Afghan mujahideen

The Afghan mujahideen were Islamist militant groups that fought against the Afghanistan government and the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War and the subsequent Afghan Civil War.

The term mujahid (from Arabic مجاهد [muˈdʒaːhid]) is used in a religious context by Muslims to refer to those engaged in a struggle of any nature for the sake of Islam, commonly referred to as jihad (جهاد [dʒiˈhaːd]). The Afghan mujahideen consisted of numerous groups that differed from each other across ethnic and ideological lines, but were united by their anti-communist and Islamist goals. The coalition of anti-Soviet Muslim militias was also known as the "Afghan resistance", and the Western press widely referred to the Afghan guerrillas as "freedom fighters", or "Mountain Men".

The militants of the Afghan mujahideen were recruited and organized immediately after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, initially from the regular Afghan population and defectors from the Afghan military, with the aim of waging an armed struggle against both the communist government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which had taken power in the 1978 Saur Revolution, and the Soviet Union, which had invaded the country in support of the former. There were many ideologically different factions among the mujahideen, with the most influential being the Jamiat-e Islami and Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin parties. The Afghan mujahideen were generally divided into two distinct alliances: the larger and more significant Sunni Islamic union collectively referred to as the "Peshawar Seven", based in Pakistan, and the smaller Shia Islamic union collectively referred to as the "Tehran Eight", based in Iran; as well as independent units that referred to themselves as "mujahideen". The "Peshawar Seven" alliance received heavy assistance from the United States (Operation Cyclone), Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, as well as other countries and private international donors.

The basic units of the mujahideen continued to reflect the highly decentralized nature of Afghan society and strong loci of competing Pashtun tribal groups, which had formed a union with other Afghan groups under intense American, Saudi Arabian and Pakistani pressure. The alliance sought to function as a united diplomatic front towards the international community, and sought representation in the United Nations and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. The Afghan mujahideen also saw thousands of volunteers from various Muslim countries come to Afghanistan to aid the resistance. The majority of the international fighters came from the Arab world, and later became known as Afghan Arabs; the most well-known Arab financier and militant of the group during this period was Osama bin Laden, who would later found al-Qaeda and mastermind the September 11 attacks on the United States. Other international fighters from the Indian subcontinent became involved in terrorist activities in Kashmir and against the states of Bangladesh and Myanmar during the 1990s.

The mujahideen guerrillas fought a long and costly war against the Soviet military, which suffered heavy losses and withdrew from the country in 1989, after which the rebels' war against the communist Afghan government continued. The loosely-aligned mujahideen took the capital city of Kabul in 1992 following the collapse of the Moscow-backed government. However, the new mujahideen government that was formed by the Peshawar Accords following these events was quickly fractured by rival factions and became severely dysfunctional. This unrest quickly escalated into a second civil war, which saw the large-scale collapse of the united Afghan mujahideen and the victorious emergence of the Taliban, which established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan shortly after taking most of the country in 1996. The Taliban were ousted in 2001 following the U.S.-led invasion during the war in Afghanistan, but they regrouped and ultimately retook control of the country in 2021.