http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB57/essay.html

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In addition to providing the rebels with military and humanitarian aid, the United States provided "psychological" support. In 1983, a unique National Security Decision Directive, number 77, was signed into action to coordinate U.S. government agencies to enhance U.S. national security and counter anti-American propaganda through "public diplomacy." U.S. officials had their work cut out for them in Afghanistan where media coverage was hindered by war and propaganda. To overcome these obstacles, the National Security Council, in keeping with NSDD 77, formed the inter-agency Afghan Working Group, which met twice a month to discuss ways of increasing media coverage of the war and generating sympathy and support for the mujahidin.

News coverage of the war was indeed limited, especially when one considers that this was the longest war in Soviet history, the largest CIA paramilitary operation since Vietnam, and, with 1 million dead Afghans, the bloodiest regional conflict in the world at the time. Nevertheless, no major American newspaper saw fit to station a reporter in Peshawar, Pakistan, the base of rebel political and military operations, and American television crews rarely ventured up to the Khyber Pass for a glimpse of the war. A major reason for this, of course, was the risk involved in reporting a guerrilla war, especially this one. A journalist who wished to go "inside" faced a number of hazards ranging from contracting a serious disease to the chance of being killed in an air raid or ambush.

What coverage there was tended to be biased toward the mujahidin. Several factors explain this. Foreign correspondents and stringers who did go to Peshawar or managed to go "inside" with the rebels encountered thousands of uprooted Afghans who all had horrific stories to tell about losing homes and relatives to Soviet/Afghan government counterinsurgency operations. Indeed, craters from Soviet bombs marked the landscape, villages were often emptied of their inhabitants, and many Afghans who found their way to Pakistan walked the streets with artificial limbs, victims of land mines.

In addition, the Afghan government often proved to be an unreliable source of information, causing Western journalists to rely heavily on U.S. officials for details of the war. The DRA in 1980, for example, reported how "Walter Cronkite" (apparently confusing him with Dan Rather) on a visit into Afghanistan had ordered the execution of two Afghans—"Islamic style." That same year the DRA expelled 18 Western journalists for "biased" coverage. When the government allowed journalists to return to the country in 1986, the journalists discovered in Kabul another side to the story: victims of rebel land mines and indiscriminate mujahidin rocket attacks on the capital.

Thus, for much of the war most reporters found it physically and journalistically safer to rely on "Western diplomatic sources in Pakistan," the cover for U.S. officials at the Consulate in Peshawar or the Embassy in Islamabad.

Despite the pro-mujahidin slant of Western news coverage, however, U.S. officials still complained of its limited nature. In 1985, Senator Humphrey sought to remedy that problem. He pushed legislation through Congress that tasked the United States Information Agency (USIA) to teach Afghan rebels how to film and write about their jihad. The USIA subcontracted Boston University’s School of Communications to train Afghans in Peshawar to become television and newsprint journalists. This program stirred controversy, drawing criticism from professors at the university and several American journalists who called the exercise in "public diplomacy" a government propaganda operation. Documents on the project, which went forth despite the criticism, show how the United States worked with rebel parties, Pakistan, a CBS cameraman and several private organizations to increase and "improve" coverage of the war.

The United States was also able to influence coverage by taking advantage of Western journalists’ inability to cover the war extensively first-hand. Once a week, a USIA officer in Islamabad would read to foreign journalists portions of a Situation Report originating from the Embassy in Kabul. These "Sitreps" were to serve two purposes. They provided U.S. officials at home and abroad with detailed information on the political and military situation in Afghanistan. They also formed part of the Afghan Working Group’s press and public information strategy to "punch holes in the Soviet news blackout." The press, however, was usually allowed to hear only the first several pages of the Sitrep, which gave a relatively simplistic overview of the situation in the country, paying special attention to government human rights abuses and mujahidin military gains. The following 20-25 detail-filled pages of the many now declassified Sitreps [b]depicted a much more complicated and bizarre war being fought on more levels than just that of Soviet-backed communists against freedom-fighting Muslims.[/b]

The Real War

Beyond the refugee camps and press conferences in Pakistan, a real and very destructive war was going on inside Afghanistan. Cables from Kabul, AID cross-border reports, DIA summaries and journal articles by the few reporters who bravely ventured into war zones reveal how pockets of mountain tribesmen, toting Chinese automatic rifles and U.S. Stinger missiles, went up against well-armed Soviet and Afghan government forces. Rebel hit-and-run attacks, assassinations of PDPA members, car bombs, rocket attacks on government-held garrisons and cities and other guerrilla tactics were met with massive aerial bombardments, mine-sowing operations, bribes and civic action campaigns from Kabul. Places like Paghman, Khost, the Panjshir Valley, Sarobi, and Jalalabad, where the mujahidin continually bogged Soviet forces down, became familiar names to observers of this war just as Hue and Khe Sanh had in Vietnam, where for years Viet Cong rebels tied down U.S. and South Vietnamese troops.

But as fierce as they were, the "Muj" were not the Viet Cong. ... No matter how much military, humanitarian, or psychological support the United States provided them, however, the mujahidin remained fractious. It was not uncommon for one rebel group to turn its guns on another.