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

Download or read book US Politics, Propaganda and the Afghan Mujahedeen: Domestic Politics and the Afghan War written by Jacqueline Fitzgibbon and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.