Shadow War: Untold Story of Jihad in South Asia

Pakistan intensified its military and financial support to Kashmiri jihadis at the end of the 1980s and kept supporting the Afghan mujahideen even after the withdrawal of the Soviets, but never admitted doing so. The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, followed by the jihad in Afghanistan (1979-89) against the Soviet occupation soon turned Pakistan into what one commentator termed as the original staging ground of Jihad as an international movement . Large sums of money and huge quantities of arms now began pouring into Pakistan from various sources, particularly from the USA and Saudi Arabia, apprehensive as both of them were of Soviet expansionism and the Iranian-style anti-monarchical and anti-Western Islamic radicalism in the region. This book is a modest attempt to discuss all these issues.