The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 drew to the region a wave of Jihadists from every corner of the world, many of whom, like Zawahiri and al-Suri, felt increasingly abandoned by the collapse of the Islamist movements in their own countries. The presence on the battlefield of tens of thousands of Muslim fighters from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Algeria, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Pakistan, Jordan, Malaysia, Indonesia—all working together for a common cause—created a sense of global community among the Jihadists that they had never before experienced.
