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

(Paperback)

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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.

Reviews

Well written and rigorously researched ... Provides mature and penetrating analysis [that] deserves a place in the modern library of Afghanistan. * History Ireland *
40 years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Jacqueline Fitzgibbon demonstrates how the US response did not resolve conflict but added to it --- highlighting the folly today of the question, 'Do we get to win this time' * Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham, UK *

Author Bio

Jacqueline Fitzgibbon is Lecturer in History and Politics at University College Cork.