By Yousuf Nazar

Copyright brecorder

In the 1960s and 1970s, Pakistani society—including its universities and colleges—was largely shaped by secular and progressive values. Western-style dress was common, and hijabs were rarely seen in public life. This began to change dramatically with the rise of General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation policies in the late 1970s.

His regime imposed modest dress codes in public institutions and promoted religious orthodoxy, gradually normalising the hijab and burqa in educational and professional spaces. Yet this visible shift was only a surface manifestation of a much deeper transformation: a wave of Islamic extremism that swept across the region throughout the 1980s and beyond.

The United States’ Cold War strategy to curb Soviet influence in Afghanistan by weaponising Islamic militancy had far-reaching, unintended consequences, reshaping Pakistan’s ideological and political landscape. By funnelling arms, money, and propaganda through Pakistan to support the Afghan Mujahideen, Washington helped unleash a wave of militant religiosity.

Under Zia-ul-Haq’s military rule, US-backed initiatives—ranging from the expansion of madrassas to the distribution of jihadi textbooks and state-sponsored propaganda—fostered an atmosphere of extremism.

Jihad was elevated to both a policy tool and a personal ideal, as a generation was raised on the mythology of holy war against communism. What began as a calculated geopolitical move evolved into a long-lasting ideological shift, embedding militant Islamism in the region, well beyond the Cold War’s demise.

In early 1979, US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski urged the Carter administration to support anti-government fighters in Afghanistan, seeing the country as a proxy front against the USSR. On 3 July 1979, President Jimmy Carter authorised covert aid to the Mujahideen—six months before the Soviet invasion of 24 December—launching Operation Cyclone, a CIA-led campaign that deeply influenced Afghanistan’s ideological trajectory.

It appears the US quietly aligned with Zia ul-Haq’s regime in line with Brzezinski’s strategy. On 21 May 1978, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping told Brzezinski in Beijing: “We have expressed our attitude frequently on the question of the death sentence on Bhutto. And now there is talk in the world that the US perhaps supports General Zia-ul-Haq in giving death sentence to Bhutto.”

By the mid-1970s, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto appeared to be drifting closer to the Soviet Union. Deng Xiaoping told President Carter in Washington on 29 January 1979: “if we look back in the history of Pakistan we can see that at the beginning Mr. Bhutto was opposed to the Soviet Union, but later when Bhutto felt he was getting more and more isolated, he depended more upon the Soviet Union.”

The broader geopolitical context was volatile. In January 1979, Time magazine described a “crescent of crisis” spanning India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia—each engulfed in revolutionary upheaval or religious ferment. Iran’s Islamic Revolution had just toppled a US-backed monarchy, intensifying fears of Soviet expansion. Amid this turbulence, Pakistan—now under military rule—emerged as a crucial US ally, even as the execution of Bhutto on 4 April 1979 deepened domestic instability.

Early propaganda efforts

Carter’s July 1979 directive catalysed a partnership between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), led by Lieutenant General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, appointed in June 1979.

Drawing on ties with tribal leaders in the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Rahman orchestrated a propaganda campaign to mobilise support. By August 1979, clandestine printing presses in Peshawar produced thousands of leaflets in Pashto, Dari, and Urdu, blending religious appeals with images of Soviet aggression. These urged resistance against the “infidel” invaders and directed recruits to Mujahideen camps. Distributed through mullahs, merchants, and smugglers, the leaflets reached rural communities, tapping into Islamic and tribal loyalties.

The propaganda resonated with Afghanistan’s conservative culture. The Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, seen as atheistic, was an easy target. By framing the conflict as a jihad, the US and Pakistan galvanised hundreds of young men, many peasants swayed by religious duty, to join training camps in eastern Afghanistan.

This approach, effective against the Soviets, planted seeds of militancy that persisted, embedding armed resistance in the region’s social fabric. In Pakistan, the leaflets reinforced Zia’s Islamisation policies, drawing border communities into the jihadist cause and aligning state and religious identities.

USIA media training in Peshawar

As Soviet troops entrenched themselves in early 1980, the US intensified psychological warfare. The United States Information Agency (USIA) partnered with Boston University’s School of Communications to train Afghan exiles in Peshawar, equipping them with skills in journalism, camera operation, scriptwriting, and broadcasting.

The trainees, young men including displaced students and landowners, worked under experienced instructors to produce weekly “victory bulletins.” Recorded in makeshift studios—often safe houses powered by generators—these broadcasts aired every Friday via shortwave radio, targeting Afghan border regions and Soviet Central Asia in Dari and Uzbek.

The bulletins portrayed Mujahideen battles as righteous triumphs. A July 1980 segment claimed fighters under Ahmad Shah Massoud repelled Soviet forces at Salang Pass, forcing a retreat.

Accompanied by footage of abandoned Soviet equipment and interviews with displaced families, these reports boosted morale and countered Soviet propaganda. While often exaggerating successes, the broadcasts resonated, reinforcing a divinely ordained struggle.

The ISI, guided by CIA Station Chief Howard Hart, launched Azadi (Freedom), a fortnightly newspaper circulated widely by late 1980. Featuring USIA-supplied images of Mujahideen training, refugee camps, and Soviet destruction, Azadi published accounts of ambushes, such as an October 1980 raid on a Jalalabad checkpoint, claiming significant Soviet casualties.

Soviet records suggested these losses were overstated, but headlines like “Soviets Tremble Before Allah’s Warriors” amplified the psychological impact. By late 1981, USIA estimated thousands of listeners and readers engaged weekly, contributing to increased Soviet troop desertions near border areas.

Operating in a war zone required smuggled cassettes, improvised transmitters, and constant relocation to evade Soviet reprisals. Yet, the broadcasts and publications rallied Afghan fighters and sapped Soviet morale, with defectors lured by promises of divine favour.

In Pakistan, these efforts reinforced Zia’s narrative of Islamic solidarity, drawing local youth into the jihadist cause and deepening societal militarisation.

Ideological warfare through education

By 1984, the U.S. extended its ideological campaign to education, targeting Afghan refugee children in Pakistan.

The USAID-funded Education Sector Support Project (ESSP) allocated over $51 million to the University of Nebraska-Omaha (UNO) to develop textbooks for refugees’ schools. ISI advisers ensured anti-Soviet and pro-jihad narratives.

A 1985 grade-five Pashto reader, distributed to over 120 schools in the then North-West Frontier Province, depicted a fictional family displaced by “godless Soviet invaders” who bombed their village and desecrated their mosque.

Arithmetic exercises militarised learning, asking students to calculate how many grenades Mujahideen could deploy or the distance between rebel outposts and Soviet convoys.

(To be continued tomorrow)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025