30th anniversary of the mysterious assassination of the "Imam of Jihad" .. Who killed Sheikh Azzam?

At 1215 noon on November 24, 1989, a red Chevrolet-Vega approached the Sabaa al-Leel Mosque in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, where crowds were waiting for it, but a roadside bomb split the car in half and killed it. Whoever was in them. Yes, violence filled Peshawar at the time, but this assassination was not the same.

The man in the car was Abdullah Azzam, the spiritual father of the so-called "Afghan Arabs," foreign fighters who traveled in the thousands to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s.

The struggle to rid Afghanistan of Soviet occupation was a legitimate issue of military jihad in much of the Muslim world. Azzam, a Palestinian sheikh, joined the Afghan jihad in 1981 and spent most of that decade mobilizing him on the international stage. In 1989, Azzam was a living legend and the most influential jihadist theorist in the world.

Azzam is seen as the father of the international jihadist movement, the mass of violent groups - such as al-Qaeda and ISIS - that describe their activities as jihad. Azzam led the mobilization of foreign fighters to Afghanistan, creating the society from which al-Qaeda and other radical groups emerged. His Islamic credentials, international connections, and personal charisma have made him an exceptionally effective recruiter. Without him, the "Afghan Arabs" would not have been this big.

Azzam also formulated influential ideas, specifically his argument that Muslims should defend each other. If a part of the Muslim world is attacked, all believers must rush to defend it.

This idea was the ideological basis for foreign Islamic fighting, a phenomenon that has manifested itself in many other conflicts in the Muslim world, from Bosnia to Chechnya in the 1990s, Iraq and Somalia in the first decade of the millennium, and Syria in the second decade of the millennium.

In addition, Azzam urged Islamists to shift their attention from domestic to international politics, setting the ideology for the rise of anti-Western jihadism in the 1990s.

His predecessors had focused on overthrowing Muslim rulers, such as the case of Egypt, where Egyptian Islamic Jihad killed President Anwar Sadat in 1981; or in Syria, where an armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood waged an unsuccessful rebellion against Hafez al-Assad's regime in the late 1970s. Azzam, by contrast, said the most important was fighting non-Muslim invaders.

Azzam himself did not defend international terrorism and had nothing to do with the founding of al-Qaeda. In short, Azzam was a giant in the jihadist movement.

Assassination: Let us now return to that fateful day in Peshawar thirty years ago; his death was a shock, not only for "Afghan Arabs"; but for the wider Islamic movement as well. Thousands attended his funeral at Pappé that evening, he was paid homage in many countries, and wrote hundreds of poems, obituaries and lamentations in the weeks following his death.

Azzam's assassination was a mystery to observers; who would kill a religious sheikh - not to mention being revered - like Azzam? Why then in the last episode of the war? Those close to Azzam learned that something was going on in secret, given the discovery of a bomb under his pulpit in the "Arab Mosque" three weeks before the assassination. However, no one knew who pursued Azzam.

A local police investigation into the assassination was conducted but did not result in anything, and no one was charged. There was a lot of speculation, but the issue has not been closed until today.

But are we closer today to the truth? The writer spent 12 years writing Azzam's biography, which is his assessment of the case. Until now, forensic analysis is still scarce. The bomb weighed 20 kilograms, and consisted of two parts, each placed on the side of a small bridge erected over a trench, and tied to a wire.

But we can make a few observations: First, the person who assassinated wanted to make a fuss and scare the Arabs. There were easier ways to kill Azzam, for example by shooting him and then running away. Second, there is no doubt that the perpetrators of the operation were highly efficient, it is difficult to hit a specific mobile vehicle with a fixed bomb.

In addition, the implementers had eyes to monitor the target, because other cars crossed over the same bridge - almost at the same time - with nothing. They also had high operational security; it is difficult to carry out such an operation and then disappear without noticing the Pakistani security services.

Defendants: These observations could formulate many theories regarding the assassination of Azzam. Whatever it was carried out; there was no doubt that he had the motivation to do it in that time, the ability to implement it, and escape without being known. Some have suggested that one of Azzam's "Arab Afghan" comrades - such as Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri - carried out the assassination, but this seems unlikely because of the cost of reputation for anyone who might be caught in the killing of the "imam of jihad."

Others have suggested the involvement of foreign intelligence agencies such as the CIA or the Israeli Mossad, but Azzam was not important enough. The United States was withdrawing from the Afghan theater, and Israel was preoccupied with the first Palestinian uprising and Lebanese Hezbollah.

In his book, Rise and Kill First, journalist Ronen Bergman documents nearly 3,000 assassinations carried out by Israel since 1948, but Azzam is not among them. Another team even speaks of Jordanian or Saudi intelligence, but these countries were not assassinating the Islamists at the time.

Afghan intelligence might have reason to kill Azzam, but earlier in the war than at the end of 1989. Many have accused Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who resented Azzam's growing influence in favor of his main rival, Ahmad Shah Massoud. New evidence shows that Hekmatyar and Azzam were close friends to the end.

All this leaves us only in front of the ISI, which has the ability and motivation. At the end of the 1980s, the "Afghan Arabs" were a source of inconvenience, criticizing Pakistan more openly, and interfering in the policies of the Afghan mujahideen.

There is no coherent evidence indicating the involvement of the ISI, so we cannot put two lines under its name to confirm, but the circumstantial evidence is convincing; Azzam could have been killed by simply shooting him and then running away. Thus, the assassination of Azzam remains the largest mysterious crime in the history of the Islamic movement.

What then? That event had important consequences because, before his assassination, Azzam had planted a very dangerous idea in the minds of his followers. That idea was that Muslims should ignore traditional powers of jihad, be they governments, local scholars, tribal leaders, or even parents.

According to Azzam's vision, the legitimacy was clear: if a Muslim land was violated, all Muslims must mobilize militarily to defend it. This opened the Pandora's Box of Radicalism, creating an uncontrollable movement. After all, how will you make people listen to you when you tell them they should not listen to anyone?

Azzam sensed the early effects of this problem in his later years, but he maintained order among the fighters through his enormous prestige within their community. However, after the assassination there was no one who could restrain young people whose blood was boiling, and the jihadist movement has since entered into a state of fragmentation and brutality.

While the 'Afghan Arabs' in the 1980s used only guerrilla tactics, some of their heirs turned to international terrorism, suicide bombings, and beheadings. The excessive violence of IS in recent years has been the last link in this process.

Thus, the story of Abdullah Azzam suggests that the collapse of respect for religious authority among young people in the late 1980s was a radical issue. Azzam started it, and his disappearance accelerated it, then its repercussions were devastating. It is also one of the many lessons of history related to unintended consequences, as it can be said that neither Azzam nor those who assassinated him intended to turn things this way.

The question now is: could the genie be returned to the bottle? Was it possible to restore religious power to young people attracted by the jihadist movement? There are some signs that the extremism of IS has undermined the appeal of the movement, but it is too early to say whether the damage caused by that mysterious bombing 30 years ago can be corrected.