The rise of muslim foreign fighters: Islam and the Globalization of jihad

International Security

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 53-94

  Hegghammer, Thomas ^a,b  

^a NORWEGIAN DEFENCE RESEARCH ESTABLISHMENT FFI   (Norway)

^b NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79251487027     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/ISEC_a_00023     Document Type: Article

References (200)

1. Anthony H. Cordesman, "Iraq's Evolving Insurgency," Working Draft (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, December 9, 2005), p. 129.
2. Mohammed M. Hafez, Suicide Bombers in Iraq: The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007), p. 71.
3. See, for example, Mohammed M. Hafez, "Jihad after Iraq: Lessons from the Arab Afghans," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 32, No. 2 (February 2009), p. 77.
4. Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 133-138. I define jihadi as "violent Sunni Islamist" and Islamist as "Muslim religious activist.".
5. There were Muslim foreign combatants in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, but most were paid members of the Arab League-sponsored Army of Salvation (Jaysh al-Inqadh) and thus not private volunteers of the kind that proliferated later. See Haim Levenberg, The Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine, 1945-1948 (London: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 189-210.
6. Joshua Landis, "Syria and the Palestine War: Fighting King 'Abdullah's 'Greater Syria Plan,'" in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 193.
7. Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 90.
8. On Afghanistan in the 1980s, see Anthony Davis, "Foreign Combatants in Afghanistan," Jane's Intelligence Review, Vol. 5, No. 7 (1993), pp. 327-331.
9. James Bruce, "Arab Veterans of the Afghan War," Jane's Intelligence Review, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1995), pp. 178-180.
10. Barnett R. Rubin, "Arab Islamists in Afghanistan," in John Esposito, ed., Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform? (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997).
11. Vahid Brown, "Foreign Fighters in Historical Perspective: The Case of Afghanistan," in Brian Fishman, ed., Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: Al-Qa'ida's Road In and Out of Iraq (West Point, N.Y.: Combating Terrorism Center, 2008), chap. 1.
12. On Bosnia, see Evan F. Kohlmann, Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network (London: Berg, 2004).
13. John R. Schindler, Unholy Terror: Bosnia, al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad (St. Paul, Minn.: MBI, 2007).
14. On Chechnya, see Murad Batal al-Shishani, Rise and Fall of Arab Fighters in Chechnya (Washington, D.C.: Jamestown Foundation, 2006).
15. Lorenzo Vidino, "The Arab Foreign Fighters and the Sacralization of the Chechen Conflct," Al-Nakhlah, Spring 2006.
16. Brian Glyn Williams, "Allah's Foot Soldiers: An Assessment of the Role of Foreign Fighters and Al-Qa'ida in the Chechen Insurgency," in Moshe Gammer, ed., Ethno-Nationalism, Islam, and the State in the Caucasus: Post-Soviet Disorder (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 156-178.
17. Cerwyn Moore and Paul Tumelty, "Foreign Fighters and the Case of Chechnya: A Critical Assessment," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 31, No. 5 (May 2008), pp. 412-433.
18. On Iraq, see Nawaf Obaid and Anthony Cordesman, "Saudi Militants in Iraq: Assessment and Kingdom's Response" (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2005).
19. Reuven Paz, "Arab Volunteers Killed in Iraq: An Analysis," PRISM Papers, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 2005).
20. Alan Krueger, "The National Origins of Foreign Fighters in Iraq," annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Chicago, Illinois, January 5, 2007.
21. Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, "Al Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq" (West Point, N.Y.: Combating Terrorism Center, 2007).
22. Christopher Hewitt and Jessica Kelley-Moore, "Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A Cross-National Analysis of Jihadism," Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 21, No. 2 (April 2009), pp. 211-220.
23. On Somalia, see Andrew Black, "Recruitment Drive: Can Somalia Attract Foreign Fighters?" Jane's Intelligence Review, Vol. 19, No. 6 (2007), pp. 12-17.
24. On post-2001 Afghanistan, see Anne Stenersen, "Foreign Fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11," paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 17, 2009.
25. David Malet, "Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identity in Civil Conflicts," Ph.D. dissertation, George Washington University, 2009.
26. David Malet, "Why Foreign Fighters? Historical Perspectives and Solutions," Orbis, Vol. 54, No. 1 (January 2010), pp. 97-114.
27. Other exceptions include Frank J. Ciluffo, Jeffrey B. Cozzens, and Magnus Ranstorp, "Foreign Fighters: Trends, Trajectories, and Conflict Zones" (Washington, D.C.: Homeland Security Policy Institute, October 1, 2010).
28. Stephanie Kaplan, "The Jihad Effect: How Wars Shape the Global Jihadist Movement," Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, forthcoming.
29. For rebels in exile, see, for example, Navin A. Bapat, "The Internationalization of Terrorist Campaigns," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Vol. 24, No. 4 (September 2007), pp. 265-280.
30. Idean Salehyan, "Transnational Rebels: Neighboring States as Sanctuary for Rebel Groups," World Politics, Vol. 59, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 217-242.
31. Lars-Erik Cederman, Luc Girardin, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, "Ethnonationalist Triads: Assessing the Influence of Kin Groups on Civil Wars,"World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 3 (July 2009), pp. 403-437.
32. For outside state support, see, for example, Patrick M. Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers: Outside Intervention in Intrastate Conflict (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
33. Daniel Byman, Peter Chalk, Bruce Hoffman, William Rosenau, and David Brannan, Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2001).
34. Stephen M. Saideman, The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy, and International Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
35. See, for example, Donatella Della Porta and Sidney Tarrow, eds., Transnational Protest and Global Activism: People, Passions, and Power (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005).
36. Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
37. See, for example, Schindler, Unholy Terror.
38. For a definition of insurgency, see James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (February 2003), p. 75.
39. See, for example, Thomas Hegghammer, "Jihadi Salafis or Revolutionaries? On Religion and Politics in the Study of Militant Islamism," in Roel Meijer, ed., Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), pp. 244-266.
40. On the general Islamic revival, see, for example, Yvonne Y. Haddad, John O. Voll, and John L. Esposito, The Contemporary Islamic Revival: A Critical Survey and Bibliography (New York: Greenwood, 1991).
41. Philip W. Sutton and Stephen Vertigans, Resurgent Islam: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).
42. Malet, "Foreign Fighters," p. 9.
43. Idean Salehyan, Rebels without Borders: Transnational Insurgencies in World Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009).
44. John Mackinlay, Globalization and Insurgency, Adelphi Papers, No. 352 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002).
45. The conflation has been encouraged by the statements of international terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, which does not want to be distinguished from foreign fighters, lest its activities appear more controversial and less legitimate. Historically, al-Qaida has enjoyed an ambiguous relationship with the foreign fighter movement. On the one hand, al-Qaida relies on foreign fighter mobilizations for recruitment and has therefore always encouraged them; on the other, it has occasionally found itself in competition with the foreign fighter movement over resources.
46. See Thomas Hegghammer, "'Classical' and 'Global' Jihadism in Saudi Arabia," in Bernard Haykel, Hegghammer, and Stéphane Lacroix, eds., Complexity and Change in Saudi Arabia (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
47. Levenberg, The Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine, p. 190.
48. Landis, "Syria and the Palestine War," p. 191.
49. Levenberg (p. 193) reports that Army of Salvation members received 18 Palestinian pounds (£P) per month-a substantial amount. Annual national income per capita in the region ranged from £P 15 (East Bank in 1948) to £P40 (Syria in 1950) to £P53 (Palestine in 1948).
50. See Yusif A. Sayigh, "Dispossession and Pauperisation: The Palestinian Economy under Occupation," in George T. Abed, ed., The Palestinian Economy: Studies in Development under Prolonged Occupation (London: Routledge,1988), p. 274.
51. See, for example, R. Dan Richardson, Comintern Army: The International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982).
52. Massimo Mangilli-Climpson, Men of Heart of Red, White, and Green: Italian Antifascists in the Spanish Civil War (New York: Vantage, 1985).
53. A. Joseph Heckelman, American Volunteers and Israel's War of Independence (New York: Ktav, 1974).
54. I define the Muslim world as "all countries and all major subnational provinces whose population is at least 50 percent Muslim.".
55. Fearon and Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War".
56. Meredith Reid Sarkees and Phil Shafer, "The Correlates of War Data on War: An Update to 1997," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Vol. 18, No. 1 (February 2000), pp. 123-144.
57. For the record, I do not include cases of foreign recruitment to terrorist groups that are not involved in a major local insurgency, such as al-Qaida in early-1990s Sudan or post-2006 Yemen.
58. A possible exception is the early-1970s Dhofar rebellion in Oman, which attracted leftists from the Gulf (although most stayed on the Yemeni side of the border and did not fight). John E. Peterson, personal correspondence with author, February 26, 2010. Third countries also sent regular military units to support the sultanate.
59. The estimates are mine, based on a reading of the available primary and secondary sources.
60. Cordesman, "Iraq's Evolving Insurgency," p. 129.
61. Hafez, Suicide Bombers in Iraq, p. 71.
62. Reuven Paz, "Middle East Islamism in the European Arena," Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 3 (September 2002), p. 70.
63. See, for example, John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism, 3d ed. (London: Pluto, 2002).
64. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, 2d ed. (New York: Holt, 2004).
65. See, for example, Dale F. Eickelman, "Trans-State Islam and Security," in Susanne H. Rudolph and James Piscatori, eds., Transnational Religion and Fading States (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997).
66. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism, pp. 126-127.
67. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin, 2004).
68. Peter L. Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader (New York: Free Press, 2006), pp. 60-61.
69. I have not seen or heard any such evidence, be it in the jihadi literature; in personal interviews with former CIA, MI6, and Saudi intelligence agents; in memoirs of former participants; or in declassified documents. There is evidence of sporadic logistical support from Saudi officials, but only for "dual use" equipment such as construction vehicles.
70. See, for example, Basil Muhammad, Al-Ansar al-Arab fi Afghanistan [The Arab supporters in Afghanistan], 2d ed. (Riyadh: Lajnat al-Birr al-Islamiyya, 1991), p. 87.
71. Mark Huband, Warriors of the Prophet: The Struggle for Islam (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999), p. 3.
72. Ahmad Zaidan estimated that 242 Arabs had been killed by mid-1989. See Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist (New York: Vintage, 2004), p. 76. Because fighting continued until 1992, a likely estimate is 300 dead out of an overall 5,000-20,000 volunteers.
73. See, for example, Mustafa Hamid, quoted in Vahid Brown, Cracks in the Foundation: Leadership Schisms in al-Qa'ida, 1989-2006 (West Point, N.Y.: Combating Terrorism Center, 2007), p. 7.
74. Reliable numbers do not exist, but Paul Tumelty noted that Arabs in Chechnya were "prone to death or capture," and very few Arab veterans from Chechnya appear in this author's sources.
75. See Tumelty, "The Rise and Fall of Foreign Fighters in Chechnya," Jamestown Terrorism Monitor, Vol. 4, No. 2 (January 2006), p. 10.
76. See, for example, Felter and Fishman, "Al Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq".
77. Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia.
78. Al-Qaida paid salaries in the range of $200-$250 to some of its Arab associates in Pakistan and Sudan between 1992 and 1996 and in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. The recipients were arguably not foreign Fighters, however, because they were not taking part in an insurgency. In the late 1990s in Afghanistan, salaries went to those involved in the running of the al-Qaida organization, not to the Arab foot soldiers fighting with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance.
79. See, for example, Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins, "Forgotten Computer Reveals Thinking behind Four Years of al Qaeda Doings," Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2001.
80. USA v Usama bin Laden et al. (Southern District of New York, 2001), p. 251.
81. Harun al-Fadil, Al-Harb ala al-Islam, Vol. 1 [The war on Islam] (document posted on the jihadi internet forum Ansar al-Mujahidin, February 26, 2009), p. 248. I thank Nelly Lahoud for the last reference.
82. Following Martin Seliger, I define ideology loosely as a "set of ideas by which men posit, explain and justify ends and means of organized social action." Seliger, Ideology and Politics (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976), p. 11. I understand doctrine to mean an ideology intended for a specific type of action. I define discourse as "a way of using language to convey norms or ideology.".
83. Malet, "Foreign Fighters," p. vi.
84. Exceptions include Chechnya and Tajikistan, where locals reportedly invited the first foreign fighters. See Paul Tumelty, "The Rise and Fall of Arab Fighters in Chechnya," Jamestown Terrorism Focus, Vol. 4, No. 2 (January 2006). There is also evidence that some Afghan commanders appealed to the Arab press for "men" very early in the 1980s. Vahid Brown, personal correspondence with author, February 10, 2010.
85. Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch, "Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths," European Journal of Population, Vol. 21, Nos. 2-3 (May 2005), pp. 145-166. I used the Battle Deaths Dataset, ver. 3.0, updated through 2008, http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Armed-Conflict/Battle-Deaths/.
86. On the increasing role of religion in civil war, see, for example, Jonathan Fox, "The Rise of Religious Nationalism and Conflict: Ethnic Conflict and Revolutionary Wars, 1945-2001," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 6 (November 2004), pp. 715-731.
87. On the Islamization of nationalist struggles, see Meir Litvak, "The Islamization of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: The Case of Hamas," Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1 (January 1998), pp. 148-163.
88. Yoginder Sikand, "The Changing Course of the Kashmiri Struggle: From National Liberation to Islamist Jihad?" Muslim World, Vol. 91, Nos. 1-2 (March 2001), pp. 229-256.
89. Julie Wilhelmsen, When Separatists Become Islamists: The Case of Chechnya (Kjeller: Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, 2004).
90. See Wilhelmsen, When Separatists Become Islamists.
91. Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
92. On the links of the Moro National Liberation Front to the Arab world, see Thomas M. McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern Philippines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 143.
93. Frances Cairncross showed that the sharpest decline in communication costs occurred from 1940 to 1950, followed by a steady decline from 1950 to 1980, after which prices stabilized. See Cairncross, The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997), p. 214.
94. According to Robert R. Bianchi, the steepest increase in pilgrim numbers of any ten-year period in the twentieth century occurred between 1965 and 1975, when the number of pilgrims rose from 250,000 to 900,000 and the percentage of pilgrims traveling by air increased from 20 to 60 percent.
95. See Bianchi, Guests of God: Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 49-51.
96. Michael Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 133.
97. In Saudi Arabia, for example, newspaper circulation increased from 10 per 1,000 in 1975 to 47 per 1,000 in 1984, while television reception increased from 14 receivers per 1,000 in 1976 to 262 per 1,000 in 1982.
98. Matrook Alfaleh, "The Impact of the Processes of Modernization and Social Mobilization on the Social and Political Structures of the Arab Countries with Special Emphasis on Saudi Arabia," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, 1987.
99. David Malet, "Foreign Fighter Observation Set Data," http://www.davidmalet.com/uploads/observation-set_-_4-09.xls.
100. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism.
101. Ali Rahnema, ed., Pioneers of Islamic Revival (London: Zed, 1994).
102. Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 328.
103. For overviews of definitions of Islamism, see Mehdi Mozaffari, "What Is Islamism? History and Definition of a Concept," Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 8, No. 1 (March 2007), pp. 17-33.
104. International Crisis Group, "Understanding Islamism," Middle East/North Africa Report, No. 37 (Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2005).
105. Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).
106. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2002).
107. See, for example, Donatella Della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
108. A majority of Arab Afghans were from Saudi Arabia, which had practically no Sunni revolutionaries in the 1980s. Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia, p. 47.
109. Gilles Kepel and Bernard Rougier have argued that a new ideology called salafi jihadism emerged in the 1980s, but they have linked this ideology to a broad range of violent phenomena, including anti-regime militancy and international terrorism, not specifically to foreign fighter activism.
110. See Kepel, Jihad, pp. 219-222.
111. Rougier, "Le jihad en Afghanistan et l'emergence du salafisme-jihadisme" [Jihad in Afghanistan and the emergence of salafi jihadism], in Rougier, ed., Qu'est-ce que le Salafisme? [What is Salafism?] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008).
112. Arab Afghan first movers include Abd al-Rahman al-Dawsary and Anwar Shaban in Bosnia, Samir al-Suwaylim (Ibn Khattab) in Tajikistan and Chechnya, Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin in Algeria, Osama bin Laden in pre- and post-2001 Afghanistan, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Yasin al-Bahr in Iraq.
113. See Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia.
114. Evan F. Kohlmann, "The Role of Islamic Charities in International Terrorist Recruitment and Financing," DIIS Working Paper (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2006).
115. John Wilson, Introduction to Social Movements (New York: Basic Books, 1973).
116. The prolific Azzam's most influential tracts were Signs of the Merciful in the Afghan Jihad, Defence of Muslim Lands, and Join the Caravan. Biographical details follow later in this article. The Arab community in Peshawar published a wide range of magazines in the 1980s.
117. See Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, The "Afghan Arabs" Media at Jihad (Islamabad: ABC Printers, 1999). I copied many of the magazines from public libraries in Saudi Arabia in 2004.
118. I rely on statements by al-Dawsary, quoted in Kohlmann, Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe
119. "Interview with Sheikh al-Mujahideen Abu Abdel Aziz," Al-Sirat al-Mustaqeem, No. 33 (1994).
120. See these sources for biographical information on al-Dawsary. Numerous recruitment videos from Bosnia have been digitized and published online by activists since the early 2000s. I collected many of these from various websites from 2002 onward.
121. See especially Abu Umar al-Sayf, "Maqasid al-jihad wa anwauhu" [Objectives and types of jihad], 2003, http://www.tawhed.ws.
122. For al-Sayf's biography, see Murad al-Shishani, "Abu Omar al-Saif: His Life and after His Death," Jamestown Chechnya Weekly, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2006). I collected Iraqi recruitment videos from various jihadi websites from 2003 onward.
123. See, for example, Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
124. Johannes Jansen, The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat's Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East (New York: Macmillan, 1986).
125. Albert J. Bergesen, ed., The Sayyid Qutb Reader: Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society (New York: Routledge, 2008).
126. Recognizing the uncodified nature of Islamic law, I define orthodoxy as "the majority view among trained Islamic jurists in the twentieth century.".
127. Rachel Scott, "An 'Official' Islamic Response to the Egyptian al-Jihad Movement," Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (February 2003), p. 54.
128. Bruce Lawrence, ed., Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (London: Verso, 2005).
129. Quoted in Muhammad, Al-Ansar al-Arab fi Afghanistan, p. 89.
130. Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia, pp. 28-29.
131. The prominent revolutionary Jordanian ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi notably discouraged his followers from going to Bosnia and Chechnya, on the grounds that it meant "vacating the fronts near us." Al-Maqdisi, "Hiwar ma al-Shaykh Abi Muhammad al-Maqdisi sanat 1423" [Conversation with Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi in 2002], 2002, http://www.tawhed.ws.
132. "Qissat 'al-Afghan al-Arab' min al-dukhul ila Afghanistan ila al-khuraj ma Taliban (2)" [The story of the "Arab Afghans" from their entry into Afghanistan to their departure with the Taliban (2)], Al-Sharq al-Awsat, December 9, 2004.
133. Muhammad al-Salim, "La tadhhabu ila al-Iraq!" [Do not go to Iraq!], Sawt al-Jihad, No. 7 (2003).
134. David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 122-123.
135. Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Marcus Wiener, 1996), pp. 104, 125.
136. John Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 97-124.
137. Victor Asal, C. Christine Fair, and Stephen Shellman, "Consenting to a Child's Decision to Join a Jihad: Insights from a Survey of Militant Families in Pakistan," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 31, No. 11 (November 2008), pp. 973-994.
138. David D. Laitin, "National Revivals and Violence," in John R. Bowen and Roger Petersen, eds., Critical Comparisons in Politics and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 59.
139. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
140. Much of the social movement literature on movement emergence is really about movement early growth, not movement initiation in the strict sense. There has been limited theorizing on first movers and their motivations. See, for example, Doug McAdam, "'Initiator' and 'Spin-off' Movements: Diffusion Processes in Protest Cycles," in Mark Traugott, ed., Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995).
141. See, for example, Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion, and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974).
142. Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).
143. See, for example, Bergesen, The Sayyid Qutb Reader; and Sayed Khatab, The Power of Sovereignty: The Political and Ideological Philosophy of Sayyid Qutb (London: Routledge, 2006).
144. David Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006).
145. Reinhard Schulze, Islamischer Internationalismus Im 20. Jahrhundert [Islamic internationalism in the 20th century] (London: E.J. Brill, 1990), p. 123.
146. On identity movements, see Simon Langlois, "Identity Movements," in Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, eds., International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (New York: Elsevier, 2001).
147. On supranational identity movements, see Louis L. Snyder, Macro-Nationalisms: A History of the Pan Movements (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1984).
148. See Quran 3:110.
149. T. Cuyler Young, "Pan-Islamism in the ModernWorld: Solidarity and Conflict among Muslim Countries," in J. Harris Proctor, ed., Islam and International Relations (London: Pall Mall, 1965).
150. Jacob M. Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization (Oxford: University Press, 1990).
151. James Piscatori, "Imagining Pan-Islam," in Shahram Akbarzadeh and Fethi Mansouri, eds., Islam and Political Violence: Muslim Diaspora and Radicalism in the West (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), pp. 27-38.
152. For more on this body, see Schulze, Islamischer Internationalismus Im 20. Jahrhundert.
153. For more on the organization, see Naveed S. Sheikh, The New Politics of Islam: Pan-Islamic Foreign Policy in a World of States (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).
154. Stéphane Lacroix, "Les champs de la discorde: Une sociologie politique de l'islamisme en Arabie Saoudite (1954-2005)" [Fields of discord: A political sociology of Islamism in Saudi Arabia (1954-2005)], Ph.D. dissertation, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, 2007, pp. 193-195.
155. Schulze, Islamischer Internationalismus Im 20. Jahrhundert, p. 158.
156. Kepel, Jihad, p. 72.
157. Husam Tammam, "Al-Tanzim al-Duwali lil-Ikhwan. .. al-wad wal-masira wal-mal" [The Brotherhood's International Organization. .. the promise, the course, and the result], Jadal, 2006, http://www.jadal.org/news.php?go=fullnews&newsid=160.
158. Schulze, Islamischer Internationalismus Im 20. Jahrhundert.
159. See especially Lacroix, "Les champs de la discorde".
160. Steffen Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2010).
161. Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution Unending: Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 133.
162. William Ochsenwald, "Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Revival," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (August 1981), p. 281.
163. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster), p. 207.
164. Muhammad Ali Harakan, "Duty of Implementing the Resolutions," Journal of the Muslim World League, No. 6 (1980), pp. 48-49.
165. Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia, p. 16.
166. Abd al-Rahim Mahmud Jamus, Al-lijan al-shabiyya li-musaadat mujahidiy Filastin fil-Mamlaka al-Arabiyya al-Saudiyya [The popular committees for the support of Palestine's mujahideen in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] (Riyadh: Darat al-Malik Abd al-Aziz, 2001), p. 56.
167. See Abdel-Rahman Ghandour, Jihad humanitaire: Enquête sur les ONG Islamiques [Humanitarian jihad: Inquiry into the Islamic ONG] (Paris: Flammarion, 2002).
168. Jonathan Benthall and Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan, The Charitable Crescent: Politics of Aid in the Muslim World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003).
169. J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins, Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
170. Author interviews with various Saudi Islamists, Riyadh, 2004-06.
171. Abdallah Azzam, Ayat al-Rahman fi jihad al-Afghan [Signs of the Merciful in the Afghan jihad] (Maktabat al-Risala al-Haditha, 1986), p. 185.
172. Muhammad, Al-Ansar al-Arab fi Afghanistan, p. 79.
173. Abdallah Anas, Wiladat al-Afghan al-Arab [The birth of the Afghan Arabs] (London: Saqi, 2002), p. 31.
174. Abu Musab al-Suri, Dawat al-muqawama al-Islamiyya al-alamiyya [The global Islamic resistance call] (Islamist websites, 2004), p. 716.
175. See, for example, Muhammad al-Majdhub, Ma al-mujahidin wal-muhajirin fi Bakistan [With the mujahidin and the emigrants in Pakistan], 1st ed. (Medina: Nadi al-Madina al-Munawwara al-Adabi, 1984).
176. Muhammad 'Amir Rana and Mubasher Bukhari, Arabs in Afghan Jihad (Lahore: Pak Institute for Peace Studies, 2007), p. 79.
177. Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia, pp. 59-60.
178. For a brief English-language biography of Azzam, see John C.M. Calvert, "The Striving Shaykh: Abdullah Azzam and the Revival of Jihad," Journal of Religion and Society, Supplement No. 2 (2007), pp. 83-102.
179. My article presents new biographical information from interviews with close Azzam family members and aides, and from previously unexploited documents in Arabic, notably Bashir Abu Rumman and Abdallah Said, Al-alim wal-mujahid wal-shahid al-Shaykh Abdallah Azzam [The scholar, mujahid, martyr Sheikh Abdallah Azzam] (Amman: Dar al-Bashir, 1990).
180. Husni Adham Jarar, Al-Shahid Abdallah Azzam: Rajul dawa wa-madrasat jihad [The martyr Abdallah Azzam: Man of Dawa and school of jihad] (Amman: Dar al-Diya, 1990).
181. Muhammad Abdallah Amir, Al-Shaykh al-Mujahid Abdallah Azzam: Al-Rajul alladhi tarjama al-aqwal ila afal [The mujahid Sheikh Abdallah Azzam: The man who translated words into deeds], 1st ed. (Kuwait: Maktabat Dar al-Bayan, 1990).
182. Abu Mujahid, Al-Shahid Abdallah Azzam bayna al-milad wal-istishhad [The martyr Abdallah Azzam from birth to martyrdom] (Peshawar: Markaz al-Shahid Azzam al-Ilami, 1991).
183. Adnan Ali al-Nahawi, Abdallah Azzam: Ahdath wa mawaqif [Abdallah Azzam: Events and positions] (Riyadh: Dar al-Nahawi, 1994).
184. In addition to Kamal al-Sananiri mentioned below, Azzam was preceded by the Egyptian Islamist journalist Mustafa Hamid Abu al-Walid, who reportedly made contact with the Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in mid-1979 and worked to spread Arab awareness of Afghanistan through his articles in the Abu Dhabi-based al-Ittihad newspaper.
185. See Vahid Brown, Abul-Walid al-Masri: A Biographical Sketch (West Point, N.Y.: Combating Terrorism Center, 2007).
186. Muhammad, Al-Ansar al-Arab fi Afghanistan.
187. As mentioned earlier, Jalaluddin Haqqani had a small network of contacts in the Gulf in the very early 1980s, but this network drew no more than a handful of people. Maria A. Ressa wrote that Hashim Salamat, founder of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, sent 1,000 Filipino Bangsamoros to Afghanistan in 1980.
188. See Ressa, Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda's Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia (New York: Free Press, 2003), p. 126.
189. Although I do not question the existence of an early Filipino recruitment structure, I consider this number highly implausible given the absence of contemporary reports from Pakistan or Afghanistan on Filipino arrivals. There is also evidence of Pakistani recruitment for the Afghan jihad as early as 1979, although this constituted short-distance mobilization.
190. See Mohammed Amir Rana, A to Z of Jehadi Organizations in Pakistan (Lahore: Mashal Publishing, 2005). I thank Vahid Brown for these references.
191. Little is known about Azzam's 1968 stay in Saudi Arabia, which is only reported in Abu Rumman and Said, Al-Alim wal-mujahid wal-shahid al-Shaykh Abdallah Azzam, pp. 150-151.
192. Amir, Al-Shaykh al-Mujahid Abdallah Azzam, p. 55.
193. Interviews by author with Azzam family members, Amman, 2006.
194. Ayman al-Zawahiri, "Fursan taht rayat al-Nabi" [The knights under the Prophet's banner], Al-Sharq al-Awsat, December 3, 2001.
195. Interview by author with former Azzam aide, Islamabad, 2008. Azzam's obituary described him as an "MWL [Muslim World League] education adviser" at the time of his death. Rumman and Said, Al-Alim wal-mujahid wal-shahid al-Shaykh Abdallah Azzam, p. 137.
196. Abdallah Azzam, Hamas. .. al-judhur al-tarikhiyya wal-mithaq [Hamas. .. Historical roots and charter] (Amman: unknown publisher, 1990).
197. Even his most famous fatwa on jihad in Afghanistan explicitly stated that "any Arab able to fight in Palestine must start there." Abdallah Azzam, Al-difa an aradi al-muslimin: Ahamm furud alayan [The defense of Muslim lands: The most important of individual duties] (Alexandria: Maktabat al-Iman, 1987).
198. On counterfactual hypothesis-testing, see James D. Fearon, "Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science," World Politics, Vol. 43, No. 2 (January 1991), pp. 169-196.
199. Hegghammer, "'Classical' and 'Global' Jihadism in Saudi Arabia.".
200. Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia, pp. 133-138, 223-225.