishly cast as representing a civilizational threat by the United States in the aftermath; one of many misguided counterreactions which have actually inflated its importance. The level of aloofness of the organization was in fact such that it didn't even know about the 1998 embassy bombings specifically, just that its operatives would be doing "something" in that region.
The spirit of mutual dialogue and peaceability in which this book is written is quite inspiring. Hamid, an Islamist, is harsh towards the Salafi-Wahhabi Islamism of our time and its role in hijacking the revolutions of the Arab Spring, as well as its general harshness towards the people it claims to be liberating. He is someone who appears to see Islam as a tool to help liberate and bring dignity to the peoples of Asia and Africa, rather than an end of itself, or as a vehicle to power. Furthermore he correctly identifies the elitist version of "jihad" today, a Blackwater-esque private venture focused purely on violence rather than the legitimate mass social movement it is intended as, and which the popular revolutions at one point embodied.
He and Farrall engage in a sincere and at times moving dialogue on these issues from their respective vantage points across civilizations. Must read for those with an interest in this hugely fateful historical period, as well as those looking to demystify the state of the Muslim world as it exists today.
September 19, 2014
This is a very interesting and unique book. It offers an extended oral history from “the other side”, coming from the point of view of Mustafa Hamid, aka Abu Walid al Masri, an Egyptian who came to Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet jihad period and who remained active there until the U.S. intervention in 2001 and his subsequent quasi-detention in Iran for most of the following decade, during which time he remained a prolific writer and analyst in Arabic.
Hamid was apparently active on both the military and political fronts in Afghanistan, organizing guerrilla warfare training and developing theories for its usage, planning attacks on regime infrastructure, and later serving as a mediator or go-between for the variety of factions operating in Afghanistan. Even as he rubbed shoulders with Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden, Hamid appears to have operated as something of an independent and gadfly within the Arab-Afghan “yard”. Hamid’s own personal activities are only mentioned in snippets, though, as the focus of the book is primarily his recounting the activities of his Arab peers and local Afghan commanders such as Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and Mullah Omar.
There is a tremendous amount of detail here about the various competing Arab factions and camps that were established in Afghanistan during the late 1980s and 1990s. Title aside, though, the real throughline in the book is Osama bin Laden specifically and his efforts to form the organization that would become Al Qaeda in the face of various victories and setbacks. Hamid is highly critical of bin Laden — who he describes as borderline tactically incompetent, and regularly overlearning the significance of his successes or failures in battle and extrapolating those to the strategic level — and of what he and Farrall describe as an essentially nihilistic “Jalalabad school” of jihad that produced future Al Qaeda partners and rivals such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and others. There is a tremendous wealth of information here about Al Qaeda’s organizational evolution, and how generational shifts in power and resources, personal rivalries, battlefield dynamics, inter-group competition, and outbidding for the support of estranged militant recruits shaped that evolution.
Hamid’s co-author and partner in dialogue through the book is Leah Farrall, an Australian counterterrorism analyst whose work I respect very much. She is not a passive interviewer and is often quite effective at prodding or challenging Hamid into unpacking his initial statements, but by and large it is his eyewitness account upon which the book hangs, for better or for worse (though the references also make use of a wealth of primary source material and other secondary accounts). Brief snippets of historical narration provide the basic historical structure upon which the two authors comment, but this is not a book for beginners and will best serve those already well-versed in Al Qaeda’s history and that of Afghanistan. I do not consider myself an Al Qaeda specialist but for those readers I think this would be invaluable.
Hamid was apparently active on both the military and political fronts in Afghanistan, organizing guerrilla warfare training and developing theories for its usage, planning attacks on regime infrastructure, and later serving as a mediator or go-between for the variety of factions operating in Afghanistan. Even as he rubbed shoulders with Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden, Hamid appears to have operated as something of an independent and gadfly within the Arab-Afghan “yard”. Hamid’s own personal activities are only mentioned in snippets, though, as the focus of the book is primarily his recounting the activities of his Arab peers and local Afghan commanders such as Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and Mullah Omar.
There is a tremendous amount of detail here about the various competing Arab factions and camps that were established in Afghanistan during the late 1980s and 1990s. Title aside, though, the real throughline in the book is Osama bin Laden specifically and his efforts to form the organization that would become Al Qaeda in the face of various victories and setbacks. Hamid is highly critical of bin Laden — who he describes as borderline tactically incompetent, and regularly overlearning the significance of his successes or failures in battle and extrapolating those to the strategic level — and of what he and Farrall describe as an essentially nihilistic “Jalalabad school” of jihad that produced future Al Qaeda partners and rivals such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and others. There is a tremendous wealth of information here about Al Qaeda’s organizational evolution, and how generational shifts in power and resources, personal rivalries, battlefield dynamics, inter-group competition, and outbidding for the support of estranged militant recruits shaped that evolution.
Hamid’s co-author and partner in dialogue through the book is Leah Farrall, an Australian counterterrorism analyst whose work I respect very much. She is not a passive interviewer and is often quite effective at prodding or challenging Hamid into unpacking his initial statements, but by and large it is his eyewitness account upon which the book hangs, for better or for worse (though the references also make use of a wealth of primary source material and other secondary accounts). Brief snippets of historical narration provide the basic historical structure upon which the two authors comment, but this is not a book for beginners and will best serve those already well-versed in Al Qaeda’s history and that of Afghanistan. I do not consider myself an Al Qaeda specialist but for those readers I think this would be invaluable.
June 24, 2015
Essential reading for anyone interested in the foreign Jihadists who went to fight in Afghanistan. The reader has to be aware of Hamid's personal biases but there is so much information here on the formation of the various Arab groups and the development of their ideologies that help to put the history of Al Qaeda in its proper context.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews