By the time of the Soviet withdrawal,…
1989 CE
By the time of the Soviet withdrawal, bin Laden&emdash;reportedly minus a toe on one foot, said to be the result of a battle wound&emdash;has emerged as the leader of an organization of battle-hardened veterans and religious fundamentalists crusading to oppose non-Islamic governments with violence.
(According to later allegations by US government officials, Bin Laden calls his group al Qaeda, or al Qaida, Arabic for "The Base." However, Doctor Saad Al-Fagih, a Saudi Arabian dissident living in exile in London who took part in the Afghanistan resistance against the Soviet invasion and now heads the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, challenges the US government's characterization of Al Qaeda.
In an interview with PBS Frontline, al-Fagih asserts that Al Qaeda is simply a benign "record of [Saudi Arabian] people who ended up in Peshawar [Pakistan] and joined [the mujahideen in the 80s], and moved from Peshawar to Afghanistan.")
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