Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

In Chapter 2, Mamdani traces the evolution of American foreign policy during the Cold War, focusing on how the US embraced proxy warfare and increasingly blurred the line between legitimate military action and political terror. Mamdani begins by recounting his experience as a lecturer in Tanzania in 1975, a pivotal year marked by the American withdrawal from Vietnam and the collapse of Portuguese colonial rule in Africa. These events shifted the Cold War’s epicenter from Southeast Asia to Africa, prompting a transformation in US strategic thinking. The Nixon Doctrine emerged from America’s Vietnam failure, encapsulating the idea that “Asian boys must fight Asian wars” (64). This doctrine represented a shift toward indirect warfare: using local proxies rather than American troops. Laos provided the ideal model of a covert war run by the CIA using Hmong mercenaries and a devastating air campaign, all hidden from public view. In contrast, Vietnam represented the dangers of direct intervention, which led to mounting domestic opposition and failure.

However, financing proxy wars covertly through public funds proved difficult. This obstacle led the US, especially the CIA, to rely on illicit funding mechanisms, often involving the global “drug trade” (66). Alfred McCoy’s work shows how CIA operations helped expand opium production in Burma, Laos, and Afghanistan. The CIA’s alliance with warlords and anti-Communist factions indirectly encouraged the growth of drug empires. In Laos, the CIA not only tolerated but facilitated opium trafficking by its Hmong allies, turning Air America into a logistical arm for the drug trade. These covert funding models, Mamdani argues, were then exported to Africa. In the early 1960s, the CIA was involved in the assassination of Congo’s nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba, who was replaced with the pro-Western Mobutu Sese Seko, and helped recruit white mercenaries to suppress rebellions. American involvement, primarily through the CIA, directed these operations while maintaining plausible deniability. When similar tactics were attempted in Angola in the mid-1970s, however, they failed disastrously. The US relied on apartheid South Africa to support anti-Communist factions, which backfired due to regional and global outrage. This led to the passage of the Clark Amendment in 1976, which prohibited covert US support for military operations in Angola and became a landmark in congressional efforts to rein in executive overreach in foreign affairs. The Clark Amendment was “the high point of the antiwar movement that swept the United States” (81) in this era.

However, the Clark Amendment only temporarily constrained US policy. The executive branch responded by outsourcing covert warfare to friendly authoritarian regimes through a network called the Safari Club, composed of intelligence agencies from France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran and “put together with the blessing of Henry Kissinger” (84). Together, they carried out interventions in Africa, including propping up Mobutu in Zaire and assisting in Somalia after it expelled Soviet advisors. The key idea was to conduct Cold War operations without direct US involvement or congressional oversight.

Mamdani then turns to southern Africa, where US policy encouraged apartheid South Africa to act as a regional enforcer. South Africa, under the banner of “constructive engagement” (87) backed violent anti-Communist movements such as Renamo in Mozambique and Unita in Angola. These groups engaged in extreme political terror, targeting civilians, infrastructure, and basic services. Mamdani distinguishes Renamo as Africa’s first genuine terrorist movement, created by Rhodesian and later South African intelligence, and notes that while Unita began as a political organization, it increasingly adopted terrorist methods under South African and US patronage. The US openly supported Unita, though it never officially backed Renamo. Instead, it enabled South Africa’s support by shielding it diplomatically. Constructive engagement “clearly delayed political reform” (94) in apartheid South Africa and allowed Pretoria to conduct covert wars in neighboring countries. Mamdani highlights how, even while signing peace agreements like the Nkomati Accord with Mozambique, South Africa continued to support Renamo terrorism behind the scenes.

As the Reagan administration came to power, it embraced what became known as “low-intensity conflict” (LIC), a military strategy designed to reverse perceived Communist gains without large-scale deployments. LIC combined covert and overt tactics—supporting paramilitary operations, propaganda, and political destabilization—while minimizing domestic political costs. According to Mamdani, LIC is “terrorism by another name” (95). This shift from counterinsurgency to rollback reflected a broader ideological agenda, fueled by neoconservative thinkers like Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who justified US alliances with right-wing dictatorships as strategically necessary. The Reagan Doctrine found its fullest expression In Central America, where LIC became “the main military strategy” (97). The US organized, trained, and financed the Nicaraguan contras, largely composed of former members of Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s national guard, to fight the Sandinista government—a socialist government named for Augusto César Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistance against US occupation in the 1930s. Operating under CIA oversight, the contras engaged in brutal terror tactics including murder, torture, and kidnapping. Mamdani highlights that the CIA not only trained these forces but also provided a media campaign to rebrand them as “freedom fighters” (98).

When Congress passed the Boland Amendment limiting contra funding, the Reagan administration circumvented it by tapping into the drug trade and soliciting funds from authoritarian allies like Saudi Arabia and apartheid South Africa. The Iran-contra affair—an elaborate arms-for-hostages scheme involving Israel, Iran, and the contras—exposed the depth of this covert network. Documents and testimony revealed that Reagan officials knowingly funded and supported contra operations through illegal and secretive channels. The CIA also increasingly embraced ideological justifications for terror. A training manual for the contras advised using selective violence and psychological operations against civilian targets. The goal was not necessarily military victory but to discredit the government, provoke repression, and ultimately force political concessions.

Mamdani ends the chapter by drawing parallels between Nicaragua and Mozambique, noting how both Renamo and the contras used terror not to seize power, but to make governance untenable. The final goal was to render governments unable to protect their populations, making them vulnerable to foreign-backed regime change. Through this detailed narrative, Mamdani shows how, in its effort to win the Cold War, the US increasingly relied on proxies and terror, sacrificing both local populations and democratic accountability at home as part of an “embrace of terror” (118).