These Arab veterans of the 1980s Afghan war transformed their old crusade in recent years into a new one against `illegitimate' Arab rulers, against Israel that occupies Muslim land, against America that supports both.

It was an attack against America, the deadly US embassy bombings in Africa on August 7, that led to US air strikes yesterday against locations in Afghanistan and Sudan linked to followers of one of the leading Arab Afghans - Osama Bin Laden, an exiled Saudi millionaire.

US President Bill Clinton said Bin Laden's followers were believed to have played a key role in the embassy bloodshed. These militants are a small cluster of as many as 25,000 Arabs and other Muslims who have left home to fight in Afghanistan. But their campaign, both in its bloodshed and fervor, may help define the 1990s. Their paramilitary skills, growing sophistication and ample finance set them apart from an earlier generation.

An eclectic group, the Arab Afghans bombed the World Trade Centre in New York in 1993 and the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan two years later. They are suspected of attacking US-run facilities in Saudi Arabia. They tried to kill Egypt's President in Ethiopia. And they have fought in wars and insurgencies in some of the world's most troubled spots - Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir and Tajikistan.

Now, in the wake of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 257 people, a group of those Arab Afghans has sent another stark message: Their war has just begun.

``Strikes will continue from everywhere, and Islamic groups will appear one after the other to fight American interests,'' said a statement last week from the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and crusaders, a group formed in February.

The group stopped short of claiming responsibility, but its message was sent to Al-Hayat, the Arab leading newspaper, with several statements from a little-known group that did it. However, many Arab experts are of the opinion that they may be one and the same.

Some of the most dangerous militants have emerged from the Arab Afghan ranks. They are Egyptians, Saudis, Algerians, among other nationalities.

Islamic revolutionaries once passed hand to hand cassettes of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's speeches during the Iranian revolution. Now, Arab Afghans Egypt's Islamic groups use sleek, colorful web sites to market their fiery messages and also have an e-mail address in Europe.

``The majority come from universities, they're modern and they use sophisticated methods to fight. Americans still imagine these people to have come from the stone age but, that is not true,'' said Diaa Rashwan, an analyst at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

The most dreaded amongst the Islamic militants is Osama Bin Laden who like thousands of other Saudis of his generation, journeyed to Afghanistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion, joining activists who would later form the nucleus of militant Islam like Hamas, Egypt's Islamic group, Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front and the Moro Liberation Front in the Philippines. The war was heavily financed by an estimated three billion dollars from America, the biggest covert operation since the Vietnam war. Bin Laden soon emerged as one of that war's greatest heroes.

Scion of one of Saudi Arabia's richest families, he gave up a life of luxury. After the war, stripped of his citizenship by the Saudi government, fearful of his militant Islam, Bin Laden made his way to Sudan, protected by Hassan Al-Turabi, the country's Islamic ideologist. Western pressure forced him to leave Sudan in 1995 and return to Afghanistan, where he still resides.

His money, an estimated 300 million dollars, continues to support a vast network. Mustafa Hamza, an Egyptian wanted in the attempt assault in 1995 on Egypt's President, was reported to be running the company owned by Bin Laden in Somalia.

The contacts Bin Laden forged remain loyal, too. One of them is Ayman Al-Zawahri, a doctor and Afghanistan veteran who heads Egypt's Jihad group, which assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. With Bin Laden and others, he founded the group that warned of more attacks last week.