openpolitics.com

In the West, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was considered a threat to global security and the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf.^[10] Moreover, the failure to accurately predict Soviet intentions caused American officials to reappraise the Soviet threat to both Iran and Pakistan, although it is now known that those fears were overblown. For example, U.S. intelligence closely followed Soviet exercises for an invasion of Iran throughout 1980, while an earlier warning from Brzezinski that “if the Soviets came to dominate Afghanistan, they could promote a separate Baluchistan … [thus] dismembering Pakistan and Iran” took on new urgency.^[11][5]

 

.. Of the seven mujahideen groups supported by Zia’s government, four espoused Islamic fundamentalist beliefs—and these fundamentalists received most of the funding.^[10] Despite this, Carter has expressed no regrets over his decision to support what he still considers the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan.^[5]

 

.. Key proponents of the initial program were Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson; Michael G. Vickers, a young CIA paramilitary officer; and Gust Avrakotos, the CIA’s regional head, who developed a close relationship with Wilson. Their strategy was to provide a broad mix of weapons, tactics, and logistics, along with training programs, to enhance the rebels’ ability to fight a guerilla war against the Soviets. Initially, to avoid detection of U.S. involvement, the program supplied the rebels only with Soviet-made weaponry. This plan was enabled by the tacit support of Israel, which had captured large stockpiles of Soviet-made weaponry during the Yom Kippur War and agreed to sell them to the CIA clandestinely, as well as Egypt, which had recently modernized its army with weapons purchased from Western nations, funneling the older Soviet-made arms to the mujahideen.^[30][31] After 1985, as the Reagan administration announced that it would support anti-Soviet resistance movements globally (in what is now known as the Reagan Doctrine), there was no longer a need to obfuscate the origin of the weaponry; Pentagon senior official, Michael Pillsbury, successfully advocated providing U.S.-made weaponry, including large numbers of Stinger missiles, to the Afghan resistance.^[32]

 

.. Reports show civilian personnel from the U.S. Department of State and the CIA frequently visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area during this time, and the US contributed generously to aiding Afghan refugees. CIA director William Casey secretly visited Pakistan numerous times to meet with the ISI officers managing the mujahideen,^[39] and personally observed the guerrillas training on at least one occasion.^[40] Coll reports that

Casey startled his Pakistani hosts by proposing that they take the Afghan war into enemy territory — into the Soviet Union itself. Casey wanted to ship subversive propaganda through Afghanistan to the Soviet Union’s predominantly Muslim southern republics. The Pakistanis agreed, and the CIA soon supplied thousands of Korans, as well as books on Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan and tracts on historical heroes of Uzbek nationalism, according to Pakistani and Western officials.^[40]

.. The U.S.-built Stinger antiaircraft missile, supplied to the mujahideen in very large numbers beginning in 1986, struck a decisive blow to the Soviet war effort as it allowed the lightly armed Afghans to effectively defend against Soviet helicopter landings in strategic areas. The Stingers were so renowned and deadly that, in the 1990s, the U.S. conducted a “buy-back” program to keep unused missiles from falling into the hands of anti-American terrorists. This program may have been covertly renewed following the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in late 2001, out of fear that remaining Stingers could be used against U.S. forces in the country.^[49]

.. The Stinger missiles supplied by the United States gave Afghan guerrillas, generally known as the Mujahideen, the ability to destroy the dreaded Mi-24D helicopter gunships deployed by the Soviets to enforce their control over Afghanistan. Three of the first four Stingers fired each took down a gunship. The guerrillas were now able to challenge Soviet control of the airspace above the battlefield.^[50]

— CIA – Central Intelligence Agency

Reagan’s program assisted in ending the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan,^[51][52] with the Soviets unable to quell the insurgency. On 20 July 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced pursuant to the negotiations that led to the Geneva Accords of 1988,^[53] with the last Soviets leaving on 15 February 1989. Soviet forces suffered over 14,000 killed and missing, and over 50,000 wounded.^{[citation needed]} The withdrawal helped precipitate the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself.^[5]

 

.. The U.S. offered two packages of economic assistance and military sales to support Pakistan’s role in the war against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The first six-year assistance package (1981–87) amounted to US$3.2 billion, equally divided between economic assistance and military sales. The U.S. also sold 40 F-16 aircraft to Pakistan during 1983–87 at a cost of $1.2 billion outside the assistance package. The second six-year assistance package (1987–93) amounted to $4.2 billion. Out of this, $2.28 billion were allocated for economic assistance in the form of grants or loan that carried the interest rate of 2–3 per cent. The rest of the allocation ($1.74 billion) was in the form of credit for military purchases. More than $20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and arm the Afghan resistance groups.^[54]

The program funding was increased yearly due to lobbying by prominent U.S. politicians and government officials, such as Charles Wilson, Gordon Humphrey, Fred Ikle, and William Casey. Under the Reagan administration, U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen evolved into a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, called the Reagan Doctrine, in which the U.S. provided military and other support to anti-communist resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.^{[citation needed]}

The mujahideen benefited from expanded foreign military support from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, United Kingdom and other Muslim nations. Saudi Arabia in particular agreed to match dollar for dollar the money the CIA was sending to the Mujahideen. When Saudi payments were late, Wilson and Avrakotos would fly to Saudi Arabia to persuade the monarchy to fulfil its commitments.^[55]

Levels of support to the various Afghan factions varied. The ISI tended to favor vigorous Islamists like Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami and Haqqani. Some Americans agreed.^[55][56] However others favored the relative moderates like Ahmed Shah Massoud. These included two Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of US support under the Reagan Doctrine.^[57][58][59]

After the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the U.S. shifted its interest from Afghanistan. American funding of Hekmatyar and his Hezb-i-Islami party was cut off immediately.^[60] The U.S. also reduced its assistance for Afghan refugees in Pakistan.^{[citation needed]}

In October 1990, U.S. President George H. W. Bush refused to certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device, triggering the imposition of sanctions against Pakistan under the Pressler Amendment (1985) to the Foreign Assistance Act (1961). This disrupted the second assistance package offered in 1987 and discontinued economic assistance and military sales to Pakistan with the exception of the economic assistance already on its way to Pakistan. Military sales and training programs were abandoned as well and some of the Pakistani military officers under training in the U.S. were asked to return home.^[33]

As late as 1991 Charlie Wilson persuaded the House Intelligence Committee to continue the funding of the Mujahideen, providing them with $200 million for fiscal year 1992. With the matching funds from Saudi Arabia, this amounted to $400 million for that year. Afghan tribes were also delivered weapons which the United States captured from Iraq during the Gulf War.^[61]

 

The U.S. government has been criticized for allowing Pakistan to channel a disproportionate amount of its funding to the controversial Hekmatyar,^[62] whom Pakistani officials believed was “their man”.^[63] Hekmatyar has been criticized for killing other mujahideen and attacking civilian populations, including shelling Kabul with American-supplied weapons, causing 2,000 casualties. Hekmatyar was said to be friendly with Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda, who was running an operation for assisting “Afghan Arab” volunteers fighting in Afghanistan, called Maktab al-Khadamat. Alarmed by his behavior, Pakistan leader General Zia warned Hekmatyar, “It was Pakistan that made him an Afghan leader and it is Pakistan who can equally destroy him if he continues to misbehave.”^[64] The CIA and State Department have been criticized for publishing textbooks intended to indoctrinate children with racism and hatred towards foreigners and towards non-muslim Afghans.^[62] The CIA and State Department have been criticized for their direct relationship with Hekmatyar, beyond ISI contact,^[41][42] in spite of his being one of the leading heroin smugglers in the region.^[65]

In the late 1980s, Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, concerned about the growing strength of the Islamist movement, told President George H. W. Bush, “You are creating a Frankenstein.”^[66]

Others have asserted funding the mujahideen may have played a role in causing the September 11 attacks. A number of political commentators have described Al-Qaeda attacks as “blowback” or an unintended consequence of American aid to the mujahideen.^[67]

Alleged connections of CIA assistance to Bin Laden[edit]

See also: Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden

Some have alleged that bin Laden and al Qaeda were beneficiaries of CIA assistance. This is challenged by experts such as Coll—who notes that declassified CIA records and interviews with CIA officers do not support such claims—and Peter Bergen, who argues: “The theory that bin Laden was created by the CIA is invariably advanced as an axiom with no supporting evidence.”^[68][69] Bergen insists that U.S. funding went to the Afghan mujahideen, not the Arab volunteers who arrived to assist them.^[69]

However, Sir Martin Ewans noted that the Afghan Arabs “benefited indirectly from the CIA’s funding, through the ISI and resistance organizations,”^[70] and that “it has been reckoned that as many as 35,000 ‘Arab-Afghans’ may have received military training in Pakistan at an estimated cost of $800 million in the years up to and including 1988.”^[71] Some of the CIA’s greatest Afghan beneficiaries were Arabist commanders such as Haqqani and Hekmatyar who were key allies of bin Laden over many years.^[72][73] Haqqani—one of bin Laden’s closest associates in the 1980s—received direct cash payments from CIA agents, without the mediation of the ISI. This independent source of funding gave Haqqani disproportionate influence over the mujahideen.^[48] Haqqani and his network played an important role in the formation and growth of al Qaeda, with Jalalhuddin Haqqani allowing bin Laden to train mujahideen volunteers in Haqqani territory and build extensive infrastructure there.^[74]