1979- the world casts a wary eye towards Afghanistan.
The year prior Nur Muhammad Taraki had seized power and installed a communist government,
much to the Soviet Union's pleasure.
However, Taraki's government has turned brutally oppressive, with mass executions and extrajudicial
arrests.
The move sparks an insurgency, widely labeled as the Afghan Mujahideen.
While the name has a religious significance, the truth is the rebel forces are split along
ideological lines- with some practicing hardcore fundamentalism and others embracing secularism.
They are united however in their wish to overthrow the Taraki regime.
In April, Nur Muhammad Taraki is removed from power forcefully, and replaced by Hafizullah
Amin a few months later in September.
At first Amin tries to quell the growing rebellion with friendly overtures, but his security
forces disappear thousands of people behind the scenes.
The abuses only increase as time goes on, and the rebellion festers.
Amin is so unpopular that the Soviet Union begins to suspect he's a CIA plant, purposefully
placed in power in order to collapse the Afghan communist government.
On December 25th, 1979, the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan.
Its goal is simple: remove Amin from power and establish a legitimate, communist government.
Two days later, Soviet special forces locate and assassinate Haifuzllah Amin.
The war, if it can be called that, should be over in a matter of months.
It would last ten years.
The United States is initially caught off guard by the Soviet invasion.
Its intelligence efforts in the region have been to date an almost complete failure.
The CIA and other intelligence agencies have been largely focused on Central and South
America due to communism paranoia and the effort to keep the perceived threat out of
America's own backyard.
To date, the CIA has funneled half a million dollars worth of medical and non-lethal aid
to the mujahideen, but not supported the insurgency in any significant way.
Soviet fears of American intervention in Afghanistan are hilariously overblown- but that will soon
change.
Discussions about Soviet interventionism in Afghanistan have been taking place for months,
though nobody suspected a full-blown invasion was truly imminent.
America has a very real interest in making the Afghan situation difficult for the Soviets,
but differ on how important it truly is.
For some, Afghanistan is a chance to pay back the Soviet Union for its interference in Vietnam,
a war that cost the US dearly in manpower and capital.
Others fear that increasing aid to the mujahideen would only encourage the Soviets to more directly
intervene.
An April 5th memo by National Intelligence Officer Arnold Horelick lays out the stakes:
“Covert action would raise the costs to the Soviets and inflame Moslem opinion against
them in many countries.
The risk is that a substantial US covert aid program could raise the stakes and induce
the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended.”
Preliminary meetings with mujahideen leadership have already been undertaken, but still the
US has played a cautious hand in Afghanistan.
The Soviet invasion changes all of that.
Texas Democrat Congressman Charlie Wilson watches the invasion taking place from a hot
tub in Las Vegas.
A playboy at heart, Wilson nonetheless is shocked at the brutality of Soviet bombing
of Afghan civilians, and vows to do something to help the Afghan people.
With the best of intentions, he sets out to build a Washington coalition with one purpose:
push for the direct military support of the mujahideen in Afghanistan.
Seeing an opportunity for payback and to force the Soviet Union to lose its focus in Africa,
the program to aid the mujahideen, now code-named Operation Cyclone, is approved.
At first Operation Cyclone aims to keep US involvement in the war within the realm of
plausible deniability.
To this effect, the program initially focuses on providing training and logistical support
to the mujahideen, as well as equipping them with Soviet-made weapons purchased by the
CIA covertly.
With Iran on one side though and the Soviets directly north, this leaves the US with only
Pakistan as a route into the country.
This is a difficult position for the US, as Pakistan's recent development of nuclear weapons
has put a severe strain between the two nations.
In order to improve relations, it’s decided that Pakistan would be granted near-full control
over the dissemination of American aid to the mujahideen.
Some within the CIA, State Department, and other agencies express concern over the decision,
as Pakistan clearly favors the more fundamentalist forces inside Afghanistan itself.
Their concerns are ignored, with inevitable disastrous future consequences.
In order to coordinate the influx of American funding, equipment, and weapons, Pakistan's
President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq turns to the Inter-services Intelligence agency, at the
time a Pakistani intelligence agency struggling for legitimacy.
The massive responsibility of coordinating millions of dollars in US aid however skyrockets
the agency's legitimacy, cementing it as an instrument of power in Pakistan for decades
to come.
This too would eventually be a mistake.
Massive refugee camps are set up along the Pakistan border, and the United States contributes
millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to these camps.
Sensing an opportunity however, hardline fundamentalist clerics from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim
nations converge on the camps, slowly indoctrinating tens of thousands of young Afghan men into
religious fundamentalism.
One of these Saudi holy men bears the name Osama Bin Laden, who's family owns a construction
firm worth millions of dollars and has close ties to the Saudi government.
Despite early warning signs that Bin Laden and others are preaching a dangerous fundamentalist
form of Islam to vulnerable young men who'll soon be armed to the teeth, the United States
ignores these warnings and continues on with almost no oversight of Pakistan's dissemination
of US aid.
Even worse, the US now directly helps spread the message of radical Islam, believing it
to be a valuable recruitment tool.
Right here in America, the CIA enlists Egyptian double agent Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed and sends
him to recruit American Muslims to fight in Afghanistan, operating out of the Kifah Refugee
Center in Brooklyn.
Mohamed preaches a fiery message of holy war to impressionable youths, bolstering the ranks
of the mujahideen.
Around the world, the CIA encourages similar recruitment efforts, helping funnel tens of
thousands of volunteer fighters to Pakistan.
Mohamed would eventually make his way to Pakistan as well, where he would use his U.S. Army
training to instruct both Ayman al-Zawahiri, the founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and
Osama Bin Laden.
Inside Afghanistan, the grinding war against the Soviet occupation continues on.
American aid is now supplemented by the British, Saudi Arabia, and even China- who's own relations
with the Soviet Union have seriously deteriorated.
The British, leading the second-greatest effort after the Americans, have thrown much of their
support behind Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Massoud is a brilliant guerrilla commander, instrumental in the defeat of several Soviet
offensives, and is a growing national hero to the Afghan people.
However, his fearsome militia is increasingly being infiltrated by hardline fundamentalists.
While Massoud himself is a moderate, he has no choice but to accept the troops available
to him.
The MI6 thus arm Massoud's militia with thousands of rifles, mines, explosives, radios, and
50 missile launchers with 300 missiles.
The British even use the SAS to train Massoud's militia directly.
One thing is becoming clear though- moderate voices within the Afghan resistance are becoming
increasingly scarce.
Pakistan and America may be allied in their wish to see the Soviets evicted from Afghanistan,
but their long-term vision for the nation differs greatly.
For one, America doesn't have one.
It's not even remotely invested in the long-term state of Afghanistan, even as it becomes increasingly
clear that the Soviet Union can't maintain this invasion forever.
This leaves the door wide open for Pakistan to shape the future Afghanistan as it sees
fit.
For starters, it views the nation as a vital buffer between itself and Iran.
It also needs a future Afghanistan that will not become a close US ally.
Pakistan fears that the United States, who does not look favorably on Pakistan after
its development of nuclear weapons, might use Afghanistan as a staging ground for its
own invasion in a bid to strip Pakistan of nuclear arms.
Thus it must make sure that the future Afghanistan is one hostile to US interests.
Luckily, the indoctrination of tens of thousands of Afghan youths and volunteer mujahideen
by extremist clerics provides the opportunity they need.
The ISI works busily to build strong relationships with the most fundamentalist of militias,
funneling American weapons and money to them directly while choking off moderate forces.
Pakistan is not particularly invested in the growing fundamentalist Islamic movement within
the mujahideen, but the movement proves to be a powerful binding force and the promise
of a strong future government for the nation- which will be greatly indebted to Pakistan
of course.
Even as warnings of rising fundamentalism continue to rise, they are ignored, and in
1985 President Ronald Reagan ends all pretenses by announcing America's global support of
anti-Soviet resistance movements.
Even as much as a few years ago this would have been impossible, and tantamount to a
declaration of war against the Soviet Union- but news back home in the USSR are not good.
The country is experiencing increasing political unrest, and the war in Afghanistan as well
as the Soviet's support for communist guerilla movements around the world are straining the
Soviet economy.
Reagan senses an opportunity to strike a definitive blow against the Soviet Union.
With the declaration of the Reagan Doctrine, the flow of weapons and money to the mujahideen
increases exponentially.
Free of the restraint of having to support the movement covertly, the CIA no longer has
to limit its efforts by purchasing Soviet-made weapons.
Reagan's proclamation allows the US to now arm the mujahideen with more modern, and far
more capable weapons.
For years the Soviet air force has wreaked havoc against the mujahideen.
Soviet Hind attack helicopters though have been particularly deadly opponents, hunting
down and annihilating mujahideen forces even in their traditional safe zones high up in
the mountains.
Starting in 1985, the US arms the mujahideen with the Stinger shoulder-fired surface-to-air
missile system, and almost immediately Soviet aircraft losses skyrocket.
The effectiveness of the weapon would be hotly debated for decades to come, but one thing
is for sure- after its introduction in Afghanistan, the Soviet air force no longer operated as
brazenly as it had before.
This allows the mujahideen to make serious inroads in its fight against the Soviets.
It's only with the introduction of the Stinger to the mujahideen, and the reports of mounting
Soviet aircraft losses, that America begins to show some concern over its to-date completely
unchecked tidal wave of money and weapons to Afghanistan.
There are growing worries that the Stingers will eventually make their way out of the
country and be used to shoot down civilian or military aircraft- perhaps even American
ones.
For the first time, the US takes note of the rising wave of dangerous fundamentalism amongst
the mujahideen- though ultimately America continues to leave Pakistan in charge of who
receives what.
Inevitably, the Soviet Union is forced to limp out of Afghanistan in 1989, suffering
over 14,000 dead and 50,000 wounded.
The war is over, the mujahideen successful.
Yet even as moderates like Ahmad Shah Massoud are being forced into the peripheries of post-Soviet
Afghanistan, the only concern that the United States shows in what happens next is in the
retrieval of the Stinger missile units provided to the mujahideen.
In what would become the single most baffling foreign policy decision in 20th century history,
President Ronald Reagan and successor H.W. Bush show absolutely no interest in the shaping
of future Afghanistan.
Even as civil war breaks out between extremist fundamentalists and the vastly outnumbered
moderates, the United States pays no attention.
With the direct aid and support of Pakistan, extremist forces take over most of the country,
leaving what has become the moderate United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan,
or Northern alliance, in control of only 5 to 10 percent of the nation.
With the formation of the Taliban government, Pakistan has achieved its strategic goals
in the nation, all on America's dime.
On September 9th, 2001, moderate leader and national hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, once backed
directly by MI6, is assassinated by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, who both fear that in their
coming attack against America and the US's inevitable response, Massoud will be installed
as a popular leader to unite the nation against the Taliban.
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