US Politics, Propaganda and the Afghan Mujahedeen: Domestic Politics and the Afghan War

Jacqueline Fitzgibbon

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780755637256
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781838604011
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Influential fundraising groups and senators in the US made enormous efforts in the First Afghan War to present the Mujahedeen as 'freedom fighters' – even while the CIA secretly armed them with surface to air missiles and other weapons. A mass propaganda effort was launched, aimed at portraying parts of Afghanistan as victims of communist aggression. As we know now, many of those groups that were armed became the seedbeds for organisations like Al-Qaeda. Dr Jacqueline Fitzgibbon, through a forensic investigation of the American PR of the period, argues that this militarised and fractured Afghan society for a generation – partly resulting in the mess today. This book will look specifically at the American efforts to suppress any reports which showed these forces as anti-western or anti 'American values', and instead to portray the arming of partisan groups, often an extremely dangerous course of action, as an example of American values in action.

1

US foreign policy and Afghanistan: History, context and Carter

American foreign policy towards Afghanistan underwent a volte-face in the latter half of President Jimmy Carter’s term. This was triggered ostensibly by the Soviet invasion but an equally important factor was the ‘loss’ of Iran, a geopolitical catastrophe for Washington. Domestic forces such as a looming presidential election further contributed. These factors coupled with pressures from the virulently anti-communist New Right and neo-conservative movements impelled Carter towards a more belligerent foreign policy which would have considerable implications for Afghanistan.

Just four years after the fall of Saigon, direct US military action over the Soviet invasion was out of the question and would remain so throughout the Reagan administration. Washington needed to counter Moscow’s intervention while avoiding military engagement. The US response included the well-documented covert action programme to aid the Afghan mujahedeen in their fight against their government and its Soviet mentors. Less well-documented are the propaganda efforts, initiated under Carter, albeit tentatively, to exact the maximum cost to Moscow’s international reputation. These included attempts to radicalize Muslims and the public diplomacy debacle that was the Olympic boycott.

These efforts not only ensured that Afghanistan remained a thorn in the USSR’s side but they also served to prolong the conflict with disastrous results for Afghan society and politics and, ultimately, international stability. Carter’s policies provided a template for the Reagan administration’s strategy on Afghanistan making the Georgia politician’s administration a natural starting to explore how propaganda became one of the most powerful weapons in the Afghan conflict.

To understand this, it is necessary to examine the historical, geopolitical and domestic circumstances informing the US entanglement in the Afghan conflict. These contexts are vital to clarifying the motivations for US foreign policy in the region. They provide a framework for analysing US propaganda on the conflict by enabling the juxtaposition of strategic and political aims with public assertions of the administration. They demonstrate how and why propaganda became an intrinsic pillar of Washington’s strategy on the Afghan conflict.

The 1978 coup orchestrated by Afghanistan’s small communist party triggered deeper involvement from Moscow in Afghan affairs driven largely by security imperatives. While Washington was well aware that Soviet motivations were grounded in localized security concerns, US propaganda contended that the invasion was part of an aggressive Cold War strategy hatched by Moscow to control the Persian Gulf. This elevated tensions internationally and fashioned Afghanistan as a theatre for confrontation between ‘freedom’ and ‘communism’. However, US foreign policy towards the region demonstrates Washington’s indifference to Afghanistan before the ‘loss’ of Iran and the Soviet invasion. These circumstances sharpened Afghanistan’s significance to the United States but not, as its propaganda insisted, due to any concerns about Afghan self-determination. Instead, Carter was motivated by geostrategic imperatives that were driven by domestic influences. Within the United States, the Afghan invasion seemed to validate the uncompromising anti-Soviet stance of New Right organizations like the Heritage Foundation. It seemed to vindicate neo-conservative politicians’ and intellectuals’ ominous warnings about Soviet intentions and ideology. Carter was compelled to take these views seriously, as they gained traction with the public. These constituencies were adept at using the media to promulgate their ideas in an effort to influence US foreign policy. As a result, when it came to Afghanistan, propaganda was an instrument not solely of US foreign policy but also of domestic forces seeking to shape it. This would continue to be the case throughout the lifetime of the Reagan administration.

The Saur Revolution, Soviet intervention and US foreign policy

In Kabul during the spring of 1978, the Saur (April) Revolution brought the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to power. This coup would spark a series of events leading to the Soviet invasion to prop up the PDPA and US actions to undermine it. The PDPA consisted of two factions: the Khalq (led by Nur Mohammed Taraki) and the Parcham (led by Babrak Karmal). In response to Soviet pressure, the party had maintained an uneasy alliance under the republican regime of Mohammed Daoud Khan (1973–1978). Moscow feared instability in bordering Afghanistan and, to this end, had advised patience in pursuing political and social change in Afghanistan.¹ While the PDPA’s Parcham faction sought moderate political reforms, the Khalq were more radically Marxist. Following the coup, Taraki assumed the presidency and initiated reforms, which the tribal societies of rural Afghanistan considered an affront to their traditional ways.

Popular unrest stirred. An uprising in Herat on 15 March 1979 resulted in the death of a number of Soviet advisors. The Afghan Army division garrisoned in Herat decamped to the insurgents’ side. Taraki found the rebellion increasingly impossible to suppress and persistently requested Moscow’s assistance. The Soviet leadership was alarmed by events and suspected outside interference. On 17 March 1979, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko informed the Politburo that ‘bands of saboteurs and terrorists’ sponsored by the United States, China, Iran and Pakistan had infiltrated the insurgency and reduced Herat to ‘chaos’.² He warned that ‘under no circumstances may we [the USSR] lose Afghanistan’.³ Dating back to Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union feared the re-emergence of a threat similar to the one posed historically by Germany and, as a result, considered the security of its periphery of vital strategic importance.

The NATO deployment of cruise missiles in Western Europe had heightened Soviet insecurity, and the ‘loss’ of Afghanistan could bring US missiles within range of key strategic assets in the USSR. Furthermore, Afghanistan could become the ‘new Iran’, that is, a listening post for the United States into Soviet Central Asia.⁴ The Politburo agreed to military aid for the Taraki regime but refused to send in troops, which they quite rightly believed would provoke an unfavourable international response and worsen the situation within Afghanistan.⁵ By September 1979, President Taraki was usurped by his even more radical Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin. Within weeks, Taraki was murdered. Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev had personally assured Taraki of his support and worried about the implications of the assassination for Soviet credibility.⁶ Moscow watched with disquiet the self-destructive policies of the PDPA and the growing unrest in Afghanistan. They nursed fears that Amin was courting the United States or that he was a CIA agent.⁷ Soviet concerns grew that the revolution would fail amidst in-fighting, outside interference and overzealous application of Marxist doctrine in the under-developed, traditional society of rural Afghanistan. Reflecting these fears the Politburo made the fateful decision, against Soviet military advice, to intervene to maintain the Afghan revolution.⁸

International condemnation ensued. President Carter, already reeling from other foreign policy setbacks that year, including the ‘loss’ of Iran and the continuing Tehran hostage crisis, reacted angrily. Responding to events in his State of the Union address in January 1980, he outlined the ‘Carter Doctrine’. In it, Carter promised a more assertive US posture to protect against any further Soviet encroachment on US ‘interests’ in this region.⁹ Within the United States, an outspoken coalition of New Right and neo-conservatives commentators insisted that détente was dead and the Soviets were on the march across the Third World. According to this constituency, the Brezhnev Doctrine cemented Soviet gains in perpetuity. As this perspective gained ascendency, a chill descended upon superpower relations heralding a new era in the Cold War.

While Afghanistan was important to the Soviet Union for obvious geostrategic reasons, US interests in the state were ambiguous, at least until the Iranian revolution. Afghanistan’s present was circumscribed by the region’s imperial past. Following the Second World War, the crumbling British Empire limped away from its colonial possessions on the Indian subcontinent, and the Indian Independence Act of 1947 partitioned the former colony into India and Pakistan. Pakistan inherited British India’s 1,500-mile border (approximately) with Afghanistan – the Durand Line. However, Kabul never recognized this border contending that lands beyond it in North Pakistan were part of Afghanistan. It registered its discontent by voting against Pakistan’s admission to the United Nations in 1947. Over the course of the following decades, the Cold War further divided the region. The United States established security relations with Pakistan under Eisenhower. Along with Iran, the state became an intrinsic element of a ‘northern tier’ containment strategy for the region. Pakistan was also a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. On the other hand, Washington considered Afghanistan strategically unimportant and refused Kabul’s requests for military assistance. This allowed the Soviet Union to establish some influence in the state via considerable aid and assistance.¹⁰ Moscow invested heavily in the modernization of the Afghanistan military, and Soviet training personnel were stationed there.¹¹ US indifference to Soviet involvement in the state was evident when Eisenhower visited Kabul in 1959 and his plane was escorted in to land by Afghan-piloted Soviet MiG jets, to little public comment in America.¹² China’s split with the Soviet Union in 1960 and subsequent border wars with India in 1962 meant, by default, China was allied with Pakistan and the United States within the context of regional politics. Non-aligned India accepted military aid from the USSR signing a friendship treaty in 1971. These lingering imperial-era animosities and Cold War alliances would become entangled in the programme to aid the mujahedeen’s fight against the PDPA in the 1980s.

The United States did provide some development aid to Afghanistan and educational assistance from the 1950s. These early educational programmes emphasized the compatibility between Islamic and Western values in an attempt to contain Soviet influence, though not in any determined way.¹³ Afghanistan was ostensibly non-aligned prior to the Saur Revolution but even following the communists’ ouster of Daoud an initial assessment of the coup by the US Ambassador Theodore Eliot downplayed Soviet involvement.¹⁴ Eliot described the leaders as ‘young, leftist and nationalistic’ and his initial meeting with Taraki as friendly.¹⁵ This was soon to change. By June 1978, less than two months later, the Kabul embassy, now under the stewardship of Ambassador Adolph ‘Spike’ Dubs, characterized the new regime as ‘overwhelmingly dependent on the Soviet Union’. In a telegram to Washington, the ambassador added that Afghanistan’s foreign policy was likely to be shaped by this relationship. Furthermore, Moscow would continue to strengthen its influence in Afghanistan if it did not negatively affect Soviet international relations.¹⁶ Hardliners like Brzezinski went even further by contending that the security of Iran, the Persian Gulf and Pakistan was under threat from increased Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. The view in the Carter administration that the Soviets had legitimate security concerns informing its policy towards Afghanistan was losing ground to a more ‘hawkish’ analysis. Still, on 1 December 1978 Secretary of State Cyrus Vance remained hopeful ‘that a constructive US-Afghan working relationship could still emerge’.¹⁷

However, 1979 would prove a turbulent year for US foreign policy in the region casting Afghanistan in a new strategic light. In January, following over a year of popular unrest, the Shah of Iran fled into exile leaving the reactionary anti-American Ayatollah Khomeini to assume the leadership of the state. The Shah had been a key ally of the United States, dating back to his installation following the US-British orchestrated ouster of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953. The ‘loss’ of Iran was a significant factor in provoking US engagement in a new ‘great game’ on the Afghan playing field.¹⁸ Robert Gates, at the time a NSC analyst, characterized Washington’s perspective as follows: ‘In the global competition, the US loss of Iran was in itself an important strategic gain for the USSR.’¹⁹ Brzezinski framed it even more dramatically stating that the loss of Iran ‘would be the most massive American defeat since the beginning of the Cold War, overshadowing in its real consequences the setback in Vietnam’²⁰ (emphasis in original). Furthermore, instability in Iran could precipitate a Soviet intervention, summoning up ghosts of the earlier Cold War standoff in 1946. This ‘loss’ and its strategic implications profoundly shaped US reaction to the invasion of Afghanistan later in the year.

As the Carter administration dealt with the fallout from events in Iran, its relations with Afghanistan were strained by the murder of Ambassador Dubs in Kabul. Dubs was kidnapped by anti-government rebels on 14 February 1979 seeking the release of an imprisoned associate. In the subsequent negotiations, the Afghan authorities excluded US embassy staff while the Soviet embassy’s chief security advisor assumed an advisory role. During the ensuing gun battle between the kidnappers and the Afghan security forces, Dubs was shot dead. The United States immediately blamed the Soviet as well as the Afghan authorities for his death though both protested their innocence. Afghan Foreign Minister Amin insisted that ‘the actions of the Afghan authorities were completely aimed at releasing the ambassador unharmed, and were inspired by friendly relations between the two countries’.²¹ Nevertheless, the Carter administration suspected a Soviet conspiracy surrounding the ambassador’s death. Time magazine judged events more dispassionately stating, ‘the perverse tragedy of Spike Dubs was that guerrillas fighting a pro-Soviet regime had picked an American to show the world their rebellion’.²² Instea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Introduction
• 1 US foreign policy and Afghanistan: History, context and Carter
• 2 The Reagan administration: Foreign policy influences and the importance of propaganda
• 3 The Reagan Doctrine, propaganda and the Afghan conflict
• 4 Justifying escalation in Afghanistan
• 5 The Afghan Media Project
• 6 ‘The road to Geneva and beyond’: The superpower summit, public diplomacy and the Afghan conflict
• 7 The beginning of the end: The Geneva Accords and national reconciliation
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected bibliography
• Index
• Imprint