SUMMARY
Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan was a Sunni Islamist armed group and political party that was also known as Ittehad-e Islami, the Islamic Union of Afghanistan and Islamic Alliance for the Liberation of Afghanistan. It was one of the seven main insurgency groups based in Peshawar, Pakistan commonly known as the Mujahideen during the 1980s and 1990s.
The Islamist movements in Afghanistan originated from a cell of intellectuals at Kabul University. In the 1950s, the theology faculty opened, and graduates could travel to other Muslim universities. Inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a group called the Muslim Youth was formed in the mid-1960s. As a reaction to a communist-backed coup in 1973, the resistance group Jam’iyyat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan was created by members of the Muslim Youth network. In the following years several new resistance groups were formed and after the communist PDPA overthrew the government and the Soviets invaded in 1978 and 1979 respectively, the Islamist struggle against the communist regime became increasingly violent.
Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan thus formed initially as an alliance between six Islamic resistance movements in Peshawar on 27 January 1980. The objectives of the new alliance were to gain international support for the Afghan government-in-exile that was set up in Peshawar, and to unite the efforts of the opposition forces. The leader of Hizb-i Islami-yi Afghanistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, boycotted the alliance after a few weeks, and the organization was never very cohesive. In April, the alliance finally managed to agree on a leader, Abdul Rasul Sayaf, but problems unifying the different parties persisted and the alliance fell apart. Consequently, Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf continued with a new party under the same name – Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan – by April 1981.
Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan adopted a radical Islamist, anti-Shia approach and was recognized for being a sectarian, rather than ethnic, armed group in Afghanistan. Within Afghanistan, its base was in Paghman, Kabul province. Support for the group grew particularly in the province of Nangahar and the area of Sheberghan in the northern province of Jowzjan. This support largely drew from ethnic Pashtuns. In addition, the group was recognized for recruiting young and enthusiastic Arabs for jihad operations. However, membership was also based upon interpersonal links and the exchange of valuable resources rather than a coherent ideology. This resulted in the units of Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan operating relatively independently; it was estimated to have 1000 to 1500 troops that were well-resourced with quality weaponry.
Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, an ethnic Pashtun born in Paghman, led Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan. He was a radical Islamist, who had originally been recruited to the Islamist movement whilst undertaking Islamic theology at a madrasa during the 1970s. Having studied in Saudi Arabia, as well as Egypt, Sayyaf was able to personally connect himself to the Wahabis and received funding from them personally, which was used to buy the loyalty of local fighters for Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan. When the mujahideen groups took over the Government of Afghanistan in 1992, Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan became part it. Sayyaf became prime minister after the appointment was rejected by Hizb-I Islami-yi Afghanistan leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He remained in this position and Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan remained part of the government until the Mujahideen regime was ousted by the Taleban in 1996. Other key figures in Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan included Haji Shir Alam, Zalmay Tufan, Abdullah Shah and Mullah Taj Mohammad.
Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan and the other Mujahideen groups made several attempts to unite in an alliance, both in order to increase their combat strength but also because external donors, primarily the Government of United States of America, preferred to support one cohesive organization rather than numerous dispersed groups. They formed an informal alliance known as the “Peshawar Seven”, which then became a formalized coalition under the name “Islamic Unity of the Afghan Mujahideen” (although it was still also known as the Peshawar Seven) and was active between 1985 and 1992. The other Peshawar Seven members were: Hizb-i Islami-yi Afghanistan, Mahaz-i Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan, Hizb-i Islami-yi Afghanistan - Khalis faction, Harakat-i Inqilab-i Islami-yi Afghanistan, Jam’iyyat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan and Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan. External funding, despite tension between the individual group leaders, led to the coalition retaining a loose but longer-lasting alliance.
After the Taleban ousted the Mujahideen regime and took over the Government of Afghanistan, Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan joined the UIFSA coalition to fight against it. Following the removal of the Taleban regime in 2001, Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan transitioned into being a political party and formally changed its name to Dawat-I Islami, also known as Tanzim-e Da’wat-e Islami-ye Afghanistan or Organization for the Islamic Call of Afghanistan.
The Sunni mujahideen, including Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan, received substantial amounts of support in the form of arms, training, advisors, logistics and financial assistance from several governments. These included the governments of the United States of America, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China and Egypt (click Read More to see more information on secondary support).
For Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan, its greatest benefactor was the Wahabis from Saudi Arabia. In addition, its allocated share of the funding from the Government of Pakistan to the Sunni mujahideen groups was 17-18%.
