Afghan Arabs (Arabic: أفغان عرب; Pashto: افغان عربان; Dari: عرب‌های افغان) were the Arab Muslims who immigrated to Afghanistan and joined the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. The term does not refer to the Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan who are an ethnic Arab minority group living in the north western parts of the country. Despite being referred to as Afghans, they originated from the Arab world and did not hold Afghan citizenship.

It is estimated that between 8,000 and 35,000 Arabs immigrated to Afghanistan to partake in what much of the Muslim world was calling an Islamic holy war against the Soviet Union, which had militarily intervened in Afghanistan to support the ruling People's Democratic Party against the rebelling jihadists. The Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was the first Arab journalist from a major Arabic-language media organization to cover the Soviet–Afghan War, approximated that there were 10,000 Arab volunteer fighters in Afghanistan during the conflict. Among many Muslims, the Afghan Arabs achieved near hero-status for their association with the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1989, and it was with this prestige that they were later able to exert considerable influence in mounting jihadist struggles in other countries, including their own. Their name notwithstanding, none of them were Afghans, and some who were grouped with the community were not even Arabs. A number of the foreign jihadists in Afghanistan were Turkic or Malay, among other ethnicities, or non-Arabs from Arab countries, such as Kurds.

To the Western world, the most notorious Afghan Arab fighter was Osama bin Laden, who immigrated to Afghanistan from Saudi Arabia and founded al-Qaeda, which carried out the September 11 attacks against the United States in 2001, prompting the American invasion of Afghanistan a month later. Bin Laden then took refuge in Pakistan (with alleged Pakistani support) until May 2011, when he was assassinated by U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six, though the American-led War in Afghanistan against the Taliban continued until August 2021.

Pakistani military officer Hamid Gul, who led the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1987 to 1989, stated of his country's role in recruiting Muslim volunteer fighters in Afghanistan: "We are fighting a jihad and this is the first Islamic international brigade in the modern era. The Communists have their international brigades, the West has NATO, why can't the Muslims unite and form a common front?"

The Palestinian jihadist Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, who was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, is often credited with creating enthusiasm for the Afghan mujahideen cause in Arab countries and throughout the broader Muslim world. Upon the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, Azzam issued a fatwa (Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Faith) declaring that jihad against the Soviet Union was fard 'ayn (a personal obligation) for every able-bodied Muslim man: "Whoever can, from among the Arabs, fight jihad in Palestine, then he must start there. And, if he is not capable, then he must set out for Afghanistan." Although waging a jihadist struggle against Israel was regarded with the most importance in the Arab world, for practical reasons, "it is our opinion that we should begin [jihad] with Afghanistan before Palestine." The edict was supported by other prominent sheikhs, including the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (the country's highest religious authority) Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd Allah Al Baz.

Sometime after 1980, Azzam established the Maktab al-Khidamat to organize guest houses in Peshawar, a Pakistani city near the Afghan border, as well as jihadist training camps in Afghanistan to prepare international recruits for confrontations with the Soviet Armed Forces. With financing from Saudi Arabia, including from Bin Laden, Maktab al-Khadamat paid for "air tickets and accommodation, dealt with paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihad fighters" who had come from all over the Muslim world. During the 1980s, Azzam had forged close links with two of the Afghan mujahideen's faction leaders: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was favoured by the Pakistani government; and Abdulrab Rasul Sayyaf, who was receiving close support from Saudi Arabian authorities for the purpose of spreading Wahhabism (a stream of Islamic revivalism that originated in 18th-century Saudi Arabia) throughout Afghanistan.

Azzam toured not only the Muslim world, but also the United States in search of funding and young Muslim recruits. He inspired young Muslims with stories of miraculous deeds: mujahideen who defeated vast columns of Soviet troops virtually single-handed, who had been run over by tanks and survived, who were shot and still unscathed by bullets; while angels were said to ride into battle on horseback, and falling bombs were said to be intercepted by birds, which raced ahead of Soviet fighter jets to form a protective canopy over the Muslim warriors in Afghanistan.

Estimates of the number of Afghan Arab that came from around the world to fight in Afghanistan include 8,000, 10,000, 20,000 and 35,000.