The
Afghanistan conflict began in 1978 and has coincided with several notable operations by the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
(U.S.)
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(CIA). The first operation, code-named
Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in suppor ...
, began in mid-1979, during the
Presidency of Jimmy Carter. It financed and eventually supplied weapons to the
anti-communist ''
mujahideen''
guerrillas
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tacti ...
in Afghanistan following an
April 1978 coup by the
People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and throughout the nearly ten-year
military occupation of Afghanistan by the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
(U.S.S.R.). Carter's successor,
Ronald Reagan, supported an expansion of the
Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was stated by United States President Ronald Reagan in his State of the Union address on February 6, 1985: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to ...
, which aided the mujahideen along with several other anti-Soviet resistance movements around the world.
Operation Cyclone primarily supported militant
Islamist groups that were favored by the regime of President
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq HI, GCSJ, ร.ม.ภ, (Urdu: ; 12 August 1924 – 17 August 1988) was a Pakistani four-star general and politician who became the sixth President of Pakistan following a coup and declaration of martial law in ...
in
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
, which
borders Afghanistan to the south and east, at the expense of other groups fighting the Soviet-aligned
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA).
[ Bergen, Peter (2001). ''Holy War Inc.'' Free Press. p. 68.] Specifically and in deference to the priorities of Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...
(ISI), CIA funding disproportionately benefited
Muslim Brotherhood-inspired
Afghan mujahideen commanders, most notably
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ( ps, ګلب الدين حكمتيار; born 1 August 1949) is an Afghan politician, former mujahideen leader and drug trafficker. He is the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin political party, so calle ...
and
Jalaluddin Haqqani
Jalaluddin Haqqani ( ps, جلال الدين حقاني, Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥaqqānī) (1939 – 3 September 2018) was an Afghan insurgent commander who founded the Haqqani network, an insurgent group fighting in guerilla warfare against US-led ...
; the CIA also developed a limited unilateral relationship with the comparatively moderate northern Afghanistan commander
Ahmad Shah Massoud (a favorite of
British intelligence
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains intelligence agencies within three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These agencies are responsible for collecting and analysing foreign and d ...
) beginning in late 1984. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive CIA operations ever undertaken;
costing over $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and peaking at $630 million during the fiscal year ending in October 1987.
The program began modestly with provisions of antique British
Lee–Enfield
The Lee–Enfield or Enfield is a bolt-action, magazine-fed repeating rifle that served as the main firearm of the military forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth during the first half of the 20th century, and was the British Army's sta ...
rifles but by 1986 included U.S.-origin
state of the art weaponry, such as thousands of
FIM-92 Stinger
The FIM-92 Stinger is an American man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS) that operates as an infrared homing surface-to-air missile (SAM). It can be adapted to fire from a wide variety of ground vehicles, and from helicopters as the Air-t ...
surface-to-air missiles.
Michael Pillsbury
Michael Paul Pillsbury (born February 8, 1945) is an author, and former public official in the United States. He has been the Director of the Center on Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. since 2014. Before Hudson, he he ...
,
Morton I. Abramowitz,
Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)
William J. Casey, and the CIA's
Islamabad
Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital ...
station chief
Milton Bearden, among others, have been named as the architects of the ambitious escalation of CIA activities in Afghanistan from 1985 on, as the Reagan administration rejected compromise with reformist Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev in favor of a total mujahideen victory. Funding continued until January 1992 as the mujahideen battled the forces of
Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai (Pashto/ prs, محمد نجیبالله احمدزی, ; 6 August 1947 – 27 September 1996), commonly known as Dr. Najib, was an Afghan politician who served as the General Secretary of the People's Democratic Par ...
's PDPA during the
civil war in Afghanistan (1989–1992).
After the
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan
The final and complete withdrawal of Soviet combatant forces from Afghanistan began on 15 May 1988 and ended on 15 February 1989 under the leadership of Colonel-General Boris Gromov.
Planning for the withdrawal of the Soviet Union (USSR) from t ...
in February 1989, the CIA's objective was to topple the Najibullah government, which had been formed under Soviet occupation, even as the
George H. W. Bush administration's
State Department sometimes showed open skepticism towards the CIA's proposed military solution. By 1990, the ISI and Hekmatyar were working to violently eliminate their Afghan rivals, especially Massoud, in advance of the anticipated fall of the Afghan capital,
Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...
. In spite of this internecine warfare, the ISI and CIA jointly formulated a plan to capture
Jalalabad
Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلالآباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jala ...
and Kabul during 1989–1990, marking a high point in cooperation between the two spy agencies. As part of the offensive, the CIA paid Massoud to close the
Salang Pass
The Salang Pass ( ps, د سالنګ لاره; prs, كتل سالنگ ''Kutal-i Salang'', el. ) is the primary mountain pass connecting northern Afghanistan with Parwan Province, with onward connections to Kabul Province, southern Afghanistan, ...
, which Massoud failed to do. The
Najibullah government finally collapsed in April 1992, several months after the December 1991
dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of U.S. aid to the mujahideen, leaving Afghanistan a
failed state
A failed state is a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly (see also fragile state and state collapse). A state can also fail if the ...
in the grip of a multifaceted
civil war
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
marked by horrific atrocities and the destruction of Kabul in mass-casualty rocket attacks. While some U.S. officials initially welcomed the emergence of the
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...
militia as it sought to restore its vision of Islamic order to the
Pashtun
Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically re ...
heartland of
Kandahar
Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118. It is the c ...
and then to the rest of Afghanistan, by the latter half of the 1990s the
administration of President Bill Clinton became increasingly concerned about the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban, as the Taliban and allied group
Al-Qaeda became a more direct threat to the U.S., its citizens, and its foreign dignitaries. In response to the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
, CIA personnel coordinated closely with Massoud's anti-Taliban
Northern Alliance
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan ( prs, جبهه متحد اسلامی ملی برای نجات افغانستان ''Jabha-yi Muttahid-i Islāmi-yi Millī barāyi Nijāt ...
militia during the 2001
United States invasion of Afghanistan
In late 2001, the United States and its close allies invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban government. The invasion's aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda, which had executed the September 11 attacks, and to deny it a safe base of operatio ...
. During the invasion, which was largely planned by the CIA, the administration of President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
rejected the advice of many CIA officers to send
Army Rangers and
Marines
Marines, or naval infantry, are typically a military force trained to operate in littoral zones in support of naval operations. Historically, tasks undertaken by marines have included helping maintain discipline and order aboard the ship (refle ...
to
Tora Bora
Tora Bora ( ps, توره بوړه, "Black Cave") is a cave complex, part of the Spin Ghar (White Mountains) mountain range of eastern Afghanistan. It is situated in the Pachir Aw Agam District of Nangarhar, approximately west of the Khyber ...
, allowing
Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders to escape to Pakistan. Throughout the nearly 20-year
U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan, CIA-backed Afghan paramilitaries participated in numerous massacres and war crimes, most notably the
Dasht-i-Leili massacre in 2001.
1979: Origins of the Afghanistan conflict
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.
According to this report,
Pashtun
Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically re ...
tribal insurgency began in 1978, with the installation of a pro-Soviet government. The Pashtuns are devout Muslims and communist atheism is not in line with their strong Islamic beliefs. Furthermore, the historic preeminence of Pashtun politicians in Afghan politics since the 18th century served as a divisive issue that strengthened the resistance of the tribal groups. Ethnic solidarity among the Pashtun is strong compared to the
Tajiks
Tajiks ( fa, تاجيک، تاجک, ''Tājīk, Tājek''; tg, Тоҷик) are a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Taj ...
, who are the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
Soviet invasion; U.S. response
Afghan communists under the leadership of
Nur Muhammad Taraki seized power from
Mohammed Daoud Khan
Mohammed Daoud Khan ( ps, ), also romanized as Daud Khan or Dawood Khan (18 July 1909 – 28 April 1978), was an Afghan politician and general who served as prime minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and, as leader of the 1973 Afghan coup ...
in the
Saur Revolution on April 27, 1978.
The
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
(U.S.S.R.) had previously invested in exporting communist ideology to Afghanistan and trained many of the army officers involved in Daoud's overthrow. Daoud had himself ousted King
Mohammed Zahir Shah
Mohammed Zahir Shah (Pashto/Dari: , 15 October 1914 – 23 July 2007) was the last king of Afghanistan, reigning from 8 November 1933 until he was deposed on 17 July 1973. Serving for 40 years, Zahir was the longest-serving ruler of Afghanistan ...
, ending more than two centuries of rule by the Afghan monarchy, five years earlier in the
1973 Afghan coup d'état
The 1973 Afghan coup d'état was led by Army General and prince Mohammed Daoud Khan against his cousin, King Mohammed Zahir Shah, on 17 July 1973, which resulted in the establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan under a one-party system led ...
. The newly formed
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA)—which was divided between Taraki's extremist
Khalq
Khalq ( ps, خلق, ) was a faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Its historical ''de facto'' leaders were Nur Muhammad Taraki (1967–1979), Hafizullah Amin (1979) and Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy (1979–1990). It was als ...
faction and the more moderate
Parcham
Parcham (Pashto and prs, پرچم, ) was the name of one of the factions of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, formed in 1967 following its split and led for most of its history by Babrak Karmal and Mohammed Najibullah. The basic ...
—signed a treaty of friendship with the U.S.S.R. in December 1978.
Hundreds of Soviet advisors arrived in Afghanistan. Taraki's efforts to improve education and redistribute land were accompanied by mass executions (including of many conservative religious leaders) and political repression without precedent in Afghan history, igniting a revolt by
mujahideen rebels.
The rebellion began to take shape with the
March 1979 uprising in the western Afghan city of
Herat
Herāt (; Persian: ) is an oasis city and the third-largest city of Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains (''Selseleh-ye Safē ...
, which has a relatively large
Shi'ite
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most ...
population and deep ties to
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
(then in the throes of the
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dyna ...
); Iranian leader
Ruhollah Khomeini's rhetoric along with the defection of Captain
Ismail Khan
Mohammad Ismail Khan (Dari/Pashto: محمد اسماعیل خان) (born 1946) is an Afghan former politician who served as Minister of Energy and Water from 2005 to 2013 and before that served as the governor of Herat Province. Originally a cap ...
from the DRA's armed forces inspired countless Afghans—
Sunnis and Shi'ites alike—to violently resist secular change. The DRA's mass killing of up to 20,000 residents of Herat, followed by the
Kerala massacre, failed to deter additional mutinies in
Jalalabad
Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلالآباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jala ...
and then across Afghanistan: By 1980, desertion had reduced the size of the Afghan army by considerably more than half. After a general uprising in April 1979, Taraki was deposed by Khalq rival
Hafizullah Amin
Hafizullah Amin (Pashto/ prs, حفيظ الله امين; 1 August 192927 December 1979) was an Afghan communist revolutionary, politician and teacher. He organized the Saur Revolution of 1978 and co-founded the Democratic Republic of Afghan ...
in September.
Amin was considered a "brutal psychopath" by foreign observers; even the Soviets were alarmed by the brutality of the Afghan communists, and suspected Amin of being an agent of the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(CIA), although that was not the case.
In reality, the CIA (which was blindsided by the 1978 coup) had little interest in or understanding of Afghanistan's internal politics at the time; its limited intelligence-gathering efforts in the country focused overwhelmingly on the Soviet presence, particularly with regard to Soviet military technology, and it was unwilling to expend considerable resources on recruiting Afghan communists. In December, citing concerns that Amin's government was losing control of the country, the U.S.S.R.
invaded Afghanistan, assassinated Amin in a
surprise attack, installed Parcham leader
Babrak Karmal
Babrak Karmal (Farsi/ Pashto: , born Sultan Hussein; 6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Afghanistan, serving in the post of General Secretary of the People's Democratic Pa ...
as the new Afghan leader, and oversaw a purge of Amin's supporters.
U.S.
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1 ...
expressed surprised at the invasion, as the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community during 1978 and 1979—reiterated as late as September 29, 1979—was that "Moscow would not intervene in force even if it appeared likely that the Khalq government was about to collapse." Indeed, Carter's diary entries from November 1979 until the Soviet invasion in late December contain only two short references to Afghanistan, and are instead preoccupied with the ongoing
hostage crisis in Iran.
However, while CIA analysts misjudged the likelihood of an invasion, the CIA carefully tracked Soviet military activities in and near Afghanistan, allowing it to accurately predict the
Christmas Eve invasion on December 22. In the West, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was considered a threat to global security and the oil supplies of the
Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The bod ...
.
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 Carter's
national security adviser (NSA)
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński ( , ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), or Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter' ...
that "if the Soviets came to dominate Afghanistan, they could promote a separate
Baluchistan ...
husdismembering Pakistan and Iran" took on new urgency.
These concerns were a major factor in the unrequited efforts of both the Carter and Reagan administrations to improve
relations with Iran, and resulted in massive aid to Pakistan's
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq HI, GCSJ, ร.ม.ภ, (Urdu: ; 12 August 1924 – 17 August 1988) was a Pakistani four-star general and politician who became the sixth President of Pakistan following a coup and declaration of martial law in ...
. President Zia's ties with the U.S. had been strained during Carter's presidency due to
Pakistan's nuclear program and the execution of
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar (or Zulfiqar) Ali Bhutto ( ur, , sd, ذوالفقار علي ڀٽو; 5 January 1928 – 4 April 1979), also known as Quaid-e-Awam ("the People's Leader"), was a Pakistani barrister, politician and statesman who served as the fourt ...
in April 1979, but Carter told Brzezinski and
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance as early as January 1979 that it was vital to "repair our relationships with Pakistan" in light of unrest in Iran.
One initiative Carter authorized to achieve this goal was a collaboration between the CIA and Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...
(ISI); through the ISI, the CIA began providing $695,000 worth of non-lethal assistance (e.g., "cash, medical equipment, and radio transmitters"
) to the mujahideen on July 3, 1979—several months prior to the Soviet invasion. The modest scope of this early collaboration was likely influenced by the understanding, later recounted by senior CIA official
Robert Gates
Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943) is an American intelligence analyst and university president who served as the 22nd United States secretary of defense from 2006 to 2011. He was originally appointed by president George W. Bush a ...
, "that a substantial U.S. covert aid program" might have "raise
the stakes" thereby causing "the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended."
[ When asked whether he expected that the revelations in his memoir (combined with an apocryphal quote attributed to Brzezinski) would inspire "a mind-bending number of conspiracy theories which adamantly—and wrongly—accuse the Carter Administration of luring the Soviets into Afghanistan," Gates replied: "No, because there was no basis in fact for an allegation the administration tried to draw the Soviets into Afghanistan militarily." See Gates, email communication with John Bernell White, Jr., October 15, 2011, as cited in ][ cf. ] A 2020 review of declassified U.S. documents by Conor Tobin in the journal ''
Diplomatic History
Diplomatic history deals with the history of international relations between states. Diplomatic history can be different from international relations in that the former can concern itself with the foreign policy of one state while the latter deals ...
'' found that "The small-scale covert program that developed ''in response'' to the increasing Soviet influence was part of a contingency plan ''if'' the Soviets did intervene militarily, as Washington would be in a better position to make it difficult for them to consolidate their position, but not designed to induce an intervention."
Although
Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)
Stansfield Turner and the CIA's
Directorate of Operations (DO) were contemplating what Gates described as "several enhancement options"—up to and including the direct provision of arms from the U.S. to the mujahideen through the ISI—by October 1979, and an unnamed Brzezinski aide acknowledged in conversation with
Selig S. Harrison that the U.S.'s nominally "non-lethal" assistance to the mujahideen included facilitating arms shipments by third-parties,
Steve Coll
Steve Coll (born October 8, 1958) is an American journalist, academic and executive.
He is currently the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he is also the Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism. A staff writer f ...
, Harrison,
Bruce Riedel
Bruce O. Riedel (born 1953) is an American expert on U.S. security, South Asia, and counter-terrorism. He is currently a senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Johns Hopkins School ...
, and the head of the DO's Near East–South Asia Division at the time—
Charles Cogan—all state that no U.S.-supplied arms intended for the mujahideen reached Pakistan until January 1980, after Carter amended his presidential finding to include lethal provisions in late December 1979.
Tobin reiterates that "no weapons were directly supplied before January 1980" but mentions that the
United States National Security Council
The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Exe ...
(NSC) agreed to explore additional ways to facilitate arms shipments to the mujahideen on December 17—an idea rendered moot by the Soviet invasion one week later.
Finally, on December 28 Carter signed a presidential finding explicitly allowing the CIA to transfer "lethal military equipment either directly or through third countries to the Afghan opponents of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan," and to arrange "selective training, conducted outside of Afghanistan, in the use of such equipment either directly or via third country intermediation."
Coll describes Carter's December 1979 presidential finding:
In any event, policymakers back in Washington did not believe the Soviets could be defeated militarily by the rebels. The CIA's mission was spelled out in an amended Top Secret presidential finding signed by President Carter in late December 1979 and reauthorized by President Reagan in 1981. The finding permitted the CIA to ship weapons secretly to the mujahedin. The document used the word ''harassment'' to describe the CIA's goals against Soviet forces. The CIA's covert action was to raise the cost of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. It might also deter the Soviets from undertaking other Third World invasions. But this was not a war the CIA expected to win outright on the battlefield. The finding made clear that the agency was to work through Pakistan and defer to Pakistani priorities. The CIA's Afghan program would not be "unilateral," as the agency called operations it ran in secret on its own. Instead the CIA would emphasize "liaison" with Pakistani intelligence. The first guns shipped in were single-shot, bolt-action .303 Lee Enfield rifles, a standard British infantry weapon until the 1950s. With its heavy wooden stock and antique design, it was not an especially exciting weapon, but it was accurate and powerful.
In the aftermath of the invasion, Carter was determined to respond vigorously to what he considered a dangerous provocation. In a televised speech, he announced sanctions on the U.S.S.R., promised renewed aid to Pakistan, and
committed the U.S. to the Persian Gulf's defense.
Carter also called for a boycott of the
1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which raised a bitter controversy. British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...
enthusiastically backed Carter's tough stance, although British intelligence believed "the CIA was being too alarmist about the Soviet threat to Pakistan."
The thrust of U.S. policy for the duration of the war was determined by Carter in early 1980: Carter initiated
a program to arm the mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI and secured a pledge from
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
to match U.S. funding for this purpose. U.S. support for the mujahideen accelerated under Carter's successor,
Ronald Reagan, at a final cost to U.S. taxpayers of some $3 billion (per Riedel, based on congressional appropriations). The Soviets were unable to quell the insurgency and
withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, precipitating the
dissolution of the Soviet Union itself.
Of the
seven mujahideen groups supported by Zia's government, four espoused Islamic fundamentalist beliefs—and these fundamentalists received most of the funding.
By 1992, the combined U.S., Saudi, and
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
aid to the mujahideen was estimated at $6–12 billion, whereas Soviet military aid to Afghanistan was valued at $36–48 billion. The result was a heavily-armed, militarized Afghan society: Some sources indicate that Afghanistan was the world's top destination for personal weapons during the 1980s. Some 1.5 million Afghans died as a result of warfare between 1979 and 1996.
There are
allegations
In law, an allegation is a claim of an unproven fact by a party in a pleading, charge, or defense. Until they can be proved, allegations remain merely assertions. that
Osama bin Laden and
Al-Qaeda were beneficiaries of CIA assistance. This is contradicted by journalists such as Coll—who notes that declassified CIA records and interviews with CIA officers do not support such claims—and more forcefully by
Peter Bergen
Peter Bergen (born December 11, 1962) is an American journalist, author, and producer who serves as CNN's national security analyst and as New America's vice president. He produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, w ...
, who concludes: "The theory that bin Laden was created by the CIA is invariably advanced as an axiom with no supporting evidence."
According to them, U.S. funding went exclusively to the ''Afghan'' mujahideen fighters, not the
Arab volunteers
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, No ...
who arrived to assist them.
Yet Coll also documents that bin Laden at least informally cooperated with the ISI and with
Saudi intelligence
The General Intelligence Presidency (GIP); ( ar, (ر.ا.ع) رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة ), also known as the General Intelligence Directorate (GID), is the primary intelligence agency of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
History
T ...
during the 1980s and had intimate connections to CIA-backed mujahideen commander
Jalaluddin Haqqani
Jalaluddin Haqqani ( ps, جلال الدين حقاني, Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥaqqānī) (1939 – 3 September 2018) was an Afghan insurgent commander who founded the Haqqani network, an insurgent group fighting in guerilla warfare against US-led ...
;
Milton Bearden, the CIA's
Islamabad
Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital ...
station chief from mid-1986 until mid-1989, took an admiring view of bin Laden at the time. Afghan assets recounted the fanaticism and intolerance of many of the so-called "Afghan Arabs" to the CIA, yet the CIA discounted these reports, instead contemplating direct support to the Arab volunteers under the guise of a
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...
-inspired "
international brigade
The International Brigades ( es, Brigadas Internacionales) were military units set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organization existe ...
"—a concept that never got off paper. Coll writes that Haqqani and his brothers, who were given hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct cash payments by their CIA
case officer
In intelligence organizations, agent handling is the management of so-called agents (called secret agents or spies in common parlance), principal agents, and agent networks (called "assets") by intelligence officers typically known as case o ...
, "did more than any other commander network in Afghanistan to nurture and support Arab volunteer fighters, seeding Al Qaeda's birth."
1980
Intelligence analysis
A memorandum spoke of continued tribal rivalries as adding to the resistance to the Soviets.
September 23, 1980, the intelligence community at the Southwest Asia Analyst Center, Office of Political Analysts Intelligence created a report on Afghanistan's power structures and tribal affiliations. The report reveals there were hundreds of tribes and more than a dozen ethnic groups in Afghanistan, focusing on power structures and loyalties. Other significant sections includes a detail that those who clung closely to traditional tribal ways were least likely to be swayed by communism and that traditional beliefs include dedication to revenge, masculine superiority, emphasis on bravery and honor, and suspicion of outsiders. The reports states: "Any change in the traditional way of life is considered wrong, and modern ideas—whether communist or western—are seen as a threat."
1985: Escalation
NSDD–166
Largely as a result of lobbying by ideological
conservatives
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
and Democratic representative
Charlie Wilson, the fiscal year beginning in October 1984 coincided with a large increase in funding and, ultimately, in the scale of the CIA's activities in Afghanistan. An agreement between Wilson, DCI
William J. Casey, and the
Defense Department permitted congressional hardliners, with Wilson in the lead, to transfer tens of millions in unspent congressional funds originally allocated for the U.S. military to the CIA's Afghan program each year, notwithstanding the preference of many career CIA officials (including Cogan and Casey's deputy director
John N. McMahon
John N. McMahon (born July 3, 1929) is a former senior U.S. official of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Background
John Norman McMahon was born on July 3, 1929, in East Norwalk, Connecticut. His parents were Frederick Francis McMahon and Eli ...
) for a smaller program. Congressional funding for fiscal 1985 (not even including matching funds from Saudi intelligence) reached $250 million, which was almost the same as the total amount previously spent on aid to the mujahideen. This funding surge led Casey to call for a reassessment of the CIA's role in Afghanistan. Casey wrote in December 1984: "In the long run, merely increasing the costs to the Soviets of an Afghan incursion, which is basically how we have been justifying the activity when asked, is not likely to fly."
![National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD-166)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/National_Security_Decision_Directive_166_%28NSDD-166%29.jpg)
Following an interagency review of Afghan policy overseen by the NSC and including representatives from the
State Department and Defense Department in addition to the CIA, in March 1985 President Reagan signed a draft of a National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) that was pushed for by
Fred Iklé
Fred Charles Iklé (August 21, 1924 – November 10, 2011) was a Swiss-American sociologist and defense expert. Iklé's expertise was in defense and foreign policy, nuclear strategy, and the role of technology in the emerging international order. ...
and especially the arch-conservative
Michael Pillsbury
Michael Paul Pillsbury (born February 8, 1945) is an author, and former public official in the United States. He has been the Director of the Center on Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. since 2014. Before Hudson, he he ...
at the Defense Department, which formalized and provided a legal rationale for the changes that were already taking place with regard to CIA activities in Afghanistan. The resulting NSDD–166 reportedly included a highly classified supplement signed by NSA
Robert McFarlane
Robert Carl "Bud" McFarlane (July 12, 1937 – May 12, 2022) was an American Marine Corps officer who served as National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985. Within the Reagan administration, McFarlane was a leading ar ...
that detailed expanded forms of U.S. assistance to the mujahideen, such as the provision of satellite intelligence, "
burst communication" devices, advanced weapons systems, and additional training to the Afghan rebels through the ISI. Furthermore, the document allowed the CIA to unilaterally support certain Afghan assets without the ISI's participation or knowledge. In sum, NSDD–166 defined the Reagan administration's policy as aiding the mujahideen by "all available means." In an April 30 meeting, Iklé communicated the general thrust of this policy to ISI Director
Akhtar Abdur Rahman. Vastly more Americans arrived in Pakistan to train ISI handlers on the new weapons systems. In turn, the ISI developed a complex infrastructure that was training 16,000 to 18,000 Afghan mujahideen annually by early 1986, with ISI chief of Afghan operations Mohammed Yousaf estimating that a further 6,000 to 7,000 rebels (including a number of Arab volunteers) were trained every year by mujahideen that had previously been recipients of ISI instruction. Although the CIA was theoretically empowered to act more independently of the ISI and took some steps to "audit" the ISI's handling of American resources in response to congressional concerns about fraud, the ISI remained the main conduit for U.S. support to the mujahideen and the bulk of the Reagan-era aid championed by conservatives went to
Muslim Brotherhood-inspired commanders favored by the ISI, most notably
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ( ps, ګلب الدين حكمتيار; born 1 August 1949) is an Afghan politician, former mujahideen leader and drug trafficker. He is the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin political party, so calle ...
.
There were discussions within the U.S. government regarding the connection between the CIA's support for an Afghan insurgency that was actively killing Soviet troops and the
legal rule prohibiting employees of the U.S. government from engaging in assassination. Casey asked rhetorically: "Every time a mujahedin rebel kills a Soviet rifleman, are we engaged in assassination?" On paper, the CIA's lack of
command and control
Command and control (abbr. C2) is a "set of organizational and technical attributes and processes ... hatemploys human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions" to achieve the goals of an organization or en ...
over the mujahideen insulated it from charges of assassination; in practice, however, there were ambiguities. Among many other examples, the CIA's Islamabad station chief from May 1981 to mid-1984,
Howard Hart, previously called for a Pakistani
bounty
Bounty or bounties commonly refers to:
* Bounty (reward), an amount of money or other reward offered by an organization for a specific task done with a person or thing
Bounty or bounties may also refer to:
Geography
* Bounty, Saskatchewan, a g ...
on killed or captured Soviet troops;
Gust Avrakotos
Gustav Lascaris Avrakotos (January 14, 1938 – December 1, 2005) was an American case officer and the Afghan Task Force Chief for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Avrakotos joined the CIA in August 1962 and was posted to Greece in 1963. Followi ...
, serving as the head of the CIA's task force on Afghan operations, praised a Pakistani program that provided incentives to mujahideen commanders based on the volume of captured Soviet belt buckles they turned in; the ISI organized repeated unsuccessful assassination attempts on
Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai (Pashto/ prs, محمد نجیبالله احمدزی, ; 6 August 1947 – 27 September 1996), commonly known as Dr. Najib, was an Afghan politician who served as the General Secretary of the People's Democratic Par ...
, then in charge of
Afghanistan's KHAD secret police (and later the
President of Afghanistan
The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was constitutionally the head of state and head of government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004–2021) and Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Armed Forces.
On 15 August 2021, as th ...
), using CIA funds; and CIA-supplied long-range rockets (originally of Chinese or Egyptian origin) killed and maimed countless civilians during the bombardment of
Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...
from 1985 on. Ultimately, the CIA had no way to know with certainty how any weapon that it supplied would be used on the battlefield, but it generally refrained from providing a weapon if a determination was made that the weapon's primary purpose was more likely than not to be assassination, terrorism, or other unlawful conduct. This "most likely use" standard had no bearing on so-called "
dual-use" weapons that could plausibly serve a legitimate military purpose and were shipped to Pakistan under the auspices of NSDD–166—such as tons of
C-4 explosives, thousands of timed detonators, and dozens of
sniper rifles—but in a concession to its in-house legal advisors the CIA declined to provide
night vision technology or satellite intelligence on the apartment residences of Soviet military officers along with the sniper rifles. Several years later the U.S. was compelled by ISI activities in the disputed territory to warn
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n officials in
Kashmir to take protective measures against the long-range rifles.
Cross-border activities
Beginning in early 1985, the CIA and ISI shipped thousands of translated
Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...
s across Afghanistan's northern border into the Central Asian Soviet republics. In retaliation for
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
-sponsored bombings that had killed hundreds in Pakistan, the ISI also organized mujahideen teams to carry out violent raids inside Soviet territory, which the CIA was at least aware of. Many other raids were launched by northern Afghan commanders operating largely independently of the ISI and CIA, including by
Ahmad Shah Massoud. CIA and State Department analysts were horrified by these raids (believing they could cause an international crisis akin to the
1960 U-2 incident
On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory. The single-seat aircraft, flown by American pilot Francis Gary Power ...
) and Hart's successor William Piekney conveyed a State Department message to Akhtar to the effect that the ISI should not encourage Afghans to cross the Soviet border (albeit with the caveat that, in Piekney's own words, "the Afghans would exploit opportunities that arose and do pretty much what they wanted to do"). However, Yousaf recounted that Casey had approved such acts of sabotage; according to Yousaf, Casey first broached the idea in late 1984 to an ambivalent reception by Akhtar, stating that "You should take the books ... and you can think of sending arms and ammunition if possible." Some of Casey's colleagues questioned this anecdote, but it was later corroborated by Gates (Casey's executive assistant at the time). Because President Reagan never signed a presidential finding to authorize this risky expansion of the CIA's mandate in Afghanistan, which would have entailed notifying certain members of the U.S. Congress, Coll observes: "If Casey spoke the words Yousaf attributed to him, he was almost certainly breaking American law. No one but President Reagan possessed the authority to foment attacks inside the Soviet Union."
As a side note, the CIA began funding Massoud to a limited extent in late 1984 without Pakistani connivance, but CIA officers remained prohibited from interacting with him directly. British and French intelligence officers, however, did not operate under the same legal restrictions as their CIA counterparts and spoke with Massoud in person. The British role was particularly resented by the Pakistanis and some CIA officers found the French to be "grating," but the CIA came to rely on
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
for intelligence regarding Massoud during these years.
In April 1987, three separate teams of Afghan rebels were directed by the ISI to launch coordinated violent raids on multiple targets across the Soviet border and extending, in the case of an attack on an
Uzbek factory, as deep as over 10 miles into Soviet territory. In response, the Soviets issued a thinly-veiled threat to invade Pakistan to stop the cross-border attacks: No further attacks were reported. Casey had been forced to resign his DCI post after being afflicted by a
brain tumor
A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seconda ...
in December 1986, a condition that proved fatal several months later, but Coll characterized the April 1987 raids as "Casey's last hurrah."
1986: Stinger missiles
In late September 1986, roughly two months after Bearden replaced Piekney as Islamabad station chief, the CIA began delivering U.S.-made
state of the art FIM-92 Stinger
The FIM-92 Stinger is an American man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS) that operates as an infrared homing surface-to-air missile (SAM). It can be adapted to fire from a wide variety of ground vehicles, and from helicopters as the Air-t ...
surface-to-air missiles to the mujahideen. The Stingers used
infrared homing technology to destroy Soviet aircraft from a distance of roughly 12,500 feet, seriously disrupting the increasingly effective use of low-flying
attack helicopters by the Soviet
Spetsnaz
Spetsnaz are special forces in numerous post-Soviet states. (The term is borrowed from rus, спецназ, p=spʲɪtsˈnas; abbreviation for or 'Special Purpose Military Units'; or .)
Historically, the term ''spetsnaz'' referred to the S ...
special forces; the Soviets eventually decided that it was no longer safe to evacuate their wounded by helicopter. CIA officers were aware that the Stingers could easily be used by terrorists to shoot down civilian aircraft and were reticent to abandon the last vestiges of
plausible deniability by introducing U.S.-origin weaponry into Afghanistan, but their objections were overruled by Reagan administration hardliners, including by senior State Department official
Morton I. Abramowitz. China and Pakistan, which were consulted in advance out of consideration for the security risks posed to those countries by the prospect of Soviet retaliation, approved the deliveries after careful deliberation. The possibility that the Stingers might be diverted for purposes not intended by U.S. policymakers provided an additional impetus for the CIA to expand the number of unilateral agents on its Afghan payroll (including both Massoud and
Abdul Haq until Bearden ended direct subsidies to Haq after the latter criticized the ISI's role in the conflict), which was a comparatively minor expense when juxtaposed with the unprecedented congressionally-allocated $1.1 billion budget that it had to work with for its Afghan operations in fiscal 1986 ($470 million) and fiscal 1987 ($630 million). Bearden subsequently endorsed supplying the Stingers as a turning point in the Soviet–Afghan war. In total, the CIA sent approximately 2,300 Stingers to Afghanistan, creating a substantial
black market for the weapons throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and even parts of Africa that persisted well into the 1990s. Perhaps 100 Stingers were acquired by Iran. The CIA later operated a program to recover the Stingers through cash buy-backs. Despite Massoud's reputation as one of the most effective mujahideen commanders, Pakistan's ISI made sure that Massoud received just 8 Stingers—a fraction of 1% of the total—and none before 1991.
1988: Soviet withdrawal begins
Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as the reformist leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 and was determined to extricate his country from Afghanistan as quickly as possible, openly calling the war a "bleeding wound" in widely-reported 1986 remarks. By November 1986 the decision to withdraw Soviet troops had been made, although the exact timetable remained subject to revision; Najibullah was informed of the ''fait accompli'' in December. Around the same time, the CIA inaccurately predicted that the Soviet Union would stay the course in Afghanistan, possibly distorting the intelligence to support the hawkish views of Reagan administration officials; even a year later Gates was adamant that the imminent withdrawal was a Soviet ruse, although other officials, such as Secretary of State
George Shultz (after speaking with Soviet
Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze
Eduard Ambrosis dze Shevardnadze ( ka, ედუარდ ამბროსის ძე შევარდნაძე}, romanized: ; 25 January 1928 – 7 July 2014) was a Soviet and Georgian politician and diplomat who governed Georgia fo ...
), by then accepted that the Soviets were sincere. The U.S. rejected out of hand Soviet entreaties to work together to prevent civil war or the rise of what KGB head
Vladimir Kryuchkov
Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov (russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович Крючко́в, link=no; 29 February 1924 – 23 November 2007) was a Soviet lawyer, diplomat, and head of the KGB, member of the Politburo of the ...
told Gates would be a "fundamentalist
Islamic state
An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...
" in Afghanistan; U.S. negotiators initially signaled a willingness to suspend CIA support to the mujahideen in exchange for a Soviet withdrawal, but President Reagan personally intervened to declare an aid cut-off unacceptable as long as the Soviets assisted Najibullah's regime. Nevertheless, Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan began in May 1988 pursuant to the terms of the
Geneva Accords and was completed in February 1989. These events produced much elation in the U.S. government—which was only slightly dampened by the deaths of President Zia, Akhtar, and
U.S. ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Lewis Raphel
Arnold Lewis Raphel (March 16, 1943 – August 17, 1988) was the 18th United States Ambassador to Pakistan.
Early life and education
Raphel was born March 16, 1943 in Troy, New York, into a Jewish family, the son of Harry and Sarah (Rote-Rose ...
in an
August 1988 plane crash and by a warning from
special envoy
Diplomatic rank is a system of professional and social rank used in the world of diplomacy and international relations. A diplomat's rank determines many ceremonial details, such as the order of precedence at official processions, table seating ...
to the Afghan resistance
Edmund McWilliams that the ISI was colluding with Hekmatyar to install an
Islamist regime in Afghanistan by killing or intimidating Hekmatyar's opponents, thereby making a mockery of U.S. claims to support Afghan "self-determination." Raphel's successor
Robert B. Oakley and Bearden responded to McWilliams's dissent by working to undermine McWilliams's credibility through an internal investigation that uncovered no personally derogatory information. Meanwhile, President Zia left a formidable legacy including a roughly ten-fold increase in the number of
madrassas in Pakistan (a large proportion of them built along the
Afghan–Pakistan border) and the transformation of the ISI into a powerful
state-within-a-state, much of which the formerly cash-strapped country of Pakistan could not have accomplished without funding from the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states in the Persian Gulf. Many of these madrassas introduced a new generation of Afghan religious students, or "''taliban,''" from
Kandahar
Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118. It is the c ...
to a severe,
Deobandi-influenced interpretation of Islam that had not previously played a significant role in Afghan history or culture.
Even after the February 1989 withdrawal, Coll writes that "Thousands of Soviet advisers remained behind."
1989
Bearden and the head of the CIA's Afghanistan taskforce, Frank Anderson, were nearly killed by a Saudi jihadist volunteer during a chance encounter while crossing between the Afghan-Pakistan border in 1989.
Intelligence analysis
A Special
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), "Afghanistan: The War in Perspective", estimated that the Najibullah government "is weak, unpopular, and factionalized, but it will probably remain in power over the next twelve months."
A 1989 CIA estimate put the number of Arab fighters then active in Afghanistan at 4,000 with the majority organized around
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Abdulrab Rasul Sayyaf ( ; ps, عبدالرسول سیاف; born 1946) is an exiled Afghan politician and former mujahideen commander. He took part in the war against the Marxist–Leninist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) govern ...
.
1991: Hekmatyar breaks with U.S.; Gulf War tanks
After Hekmatyar and Sayyaf publicly denounced the U.S. and the Saudi royal family for their role in the 1991
Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...
against
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
, U.S. and Saudi officials indicated that they would stop funding both commanders, yet funding continued. However, when the CIA shipped captured Iraqi tanks from
Kuwait
Kuwait (; ar, الكويت ', or ), officially the State of Kuwait ( ar, دولة الكويت '), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to the nort ...
to
Karachi
Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former c ...
for onward distribution to the mujahideen, the Americans conveyed to the ISI through Saudi intelligence that the tanks should be given to Haqqani as opposed to Hekmatyar.
1992: Aid cut-off; civil war begins
Najibullah's government, backed by hundreds of millions in Soviet aid every month, demonstrated more staying power than some CIA analysts had anticipated, successfully fending off a disastrous 1989 attempt by the mujahideen to take Jalalabad (which was largely planned by Akhtar's successor as ISI Director
Hamid Gul
Lieutenant General Hamid Gul ( ur, ; 20 November 1936 – 15 August 2015) was a three-star rank army general in the Pakistan Army and defence analyst. Gul was notable for serving as the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligenc ...
, Bearden, and the CIA's designated Kabul station chief
Gary Schroen
Gary Charles Schroen (November 6, 1941 – August 1, 2022) was an American intelligence officer who spent 52 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, most notably as a field officer in charge of the initial CIA incursion into Afghanistan in S ...
), a winter of 1989–1990 coordinated assault on Kabul and
Khost
Khōst ( ps, خوست) is the capital of Khost Province in Afghanistan. It is the largest city in the southeastern part of the country, and also the largest in the region of Loya Paktia. To the south and east of Khost lie Waziristan and Kurram ...
(the failure of which was blamed on Massoud's inability or unwillingness to close the
Salang Pass
The Salang Pass ( ps, د سالنګ لاره; prs, كتل سالنگ ''Kutal-i Salang'', el. ) is the primary mountain pass connecting northern Afghanistan with Parwan Province, with onward connections to Kabul Province, southern Afghanistan, ...
, resulting in a cut to Massoud's CIA stipend), and a
March 1990 coup attempt organized by Khalq defector
Shahnawaz Tanai
Lieutenant General Shahnawaz Tanai ( Russian: Шахнаваз Танай, 1950 – 7 March 2022) was an Afghan politician and general officer who served as the Chief of General Staff of the Afghan National Army until his defection to neighbo ...
in collaboration with Hekmatyar (and reportedly funded by bin Laden). Despite these setbacks, the mujahideen scored a major victory by capturing Khost in early 1991. With the end of the Soviet occupation, policy disagreements between the State Department—including its
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) is an intelligence agency in the United States Department of State. Its central mission is to provide all-source intelligence and analysis in support of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy. INR is ...
(INR) and McWilliams's ambassadorial-level successor as special envoy to Afghanistan
Peter Tomsen
Peter Tomsen (born November 19, 1940) is an American retired diplomat and educator, serving as U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992, United States Ambassador to Armenia between 1995 and 1998, and was Deputy Ambassador at the Un ...
—and the CIA regarding the future of the Afghan conflict became more pronounced, as illustrated by the CIA's apparent acquiescence in a mass rocket attack on Kabul planned by ISI Director
Asad Durrani
Lieutenant General Asad Ahmed Durrani ( ur, اسد أحمد درانی; born 7 February 1941) is a retired 3-star rank general in the Pakistan Army and presently a commentator, speaker and author. Durrani previously served as the Director G ...
and Hekmatyar for October 1990 (which was cancelled only after a last-minute intervention by Oakley and Tomsen) and a remark by
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
The Under Secretary for Political Affairs is currently the fourth-ranking position in the United States Department of State, after the secretary, the deputy secretary, and the deputy secretary of state for management and resources. The current un ...
Robert M. Kimmitt to the effect that the U.S. saw nothing objectionable in Najubullah participating in Afghan elections as part of a peaceful settlement. Regardless, this internal debate would soon be rendered moot by the November 1989
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The fall of the Berlin Wall (german: Mauerfall) on 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, was a pivotal event in world history which marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain and one of the series of eve ...
and the end of the
Cold War.
Shortly after taking office in 1989, President
George H. W. Bush signed a presidential finding renewing the CIA's legal authority to conduct covert operations in Afghanistan, but the country ranked low on the fledgling administration's priorities; Bearden recalled a conversation about Afghanistan in which President Bush asked: "Is that thing still going on?" Congress was losing interest in Afghanistan as well, slashing the CIA's Afghan budget to $280 million for fiscal 1990 with additional cuts in fiscal 1991. In late 1990, the U.S. suspended most aid to Pakistan as a consequence of Pakistan's continued progress towards developing a nuclear weapon, as legally required by an amendment to the
Foreign Assistance Act
The Foreign Assistance Act (, et seq.) is a United States law governing foreign aid policy. It outlined the political and ideological principles of U.S. foreign aid, significantly overhauled and reorganized the structure U.S. foreign assistance ...
. Finally, after
Soviet hardliners tried to oust Gorbachev in a failed August 1991 coup attempt, triggering a series of crises that culminated in the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, President Bush's secretary of state
James Baker
James Addison Baker III (born April 28, 1930) is an American attorney, diplomat and statesman. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 10th White House Chief of Staff and 67th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President ...
reached an agreement with his Soviet counterpart
Boris Pankin
Boris Dimitrievich Pankin (russian: Борис Дмитриевич Панкин; born 20 February 1931, in Frunze) is a former Soviet diplomat who served as acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR for a brief period in 1991.
Earlier ca ...
for both sides to cease sending weapons to either the mujahideen or Najibullah. This agreement—honored by the new government of
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
—came into force on January 1, 1992, at which point the Soviet Union no longer existed. While the CIA therefore played no direct role in the
fall of Kabul (and Afghanistan's subsequent descent into civil war between rival mujahideen factions) later that year, the cessation of external assistance was clearly much more devastating to Najibullah than to the mujahideen (especially when combined with erstwhile Najibullah ally
Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum ( ; prs, عبدالرشید دوستم; Uzbek Latin: , Uzbek Cyrillic: , ; born 25 March 1954) is an Afghan exiled politician, former Marshal in the Afghan National Army, founder and leader of the political party Junbish- ...
's nearly-simultaneous defection to the latter).
Following Dostum's defection, Massoud and his allied militia captured
Kabul International Airport
, nativename-r =
, image = Flightline at Kabul International Airport.jpeg
, caption = The flightline at Kabul International Airport in January 2012
, IATA = KBL
, ICAO = OAKB
, ...
and amassed outside of Kabul from the north, while Hekmatyar and other mujahideen commanders advanced closer to Kabul from Charasyab to the south. In a televised speech, Najibullah stated that he planned to resign as part of a peaceful transition organized by the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
(UN). The two factions within Afghanistan's communist party disagreed on the question of whether to surrender to Hekmatyar or to Massoud. Massoud initially declined to enter the capital until a political settlement regarding the future of Afghanistan could be reached between the mujahideen groups then negotiating in
Peshawar
Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...
. After a tense exchange by radio in which Hekmatyar rejected Massoud's pleas for compromise and reconciliation, forces allied with Massoud entered Kabul, preempting Hekmatyar's planned offensive on the city. An
interim government was established with
Burhanuddin Rabbani
Burhānuddīn Rabbānī (Persian: ; 20 September 1940 – 20 September 2011) was an Afghanistani politician and teacher who served as President of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996 (in exile from 1996 to 2001).
Born in the Badakhshan Province, Ra ...
—a religious scholar who had taught both Massoud and Hekmatyar during their time at
Kabul University
Kabul University (KU; prs, دانشگاه کابل, translit= Dāneshgāh-e-Kābul; ps, د کابل پوهنتون, translit=Da Kābul Pohantūn) is one of the major and oldest institutions of higher education in Afghanistan. It is in the 3rd ...
—serving as president (after a brief stint by acting president
Sibghatullah Mojaddedi
Sibghatullah Mojaddedi ( ps, صبغت الله مجددي; prs, صبغتالله مجددی; 27 September 1926 – 11 February 2019) was an Afghan politician, who served as Acting President after the fall of Mohammad Najibullah's government ...
) while Massoud took the reins of the defense ministry. Despite being offered the role of prime minister, Hekmatyar (heavily backed by the ISI) bombarded Kabul with rockets, inflicting mass casualties in a flailing bid to impose his personal rule on Afghanistan. The fighting in and around the capital plunged Afghanistan into a multifaceted civil war that would continue for several years, with all sides committing substantial atrocities. Eventually the
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...
, controlled by an obscure, soft-spoken, and insular former participant in
Mohammad Yunus Khalis's mujahideen faction named
Mohammed Omar emerged from the Pashtun heartland of Kandahar, taking control of all of southern Afghanistan and Herat by September 1995 before driving Massoud and the Afghan interim government from Kabul in September 1996: The Taliban proceeded to
ban Afghan women and girls from school and from public life. Extensive Pakistani and Saudi support played a key role in these Taliban victories. Massoud retreated to his native
Panjshir Valley
The Panjshir Valley (also spelled Panjsher or Darah-I-Panjshir; Pashto/Dari: – ''Dare-ye Panjšēr''; literally ''Valley of the Five Lions'') is a valley in northeastern Afghanistan, north of Kabul, near the Hindu Kush mountain range. It is di ...
, forming the
United Front
A united front is an alliance of groups against their common enemies, figuratively evoking unification of previously separate geographic fronts and/or unification of previously separate armies into a front. The name often refers to a political ...
(also known as the "Northern Alliance"), which was backed by India, Iran, and Russia as a bulwark against the further expansion of the Taliban's militant Sunni fundamentalism into Central Asia.
1996
The U.S. originally sought to work with the Taliban as a legitimate Afghan political faction.
In August 1996, the ISI was providing between $30,000–$60,000 per month to the militant Kashmiri group
Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA). This group was also reaching out for money from bin Laden.
Bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan earlier in the year after being expelled from
Sudan by President
Omar al-Bashir under heavy U.S. pressure, initially settling in Jalalabad, which was then controlled by former mujahideen whom bin Laden knew from the 1980s—''not'' by the Taliban. Jalalabad fell to the Taliban in August, shortly before the Taliban evicted Massoud from Kabul, and bin Laden subsequently moved to Kandahar, where (despite Taliban obfuscations to the effect that bin Laden was merely "''a guest of the previous regime''") he seems to have established a close relationship with Mullah Omar, who repeatedly praised bin Laden as a hero to Muslims (including in a private September 1998 meeting with Saudi intelligence chief
Turki bin Faisal Al Saud
Turki bin Faisal Al Saud ( ar, تركي بن فيصل آل سعود, Turkī ibn Fayṣal Āl Su‘ūd; tr, Türki bin Faysal Al Suud) (born 15 February 1945), known also as Turki Al Faisal, is a Saudi prince and former government official who se ...
, which damaged
Afghanistan–Saudi Arabia relations). The Taliban granted bin Laden and his followers access to the Tarnak Farm complex and to old, U.S.-built apartments located near
Kandahar International Airport
Ahmad Shah Baba International Airport, also referred to as Kandahar International Airport ( ps, د کندهار نړيوال هوايي ډګر) and by some military officials as Kandahar Airfield, KAF) , is located about south-east of the city Ka ...
. The U.S. became increasingly concerned with the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban. Pakistan supported the Taliban in different ways and Pakistani officials considered themselves to be in control of the group, but history has shown that the Taliban pursued its own interests rather than acting as a proxy for external forces. Pakistani support of the Taliban led to tensions with the U.S., as the Taliban became a more extreme and direct threat to the United States, its citizens, and its foreign dignitaries.
1998
On August 7, 1998
truck bombs were detonated at the U.S. embassies in two different East African capital cities:
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and
Nairobi, Kenya
Nairobi ( ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase ''Enkare Nairobi'', which translates to "place of cool waters", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper h ...
. These explosions killed 224 people, wounded more than 4,500, and caused a substantial amount of property damage. Although twelve Americans were killed in these attacks, the vast majority of the casualties were Kenyan civilians.
[http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB253/sandia.pdf ] A faction of al-Qaeda was determined to be responsible for the attacks. Al-Qaeda's portrayal within the realm of Western media would go on to become relatively notorious in response to the 1998 bombings; bin Laden was subsequently placed on the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
(FBI)'s most wanted fugitives list. Prior to the bombings, al-Qaeda was relatively unknown to the Western public. The CIA, however, was well aware of al-Qaeda before the attacks. The al-Qaeda cell in East Africa had even been monitored by the CIA prior to the attacks. The Nairobi Embassy had increased security measures and issued warnings about its vulnerabilities. In addition, representatives from the U.S. were sent to the Nairobi Embassy for security assessments, on multiple occasions, prior to the bombings.
The embassy bombings exposed potential U.S. vulnerability to the growing global threat posed by terrorism.
In the immediate aftermath of the bombings, U.S. President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
ordered
cruise missiles strikes at "targets in Sudan and Afghanistan in response to the clear evidence of Bin Laden's responsibility for the planning and execution ... of the bombings."
In addition, seven suspected members of al-Qaeda were arrested. On November 4, 1998 the U.S. moved to "indict Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda military chief
Muhammad Atef on 224 counts of murder for the embassy bombings."
1999
In a declassified CIA document, there are mentions of bin Laden and the UN's efforts to have him expelled to a country where he could be prosecuted for his crimes: "in our talks we have stressed that UBL (Usama Bin-Laden) has murdered Americans and continues to plan attacks against Americans and others and that we cannot ignore this threat.
he CIAalso emphasized that the international community shares this concern." In this document, the CIA also stressed to the Taliban that bin Laden was not its only terrorist problem, and that it needed to immediately cease all terrorist activities.
[http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB97/tal40.pdf ] The Taliban adamantly claimed to be restricting bin Laden's activities. In February, the Memoranda of Notification, a provision signed by the president that oversaw covert action in Afghanistan, "authorized the CIA to work with the Afghan Northern Alliance ... against
in Laden"
In October, the Taliban proposed solutions including a trial of bin Laden by a panel of Islamic scholars or monitoring of bin Laden by the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) or the UN. The U.S., however refused to be bound by the panel's decisions.
2001: September 11 attacks; U.S. invades Afghanistan
The CIA began reporting with increasing frequency about the danger that bin Laden posed to the United States. A Senior Executive Intelligence Brief dated February 6, 2001 stated that the threat of Sunni terrorism was growing. The report also stated that the increase in al-Qaeda activities "stems in part from changes to Bin Laden's practices. To avoid implicating himself and his Taliban hosts, Bin Laden over the past two years has allowed cells in his network ... to plan attacks more independently of the central leadership and has tried to gain support for his agenda outside the group." Before the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
, United States intelligence had determined that Afghanistan had been a training ground for bin Laden's terrorist network. These warnings were not enough to stop the attacks from occurring, resulting in the United States
invading Afghanistan.
The plan for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan originated in the CIA's
Counterterrorist Center
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Mission Center for Counterterrorism (often referred to as the Counterterrorism Mission Center or CTMC, formerly the Counterterrorism Center, or simply CTC) was established in 1986, and is a division of the CI ...
(CTC), then under the leadership of
Cofer Black, building off earlier contingency plans for collaboration with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. It was approved by President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
following a September 15 presentation by DCI
George Tenet, as the Defense Department did not have a pre-existing plan for an invasion of Afghanistan.
Mohammed Fahim
Mohammad Qasim Fahim ( prs, محمد فهیم, also known as "Marshal Fahim"; 1957 – 9 March 2014) was a politician in Afghanistan who served as Vice President from June 2002 until December 2004 and from November 2009 until his death. Betwee ...
(who succeeded Massoud following the latter's
assassination),
Atta Muhammad Nur
Atta Muhammad Nur (also spelled Ata Mohammed Noor; fa, عطا محمد نور; born 1964) is an Afghan exiled politician and former militant who served as the Governor of Balkh Province in Afghanistan from 2004 to January 25, 2018. An ethnic ...
, Dostum, Khan, and Sayyaf all played important roles in the invasion, which was overseen by the CTC's
Henry A. Crumpton. On September 26, Schroen led the first CIA "Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team" into the Panjshir, long before any Defense Department personnel arrived in Afghanistan. In the end, officers from the CIA's
Special Activities Division
The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015. Within SAC there are two ...
(SAD),
United States Special Operations Command
The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM) is the unified combatant command charged with overseeing the various special operations component commands of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force of the United States Ar ...
(USSOCOM) special forces, and the Northern Alliance combined to overthrow the Taliban without the need for U.S. military conventional ground forces.
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai (; Pashto/ fa, حامد کرزی, , ; born 24 December 1957) is an Afghan statesman who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014, including as the first elected president of the Islamic Repub ...
was inaugurated as the new
President of Afghanistan
The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was constitutionally the head of state and head of government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004–2021) and Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Armed Forces.
On 15 August 2021, as th ...
on December 22, at which point the war's casualties included just 13 soldiers or CIA officers in the U.S.-led military campaign, along with at least 1,500 to 2,375 Afghan civilians who died primarily from
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...
or
Navy
A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions. It in ...
bombing raids.
The seemingly successful military campaign in Afghanistan, officially dubbed "
Operation Enduring Freedom," was met with bipartisan praise in the U.S., with American media hailing it as "a harbinger of a new kind of war," per Coll. However, in the aftermath of the invasion it became clear that U.S. policymakers lacked a long-term plan for addressing Afghanistan's severe poverty and underdevelopment, and that establishing a stable successor regime would be exceptionally challenging. Coll comments that "the shockingly rapid triumph of the C.I.A.-inspired campaign to overthrow the Taliban so exceeded expectations that it blinded some of its architects to their own limitations." Crumpton later conceded: "What we failed to do is to understand that we had to replace the Taliban with something better." Additionally, bin Laden and hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters escaped into Pakistan as a result of a decision by
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
United States Central Command
The United States Central Command (USCENTCOM or CENTCOM) is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the U.S. Department of Defense. It was established in 1983, taking over the previous responsibilities of the Rapid Deployment Joint Ta ...
commander
Tommy Franks
Tommy Ray Franks (born 17 June 1945) is a retired general in the United States Army. His last army post was as the Commander of the United States Central Command, overseeing United States military operations in a 25-country region, including t ...
, and ultimately President Bush to rely on the CIA-backed Afghan militias of
Hazrat Ali and
Zahir Qadeer (whose father,
Haji Abdul Qadeer
Haji Abdul Qadeer ( ps, حاجی عبدالقدیر; – 6 July 2002) was a prominent Northern Alliance leader in Afghanistan and opposed the Taliban. Originally a commander of the Hezb-i Islami Khalis faction during the Soviet–Afghan War, ...
, welcomed bin Laden's arrival in Jalalabad in 1996)—along with large-scale
B-52
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is an American long-range, subsonic, jet-powered strategic bomber. The B-52 was designed and built by Boeing, which has continued to provide support and upgrades. It has been operated by the United States Air ...
bombardment—instead of sending in U.S.
army rangers or
marines
Marines, or naval infantry, are typically a military force trained to operate in littoral zones in support of naval operations. Historically, tasks undertaken by marines have included helping maintain discipline and order aboard the ship (refle ...
during the December 2001
Battle of Tora Bora
The Battle of Tora Bora was a military engagement that took place in the cave complex of Tora Bora, eastern Afghanistan, from December 6–17, 2001, during the opening stages of the United States invasion of Afghanistan. It was launched by the ...
. An alarmed Pakistani President
Pervez Musharraf
General Pervez Musharraf ( ur, , Parvez Muśharraf; born 11 August 1943) is a former Pakistani politician and four-star general of the Pakistan Army who became the tenth president of Pakistan after the successful military takeover of t ...
asked Franks "what are you doing? You are flushing these guys
l-Qaedaout and ... They are pouring in to my country" and requested urgently-needed helicopters to move 60,000 Pakistani troops to the Afghan–Pakistan border, but the U.S. refused, citing high demand for helicopters elsewhere. Franks and Rumsfeld were apparently motivated by fear that a substantial American presence near Tora Bora could incite a rebellion by local Pashtuns, despite the latter's lack of organizational capability at the time and the fierce dissent voiced by many CIA analysts including
Charles E. Allen (who warned Franks that "the back door
o Pakistanwas open") and
Gary Berntsen
Gary Berntsen (born July 23, 1957) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) career officer who served in the National Clandestine Service, Directorate of Operations between October 1982 and June 2005. During his time at the CIA, he ...
(who briefly served as the chief of the CIA station informally operating out of the Ariana Hotel in Kabul and who called for army rangers to "kill this baby in the crib"). Regardless, a
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and pow ...
investigation cited the strategic failure at Tora Bora as having a profound impact on both "the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism"; Coll argues that it destabilized Pakistan and created a perception among Pakistan's leaders that "their country's rising violence
asa price of American folly in the fall of 2001." To fill the power vacuum left by the Taliban's collapse, the U.S. relied on corrupt and brutal former mujahideen paid by the CIA; Dostum prominently participated in Afghan politics after his forces
murdered hundreds of surrendered Taliban prisoners in shipping containers, while the CIA re-installed
Gul Agha Sherzai
Gul Agha Sherzai (), also known as Mohammad Shafiq, is a politician in Afghanistan. He is the former governor of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan.
He previously served as Governor of Kandahar province, in the early 1990s and from 2001 ...
as
governor of Kandahar
This is a list of the governors of the province of Kandahar, Afghanistan.
See also
* List of current provincial governors in Afghanistan
References
{{Kandahar Province
Kandahar
Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a city in Afgh ...
. Dostum denied personal involvement in the massacre, and the Bush administration did not seem to be concerned with punishing anyone over it. Sherzai was soon using his position to enrich himself with earnings of perhaps $1.5 million per month.
2002: Formation of the National Directorate of Security
In late 2001 and early 2002, Schroen organized Afghanistan's
National Directorate of Security
The National Directorate of Security (NDS; ps, د ملي امنیت لوی ریاست; prs, ریاست عمومی امنیت ملی) was the national intelligence and security service of Afghanistan. The headquarters of the NDS was in Kabul, ...
(NDS) in consultation with its first director,
Muhammad Arif Sarwari. The NDS inherited workplace culture and personnel from the Soviet-era KHAD, itself commonly described as the Afghan equivalent of the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
, but Schroen preferred to use
SAVAK as a model for the new intelligence agency.
2003
Intelligence analysis
In June 2003, the CIA published a report entitled, "11 September: The Plot and the Plotters." This document analyzes the 9/11 attack and also includes CIA intelligence on al-Qaeda and the attack, including detailed biographical pages on each of the hijackers. According to the report, the CIA found that the attackers had traveled back and forth to Afghanistan and that most of the attackers traveled to Afghanistan to pledge their loyalty to bin Laden.
2007
Intelligence analysis: Afghan war effort deteriorating
In mid-2006, the CIA's
Counterterrorism Center
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Mission Center for Counterterrorism (often referred to as the Counterterrorism Mission Center or CTMC, formerly the Counterterrorism Center, or simply CTC) was established in 1986, and is a division of the CI ...
hired
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMass Dartmouth or UMassD) is a public research university in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It is the southernmost campus of the University of Massachusetts system. Formerly Southeastern Massachusetts Un ...
academic
Brian Glyn Williams
Brian Glyn Williams is a professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who worked for the CIA. As an undergraduate, he attended Stetson University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1988. He received his PhD in Mi ...
to conduct a study, including field work in Afghanistan and a final research paper (published in 2007), examining the dramatic increase in
suicide attacks by Afghan insurgents beginning that year. (Few, if any, suicide attacks were documented during the Soviet–Afghan War and the Taliban is not known to have sanctioned such attacks as part of its war against the Northern Alliance in the 1990s.) Williams documented 149 suicide attacks in 2006, compared to just eight suicide attacks recorded between December 2001 and December 2004, and found evidence that Arab and international jihadists helped export the tactic to Afghanistan as spillover from the
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror
, image ...
. However, the vast majority of suicide attackers appeared to be ethnic Pashtuns, not Arabs. In contrast to Iraq, where suicide attacks regularly inflicted mass casualties on soft targets (including mosques) as part of the sectarian
Iraqi civil war (2006–2008)
The Iraqi Civil War was a civil war fought mainly between the Iraqi government along with American-led coalition forces and various sectarian armed groups, mainly Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Mahdi Army, from 2006 to 2008. In February 2006, sect ...
between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the majority of suicide attacks in Afghanistan killed only the attacker, and in nearly 9% of cases the bomb failed to detonate or was abandoned; the Afghan suicide attacks were generally directed against military targets, not civilians (as was commonplace in Iraq). The profile that Williams created of Taliban suicide attackers was that of Pashtun males as young as 12 or 13 years old from
Waziristan
Waziristan (Pashto and ur, , "land of the Wazir") is a mountainous region covering the former FATA agencies of North Waziristan and South Waziristan which are now districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Waziristan covers some . ...
or rural southeastern Afghanistan, recruited (if not coerced) after being educated in fundamentalist madrassas, the families of whom were compensated several thousand dollars in exchange for their sacrifice—a sacrifice that was expected to be honorable, hence the Taliban's preference for hard targets. Coll hypothesizes that because suicide attacks proved relatively unsuccessful against
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
's armored vehicles, in successive years the Taliban switched to relying more on
improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached to a detonating mecha ...
s (IEDs): "Between 2007 and 2010, the number of Taliban attacks using improvised explosives rose from just over 2,200 to more than 14,000. ... the number of suicide bombings remained steady at just over 100 per year."
In late 2007, analysts from the CIA's
Directorate of Intelligence produced the first of many "District Assessment" maps of Afghanistan's 398 administrative districts, which assigned a color-coded rating to each district documenting control by the U.S.–backed
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai (; Pashto/ fa, حامد کرزی, , ; born 24 December 1957) is an Afghan statesman who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014, including as the first elected president of the Islamic Repub ...
-led Afghan government, control by the Taliban, contested districts, and districts under the "local control" of rival warlords, based on approximately three dozen metrics of data. The CIA's "District Assessments" were widely shared across U.S. government agencies, becoming "one of the most popular top secret analytic products the agency had ever distributed," according to Coll. The CIA's 2007 map showed that the Taliban controlled or contested roughly half of the official districts in Afghanistan, sharply undercutting optimistic assessments by
International Security Assistance Force
' ps, کمک او همکاري '
, allies = Afghanistan
, opponents = Taliban Al-Qaeda
, commander1 =
, commander1_label = Commander
, commander2 =
, commander2_label =
, commander3 =
, command ...
(ISAF) commander
Dan K. McNeill and
U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan William Braucher Wood but echoing the growing doubts about progress in the war expressed by U.S. secretary of state
Condoleezza Rice and her counselor
Eliot A. Cohen.
2009
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
Khost
Khōst ( ps, خوست) is the capital of Khost Province in Afghanistan. It is the largest city in the southeastern part of the country, and also the largest in the region of Loya Paktia. To the south and east of Khost lie Waziristan and Kurram ...
, 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 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.
2010s
During the 2010s, the CIA was engaged in a program to kill or capture militant leaders, codenamed ANSOF, previously Omega.
CIA manpower was supplemented with personnel assigned from
United States Army Special Operations Command
The United States Army Special Operations Command (Airborne) (USASOC ( )) is the command charged with overseeing the various special operations forces of the United States Army. Headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, it is the larges ...
.
"
Green-on-blue" or "insider attacks," in which Afghan soldiers or police officers turned their weapons on American or European counterparts, became a major concern in 2010 and peaked in 2012—when they accounted for nearly 25% of ISAF casualties—before declining during 2013-2014 as international forces withdrew from the conflict. The scale of the insider attacks shocked CIA analysts, who could find no similar phenomenon during the Vietnam War, the Soviet–Afghan War, or any other counter-insurgency in modern history.
In mid–2019, the NGO
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
stated that "CIA-backed Afghan strike forces" had committed "serious abuses, some amounting to war crimes" since late 2017.
2021: Evacuation
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) is a statutory office () that functions as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, which in turn is a part of the United States Intelligence Community.
Beginning February 2017, the ...
William J. Burns met with high-ranking Taliban official
Abdul Ghani Baradar
Abdul Ghani Baradar, , (born 29 September 1963 or 1968; known by the honorific ''mullah'') is an Afghan political and religious leader who is currently the acting first deputy prime minister alongside Abdul Salam Hanafi and Abdul Kabir, of ...
in Kabul shortly after the city's
August 2021 capture by the Taliban to discuss the August 31 deadline for the U.S. to complete its
evacuation of the country, by then President Joe Biden.
2022: Heightened terrorism
Investigations began in September involving bombings of the
Russian Embassy
This is a list of diplomatic missions of Russia. These missions are subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Russian Federation has one of the largest networks of embassies and consulates of any country. Russia has significant ...
, and a
mosque
A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...
in August.
See also
*
Death of Abdul Wali
*
Inter-Services Intelligence activities in Afghanistan
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) intelligence agency of Pakistan has been accused of being heavily involved in covertly running military intelligence programs in Afghanistan since before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The first I ...
References
{{Afghanistan–United States relations
Politics of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
Afghanistan–United States relations
Reagan administration controversies
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...