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behind the mujahideen. Roughly 6 million Afghans Further Reading
fled to the neighboring countries of Pakistan and Iran;
Gall, Sandy. Afghanistan: Agony of a Nation. London:
once there, they established bases of operation from
Bodley Head, 1988.
which to attack Soviet forces. Gall, Sandy. Behind Russian Lines: An Afghan Journal.
The invasion also prompted countries hostile to the New York: St. Martin’s, 1983.
Soviet Union—including the United States, Pakistan, Giustozzi, Antonio. War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan
Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, and Egypt—to support the 1978-1992. Washington, DC: Georgetown University
mujahideen with arms and training. The United States Press, 2000.
alone spent more than $2 billion on weapons and sup- Urban, Mark. War in Afghanistan. New York: St. Martin’s,
plies for the mujahideen during the 1980s. 1988.
The mujahideen consisted of dozens of factions
that had little in common besides wanting to rid
Afghanistan of the Soviets and the PDPA government. MUNICH OLYMPICS MASSACRE
Afghans of different ethnic groups and with different
approaches to Islam found themselves in different fac-
tions, and each faction found different foreign backers. Before the 1972 Munich Olympics, security
Among the various factions were Islamic fundamen- for major international events was often lax, and ter-
talist groups, who were soon joined by fundamentalists rorism was generally not a major concern among
from other countries. The Saudi billionaire Osama bin civilians. Much changed in 1972, when a group of
Laden joined the mujahideen in the late 1970s or early Palestinian terrorists kidnapped nine Israeli athletes at
1980s. In the mid-1980s, he helped found an organiza- the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany.
tion that recruited thousands of people from the world The hostage drama, which resulted in the death of
over to come to Afghanistan and fight; this organization 11 athletes, took place almost entirely under the glare
would ultimately become Al Qaeda (“The Base”), a vir- of the media cameras. The world watched, horrified,
ulently anti-Western terrorist network. By the end of the as terrorism was brought into their homes for the first
decade, Afghanistan was home to terrorist training time. Neither security considerations, media coverage
camps for Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups. of terrorist incidents, nor the way the Western world
By the late 1980s, the war in Afghanistan had views terrorism has ever been the same since.
become extremely unpopular in the Soviet Union. In
1988, the Soviet Union, United States, Pakistan, and
Afghanistan reached an agreement ending all foreign THE BEGINNING
intervention in Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union At around 5:00 A.M. on September 5, 1972, five ter-
withdrew its forces the next year. rorists hopped over the six-foot-six-inch fence sur-
But the mujahideen did not stop fighting. The 1988 rounding the Olympic Village in Munich. Although
agreement left the PDPA government in power, and they were seen by several people, athletes routinely
both the United States and Soviet Union continued hopped the fence and no one thought it was odd. Once
to send arms. In 1992, the mujahideen laid siege to the inside, they were met by three more terrorists who had
capital of Kabul, overthrowing the PDPA in April. obtained credentials to enter the village.
Following the overthrow of the PDPA, many of the The terrorists first knocked on the door of 33-year-
foreign mujahideen returned to their home countries, old Israeli wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg. Weinberg
establishing or joining Islamic terrorist groups. The opened the door, saw the attackers and shouted, “Boys
Afghan mujahideen promptly began fighting among get out!” He and weightlifter Joseph Romano attem-
themselves, further decimating a country ravaged by pted to block the door while other Israeli athletes
decades of war. Two years after the fall of the PDPA, escaped. The terrorists fired through the door, mortally
a new group, the Taliban, emerged, promising to rid wounding Weinberg and killing Romano.
the country of the mujahideen. The Taliban quickly The noise of the shots alerted the Olympic Village
swept, the country, seizing Kabul from a mujahideen to news of the attack. Although some Israeli athletes
faction in 1996. escaped by climbing out windows, the terrorists

See also OSAMA BIN LADEN; TALIBAN; UNITED STATES V. managed to capture nine more people before armed
USAMA BIN LADEN ET AL. INDICTMENT German police officers sealed off the area. Once the