Iraq is attracting Islamic militants from across the world determined to join the "holy war" against the US-led occupation, the son of Osama bin Laden's mentor Abdullah Azzam said 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. Azzam also claimed that the former regime of Saddam Hussein "strictly and directly controlled" members of bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror network in Iraq before the US invasion, as charged by members of US President George W. 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" (Muslim combatants), 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 Muslim followers. He also founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian territories. His ideology is that "when a Muslim country is occupied, sharia (Islamic law) says that Muslims across the world must strive to liberate that land," his son added. "That is why my father was the first Arab to go to Peshawar to help liberate Afghanistan from Soviet occupation," he said.
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 recruits, 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. He said that leading Islamic militants "realized that it is more beneficial not to have too many groups, parties and masterminds because it creates problems." |