When Jihad Was U.S. Strategy: The Forgotten Roots of Modern Extremism in Cold War Politics

Reagan with Afghan Mujahideen

in the Oval Office (1983)

Between the 1920s and the 1980s, the United States viewed jihad not as a threat, but as a strategic tool. Far from equating jihad with terrorism, successive American administrations saw it as a potential weapon against their principal ideological adversary—communism. 

In the post-Ottoman era, while communist regimes emerged as America’s greatest geopolitical foes, most Islamic nations remained allies or aligned with the West. As a result, the American foreign policy establishment did not associate Islam with militancy. Rather, it regarded jihadist forces as useful partners in its global campaign to counter Soviet influence.

This mindset reached its zenith under President Ronald Reagan. In the 1980s, Reagan enthusiastically embraced the Afghan mujahideen—many of whom espoused jihadist ideologies—as key allies in the fight against the Soviet Union. In a striking symbolic gesture, Reagan dedicated the 1982 launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia to “the people of Afghanistan.” The following year, Afghan mujahideen leaders were received in the Oval Office. Reagan’s administration funneled billions of dollars in arms and logistical support to these groups, training them in insurgency tactics and portraying them as heroic “freedom fighters” in official rhetoric and media.

Meanwhile, Pakistan—initially founded with a secular self-image—underwent a radical transformation under General Zia-ul-Haq, who seized power in a 1977 military coup. Zia embarked on a sweeping campaign of Islamization, reshaping Pakistan’s laws, educational system, media, and economy along religious lines. His regime became a linchpin in America's anti-Soviet strategy. When Reagan took office in 1981, he declared Pakistan under Zia to be the “frontline state” against Soviet aggression. With Washington’s blessing, Zia expanded Pakistan’s support for jihadist movements in Afghanistan and gave legitimacy to groups like Jamaat-e-Islami within Pakistan.

For the United States, these jihadist networks were valued allies because they were fighting the “right enemy”—the Soviet Union. But this strategic alliance came at a heavy cost for India. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, many of the jihadist fighters redirected their focus toward Kashmir. By the late 1980s, India witnessed a dramatic rise in terrorist violence, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir. Thousands of civilians lost their lives, and the Kashmiri Pandit community was subjected to forced displacement from the valley—an enduring national trauma.

The American stance on jihad shifted dramatically after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The very forces it once empowered now turned their wrath on the United States itself. In the aftermath of 9/11, Washington’s narrative underwent a profound reversal. The term “jihad” lost its earlier strategic romanticism and came to symbolize global terrorism in American political discourse. Islamism replaced communism as the dominant ideological threat in the Western imagination, and the very jihadist groups once hailed as defenders of freedom were now cast as perpetrators of extremism and violence.