How the CIA missed Jihad.

• Author: Lee, Martin A.
• Position: Book Review

Understanding Terror Networks By Marc Sageman. University of Pennsylvania Press. 232 pages. $29.95.

Sleeping With the Devil. How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude By Robert Baer. Crown. 226 pages. $24.95.

The Future of Political Islam By Graham E. Fuller. Palgrave MacMillan. 256 pages. $16.95.

George Bush's Iraq War was a diversion from the real threat to the United States: Al Qaeda. These three books shed light on that threat.

In March 1989, shortly after the Soviet Union withdrew the last of its military regiments from Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and a group of foreign Islamic volunteers, the so-called Afghan-Arabs, joined indigenous mujahedeen combatants in the battle for Jalalabad, the heavily fortified gateway to Kabul. The campaign got off to a good start for the anti-communist mujahedeen, who quickly seized several strategic targets on the outskirts of the city. Bereft of Soviet support, demoralized local government officials were in the process of negotiating their surrender and guarantees of safety in accordance with traditional Afghan ways of resolving such matters. Some government troops had already begun laying down their arms after putting up token resistance.

But foreigners such as bin Laden, who was slightly wounded during skirmishes near the Jalalabad airport, did not hold native Afghan customs in high regard. When about sixty government soldiers surrendered to an Arab volunteer contingent, the Arabs promptly hacked them to death and cut them into small pieces. A truck carted their remains to the besieged city, sending a stark warning as to what fate lay in store for infidels. This gruesome massacre brought an abrupt halt to negotiations between warring parties and stiffened the resolve of the besieged forces, resulting in the first major government victory since the Soviet pullout. The crazed outburst of bloodletting by Arab jihadists had the unintended effect of rejuvenating the fighting spirit of a regime that seemed on the brink of collapse. The Afghan civil war would grind on for another three years until Kabul belatedly fell to the rebels, who were already fighting among themselves.

In Understanding Terror Networks, Marc Sageman cites the fiasco at Jalalabad as an example of bow radical Islamic foreign legionnaires undermined the efforts of homegrown Afghan resisters and needlessly prolonged the conflict. A former CIA case officer who worked on a daily basis with mujahedeen units in the late 1980s, Sageman maintains that relations between Arab jihadists and traditional Afghan rebels were fraught with tension. Some Afghan fighters complained to their CIA handlers about the condescending attitudes and behavior of the Islamic volunteers, whose ranks swelled to more than 10,000 at the height of the anti-Soviet crusade. The sectarian Arabs often disparaged the Afghan tribesmen for not being good Muslims. Early on, they feuded over Islamic Sufi...