“The impression is being created that the Americans are actually concerned with the danger of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism,” Gorbachev confided to Najibullah in private that August. “They think, and they frankly say this, that the establishment today of fundamentalism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran would mean that tomorrow this phenomenon would encompass the entire Islamic world. And there are already symptoms of this, if you take Algeria, for example. But the Americans will remain Americans. And it would be naïve if one permitted the thought that we see only this side of their
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