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Arabic term for people engaged in jihad ("struggle")
Mujahideen or mujahidin, is the plural form of mujahid, an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in jihad, interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the community (ummah).
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Mujahideen”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Mujahideen or mujahidin (Arabic: مُجَاهِدِين, romanized: mujāhidīn), is the plural form of mujahid (Arabic: مُجَاهِد, romanized: mujāhid, lit. 'strugglers or strivers, doers of jihād'), an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in jihad (lit. 'struggle or striving [for justice, right conduct, Godly rule, etc.]'), interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the community (ummah).
The widespread use of the word in English began with reference to the guerrilla-type militant groups led by the Islamist Afghan fighters in the Soviet–Afghan War (see Afghan mujahideen). The term now extends to other jihadist groups in various countries.
In its roots, the Arabic word mujahideen refers to any person performing jihad. In its post-classical meaning, jihad refers to an act that is spiritually comparable in reward to promoting Islam during the early 600s CE. These acts could be as simple as sharing a considerable amount of one's income with the poor.
The term continued to be used throughout India for Muslim resistance to British colonial rule. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, these holy warriors were said to accept any deserting Indian sepoys and recruit them into their ranks. As time went by, the sect grew ever larger until it was not only conducting bandit raids but even controlling areas in Afghanistan.
The first known use of the word mujahideen to refer to insurgent Islamic extremism (what has neologically been called jihadism) was supposedly in the late 19th century, in 1887, by Thomas Patrick Hughes (1838–1911).
In Central Asia from 1916 to the 1930s, Islamic guerrillas were opponents of Tsarism and Bolshevism and were referred to by the Soviets as basmachi ('bandits'). These groups called themselves mojahed, describing themselves as standing for Islam. Other proto-mujahideen include Usman dan Fodio, Jahangir Khoja, and Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi.
The name was most closely associated with the mujahideen in Afghanistan, a coalition of guerrilla groups in Afghanistan that opposed the invading Soviet forces and eventually toppled the Afghan communist government during the Afghan War (1978–92). Rival factions thereafter fell out among themselves, precipitating the rise of the Taliban and the opposing Northern Alliance.
Arguably the best-known mujahideen outside the Islamic world are the various, loosely aligned Afghan opposition groups who initially rebelled against the government of the pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) during the late 1970s. At the DRA's request, the Soviet Union brought forces into the country to aid the government in 1979. The mujahideen fought against Soviet and DRA troops during the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989). Afghanistan's resistance movement originated in chaos and, at first, regional warlords waged virtually all of its fighting locally. As warfare became more sophisticated, outside support and regional coordination grew. The basic units of mujahideen organization and action continued to reflect the highly decentralized nature of Afghan society and strong loci of competing mujahideen and Pashtun tribal groups, particularly in isolated areas among the mountains. Eventually, the seven main mujahideen parties allied as the political bloc called Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen. The parties were not under a single command and had ideological differences.
Many Muslims from other countries assisted the various mujahideen groups in Afghanistan. Some groups of these veterans became significant players in later conflicts in and around the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden, originally from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, was a prominent organizer and financier of an all-Arab Islamist group of foreign volunteers; his Maktab al-Khadamat funnelled money, arms, and Muslim fighters from around the Muslim world into Afghanistan, with the assistance and support of the Saudi and Pakistani governments. These foreign fighters became known as "Afghan Arabs" and their efforts were coordinated by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam.
Although the mujahideen were aided by the Pakistani, American, British, Chinese and Saudi governments, the mujahideen's primary source of funding was private donors and religious charities throughout the Muslim world—particularly in the Persian Gulf. Jason Burke recounts that "as little as 25% of the money for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states."
Mujahideen forces caused serious casualties to the Soviet forces, and made the war very costly for the Soviet Union. In 1989 the Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Afghanistan. In February 1989 the seven Sunni mujahideen factions formed an Afghan Interim Government (AIG) in Peshawar, The Interim Government had been in exile in Pakistan since 1988, led by Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, as an attempt for a united front against the DRA. The AIG became a failure, partly because it could not solve the differences between the factions; partly because of limited public support as it excluded the Iran-backed Shia mujahideen factions, and the exclusion of supporters of ex-King Mohammed Zahir Shah; and the mujahideen's failure in the Battle of Jalalabad in March 1989.
In 1992 the DRA's last president, Mohammad Najibullah, was overthrown and most mujahideen factions signed the Peshawar Accords. The mujahideen could not establish a functional united government, and many of the larger mujahideen groups began to fight each other over power in Kabul.
After several years of devastating fighting, in a small Pashtun village, a mullah named Mohammed Omar organized a new armed movement with the backing of Pakistan. This movement became known as the Taliban ("students" in Pashto), referring to how most Taliban had grown up in refugee camps in Pakistan during the 1980s and were taught in the Saudi-backed Wahhabi madrassas, religious schools known for teaching a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
While more than one group in Iran has called itself mujahideen, the most famous is the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI; Persian: Mojāhedin-e Khalq), an Iranian organization that advocates for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The group has taken part in multiple well-known conflicts in the region, and has been at odds with the conservative government of Iran since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Another mujahideen was the Mujahedin-e Islam, an Islamic party led by Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani. It formed part of the Iranian National Front during the time of Mohammed Mosaddeq's oil nationalization, but broke away from Mosaddeq over his allegedly un-Islamic policies.
From 1947 to 1961, local mujahideen (Furikka) fought against Burmese government soldiers in an attempt to have the Mayu peninsula in northern Arakan, Burma (present-day Rakhine State, Myanmar) secede from the country, so it could be annexed by East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the mujahideen lost most of their momentum and support, resulting in most of them surrendering to government forces.
In the 1990s, the well-armed Rohingya Solidarity Organisation was the main perpetrator of attacks on Burmese authorities positioned on the Bangladesh–Myanmar border.
In 1969, political tensions and open hostilities developed between the Government of the Philippines and jihadist rebel groups. The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was established by University of the Philippines professor Nur Misuari to condemn the killings of more than 60 Filipino Muslims and later became an aggressor against the government while the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a splinter group from the MNLF, was established to seek an Islamic state within the Philippines and is more radical and more aggressive. The conflict is ongoing; casualty statistics vary for the conflict, with conservative estimates of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program indicating at least 6,015 people were killed in armed conflict between the Government of Philippines and ASG, BIFM, MILF, and MNLF factions between 1989 and 2012. Abu Sayyaf is an Islamic separatist group in the southern Philippines, formed in 1991. The group is known for its kidnappings of Western nationals and Filipinos, for which it has received several large ransom-payments. Some Abu Sayyaf members have studied or worked in Saudi Arabia and developed relations with the mujahideen members while fighting and training in the war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The 1990s are a transitional period between the Mujahideen outfits forming part of the proxy wars between the Cold War superpowers and the emergence of contemporary jihadism in the wake of the US "war on terror" and the "Arab Spring".
Al-Qaeda saw its formative period during this time, and jihadism formed part of the picture in regional conflicts of the 1990s, including the Yugoslav Wars, the Algerian Civil War, the Somali Civil War, the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, the First Chechen War, etc.
During the Bosnian war 1992–1995, many foreign Muslims came to Bosnia as mujahideen. Muslims around the world who shared mujahideen beliefs and respected the author of Islamic Declaration come to the aid of fellow Muslims. Alija Izetbegovic, author of Islamic Declaration and in his younger days author of poem "To the Jihad" was particularly happy about the presence of Mujahedeens in Bosnia and gave them full support. El Mujahid members claimed that in Bosnia they only have respect for Alija Izetbegovic and the head of the Bosnian Army Third Corps, Sakib Mahmuljin. The number of foreign Muslim volunteers in Bosnia was estimated at 4,000 in contemporary newspaper reports. Later research estimated the number to be about 400. They came from various places such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories; to quote the summary of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia judgment:
The evidence shows that foreign volunteers arrived in central Bosnia in the second half of 1992 with the aim of helping Muslims. Mostly they came from North Africa, the Near East and the Middle East. The foreign volunteers differed considerably from the local population, not only because of their physical appearance and the language they spoke, but also because of their fighting methods. The various foreign, Muslim volunteers were primarily organized into an umbrella detachment of the 7th Muslim Brigade, which was a brigade of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Zenica. This independent subdivision colloquially known as El-Mudžahid, was composed exclusively of foreign nationals and not Bosnians (whereas the 7th Muslim Brigade was entirely made up of native Bosnians) and consisted of somewhere between 300 and 1,500 volunteers. Enver Hadžihasanović, Lieutenant Colonel of the Bosnian Army's 3rd Corps, appointed Mahmut Karalić (Commandant), Asim Koričić (Chief of Staff) and Amir Kubura (Assistant Chief for Operational and Curricula) to lead the group.
Some of the mujahideen funnelled arms and money into the country which Bosnia direly needed due to a United Nations-sanctioned arms embargo restricting the import of weapons into all of the republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Many of the mujahideen were extremely devout Muslims of the strict Salafi sect, which contrasted sharply with the relatively secular society of Bosnian Muslims. This led to friction between the mujahideen and the Bosnians.
Foreign volunteers in Bosnia have been accused of committing war crimes during the conflict. The ICTY has never issued indictments against mujahideen fighters. Instead, the ICTY indicted some Bosnian Army commanders on the basis of superior criminal responsibility. The ICTY acquitted Amir Kubura and Enver Hadžihasanović of the Bosnian 3rd Corps of all charges related to the incidents involving mujahideen. Furthermore, the Appeals Chamber noted that the relationship between the 3rd Corps and the El Mujahedin detachment was not one of subordination but was instead close to overt hostility since the only way to control the detachment was to attack them as if they were a distinct enemy force.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Mujahideen”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.