Share this story!            

Iraq fertile ground for jihad: Azzam

AMMAN: Iraq is attracting Islamic militants from across the world determined to join the “holy war” against the United States-led occupation, the son of Osama Bin Laden’s mentor Abdullah Azzam told AFP in an interview.

“Hundreds of Muslims from all over Arab and non-Arab countries go to Iraq to help the resistance end the occupation, spurred by the conviction that jihad is a duty against the occupier,” said Hudayfa Azzam, 34. He also claimed that the former regime of Saddam Hussein “strictly and directly controlled” members of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network in Iraq before the US invasion, as charged by members of US President George Bush’s administration but refuted by other experts.

In 1984 Bin Laden decided to leave his native Saudi Arabia and follow Abdullah Azzam, better known as “the prince of the mujahideen”, to Afghanistan.

Before being killed with two of his sons in a bomb attack against their car in Afghanistan in November 1989, Abdullah Azzam wrote a five-volume encyclopedia on jihad which has become the reference book for his followers.

He also founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian territories.

His ideology is that “when a Muslim country is occupied the Sharia says that Muslims across the world must strive to liberate that land,” his son said.

“That is why my father was the first Arab to go to Peshawar to help liberate Afghanistan from Soviet occupation,” he said.

Impressed by the lectures Abdullah Azzam gave at the King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden decided in 1984 to visit Azzam in Amman where he lived to learn more about jihad. But Azzam was packing up for Afghanistan and invited Bin Laden to follow him there.

Bin Laden took up the offer and agreed “to work in and finance” an office set up by Abdullah Azzam which provided services and guidance to the new mujahideen, Hudayfa Azzam said.

In 1987 he broke away and set up Al Qaeda. “The idea of jihad is the same whether the occupier is Soviet, as was the case in Afghanistan, or American, as it is now in Iraq,” Hudayfa Azzam added. “There is effective coordination among the elite members of the resistance in Iraq,” said Hudayfa Azzam, adding that the ideology now prevailing in the embattled country is close to his father’s beliefs. It is close to the ideology of “liberation movements, such as the Hamas (Palestinian radical group)”, he said.

“Most of them seek liberation, despite a few small groups who have deviated from this ideology and whose actions, unfortunately, harm the reputation of the resistance,” in Iraq, he said.

“The resistance in Iraq is becoming more effective day after day and is making progress and securing real victories,” he said.

According to Hudayfa Azzam, Arabs who fought in Afghanistan began going to Iraq after the September 11 attacks on the US that have been blamed on Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

They wanted to flee Afghanistan and take advantage of a situation which was still stable in Iraq, he said. “They infiltrated into Iraq with the help of Kurdish mujahideen from Afghanistan, across mountains in Iran,” he said.

When the possibility of a US-led invasion became clearer “Saddam Hussein’s regime welcomed them with open arms and young Al Qaeda members entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organisation to confront the occupation,” he said.

Saddam’s regime “strictly and directly controlled” these Al Qaeda members, he said. afp

Home | National

Share this story!