Afghanistan 1979-1992

In December 1979, only a few weeks after the US embassy in Tehran was overrun, Soviet troops intervened in Afghanistan. The Marxist leader of the country, Hafizullah Amin, was killed in a shootout with the invading forces and replaced by another communist leader, Babrak Karmal, who "invited" the Soviets in, in force, to stabilize the country. By the end of the month, 8,000-10,000 Soviet troops were inside the country.

The Carter administration and other governments around the world immediately denounced the intervention, and United States took various diplomatic steps to "punish" the Soviets for their adventurism. The administration also turned to covert action. Tribal resistance forces, collectively known as the mujahedin, already existed in Afghanistan, and Carter signed a finding in January 1980 authorizing the CIA to equip them with weapons. To keep US involvement secret, the operation would acquire Soviet weapons through countries like China and Egypt and transport them to the resistance forces through Pakistan. Both intelligence committees supported the program.

In 1981 the new Reagan administration, with the backing of the committees, began to increase the funding of the Afghan program significantly and to provide the mujahedin with more sophisticated weapons and other forms of assistance. By 1984, the funding had reached $60 million a year, an amount the Saudi government matched.

Even at that, one flamboyant congressman, Charles Wilson (D-TX), was not satisfied. After several trips to Pakistan to assess the progress of the war, he concluded that the Afghan program was vastly underfunded. What the mujahedin really needed, he believed, was a high-tech, rapid-fire anti-aircraft gun known as the Oerlikon to use against Soviet helicopters and other aircraft. Although Wilson was not a member of the HPSCI, he was a member of the defense subcommittee of the HAC that had jurisdiction over CIA funding. While the intelligence committees had already approved the amount the administration requested for the program - and technically the appropriators couldnot appropriate more than had been authorized - Wilson managed to have the HAC subcommittee add $40 million for the program - most of which would go for the Oerlikon guns. Because this additional money had to come from some-where in the DoD budget, the Pentagon initially objected to the subcommittee's action. Wilson threatened DoD with additional cuts, and it backed off.

This still left a problem with the intelligence committees, however, whichhad to go back and authorize the additional funds. Although CIA, like DoD, initially argued that the Oerlikon guns were in no way what the mujahedin needed - among other things, they were too difficult to transport and maintain in the Afghan environment - in the end, the Agency went along as well. After all, it was nonetheless funding they had not counted upon.

DCI Casey thought the time was right for a quantum leap to extend the program's objectives and resources even further. In the fall of 1984, after consulting with the committees, he told the Saudis the United States would raise its contribution to $250 million in 1985, increasing it several times over in a single year. From here on, the aim would be to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

Although both committees supported these initiatives, members of the SSCI became concerned in the summer of 1984 that arms being furnished under the program were being siphoned off along the way and never reaching the mujahedin. To ascertain whether this was occurring, a staff member madea trip to Pakistan in the summer of 1984 to trace and examine the supply line. Agency officers strenuously objected to such an examination, believing it could harm the program, but in the end the staffer was permitted to conduc this inquiry.

In 1985, the administration began exploring with the committees the idea of providing the mujahedin a more effective anti-aircraft capability, namely, US Stinger surface-to-air missiles, which at that point were far from being integrated with US forces. Initially, the Agency objected to providing the Stinger because, among other reasons, it would no longer be possible to "plausibly deny" US involvement and might prompt retaliatory action by the Soviets. In March 1986, however, President Reagan, on Casey's recommendation, approved providing Stingers to the mujahedin, pursuant to the original program finding signed by President Carter. Although both committees had considered the Stinger issue throughout the preceding year, Casey chose to brief only the leaders and staff directors of the two committees, two days after Reagan's decision. According to CIA records, neither committee held follow-up hearings, their leaders apparently agreeing with the president's action.

Both committees continued to receive briefings on the Stinger issue overthe next two years. While concern arose for the number of Stingers reportedly lost, it was also clear the missiles were having a decided impact on the war, prompting the committees to approve the provision to the mujahedin of other advanced weaponry (as well as thousands of mules to transport it acrossthe rugged Afghan terrain).

Even after the Soviets announced in April 1988 their intention to withdraw from Afghanistan, the committees insisted that US support continue so long as the Soviets were supplying aid to the Afghan government.

The United States did not "create" Osama bin Laden or al Qaida.  The United States supported the Afghans fighting for their country's freedom in the 1980s - as did other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, Egypt, and the UK - but the United States did not support the "Afghan Arabs," the Arabs and other Muslims who came to fight in Afghanistan for broader goals.  CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen notes that the "Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding":

While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don't make good history.  The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray.  The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI).  ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan.  The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA.

Former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency's Afghan operation in the late 1980s, says:  "The CIA did not recruit Arabs," as there was no need to do so.  There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight, and the Arabs who did come for jihad were "very disruptive . . . the Afghans thought they were a pain in the ass."  I have heard similar sentiments from Afghans who appreciated the money that flowed from the Gulf but did not appreciate the Arabs' holier-than-thou attempts to convert them to their ultra-purist version of Islam.  [Freelance cameraman] Peter Jouvenal recalls:  "There was no love lost between the Afghans and the Arabs.  One Afghan told me, 'Whenever we had a problem with one of them we just shot them.  They thought they were kings.'"

. There was simply no point in the CIA and the Afghan Arabs being in contact with each other.  . the Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding.  The CIA did not need the Afghan Arabs, and the Afghan Arabs did not need the CIA.  So the notion that the Agency funded and trained the Afghan Arabs is, at best, misleading.  The "Let's blame everything bad that happens on the CIA" school of thought vastly overestimates the Agency's powers, both for good and ill.  [Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: The Free Press, 2001), pp. 64-66.]

Al Qaida's number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has confirmed that the "Afghan Arabs" did not receive any U.S. funding during the war in Afghanistan.  In the book that was described as his "last will," Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, which was serialized in December 2001 in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, al-Zawahiri says the Afghan Arabs were funded with money from Arab sources, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars:

"While the United States backed Pakistan and the mujahidin factions with money and equipment, the young Arab mujahidin's relationship with the United States was totally different. 

". The financing of the activities of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan came from aid sent to Afghanistan by popular organizations.  It was substantial aid.

"The Arab mujahidin did not confine themselves to financing their own jihad but also carried Muslim donations to the Afghan mujahidin themselves.  Usama Bin Ladin has apprised me of the size of the popular Arab support for the Afghan mujahidin that amounted, according to his sources, to $200 million in the form of military aid alone in 10 years.  Imagine how much aid was sent by popular Arab organizations in the non-military fields such as medicine and health, education and vocational training, food, and social assistance ..

"Through the unofficial popular support, the Arab mujahidin established training centers and centers for the call to the faith.  They formed fronts that trained and equipped thousands of Arab mujahidin and provided them with living expenses, housing, travel and organization."  (Al-Sharq al-Awsat, December 3, 2001, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), GMP20011202000401)

Abdullah Anas, an Algerian who was one of the foremost Afghan Arab organizers and the son-in-law of Abdullah Azzam, has also confirmed that the CIA had no relationship with the Afghan Arabs.  Speaking on the French television program Zone Interdit on September 12, 2004, Anas stated:

If you say there was a relationship in the sense that the CIA used to meet with Arabs, discuss with them, prepare plans with them, and to fight with them - it never happened.

Milt Bearden served as the CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, where he was in charge of running the covert action program for Afghanistan.  In his memoirs, The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB, Bearden says the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, Egypt, and the UK were "major players" in the effort to aid the Afghans.  (pp. 217-218)  Bearden writes:

[President Jimmy] Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, had in 1980 secured an agreement from the Saudi king to match American contributions to the Afghan effort dollar for dollar, and [Reagan administration CIA director] Bill Casey kept that agreement going over the years." (The Main Enemy, p. 219) 

From 1983 to 1987, Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf was in charge of the Afghan Bureau of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which ran Pakistan's covert program to aid the Afghan mujahidin.  In his book, The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story, Brigadier Yousaf confirms the matching U.S.-Saudi arrangement, stating,

For every dollar supplied by the US, another was added by the Saudi Arabian government.  The combined funds, running into several hundred million dollars a year, were transferred by the CIA to special accounts in Pakistan under the control of the ISI.  (The Bear Trap, p. 81)

Bearden makes it clear that the CIA covert action program did not fund any Arabs or other Muslims to come to the jihad:

Contrary to what people have come to imagine, the CIA never recruited, trained, or otherwise used Arab volunteers.  The Afghans were more than happy to do their own fighting - we saw no reason not to satisfy them on this point."  (The Main Enemy, p. 243)

Marc Sageman worked closely with the Afghan mujahideen as one of Milt Bearden's case officers, from 1987 to 1989.  In his book, Understanding Terror Networks, he writes:

No U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers.  They simply traveled in different circles and never crossed U.S. radar screens.  They had their own sources of money and their own contacts with the Pakistanis, official Saudis, and other Muslim supporters, and they made their own deals with the various Afghan resistance leaders.  Their presence in Afghanistan was very small and they did not participate in any significant fighting.  (Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 57-58.)

The Central Intelligence Agency has issued a statement categorically denying that it ever had any relationship with Osama bin Laden.  It stated, in response to the hypothetical question "Has the CIA ever provided funding, training, or other support to Usama Bin Laden?":

No. Numerous comments in the media recently have reiterated a widely circulated but incorrect notion that the CIA once had a relationship with Usama Bin Laden. For the record, you should know that the CIA never employed, paid, or maintained any relationship whatsoever with Bin Laden (emphasis in original).