The jihad wrought tremendous change inside Pakistan. A countrywide network of radical mosques and madrassas, funded by Saudi Arabia, sprang up across the country. The mosques served as way stations for the thousands of foreign volunteers who were arriving in Pakistan from across the Muslim world, in the hope of joining the righteous fight against the godless communists. Many viewed the jihad as a moral cause, much like the European volunteers who went into Spain to fight Franco in the 1930s. They included Osama bin Laden, the callow, twenty-three-year-old son of a Saudi billionaire, who landed
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