"Afghan Arabs" who pledged personal loyalty to Usamah Bin Laden. It could notionally be expanded to encompass the 5,000-strong "55th Brigade" of the Taliban regime, though this is not the technical definition. Because Usamah is Saudi, my guess is that they were especially influenced by an extremist form of the Wahhabi school of Islam that predominates among Saudia's some 15 million citizens. In 1998 they were joined by Egyptians from the al-Jihad al-Islami group of Ayman al-Zawahiri (many of these were from Upper Egypt, especially Asyut and environs). After that point, al-Qaeda was a joint enterprise between the Egyptian extremists and the polyglot Arabs around Bin Laden, only some of whom were Saudi. Zarqawi is a Jordanian, and his Monotheism and Holy War group in Afghanistan probably had