The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad

Abstract

The name Abdallah Azzam is not widely known outside the field of security studies. However, anyone who has ever looked into Islamism, Islamist terrorism, or the foreign fighter phenomenon would be familiar with Azzam's work. The Palestinian cleric left behind a rich collection of books and taped lectures, some of which have featured in al-Qaʿida and ISIS propaganda. Azzam has become an iconic figure among jihadists. Indeed, the plotters of the September 11 attacks, Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, and the Jordanian triple agent who went on a suicide mission in a CIA base in Afghanistan in 2009 were all familiar with Azzam's writings.1 Despite such standing, not much has been known about this man.In his seminal book, The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad, Thomas Hegghammer sheds light on the life of Azzam, whom he refers to as the Che Guevara of global jihadism. Hegghammer's research, which utilizes an impressive array of primary sources, yields important insights about the work of a man who has motivated generations of extremists. The book also provides some perspectives on the ideological tenets of jihadism and helps answer the questions of why jihadism went global, what the roots of al-Qaʿida were, and why foreign volunteers continue joining conflicts today.While Hegghammer's book focuses centrally on Azzam, to call it a biography would be a gross understatement. Through the prism of Azzam's life, Hegghammer provides us with answers to many important questions regarding how jihadism grew into a transnational movement in the 1980s. Hegghammer posits that domestic politics in the Middle East at the time deprived Islamists of opportunities to participate in the political process, and thus drove them to look outward, eventually leading to the birth of transnational, pan-Islamist activism. In Hegghammer's account, then, Azzam did not cause jihadism to go global, but he nevertheless was an important player in the process. Azzam's religious credentials allowed him to create justifications for the doctrine of defensive jihad. Moreover, his connections in the Middle East facilitated the formation and growth of recruitment networks that remain operational to this day.Hegghammer begins by discussing Azzam's early life in Palestine. The book details the impact that the 1948 and 1967 wars had on Azzam and discusses his emigration from the West Bank. The quest for the liberation of Palestine has always occupied a special position in Islamist narratives. The fact that Azzam was a Palestinian refugee, consequently, lent credibility to his ideas and elevated his clerical standing. As Hegghammer writes, Azzam “embodied the suffering of the Muslim nation” (499).Hegghammer describes how Azzam was compelled to leave Palestine but subsequently found new opportunities in Afghanistan. Moreover, Hegghammer provides important details about the broader Islamist movement in the 1970s and 1980s. The book includes an excellent overview of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the rise of transnational jihadism, the activism of Sayyid Qutb, the roots of militant Salafism, and the evolution of takfirism (28, 40, 91, 73). In addition, Hegghammer lays out the ideological debates that took place between the various factions in the Islamist movement and details how Azzam's loyalty to the doctrines of Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood often placed him at odds with more extreme adherents of militant Salafism.Azzam started his religious career by acquiring an impressive list of credentials, including a Ph.D. from the renowned Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Hegghammer shows how Azzam was able to capitalize on his education and Muslim Brotherhood connections to secure ideological and monetary support for the Afghan cause. Azzam was the only religious dignitary of his rank to get involved in the Soviet-Afghan war at the time, which inevitably elevated his status among other foreigners who arrived in Peshawar (7).Azzam relocated to Pakistan to fully devote his life to the Afghan jihad. His main goals were to recruit international volunteers for the war and attract the attention of Muslims worldwide to the cause. In 1984 he established the infamous Afghan Services Bureau to facilitate the movement of foreign fighters to and from the battlefield. Hegghammer provides key details on how the Services Bureau came to play an essential role in creating a logistical infrastructure for the first wave of Islamist foreign fighters. At the same time, Hegghammer warns against overestimating the impact that foreign fighters had on the course of the Soviet-Afghan war. Many foreign fighters were actually a nuisance to the Afghan mujahedeen, and the latter agreed to tolerate the “Afghan Arabs” only because of the money that came with the volunteers (364–68).If Azzam's military contributions barely had any impact on the Soviet-Afghan war, his ideological musings proved to have a more lasting effect. Azzam was the first religious cleric to provide the legal framework justifying the Islamist foreign fighter tradition. Azzam began by building on the Islamist ideas that were widely popular in the 1970s, which held that “all Muslims are one people; that this people is under assault by non-Muslim forces; and that Muslims in different countries should help one another” (107).But, Hegghammer shows, Azzam was also an innovator who challenged accepted Islamist norms. For example, he rejected the idea that foreign fighters required the sanction and backing of state governments. Instead, Azzam placed the responsibility for the choice of whether to become a foreign fighter squarely with the individual. He, moreover, focused primarily on promoting defensive jihad against foreign invaders, rather than on domestic regime change. Relatedly, Azzam dismissed the common conception of jihad as a spiritual struggle and instead elevated the notion of jihad to encompass fighting anywhere necessary to fulfill the individual duty of every Muslim (301).In 1984 Azzam issued his famous fatwa that laid the foundation for the doctrine of foreign fighting. In his initial reactions to the war in Afghanistan, Azzam was content to see jihad as a duty for “Afghans, their immediate neighbors, and skilled professionals” (301). But after witnessing the world's apparent indifference toward the suffering that the Soviets had caused in Afghanistan, his views shifted significantly. Azzam now proclaimed that jihad against a foreign aggressor was an individual obligation for all Muslims globally. Azzam later codified these principles in great depth in his The Defense of Muslim Lands.2 Hegghammer's painstaking work explains how Azzam's articulation of this principle came largely as a response to the geopolitical situation in Afghanistan. In taking this position, Azzam was distancing himself from other radical Islamists, who were more preoccupied with seeking domestic regime change in their respective countries.Azzam's pronouncements ultimately helped inspire numerous waves of jihadist foreign fighters. After the Soviet-Afghan war, some Afghan Arabs moved on to other conflicts across the world. In the 1990s, for instance, Azzam's disciples, who liked to refer to themselves as “helpers” (ansar), joined the Algerian civil war, as well as the wars in Tajikistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. The jihadist Samir Saleh Al-Suwailem, better known as Khattab, arrived in Chechnya in the 1990s to lead a foreign fighter contingent there. And in his memoir, Khattab acknowledged Azzam as his teacher of the principles of jihad in Afghanistan.3 Khattab, like many other followers of Azzam, spread these principles to war zones well beyond Afghanistan.Azzam, of course, worked closely during the 1980s with Osama bin Laden. With that in mind—even though Azzam did not found the organization—The Caravan is an essential text for those interested in the origins of al-Qaʿida. According to Hegghammer, Azzam was “neither a member nor an enemy of al-Qaida, but rather a passive spectator to its emergence” (361). Instead, it was bin Laden who founded the al-Masada project in October 1986 that was destined to become al-Qaʿida. Although Hegghammer provides evidence that Azzam cooperated with bin Laden, the former was neither a supporter of nor involved with al-Qaʿida. To the contrary, although Hegghammer claims that the al-Masada project grew out of Azzam's Services Bureau, once Azzam was fully appraised of its activities, he demanded that bin Laden close the site, which created some tension between the two men (342).Azzam and bin Laden, in fact, did not see eye to eye when it came to the issue of whether to use terrorism against the West. Azzam's preference, Hegghammer writes, was to employ “conventional paramilitary tactics against enemy combatants in confined theaters of war” (307). Accordingly, Azzam was opposed to the targeting of civilians. Despite his anti-Western views, Azzam did not call for acts of international terrorism, nor did he support killing Westerners in Afghanistan (309).At the same time, Hegghammer asserts that Azzam left behind a harmful legacy in this area. Indeed, Hegghammer goes so far as to claim that Azzam was “partly responsible for the subsequent rise of transnational jihadi terrorism, not because he advocated such tactics, but because he helped undermine traditional authorities on matters of jihad” (7). However, in the absence of direct calls for terrorism, the cleric is hardly to blame for events that occurred after his death, most notably the September 11 attacks. Azzam's speeches and books have been read in different ways, and his at-times-contradictory messages have allowed for numerous interpretations. Nevertheless, Azzam was mainly concerned with the Soviet-Afghan war and did not codify a strategy of targeting the West. That came well after his death, with the evolution of al-Qaʿida's anti-Western agenda.What Azzam did envision, however, was the restoration of Islamic governance throughout the Muslim world. He was critical of governments in the Muslim world that he deemed not Islamic enough. Hegghammer reveals Azzam's infatuation with the Ottoman Empire and records the cleric's laments regarding the collapse of the last Sunni Islamic Caliphate of the modern era. As a result, Azzam hoped to turn Afghanistan into a springboard for the restoration of Islamic governance (315). Thus, Azzam advocated for the restoration of a transnational Sunni Caliphate long before the Islamic State came into existence.One important aspect of Azzam's views that Hegghammer reveals has to do with his attitude toward women. While many contemporary jihadist groups eschew the use of women in active roles, Azzam favored female militancy. By declaring jihad an individual duty, Azzam extended this principle to women as well. He stated that for the purposes of defensive jihad, “the son may go out without the permission of his father, the debtor without the permission of the creditor, the woman without the permission of her husband, and the slave without the permission of his master” (383). Notably, this principle has motivated a number of women to seek more active roles in contemporary terrorist organizations. Indeed, Azzam's stance on women has even moved some to commit terrorist attacks. Roshonara Choudhry's attempt to assassinate Stephen Timms, a member of the British Parliament, in 2010, is a good case in point. Choudhry later explained that her motivation was rooted in the justifications that Azzam had laid out.4Thomas Hegghammer has produced a remarkable account of Abdallah Azzam's life. Despite its length—it runs more than 700 pages—the book is extremely well written and is easy to read. Through his biography of “the Che Guevara of jihadism,” Hegghammer masterfully illuminates the origins of the Islamist tradition, the rise of international jihadism, the various strands in jihadist thinking, the roots of al-Qaʿida, and the rise of anti-Western terrorism. The book is as much about the history of the foreign fighter phenomenon as it is about Azzam's life. With that in mind, the book is a must for anyone interested in Islamist militancy, the Soviet-Afghan war, the story of al-Qaʿida, or the broader history of the Middle East.