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The majority of foreign (that is to say, non-Afghan and non-Pakistani) fighters in
Afghanistan were ethnic Arabs from heartland Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, and Syria, but significant numbers of mujahidin also came from
northern Africa, Europe, the Caucuses, and Southeast Asia. In March 1985, the
war reached its bloodiest phase. In response, Saudi recruiting of foreign fighters
intensified and agencies such as the Rabitah stepped up their efforts to recruit
and finance foreign fighters. As a result, funding was seldom a problem for
Sungkar and Ba’asyir, but they were nevertheless careful about who they sent to
Afghanistan. In many ways, those in their first several groups represented the
crème-de-la-crème of their community—those with the best English and Arabic
language skills and greatest capacity to teach. This was deliberate, for it was
these men who translated key texts and instructed later students. 16 Those who
were sent in the first three years included future JI leader Zulkarnaen (Aris
Sumarsono), DI leader Syawal Yasin, Bali bomber Muchlas (Ali Gufron), and JI
strategist Hambali.
New recruits were processed through the “service-base” (Maktab al-Khidmat) in
Peshawar set up in 1984 to support foreign mujahidin, and headed by the
Palestinian close-confident of Usama bin Ladin, Abdullah Azzam. One of the
most important ideologues of the jihadist movement, Azzam re-articulated the
concepts first put forth by Sayyid Qutb and linked them to the contemporary
context. Most Southeast Asians who went to Azzam’s base were familiar with his
writing, which had already shaped their thinking.
Almost all of the Southeast Asian mujahidin, and certainly all of those later
associated with JI, trained in sections of camps established especially for them by
the Saudi-backed leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, such as Camp Saddah in the
Khumran Agency district of Pakistan. 17 Sayyaf’s network was one of the weakest
in Afghanistan, but he had some of the best Saudi connections of the Afghan
leaders. Furthermore, he understood the needs of his Southeast Asian brothers.
He divided Camp Saddah into separate “tribes” (qabilah) or self-sufficient
quarters, for those from North Africa, for those from the Middle East, and for
those from Southeast Asia. Students in the camps spent part of their time
studying contemporary jihadist writings (such as those by Abdullah Azzam)
together with classical Salafi texts (such as works by Ibn Taymiyya), and part of
16
International Crisis Group (2002), 5.
17
International Crisis Group, “Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: Damaged but Still
Dangerous,” Asia Report N°63, 26 August 2003, 3.
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