Slahi’s participation in the Afghan jihad

Slahi’s participation in the Afghan jihad was a defined, time-bound commitment: he interrupted his electrical-engineering studies to train and fight against Afghanistan’s communist-led government, then withdrew when the conflict turned into a struggle among Muslim factions. The distinction he drew between those phases became central to his account of why he had joined al-Qaeda’s cause and why, he maintained, he did not join its later campaign against the United States.

Studies interrupted for the Afghan cause

In Germany, Mohamedou Ould Slahi was pursuing a degree in electrical engineering and anticipated a career in telecommunications and computers. He set those studies aside to take part in the insurgency against Afghanistan’s communist-led government, a cause attracting young men from many countries. At the time, the journey was made openly: there were no restrictions or prohibitions on such activity, and Western governments, particularly the United States, actively supported the cause.

Joining the fight required military training. In early 1991, Slahi attended the al-Farouq training camp near Khost for seven weeks. He swore a loyalty oath to al-Qaeda, which operated the camp, and received instruction in light arms and mortars. The details he later recalled at his 2004 Combatant Status Review hearing give the episode an unexpectedly material character: the guns were mostly Soviet-made, while the mortar shells, he remembered, had been made in the United States. The mixed origins of the equipment sit alongside the political alignment of the period, when the cause he had joined was one the United States supported.

Return to Afghanistan and the siege of Gardez

After training, Slahi returned to his studies. In early 1992, as the communist government neared collapse, he went back to Afghanistan. He joined a unit commanded by Jalaluddin Haqqani that was laying siege to Gardez. The city fell with little resistance three weeks after Slahi arrived; Kabul fell soon afterward. The account identifies his unit, its commander, the objective, and the swift outcome, but does not describe Slahi personally taking part in a particular exchange of fire. His participation is thus located in the campaign without embellishing what the record says about his individual actions.

The rapid political change also altered the meaning of the campaign for Slahi. In his later explanation, the defeat of the communist government did not bring the conflict to a clear end. Instead, the Mujahideen began fighting one another over who would hold power. Slahi said that he chose to leave because he did not want to fight other Muslims and saw no reason to fight over who would become president or vice-president. He described his original purpose more narrowly: resistance to the communists, whom he said had prevented his fellow Muslims from practicing their religion. The shift from a shared external opponent to factional conflict was, in his account, the decisive break.

His account of ending the commitment

At his Combatant Status Review hearing, Slahi acknowledged that he had known he was fighting alongside al-Qaeda. He distinguished that earlier association from the organization’s later aims: he said that al-Qaeda had not been waging jihad against the United States when he joined the Afghan fight, and that its call in the mid-1990s to wage jihad against the United States was not one he accepted. He maintained that he had nothing to do with that decision and was independent of the dispute between al-Qaeda and the United States.

This account separates three things that could otherwise be collapsed into a single label: training at a camp operated by al-Qaeda, participation in an armed campaign against a communist government, and endorsement of al-Qaeda’s subsequent anti-American project. Slahi accepted the first two as part of his history while denying the third. His explanation ties that distinction to both a change in the war’s immediate purpose and his stated refusal to fight fellow Muslims. The evidence presents this as his retrospective account, not as an independent adjudication of every aspect of his relationship with al-Qaeda; its significance lies in the boundary he repeatedly drew between the Afghan campaign he joined and the later cause he said he rejected.