Who remembers the names of the Saudi 9/11 hijackers? While the story of Muhammad Atta and the Hamburg cell has been told in vivid detail, most of the Saudi hijackers remain an anonymous mass, collectively referred to as the ‘muscle’ of the operation. Much of the existing literature seems to presume the existence of a specifically Saudi extremism which ensures a permanent flow of recruits to war zones and terrorist groups. This assumption has diverted attention from the real puzzles of the Saudi recruitment to al-Qaida. Why did some Saudis and not others travel to Afghanistan? Why did people go in the late 1990s when there was no longer an officially sanctioned jihad in Afghanistan? How did they even get there, given how controversial jihadism had become in the mid-1990s? Using a sample of 197 biographies, this chapter takes a closer look at the backgrounds, motivations and recruitment patterns of Saudis who went to Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.

Unemployment and ‘Najdification’

Like the early jihadists, the Saudis in post-1996 Afghanistan were a diverse crowd. As a group, they were not losers, misfits or paupers, nor were they disgruntled graduates or ideologically driven rich kids. While these caricatures were probably all represented, the average al-Qaida recruits were middle- to lower-middle-class men in their early twenties from the big cities of Riyadh, Mecca and Jidda.

Nevertheless, Saudis in post-1996 Afghanistan were socio-economically less diverse and had a slightly lower level of education than the early jihadists.