Services Office
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Founded in Pakistan in 1984 by Abdullah Azzam, the Services Office (Maktab al-Khadamat) both supported refugees from the Afghanistan War (1978-92) and channeled weapons and volunteers against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was also an increasingly radical Islamist organization.
It had an overt U.S. operations side called al-Khifa.
While Azzam was assassinated in 1989, Obama bin Laden worked with the organization, and it is an indirect ancestor of al-Qaeda.