The Afghan war created an Islamist infrastructure and mindset aimed at further victories.

Evidence

The war left behind an uneasy coalition of Islamist organizations intent on promoting Islam against all non-Muslim forces. It also left a legacy of expert and experienced fighters, camps, training grounds, and logistical facilities, elaborate trans-Islam networks of personal and organizational relationships, a substantial amount of military equipment including 300 to 500 unaccounted-for Stinger missiles, and, most important, a heady sense of power and self-confidence over what had been achieved and a driving desire to move on to other victories. The “jihad credentials, religious and political,” of the Afghan volunteers, one U.S. official said in 1994, “are impeccable. They beat one of the world’s two superpowers and now they’re working on the second.” — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 683

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Afghan war transformed scattered urban militants into an organized movement — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 397; The Afghan war transformed marginal terrorists into an organized movement