Radical Islamists, Authoritarian Regimes and Hegemonic Powers: Comparing the Cases of Cold War Afghanistan and Post-Cold War Saudi Arabia.

This research paper aims to explain the causal factors behind the changes in the behavior of radical Islamist groups towards hegemonic powers during and after the Cold War era. This should be achieved by comparing and analyzing the responses of the radical Islamist trend (the Salafi-Jihadi Current) in the Middle East to the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan (1979-1989) during the Cold War and to the US military presence in the Arabian Peninsula (1991-Present) in the Post-Cold war era. The research question in this paper is: : In their declared ?war? against foreign military presence in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as well as on the ruling regimes of the two states, why did radical Islamists internationalize their operations against the Post-Cold War hegemon and its allies as opposed to confining their operations to the local theatre during the Cold-War era? In other words, why were Washington and New York City targeted in the Post-Cold War period during the American presence in the Arabian Peninsula, but neither Moscow nor Dushanbe (Capital Tajikistan soviet socialist republic?close to the Afghan borders) were targeted during the Cold War? To answer that question, I shall focus on three independent variables. The first is the international political context and how the changes within it affected the radical Islamists? behavior and strategies. The second is the changing regional contexts, which involves the changes in the policies of Middle Eastern and South Asian regimes towards the ex-combatants of the Afghan conflict as well as the impacts of the Second Gulf War on the Middle East region. The third variable is the ideological one pertaining to an evolution in the Jihadi ideology leading to its radicalization and internationalization. The expected findings of the research will relate the post-Cold War regional and international changes to some of the causes of the conflicts between hegemons and radical Islamists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]