An arms-reduction mission run by the American

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, ...

, Operation MIAS (Missing in Action Stingers) was tasked with buying back

Stinger missile 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-to-Ai ...

s given to the

Mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' ( ar, مُجَاهِدِين, mujāhidīn), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' ( ar, مجاهد, mujāhid, strugglers or strivers or justice, right conduct, Godly rule, etc. doers of jihād), an Arabic term th ...

to fight the

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Information about the program remains classified, although information has been gleaned from media accounts and government officials speaking off the record.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is an international institute based in Stockholm. It was founded in 1966 and provides data, analysis and recommendations for armed conflict, military expenditure and arms trade as well a ...

, "SIPRI Yearbook 2007", p. 636

Timeline

Launched in 1990 with a Congressional earmark of $10 million, the operation competed against Chechen,

Azeri Azerbaijanis (; az, Azərbaycanlılar, ), Azeris ( az, Azərilər, ), or Azerbaijani Turks ( az, Azərbaycan Türkləri, ) are a Turkic peoples, Turkic people living mainly in Azerbaijan (Iran), northwestern Iran and the Azerbaijan, Republi ...

and

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 ...

ian

arms dealer The arms industry, also known as the arms trade, is a global industry which manufactures and sells weapons and military technology. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and servi ...

s anxious to capitalise on the break-up of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and impending battles among satellite states, as well as drug dealers looking for weapons to fend off aircraft in their space.Cooley, John K. "Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, American and International Terrorism", p. 145 The price of a Stinger was estimated at $300,000. Other sources suggested that the weapons, which cost $20,000 to produce, were only selling for $100,000 on the

black market A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the se ...

, still much higher than the $70,000 that the CIA initially offered Afghans to turn them over. In 1993, the CIA approached Congress noting that they required an additional $55 million to buy back the weapons, noting that a failure to secure the missiles could result in attacks against American civil aircraft.

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

US bidding to regain missiles sent to Afghans
July 23, 1993 In 1998,

Felix Sater Felix Henry Sater (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky; russian: Фе́ликс Миха́йлович Шеферовский; March 2, 1966) is a Russian-American mobster, convicted felon, real estate developer and former managing director of ...

provided the CIA with the location and serial numbers of approximately 10 Stingers held by the

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 ...

.Caldwell, Leslie. Defense Sentencing Memo. 19 October 2009. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6328605-Felix-Sater-Leslie-Caldewell-Defense-Sentencing.html. Accessed 27 August 2019.

Results

The mission was dubbed a "failure" by the

, due to its inability to track the widely-dispersed weapons through decentralised groups, leaving hundreds of the devices in the hands of warlords and militants. The Institute unfavourably compared the results of the Afghanistan failure, with the success of the similar program which netted 41 out of the 43 missiles

Eritrea Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia ...

had given

Somali National Alliance The Somali National Alliance (abbreviated SNA) was a political alliance formed on 16 June 1992 by four different rebel groups that had been in opposition to the regime of Somali President Siad Barre. They would represent one of the major faction ...

leader Hussein Aideed in 1998.

References

{{Central Intelligence Agency Central Intelligence Agency operations Afghanistan–United States relations Weapons trade