Salafist Jihadis (Afghanistan)
د افغانستان اسلامي امارت

Salafist Jihadi Groups
Location: Afghanistan
Timeframe: 1996-2001

Personal interest:
Salafist jihadist groups included al-Qaeda, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), and the Egyptian group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. These groups evolved from the mujahideen who had come from around the world to fight for Islam against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Despite having supported and armed the Afghan mujahideen, the United States was declared the target of a jihad in 1996 by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. His rationale was US support of Israel, military interventions in Iraq and Somalia, and stationing of US military forces in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE.

In November 1995, an al-Qaeda car bomb killed five US citizens and two Indians at the US Military Training Mission in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In June 1996, al-Qaeda, supported by Iran's Quds Force, detonated a bomb at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, a Saudi apartment complex that was occupied by US Air Force personnel. Nineteen airmen were killed and 372 wounded. This event was personal for me. Many of the casualties were from my station at Patrick AFB, FL. I was scheduled to deploy to Dhahran myself just days later, and witnessed the destruction first hand when I arrived.

In February 1998, Osama bin Laden and three other leaders of Islamic militant organizations issued a fatwa, declaring that "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilian and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." In August 1998, al-Qaeda teams in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, attacked the cities' U.S. embassies simultaneously with truck bombs. In Nairobi, the explosion collapsed the nearby Ufundi Building and destroyed the embassy, killing 213 people, including 12 Americans; another 4,000 people were wounded. In Dar es Salaam, the bomber was unable to get close enough to the embassy to demolish it, but the blast killed 11 Africans and wounded 85. During my military service, the US retaliated for the terrorist attacks, but they only seemed to increase the jihadis resolve. My last day of military service was September 10, 2001, one day prior to the most infamous of al-Qaeda terrorist attacks.