West's Post-1979 Afghan Misadventure Cast Long Shadow

Sameer Arshad Khatlani
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When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the West mobilised massive military and monetary support for the Afghan resistance to drive the Soviets out of the country. A significant chunk of the funds pumped in was spent on school textbooks that justified violence in the name of religion with a short-term goal of drawing recruits for the anti-Soviet resistance. The textbooks featured weapons and soldiers and served as the core curriculum in Afghan schools until the US invaded Afghanistan in 2011 to oust the Taliban from power for harbouring the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban also continued the use of the books during its six-year rule from 1996 to 2001 before the Americans replaced the primers in the noughties but not before, as The Washington Post noted, steeping ‘a generation in violence’.

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The Soviets were defeated in the strategically important country in less than a decade. The West-backed Afghan resistance and foreign fighters—the so-called Mujahideen—brought them to their knees and forced them to withdraw in 1988. The humiliating defeat preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the emergence of the US as the sole superpower. But it also created the disastrous myth that mostly credited the Mujahideen for defeating the mighty Soviets. The freelance Mujahideen, who fought in Afghanistan, soon became a headache for the world as they sought to replicate their exploits elsewhere with the 9/11 attacks being its ugliest manifestation. The attacks fanned fresh flames of Islamophobia besides prompting the US to invade Afghanistan. Islamophobia has since spawned anti-Muslim movements and regimes globally. It has in part allowed regimes in places such as Myanmar to go unpunished for Muslim genocide.  

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Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist based in New Delhi. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with The Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the now-defunct Bangalore-based Vijay Times in 2005 as its national affairs correspondent. He joined Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor. 

Khatlani has reported from Iraq and Pakistan and covered elections and national disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Khatlani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. 

Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. Eminent academic and King’s college professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam’.