*****
Soldiers & Associates
Of
The Mujahideen
Jihad (Arabic: جهاد IPA: [ ʤi'haːd]), an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, Jihad means "strive" or "struggle". Jihad appears frequently in the Qur'an and common usage as the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of Allah (al-jihad fi sabil Allah)".[1][2] A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid, the plural is mujahideen.
The best-known mujahideen, various loosely-aligned Afghan opposition groups, initially fought against the incumbent pro-Soviet Afghan government during the late 1970s. At the Afghan government's request, the Soviet Union became involved in the war. The mujahideen insurgency then fought against the Soviet and Afghan government troops during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. After the Soviet Union pulled out of the conflict in the late 1980s the mujahideen fought each other in the subsequent Afghan Civil War.
The mujahideen were significantly financed and armed (and are alleged to have been trained) by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Carter[3] and Reagan administrations and the governments of Saudi Arabia, the People's Republic of China, several European countries, Iran, and Zia-ul-Haq's military regime in Pakistan. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was the interagent used in the majority of these activities to disguise the sources of support for the resistance.
The main base station of mujahideen in Pakistan was the town Badaber, 24 km from Peshawar. Afghanistan mujahideen were trained in the Badaber base under supervision by military instructors from U.S.A., Pakistan, Republic of China and Egypt. The base served as the concentration camp for Soviet and DRA captives as well. In 1985, the uprising of captives destroyed the base, but the incident was concealed by Pakistan and USSR governments until the dissolution of the USSR.
Ronald Reagan praised mujahideen as "freedom fighters", and three mainstream films, 1987 The Living Daylights, 1988 Rambo III and 2007 Charlie Wilson's War, portrayed them as heroic.
