 As well as money, Muslim countries provided thousands of volunteer fighters known as "Afghan Arabs", who wished to wage jihad against the atheist communists.Notable among them was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, whose Arab group eventually evolved into al-Qaeda.Despite their numbers, the contribution has been called a "curious sideshow to the real fighting," with only an estimated 2000 of them fighting "at any one time", compared with about a 250,000 Afghan fighters and 125,000 Soviet troops.