Services Office

This article may be deleted soon.
	To oppose or discuss a nomination, please go to CZ:Proposed for deletion and follow the instructions. For the monthly nomination lists, see Category:Articles for deletion. Founded in Pakistan in 1984 by Abdullah Azzam, the Services Office (Maktab al-Khadamat) both supported refugees from the [[Afghanistan War (1978–1992) and channeled weapons and "[[Afghan Arab" 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. As part of [[Operation CYCLONE, a [[Central Intelligence Agency effort against the Soviets, it received U.S. assistance; there is much controversy if this short-term objective created "blowback" of terrorism in the 1990s. While Azzam was assassinated in 1989, [[Osama bin Laden worked with the organization, and it is an indirect ancestor of [[al-Qaeda. This can be confusing, because it might have involved bin Laden's participation, but not yet necessarily al-Qaeda. One especially blurry incident is support of the [[1993 World Trade Center bombing, which definitely could be tied to the Services Office, and for which bin Laden was later indicted, but the connection to bin Laden and al-Qaeda is less clear. These are not organizations or executives following the best practices of graduate schools of business administration, but often simply personal relationships.