US-supported jihad framing recruited global mujahideen for Pakistan’s regional ambitions

Evidence

Throughout the decade, Zia’s regime was boosted by U.S. support as it shared the burden of fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Ian Talbot describes how Pakistan’s aim in Afghanistan was to create a client state that would offer “ ‘strategic depth’ in the event of a future war with India” and that could operate as a training base for preparing Islamic insurgents for the struggle against Indian forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Depicting the anti-Soviet struggle as a “jihad” was an effective way of securing volunteer mujahideen from all parts of the Muslim world for these other struggles, too. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 388

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to reading Changez’s religious vocabulary in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, where ‘jihad’ is redefined against the geopolitical use of it. — connects to: The US trained the mujahideen from which al-Qaeda later emerged — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 396; A coordinated international counter-jihad movement shares strategies across borders — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 648; Pakistan steered American Afghan-funding disproportionately to the most extreme Islamist groups (+8 more)
• QUESTION: Worth checking whether Hamid’s narrator plays on the term ‘jihad’ against this official instrumentalization.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The US trained the mujahideen from which al-Qaeda later emerged — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 396; A coordinated international counter-jihad movement shares strategies across borders — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 648; Pakistan steered American Afghan-funding disproportionately to the most extreme Islamist groups (+8 more)