Mujahideen is a blanket term used to describe Muslims struggling or striving in the path of Allah. The term literally means ‘strugglers’, coming from the same Arabic root as the word jihad (“struggle”). Its origins can be traced back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad, where those who helped him in battle were known as muhajirs. The term Mujahideen, however, has become most closely associated in the west in recent times with violent radical Islamic militant groups and struggles.
Use of the term Mujahideen to refer to modern religious militants was revived by the British in the 19th Century when tribal Afghan hillsmen were stirred up by Islamic preachers to fight British infidels (non-believers) along the Afghan border of British India. This religiously-motivated fighting group gained power and prominence during the 19th and 20th Centuries and the term became almost interchangeable with the wider modern-use Jihadist religious struggle movement. The Mujahideen gained particular international notoriety during the 1979-1989 Soviet War in Afghanistan, where the name came to be applied to the various loosely-aligned Afghan opposition groups fighting the Soviet-backed Afghan government – and later the USSR itself – with the covert backing of the U.S. who financed and helped train the Mujahideen to fight the Russians.
When Russia withdrew from their bloody conflict in Afghanistan in 1989, up to 2 million Afghans had died. The Mujahideen took provisional control of Afghanistan with assistance from Muslim fighters from other countries (including the early foundations of what would become the Islamist fighting group al-Qaeda), but the Mujahideen collective was too disparate and fell to infighting. Within this vacuum, the repressive Taliban rose to power in 1996. In 2001, another Afghan collective known as the Northern Alliance (again with the backing of the US and NATO) ousted the Taliban to form another new Afghan government. Confusingly to the outside observer, many of the former Mujahideen were incorporated into the new Afghan government’s police and army, while the term ‘Mujahideen’ itself now became used to describe new insurgent groups – including the Taliban and al-Qaeda – who were now fighting the new Afghan military and NATO troops. The term literally does just mean ‘struggler’.
Collectives also referred to as ‘Mujahideen’ in recent years include the numerous Islamic fighters (from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine and northern Africa) who travelled to Europe to defend Bosnian Muslims during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. In that instance, there was distinct friction between the secular, liberal Muslims of Bosnia and the more militant, foreign Islamic Mujahideen who came to defend them. These Mujahideen fought as a separate (at times uncontrollable) brigade of the Bosnian Army and were eventually accused of committing their own war crimes against the Serbs. The Mujahideen continued to fight the Serbs in the 1997-1999 Kosovo War.
These travelling militant Mujahideen – who tend to be from the devout Salafi movement within Sunni Islam – have also been active in recent years in India, Iran, Iraq (as part of the insurgency against the US), Russia (as part of the Chechen independence struggle), the Somalian government (through the al-Qaeda-backed Islamist group Al-Shabaab), Nigeria (the Boko Haram group), and against the Syrian government in the ongoing (as of 2014) Syrian Civil War, even though much of the ‘official’ Syrian opposition have refused to fight alongside jihadists. Indeed, one of the reasons the west was reluctant to help arm the Syrian opposition (and left them to die) was a fear that weapons provided would ultimately fall into the hands of al-Qaeda.
To learn more about the ongoing influence of al-Qaeda on the Mujahideen, jump to Chapter 46: Al-Qaeda – content to follow
To learn more about the wider concept of Islamic religious struggle, jump to Chapter 47: Jihadism – content to follow
To learn more about the complexities of the ongoing Syrian Civil War, jump to Chapter 48: Syrian Civil War – content to follow
