CIA activities in Afghanistan
Encyclopedia
Since the 1970s, the CIA has engaged in multiple operations in Afghanistan.
and National Security Council
staff member under presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, writing in the Asia Times
, argues that as early as 1973-74, the CIA began offering covert backing to Islamic radical rebels in Afghanistan premised on the claim that the right-wing, authoritarian government headed by Mohammed Daoud Khan
, might prove a likely instrument of Soviet military aggression in South Asia. Morris argues that this premise was without basis in fact; Daoud had always held the Russians, his main patron when it came to aid, at arm's length, and had purged local communists who supported him when he overthrew the Afghan monarchy in 1973. The Soviets had also shown no inclination to use the notoriously unruly Afghans and their army for any expansionist aim.
Morris claims that during this period U.S. foreign policy leaders saw the Soviets as always being "on the march." U.S. secret backing of radical Islamic rebels ceased following an abortive rebel uprising in 1975.
and their training, arming, and supplying. The program was initiated under President Jimmy Carter
and greatly expanded following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
in December 1979. Under Reagan funding reached levels of $600 million/year.
Roger Morris, writing in the Asia Times
, states that in April 1978, the crackdown by the regime of Daoud on Afghanistan's small Communist Party provoked a successful coup by Communist Party loyalists in the army. The coup occurred in defiance of a skittish Moscow, which had stopped earlier coup plans.
According to Morris, by autumn 1978, an Islamic insurgency, armed and planned by the U.S., Pakistan, Iran and China, and soon to be actively supported, at Washington's prodding, by the Saudis and Egyptians, was fighting in eastern Afghanistan. The Black Book of Communism instead puts the blame on the Soviet Union who feared that Afghanistan was escaping its domination. There was little Muslim extremism before the Communist coup. After the coup, according to the Black Book, several anti-religion campaigns by the Communist regime, as well as the harsh repressions, soon caused a fierce insurgency.
Tribal insurgency
, according to this report, began in 1978, with the installation of a pro-Soviet government. Even though the government tilted toward the Soviet Union, the analysis said that many tribal groups, especially Uzbek
, saw the government as ethnically Pashtun
, with hostility on ethnic and political grounds.
reacted with "open-mouthed shock" to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and began promptly arming the Afghan insurgents. Vice-President Walter Mondale famously declared: "I cannot understand -- it just baffles me -- why the Soviets these last few years have behaved as they have. Maybe we have made some mistakes with them. Why did they have to build up all these arms? Why did they have to go into Afghanistan? Why can't they relax just a little bit about Eastern Europe? Why do they try every door to see if it is locked?" The Soviets, several times shortly before the invasion, had staged conversations with the Afghan leadership suggesting that they had no desire to intervene, even as the Politburo was—with much hesitation—considering such an intervention. Though some have argued that US financial assistance to Afghan dissidents, including Islamists and other militants, prior to the invasion; along with a Soviet desire to protect the leftist Afghan government, helped convince the Soviets to intervene, the Sovietts ironically brutally murdered the Afghan President and his son, replacing him with a puppet regime, immediately after the invasion for fear that the US had secretly been collaborating with him.
One of the CIA's longest and most expensive covert operations was the supplying of billions of dollars in arms to the Afghan mujahideen militants. The CIA provided assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through the Pakistan
i secret services, Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), in a program called Operation Cyclone
. Somewhere between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons.
According to the "Progressive South Asia Exchange Net," claiming to cite an article in Le Nouvel Observateur
, U.S. policy, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy of aiming "to induce a Soviet military intervention." The article includes a brief interview with Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski
, in which he is quoted as saying that the US provided aid to the mujahideen prior to the Soviet invasion in order to delibrately provoke one. Brzezinski himself has denied the accuracy of the interview. According to Brzezinski, an NSC working group
on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Brzezinski has stated that the US provided communications equipment and limited financial aid to the mujahideen prior to the "formal" invasion, but only in response to the Soviet deployment of forces to Afghanistan and the 1978 coup, and with the intention of preventing further Soviet encroachment in the region. Two declassified documents signed by Carter shortly before the invasion do authorize the provision "unilaterally or through third countries as appropriate support to the Afghan insurgents either in the form of cash or non-military supplies" and the "worldwide" distribution of "non-attributable propaganda" to "expose" the leftist Afghan government as "despotic and subservient to the Soviet Union" and to "publicize the efforts of the Afghan insurgents to regain their country's sovereignty," but the records also show that the provision of arms to the rebels did not begin until 1980.
The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 significantly damaged the already tenuous relationship between Secretary of State Vance and Brzezinski. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT
to other Soviet activities and the MX, together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he repeatedly advanced proposals on how to maintain Afghanistan's "independence" and deter a Soviet invasion but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition.
According to Eric Alterman
of The Nation
, Cyrus Vance
's close aide Marshall Shulman "insists that the State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it" and President Carter has said it was definitely "not my intention" to inspire a Soviet invasion but to deter one. Bob Gates, in his book Out Of The Shadows, wrote that Pakistan had actually been "pressuring" the United States for arms to aid the rebels for years, but that the Carter administration refused in the hope of finding a diplomatic solution to avoid war. Brzezinski seemed to have been in favor of the provision of arms to the rebels, while Vance's State Department, seeking a peaceful settlement, publicly accused Brzezinski of seeking to "revive" the Cold War
. Gates, however, has questioned if the US financial aid did increase the chances of the Soviets intervening, writing that some CIA officers involved assumed that that was President Carter's intention.
The Soviet invasion and occupation killed up to 2 million Afghans. Brzezinski defended the arming of the rebels in response, saying that it "was quite important in hastening the end of the conflict," thereby saving the lives of thousands of Afghans, but "not in deciding the conflict, because actually the fact is that even though we helped the mujaheddin, they would have continued fighting without our help, because they were also getting a lot of money from the Persian Gulf and the Arab states, and they weren't going to quit. They didn't decide to fight because we urged them to. They're fighters, and they prefer to be independent. They just happen to have a curious complex: they don't like foreigners with guns in their country. And they were going to fight the Soviets. Giving them weapons was a very important forward step in defeating the Soviets, and that's all to the good as far as I'm concerned." When he was asked if he thought it was the right decision in retrospect (given the Taliban's subsequent rise to power), he said: "Which decision? For the Soviets to go in? The decision was the Soviets', and they went in. The Afghans would have resisted anyway, and they were resisting. I just told you: in my view, the Afghans would have prevailed in the end anyway, 'cause they had access to money, they had access to weapons, and they had the will to fight." The interviewer then asked: "So US support for the mujaheddin only begins after the Russians invade, not before?" Brzezinski replied: "With arms? Absolutely afterwards. No question about it. Show me some documents to the contrary." Likewise; Charlie Wilson said: "The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people's decision to fight ... but we'll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones." The CIA provided assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through the Pakistan
i secret services, Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), in a program called Operation Cyclone
. Somewhere between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons, including Stinger
surface-to-air missile
s.
The early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country.
missiles.
Initially, this involved close cooperation with Pakistan
's Inter-Services Intelligence
to assist mujahideen groups and in planning operations inside Afghanistan. This cooperation was already in place in 1984, prior to NSDD-166. Indeed, it was evident to residents in Islamabad and Peshawar in the 1980s that large numbers of Americans were present.
At first, the US supported the effort cautiously, concerned that the Soviet Union would act against Pakistan. "Some time into the war, however, the US began to take a much more overt position, and US-supplied technology played a key role in defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Pakistan and the USSR remain the most important external powers. Pakistan will continue to support the resistance regardless of who is in power. The Soviets will seek a political settlement while providing massive support. Gorbachev would like to resolve the issue before the US summit next year.
Any of a number of changes in foreign support could break the impasse:
Aid cuts, however, will not stop the fighting.
, which had been formed under the Soviet occupation, according to author Steve Coll. Among others, the two main factions that CIA was supporting were:
According to Coll, during this period of time, there was disagreement between CIA and the U.S. State Department regarding which Afghan factions to support. U.S. State Department
Special Envoy to Afghanistan Edmund McWilliams
, after numerous tours of the interior of Pakistan, found that Afghan people were unhappy with the Wahhabist-leaning and anti-American Hekmatyar contingent, and recommended pulling back support for fighting in favor of a political settlement involving more of the ex-pat Afghan professional class. In this McWilliams was supported by British Intelligence. CIA station chief Milton Bearden
felt that McWilliams was misreading U.S. policy. Bearden did not want to get involved in Afghanistan internal politics, trusted the ISI to establish a stable regime in Afghanistan which was favorable to Pakistan, felt that Afghanistan was historically divided from Pakistan only by a line drawn by the British, and felt that the British didn't know what they were talking about, since they had lost two wars in Afghanistan already. The argument between Bearden and McWilliams in Islamabad
was curtailed when Bearden cabled the State Department a "request for curtailment" of duty tour on McWilliams behalf, and McWilliams found himself called away.
reported "Al-Qaeda
, meaning the base, was created in 1989 as Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden
and his colleagues began looking for new jihads. The organisation grew out of the network of Arab volunteers who had gone to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight under the banner of Islam against Soviet Communism. During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA."
a charge denied by American and Pakistan intelligence officials and journalist Peter Bergen. Zbigniew Brzezinski
, the National Security Advisor
under President Carter
, has discussed U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan in several magazines.
The policy dispute between CIA's Near East Division and the U.S. State Department, regarding political settlement versus continued fighting in Afghanistan, which was initiated between McWilliams and Bearden in 1989, continues with new protagonists, CIA's Thomas Tweeten
and State's new special envoy to the Afghan resistance, Peter Tomsen
.
Civil war develops as the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) and CIA-supported Gulbadin Hekmatyar seeks to violently eliminate all rivals, including the CIA-supported Ahmed Shah Massoud
. In spite of this internecine warfare, ISI and CIA formulate a plan to topple the Najibullah
government in a winter offensive on Kabul
. As part of this offensive, CIA pays Massoud $500,000, over and above his monthly stipend of $200,000, to close the Salang Highway
. Massoud fails to do so, and in consequence, his allowance is reduced to $50,000 per month.
In Spring of 1990, ISI hopes to install Gulbadin Hekmatyar contingent on defeating the Najibullah government. Hekmatyar also acquires millions of dollars in additional funding from Osama bin Laden
, thus placing ISI, CIA and bin Laden in joint venture. On March 7, 1990, Gulbadin Hekmatyar and Shahnawaz Tanai
attempts a coup, with Tanai, a member of Najibullah
's government, orchestrating an attack using Najibullah's own forces against Najibullah's palace, with Hekmatyar's forces to follow up from outside Kabul. The money to buy the loyalty of Najibullah's troops comes in part from Osama bin Laden
. This attempt fails.
At the same time, ISI asks "bin Laden for money to bribe legislators to throw Benazir Bhutto
out of office". "That winter, then, bin Laden worked with Pakistani intelligence against both Najibullah and Bhutto, the perceived twin enemies of Islam they saw holding power in Kabul and Islamabad", according to author Steve Coll. Regarding the issue of whether bin Laden was acting alone or as an agent of Saudi intelligence
, Coll writes (see the concept of plausible deniability
):
Note that, in a grand historical coincidence, in the investigation following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto
on December 27, 2007, Pakistan's Interior Minisry has laid the blame on "Baitullah Mehsud
, a Taliban commander who holds sway across a large part of South Waziristan
", i.e. on an Al Queda-linked group, while Bhutto herself, in a letter she wrote prior to her death and subsequent to two prior attempts, laid the blame at the ISI's doorstep. In light of the above, perhaps both assertions are correct.
, there was a dispute, inside the US government, with the State Department
on one side, and the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart, ISI, on the other. HRW said The New York Times, in January 1991, said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Robert Kimmitt had "battled with [CIA] officials who would like to unleash the guerrillas in Afghanistan in one last effort," while United States Secretary of State
James Baker
worked to "coax the rebels and the Najibullah regime into democratic elections." In the interview, Kimmitt complained that agency officials were "just bucking policy." In February, as negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union remained stalled, HRW again cited The New York Times reported that "the [CIA], in a long policy dispute with the State Department that it now appears to be winning, has been arguing that negotiations cannot end the war and that Washington should step up its efforts to help the guerrillas win a military victory."
Since the early 1980s, according to HRW, the ISI and CIA has used their control over the arms pipeline to run the war and favor abusive mujahedin parties, particularly Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
's faction, which used U.S.- and Saudi-financed weapons to launch indiscriminate attacks on Afghan cities, killing countless civilians.
"The development of the Afghan National Army and a national police force is going well, although neither can yet stand on its own.
, Afghanistan
. Seven CIA officers, including the chief of the base, were killed and six others seriously wounded in the attack. The attack was the second most deadliest carried out against the CIA, after the 1983 United States Embassy bombing
in Beirut, Lebanon, and was a major setback for the intelligence agency's operations.
Afghanistan 1973
Roger Morris, a former Foreign Service OfficerForeign Service Officer
A Foreign Service Officer is a commissioned member of the United States Foreign Service. As diplomats, Foreign Service Officers formulate and implement the foreign policy of the United States. FSOs spend most of their careers overseas as members of U.S. embassies, consulates, and other diplomatic...
and National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
staff member under presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, writing in the Asia Times
Asia Times
Asia Times was a newspaper launched in Thailand by Thai tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul in 1995. The newspaper hired talent from around the world to produce a regional English-language newspaper....
, argues that as early as 1973-74, the CIA began offering covert backing to Islamic radical rebels in Afghanistan premised on the claim that the right-wing, authoritarian government headed by Mohammed Daoud Khan
Mohammed Daoud Khan
Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan or Daud Khan was Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and later becoming the President of Afghanistan...
, might prove a likely instrument of Soviet military aggression in South Asia. Morris argues that this premise was without basis in fact; Daoud had always held the Russians, his main patron when it came to aid, at arm's length, and had purged local communists who supported him when he overthrew the Afghan monarchy in 1973. The Soviets had also shown no inclination to use the notoriously unruly Afghans and their army for any expansionist aim.
Morris claims that during this period U.S. foreign policy leaders saw the Soviets as always being "on the march." U.S. secret backing of radical Islamic rebels ceased following an abortive rebel uprising in 1975.
Afghanistan 1978
One of the American intelligence community's biggest operations and initially considered a major success was the funding of the Mujahedeen (Islamist fighters) in AfghanistanAfghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and their training, arming, and supplying. The program was initiated under President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
and greatly expanded following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...
in December 1979. Under Reagan funding reached levels of $600 million/year.
Roger Morris, writing in the Asia Times
Asia Times
Asia Times was a newspaper launched in Thailand by Thai tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul in 1995. The newspaper hired talent from around the world to produce a regional English-language newspaper....
, states that in April 1978, the crackdown by the regime of Daoud on Afghanistan's small Communist Party provoked a successful coup by Communist Party loyalists in the army. The coup occurred in defiance of a skittish Moscow, which had stopped earlier coup plans.
According to Morris, by autumn 1978, an Islamic insurgency, armed and planned by the U.S., Pakistan, Iran and China, and soon to be actively supported, at Washington's prodding, by the Saudis and Egyptians, was fighting in eastern Afghanistan. The Black Book of Communism instead puts the blame on the Soviet Union who feared that Afghanistan was escaping its domination. There was little Muslim extremism before the Communist coup. After the coup, according to the Black Book, several anti-religion campaigns by the Communist regime, as well as the harsh repressions, soon caused a fierce insurgency.
Intelligence analysis
The CIA National Foreign Assessment Center completed work on a report entitled "Afghanistan: Ethnic Divergence and Dissidence" in May 1979, although it was not formally published until March 1980. It is not known if the information was readily available to policymakers at the time of the December 1979 invasion.Tribal insurgency
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
, according to this report, began in 1978, with the installation of a pro-Soviet government. Even though the government tilted toward the Soviet Union, the analysis said that many tribal groups, especially Uzbek
Uzbeks
The Uzbeks are a Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China...
, saw the government as ethnically Pashtun
Pashtun people
Pashtuns or Pathans , also known as ethnic Afghans , are an Eastern Iranic ethnic group with populations primarily between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan...
, with hostility on ethnic and political grounds.
Covert action
President CarterJimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
reacted with "open-mouthed shock" to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and began promptly arming the Afghan insurgents. Vice-President Walter Mondale famously declared: "I cannot understand -- it just baffles me -- why the Soviets these last few years have behaved as they have. Maybe we have made some mistakes with them. Why did they have to build up all these arms? Why did they have to go into Afghanistan? Why can't they relax just a little bit about Eastern Europe? Why do they try every door to see if it is locked?" The Soviets, several times shortly before the invasion, had staged conversations with the Afghan leadership suggesting that they had no desire to intervene, even as the Politburo was—with much hesitation—considering such an intervention. Though some have argued that US financial assistance to Afghan dissidents, including Islamists and other militants, prior to the invasion; along with a Soviet desire to protect the leftist Afghan government, helped convince the Soviets to intervene, the Sovietts ironically brutally murdered the Afghan President and his son, replacing him with a puppet regime, immediately after the invasion for fear that the US had secretly been collaborating with him.
One of the CIA's longest and most expensive covert operations was the supplying of billions of dollars in arms to the Afghan mujahideen militants. The CIA provided assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through the Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i secret services, Inter-Services Intelligence
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
(ISI), in a program called Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm, train, and finance the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989...
. Somewhere between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons.
According to the "Progressive South Asia Exchange Net," claiming to cite an article in Le Nouvel Observateur
Le Nouvel Observateur
Le Nouvel Observateur is a weekly French newsmagazine. Based in Paris, it is the most prominent French general information magazine in terms of audience and circulation ....
, U.S. policy, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy of aiming "to induce a Soviet military intervention." The article includes a brief interview with Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....
, in which he is quoted as saying that the US provided aid to the mujahideen prior to the Soviet invasion in order to delibrately provoke one. Brzezinski himself has denied the accuracy of the interview. According to Brzezinski, an NSC working group
Working group
A working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms . The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years...
on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Brzezinski has stated that the US provided communications equipment and limited financial aid to the mujahideen prior to the "formal" invasion, but only in response to the Soviet deployment of forces to Afghanistan and the 1978 coup, and with the intention of preventing further Soviet encroachment in the region. Two declassified documents signed by Carter shortly before the invasion do authorize the provision "unilaterally or through third countries as appropriate support to the Afghan insurgents either in the form of cash or non-military supplies" and the "worldwide" distribution of "non-attributable propaganda" to "expose" the leftist Afghan government as "despotic and subservient to the Soviet Union" and to "publicize the efforts of the Afghan insurgents to regain their country's sovereignty," but the records also show that the provision of arms to the rebels did not begin until 1980.
The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 significantly damaged the already tenuous relationship between Secretary of State Vance and Brzezinski. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT
Salt
In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...
to other Soviet activities and the MX, together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he repeatedly advanced proposals on how to maintain Afghanistan's "independence" and deter a Soviet invasion but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition.
According to Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman is an American English teacher, historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. His political weblog named Altercation was hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The...
of The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Cyrus Vance
Cyrus Vance
Cyrus Roberts Vance was an American lawyer and United States Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1980...
's close aide Marshall Shulman "insists that the State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it" and President Carter has said it was definitely "not my intention" to inspire a Soviet invasion but to deter one. Bob Gates, in his book Out Of The Shadows, wrote that Pakistan had actually been "pressuring" the United States for arms to aid the rebels for years, but that the Carter administration refused in the hope of finding a diplomatic solution to avoid war. Brzezinski seemed to have been in favor of the provision of arms to the rebels, while Vance's State Department, seeking a peaceful settlement, publicly accused Brzezinski of seeking to "revive" the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. Gates, however, has questioned if the US financial aid did increase the chances of the Soviets intervening, writing that some CIA officers involved assumed that that was President Carter's intention.
The Soviet invasion and occupation killed up to 2 million Afghans. Brzezinski defended the arming of the rebels in response, saying that it "was quite important in hastening the end of the conflict," thereby saving the lives of thousands of Afghans, but "not in deciding the conflict, because actually the fact is that even though we helped the mujaheddin, they would have continued fighting without our help, because they were also getting a lot of money from the Persian Gulf and the Arab states, and they weren't going to quit. They didn't decide to fight because we urged them to. They're fighters, and they prefer to be independent. They just happen to have a curious complex: they don't like foreigners with guns in their country. And they were going to fight the Soviets. Giving them weapons was a very important forward step in defeating the Soviets, and that's all to the good as far as I'm concerned." When he was asked if he thought it was the right decision in retrospect (given the Taliban's subsequent rise to power), he said: "Which decision? For the Soviets to go in? The decision was the Soviets', and they went in. The Afghans would have resisted anyway, and they were resisting. I just told you: in my view, the Afghans would have prevailed in the end anyway, 'cause they had access to money, they had access to weapons, and they had the will to fight." The interviewer then asked: "So US support for the mujaheddin only begins after the Russians invade, not before?" Brzezinski replied: "With arms? Absolutely afterwards. No question about it. Show me some documents to the contrary." Likewise; Charlie Wilson said: "The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people's decision to fight ... but we'll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones." The CIA provided assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through the Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i secret services, Inter-Services Intelligence
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
(ISI), in a program called Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm, train, and finance the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989...
. Somewhere between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons, including Stinger
FIM-92 Stinger
The FIM-92 Stinger is a personal portable infrared homing surface-to-air missile , which can be adapted to fire from ground vehicles and helicopters , developed in the United States and entered into service in 1981. Used by the militaries of the U.S...
surface-to-air missile
Surface-to-air missile
A surface-to-air missile or ground-to-air missile is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles...
s.
The early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country.
Intelligence analysis
A memorandum spoke of continued tribal rivalries as adding to the resistance to the Soviets.Afghanistan 1985
While the actual document has not been declassified, National Security Decision Directive 166 of 27 March 1985, "US Policy, Programs and Strategy in Afghanistan" defined a US policy of using established the US goal of driving Soviet forces from Afghanistan "by all means available", including the provision of StingerFIM-92 Stinger
The FIM-92 Stinger is a personal portable infrared homing surface-to-air missile , which can be adapted to fire from ground vehicles and helicopters , developed in the United States and entered into service in 1981. Used by the militaries of the U.S...
missiles.
Initially, this involved close cooperation with Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
's Inter-Services Intelligence
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
to assist mujahideen groups and in planning operations inside Afghanistan. This cooperation was already in place in 1984, prior to NSDD-166. Indeed, it was evident to residents in Islamabad and Peshawar in the 1980s that large numbers of Americans were present.
Covert action
However, one of the main features of NSDD-166 was to allow CIA to enter Afghanistan directly and establish its own separate and secret relationships with Afghan fighters. The funding by ISI and CIA of Afghan anti-Soviet fighters created linkages among Muslim fighters worldwide.At first, the US supported the effort cautiously, concerned that the Soviet Union would act against Pakistan. "Some time into the war, however, the US began to take a much more overt position, and US-supplied technology played a key role in defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan 1987
On July 20, 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced pursuant to the negotiations that led to the Geneva Accords of 1988.Intelligence analysis
A Special National Intelligence Estimate, "Afghanistan: the War in Perspective", estimated that Najibullah government was "weak, unpopular, and factionalized", but would probably remain in power, with the war at a near impasse. It drew key judgments including:- The mujahedin hold the military initiative, as long as they stay in the countryside, where government troops do not hinder them and they choose when and where to fight. As long as Soviet supplies continue, they will remain a guerilla force unable to seize major garrisons.
- As an insurgency, regime fragility, mujahedin disunity, and local tribal factors are as important to the outcome as strictly military aspects.
- While there is extensive popular support, the resistance will remain highly factionalized.
- The Afghan Interim Government and most major commanders will refuse direct negotiations with Najibullah, but indirect negotiations are possible.
Pakistan and the USSR remain the most important external powers. Pakistan will continue to support the resistance regardless of who is in power. The Soviets will seek a political settlement while providing massive support. Gorbachev would like to resolve the issue before the US summit next year.
Any of a number of changes in foreign support could break the impasse:
- Cessation of US support to the resistance
- Cessation of Soviet support to the government
- Mutual cuts by the US and USSR would be more harmful to the government
Aid cuts, however, will not stop the fighting.
Covert action
After the withdrawal of Soviet troops, CIA's objective was to topple the government of Mohammad NajibullahMohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai , originally merely Najibullah, was the fourth and last President of the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is also considered the second President of the Republic of Afghanistan.-Early years:Najibullah was born in August 1947 to the Ahmadzai...
, which had been formed under the Soviet occupation, according to author Steve Coll. Among others, the two main factions that CIA was supporting were:
- Ahmed Shah MassoudAhmed Shah MassoudAhmad Shah Massoud was a Kabul University engineering student turned military leader who played a leading role in driving the Soviet army out of Afghanistan, earning him the name Lion of Panjshir. His followers call him Āmir Sāhib-e Shahīd...
, unilaterally. - Gulbadin Hekmatyar, through the ISIInter-Services IntelligenceThe Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
. - Jalaluddin HaqqaniJalaluddin HaqqaniMawlawi Jalaluddin Haqqani is the leader of the Haqqani network, an insurgent group fighting against US-led NATO forces and the government of Afghanistan. He also fought in the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan, including in the Operation Magistral...
, through the ISIInter-Services IntelligenceThe Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
.
According to Coll, during this period of time, there was disagreement between CIA and the U.S. State Department regarding which Afghan factions to support. U.S. State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
Special Envoy to Afghanistan Edmund McWilliams
Edmund McWilliams
Edmund McWilliams is an American diplomat and previous United States Ambassador to Tajikistan.McWilliams was born in Rhode Island to a father who was a mill worker and a mother who was a cafeteria aide. He majored in Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Rhode Island and joined several...
, after numerous tours of the interior of Pakistan, found that Afghan people were unhappy with the Wahhabist-leaning and anti-American Hekmatyar contingent, and recommended pulling back support for fighting in favor of a political settlement involving more of the ex-pat Afghan professional class. In this McWilliams was supported by British Intelligence. CIA station chief Milton Bearden
Milton Bearden
Milton Bearden is a retired Central Intelligence Agency officer, author and film consultant. As of 2003, Bearden lives in Reston, Virginia with his French-born wife, Marie-Catherine....
felt that McWilliams was misreading U.S. policy. Bearden did not want to get involved in Afghanistan internal politics, trusted the ISI to establish a stable regime in Afghanistan which was favorable to Pakistan, felt that Afghanistan was historically divided from Pakistan only by a line drawn by the British, and felt that the British didn't know what they were talking about, since they had lost two wars in Afghanistan already. The argument between Bearden and McWilliams in Islamabad
Islamabad
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory , the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.7 million in 2011...
was curtailed when Bearden cabled the State Department a "request for curtailment" of duty tour on McWilliams behalf, and McWilliams found himself called away.
Afghanistan 1990
BBC NewsBBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
reported "Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
, meaning the base, was created in 1989 as Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
and his colleagues began looking for new jihads. The organisation grew out of the network of Arab volunteers who had gone to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight under the banner of Islam against Soviet Communism. During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA."
a charge denied by American and Pakistan intelligence officials and journalist Peter Bergen. Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....
, the National Security Advisor
National Security Advisor (United States)
The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor , serves as the chief advisor to the President of the United States on national security issues...
under President Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, has discussed U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan in several magazines.
Covert action
The discussion below draws on author Steve Coll's account.The policy dispute between CIA's Near East Division and the U.S. State Department, regarding political settlement versus continued fighting in Afghanistan, which was initiated between McWilliams and Bearden in 1989, continues with new protagonists, CIA's Thomas Tweeten
Thomas Tweeten
Thomas Twetten was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer. From 1991 to 1993 he was Deputy Director of Operations .He was posted to Benghazi, Libya during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war...
and State's new special envoy to the Afghan resistance, Peter Tomsen
United States Ambassador to Afghanistan
The United States Ambassador to Afghanistan is the official representative of the President of the United States to the head of state of Afghanistan....
.
Civil war develops as the Inter-Services Intelligence
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
(ISI) and CIA-supported Gulbadin Hekmatyar seeks to violently eliminate all rivals, including the CIA-supported Ahmed Shah Massoud
Ahmed Shah Massoud
Ahmad Shah Massoud was a Kabul University engineering student turned military leader who played a leading role in driving the Soviet army out of Afghanistan, earning him the name Lion of Panjshir. His followers call him Āmir Sāhib-e Shahīd...
. In spite of this internecine warfare, ISI and CIA formulate a plan to topple the Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai , originally merely Najibullah, was the fourth and last President of the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is also considered the second President of the Republic of Afghanistan.-Early years:Najibullah was born in August 1947 to the Ahmadzai...
government in a winter offensive on Kabul
Kabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
. As part of this offensive, CIA pays Massoud $500,000, over and above his monthly stipend of $200,000, to close the Salang Highway
Kotal-e Salang
The Salang Pass is the major mountain pass connecting northern Afghanistan and Kabul province, with further connections to southern Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is just to the east of the Kushan Pass, and both of them were of great importance in early times as they provided the most direct...
. Massoud fails to do so, and in consequence, his allowance is reduced to $50,000 per month.
In Spring of 1990, ISI hopes to install Gulbadin Hekmatyar contingent on defeating the Najibullah government. Hekmatyar also acquires millions of dollars in additional funding from Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
, thus placing ISI, CIA and bin Laden in joint venture. On March 7, 1990, Gulbadin Hekmatyar and Shahnawaz Tanai
Shahnawaz Tanai
Lieutenant General Shahnawaz Tanai is a former communist general. He was chief of Afghanistan's army under the russians-backed Republic of Afghanistan...
attempts a coup, with Tanai, a member of Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai , originally merely Najibullah, was the fourth and last President of the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is also considered the second President of the Republic of Afghanistan.-Early years:Najibullah was born in August 1947 to the Ahmadzai...
's government, orchestrating an attack using Najibullah's own forces against Najibullah's palace, with Hekmatyar's forces to follow up from outside Kabul. The money to buy the loyalty of Najibullah's troops comes in part from Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
. This attempt fails.
At the same time, ISI asks "bin Laden for money to bribe legislators to throw Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was a democratic socialist who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996....
out of office". "That winter, then, bin Laden worked with Pakistani intelligence against both Najibullah and Bhutto, the perceived twin enemies of Islam they saw holding power in Kabul and Islamabad", according to author Steve Coll. Regarding the issue of whether bin Laden was acting alone or as an agent of Saudi intelligence
Al Mukhabarat Al A'amah
The Ri'āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-'Āmah , or the General Intelligence Presidency , is the primary intelligence agency of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.- History :...
, Coll writes (see the concept of plausible deniability
Plausible deniability
Plausible deniability is, at root, credible ability to deny a fact or allegation, or to deny previous knowledge of a fact. The term most often refers to the denial of blame in chains of command, where upper rungs quarantine the blame to the lower rungs, and the lower rungs are often inaccessible,...
):
"Did bin Laden work on the Tanai coup attempt on his own or as a semi-official liaison for Saudi intelligence? The evidence seems thin and inconclusive. Bin Laden was still in good graces with the Saudi government at the time of the Tanai coup attempt; his first explicit break with Prince Turki and the royal family lay months in the future. While the CIA's Afghan informants named bin Laden as a funder of the Hekmatyar-Tanai coup, other accounts named Saudi intelligence as the source of funds. Were these separate funding tracks or the same? None of the reports then or later were firm or definitive.
"It was the beginning of a pattern for American intelligence analysts: Whenever bin Laden interacted with his own Saudi government, he seemed to do so inside a shroud."
Note that, in a grand historical coincidence, in the investigation following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto
Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto occurred on 27 December 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Bhutto, twice Prime Minister of Pakistan and then-leader of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, had been campaigning ahead of elections due in January 2008...
on December 27, 2007, Pakistan's Interior Minisry has laid the blame on "Baitullah Mehsud
Baitullah Mehsud
Baitullah Mehsud was a leading militant in Waziristan, Pakistan, and the leader of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan . He formed the TTP from an alliance of about five militant groups in December 2007. He is thought by U.S...
, a Taliban commander who holds sway across a large part of South Waziristan
South Waziristan
South Waziristan is the southern part of Waziristan, a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan and covering some 11,585 km² . Waziristan comprises the area west and southwest of Peshawar between the Tochi River to the north and the Gomal River to the south, forming...
", i.e. on an Al Queda-linked group, while Bhutto herself, in a letter she wrote prior to her death and subsequent to two prior attempts, laid the blame at the ISI's doorstep. In light of the above, perhaps both assertions are correct.
Afghanistan 1991
According to Human Rights WatchHuman Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
, there was a dispute, inside the US government, with the State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
on one side, and the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart, ISI, on the other. HRW said The New York Times, in January 1991, said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Robert Kimmitt had "battled with [CIA] officials who would like to unleash the guerrillas in Afghanistan in one last effort," while United States Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
James Baker
James Baker
James Addison Baker, III is an American attorney, politician and political advisor.Baker served as the Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagan's first administration and in the final year of the administration of President George H. W. Bush...
worked to "coax the rebels and the Najibullah regime into democratic elections." In the interview, Kimmitt complained that agency officials were "just bucking policy." In February, as negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union remained stalled, HRW again cited The New York Times reported that "the [CIA], in a long policy dispute with the State Department that it now appears to be winning, has been arguing that negotiations cannot end the war and that Washington should step up its efforts to help the guerrillas win a military victory."
Since the early 1980s, according to HRW, the ISI and CIA has used their control over the arms pipeline to run the war and favor abusive mujahedin parties, particularly Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan Mujahideen leader who is the founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party and paramilitary group. Hekmatyar was a rebel military commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and was one of the key figures in the civil war that followed the...
's faction, which used U.S.- and Saudi-financed weapons to launch indiscriminate attacks on Afghan cities, killing countless civilians.
Afghanistan 1992
Afghanistan 2001
Intelligence analysis
Speaking to the Senate Intelligence Committee in early 2005, Porter Goss said Afghanistan is on the "road to recovery after decades of instability and civil war. Hamid Karzai's election to the presidency was a major milestone. Elections for a new National Assembly and local district councils—tentatively scheduled for this spring—will complete the process of electing representatives. President Karzai still faces a low-level insurgency aimed at destabilizing the country, raising the cost of reconstruction and ultimately forcing Coalition forces to leave."The development of the Afghan National Army and a national police force is going well, although neither can yet stand on its own.
Forward Operating Base Chapman attack
On December 30, 2009, a suicide attack occurred at Forward Operating Base Chapman, a major CIA base in the province of KhostKhost
Khost or Khowst is a city in eastern Afghanistan. It is the capital of Khost province, which is a mountainous region near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan...
, Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. Seven CIA officers, including the chief of the base, were killed and six others seriously wounded in the attack. The attack was the second most deadliest carried out against the CIA, after the 1983 United States Embassy bombing
1983 United States Embassy bombing
The 1983 U.S. embassy bombing was a suicide bombing against the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon on April 18, 1983 that killed over 60 people, mostly embassy staff members and United States Marines and sailors. It was the deadliest attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission up to that time, and is...
in Beirut, Lebanon, and was a major setback for the intelligence agency's operations.