Consequently the condemnation of any form of Islamism – a significant political component throughout the Muslim world – often results from the simplistic and reactive perception that the majority in the West have toward Islamists.

(This is the third of a three-part series)

The integration of several thousand young people into the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation is a third factor that an analyst of the al-Qaida generation must carefully take into account. The Afghan episode is actually built around logical and successive phases, which are quite different.

The first phase was that of the semi-official and "legal" mobilization (from the viewpoint of Arab and Western governments, which strongly encouraged this action) of young supporters of the armed resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the early 1980s.

The end of the legalistic itinerary of the "Arab Afghans" who came from the entire Muslim world had begun with the victory of the mujahedin against Kabul's regime and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The phase that followed was a civil war between the victorious mujahedin factions that broke out after 1992, often at the expense of Arabs who lost their lives. The majority of Arab mujahedin retreated from their former Afghan sanctuary. But, they were countered by repression from the Arab regimes which had become wary of the fighters they had recklessly trained and formerly deployed in the name of "jihad."

The Taliban's rise to power in 1996 immediately changed the geopolitical landscape of the region.

An agreement made between Osama Bin Laden and the new regime in Kabul was endorsed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who decided to shift his old and unsuccessful fight against the "near" Egyptian enemy state toward a new enemy – the United States. Although the new enemy was "far" he was able to gather an exponentially growing number of discontented people.

It is this last phase that gave the signal for the 'legal' deployment (from the point of view of their Afghan hosts) of the al-Qaida global networks.

The Afghan episode gave the opportunity to thousands of young Muslims from all nationalities to take part in a victorious armed struggle against the Soviet Union, the second world power of the time. This obviously played – as also did, to a certain extent, the Balkans war and, more importantly, Chechnya – a very significant role in the birth and affirmation of the al-Qaida generation.

More than simply providing military assistance, Afghanistan facilitated the formation of the last Islamist generation by providing the Arab mujahedin with both a sanctuary and breeding ground to promote their ideas.

This assistance has accelerated the rise of radical ideology and the strength of its strategies. It gave credence – at the expense of other strategies of contemporary Islamism – of the effectiveness, or simply the feasibility, of an armed struggle against a pillar of the world order.

Indeed, the thrust of the "camp of denial," composed of a Salafi minority, which advocated military action, was promoted as the strategy of success, especially as previous attempts at change failed.

The unsuccessful struggle, for example, in the "national" space – in Egypt and Algeria in particular – and by the lack of outlets of the legalistic peaceful strategies espoused by rival Islamist counterparts, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.

In sum, to understand the Salafi identity of the al-Qaida generation in Afghanistan, we must take into account the particularly conservative nature of Afghan society and the geographical proximity of the Taliban to the al-Qaida leadership.

These Salafi jihadists today represent the all-too-famous "base" (the meaning of "al-Qaida") and pose the most lethal threat to this new and dysfunctional world order emerged from the ruins of Berlin wall on Nov. 9, 1989.

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Noureddine Jebnoun is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, in Washington, D.C.

Follow this link to view Part I 'Identity of al-Qaida generation'

Follow this link to view Part II 'Al-Qaida: 3rd generation of Islamists'