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Washington's Backing of Afghan Terrorists:
Deliberate Policy
Introductory note
In the 'Times of India' article reprinted on Emperor's
Clothes under the title "CIA
worked with Pakistan to create Taliban",
analyst Selig Harrison is quoted as follows:
"'The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from
all over the world to come to Afghanistan.' The US provided $3 billion
for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand
that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison
said."
I disagree. The creation of Islamist terrorist
organizations by the CIA has been a key part of U.S. policy, first in
attacking the Soviet Union, and since then in an on-going war against
Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union and against
Yugoslavia.
As the following article from the 'Washington Post' shows,
Washington was no distant financier of the Afghan terrorists, unaware of
how its money was being spent. Rather, it controlled the action. Today,
Washington publicly condemns Islamist terrorism but this is two-faced for
at the same time Washington and its partners continue to create, support
and manage Islamist terrorist and related groups (for instance, the
'Kosovo Liberation Army' terrorists). For Washington, organized terror is
a weapon of Empire. - Jared Israel.
Anatomy of a Victory: CIA's Covert Afghan War
By: Steve Coll, 'Washington Post', July 19, 1992
A specially equipped C-141 Starlifter transport carrying William Casey
touched down at a military air base south of Islamabad in October 1984 for
a secret visit by the CIA director to plan strategy for the war against
Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Helicopters lifted Casey to three secret
training camps near the Afghan border, where he watched mujaheddin rebels
fire heavy weapons and learn to make bombs with CIA-supplied plastic
explosives and detonators.
During the visit, Casey startled his Pakistani hosts by proposing that
they take the Afghan war into enemy territory -- into the Soviet Union
itself. Casey wanted to ship subversive propaganda through Afghanistan to
the Soviet Union's predominantly Muslim southern republics. The Pakistanis
agreed, and the CIA soon supplied thousands of Korans, as well as books on
Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan and tracts on historical heroes of Uzbek
nationalism, according to Pakistani and Western officials.
"We can do a lot of damage to the Soviet Union," Casey said, according
to Mohammed Yousaf, a Pakistani general who attended the meeting.
Casey's visit was a prelude to a secret Reagan administration decision
in March 1985, reflected in National Security Decision Directive 166, to
sharply escalate U.S. covert action in Afghanistan, according to Western
officials. Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers,
the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an
array of U.S. high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit
and demoralize Soviet commanders and soldiers. Casey saw it as a prime
opportunity to strike at an overextended, potentially vulnerable Soviet
empire.
Eight years after Casey's visit to Pakistan, the Soviet Union is no
more. Afghanistan has fallen to the heavily armed, fraticidal mujaheddin
rebels. The Afghans themselves did the fighting and dying -- and
ultimately won their war against the Soviets -- and not all of them laud
the CIA's role in their victory. But even some sharp critics of the CIA
agree that in military terms, its secret 1985 escalation of covert support
to the mujaheddin made a major difference in Afghanistan, the last
battlefield of the long Cold War.
How the Reagan administration decided to go for victory in the Afghan
war between 1984 and 1988 has been shrouded in secrecy and clouded by the
sharply divergent political agendas of those involved. But with the
triumph of the mujaheddin rebels over Afghanistan's leftist government in
April and the demise of the Soviet Union, some intelligence officials
involved have decided to reveal how the covert escalation was carried
out.
The most prominent of these former intelligence officers is Yousaf, the
Pakistani general who supervised the covert war between 1983 and 1987 and
who last month published in Europe and Pakistan a detailed account of his
role and that of the CIA, titled "The Bear Trap."
This article and another to follow are based on extensive interviews
with Yousaf as well as with more than a dozen senior Western officials who
confirmed Yousaf's disclosures and elaborated on them.
U.S. officials worried about what might happen if aspects of their
stepped-up covert action were exposed -- or if the program succeeded too
well and provoked the Soviets to react in hot anger. The escalation that
began in 1985 "was directed at killing Russian military officers," one
Western official said. "That caused a lot of nervousness."
One source of jitters was that Pakistani intelligence officers --
partly inspired by Casey -- began independently to train Afghans and
funnel CIA supplies for scattered strikes against military installations,
factories and storage depots within Soviet territory.
The attacks later alarmed U.S. officials in Washington, who saw
military raids on Soviet territory as "an incredible escalation,"
according to Graham Fuller, then a senior U.S. intelligence official who
counseled against any such raids. Fearing a large-scale Soviet response
and the fallout of such attacks on U.S.-Soviet diplomacy, the Reagan
administration blocked the transfer to Pakistan of detailed satellite
photographs of military targets inside the Soviet Union, other U.S.
officials said.
To Yousaf, who managed the Koran-smuggling program and the guerrilla
raids inside Soviet territory, the United States ultimately "chickened
out" on the question of taking the secret Afghan war onto Soviet soil.
Nonetheless, Yousaf recalled, Casey was "ruthless in his approach, and he
had a built-in hatred for the Soviets."
An intelligence coup in 1984 and 1985 triggered the Reagan
administration's decision to escalate the covert progam in Afghanistan,
according to Western officials. The United States received highly
specific, sensitive information about Kremlin politics and new Soviet war
plans in Afghanistan. Already under pressure from Congress and
conservative activists to expand its support to the mujaheddin, the Reagan
administration moved in response to this intelligence to open up its
high-technology arsenal to aid the Afghan rebels.
Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujaheddin rebels with extensive
satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield,
plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence,
intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for
the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for
urban sabotage and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper
rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy
satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.
The move to upgrade aid to the mujaheddin roughly coincided with the
well-known decision in 1986 to provide the mujaheddin with sophisticated,
U.S.-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Before the missiles arrived,
however, those involved in the covert war wrestled with a wide-ranging and
at times divisive debate over how far they should go in challenging the
Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Roots of the Rebellion
In 1980, not long after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan to prop up a
sympathetic leftist government, President Jimmy Carter signed the first --
and for many years the only -- presidential "finding" on Afghanistan, the
classified directive required by U.S. law to begin covert operations,
according to several Western sources familiar with the Carter
document.
The Carter finding sought to aid Afghan rebels in "harassment" of
Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan through secret supplies of light
weapons and other assistance. The finding did not talk of driving Soviet
forces out of Afghanistan or defeating them militarily, goals few
considered possible at the time, these sources said.
The cornerstone of the program was that the United States, through the
CIA, would provide funds, some weapons and general supervision of support
for the mujaheddin rebels, but day-to-day operations and direct contact
with the mujaheddin would be left to the Pakistani Inter-Services
Intelligence agency, or ISI. The hands-off U.S. role contrasted with CIA
operations in Nicaragua and Angola.
Saudi Arabia agreed to match U.S. financial contributions to the
mujaheddin and distributed funds directly to ISI. China sold weapons to
the CIA and donated a smaller number directly to Pakistan, but the extent
of China's role has been one of the secret war's most closely guarded
secrets.
In all, the United States funneled more than $ 2 billion in guns and
money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It
was the largest covert action program since World War II.
In the first years after the Reagan administration inherited the Carter
program, the covert Afghan war "tended to be handled out of Casey's back
pocket," recalled Ronald Spiers, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, the
base of the Afghan rebels. Mainly from China's government, the CIA
purchased assault rifles, grenade launchers, mines and SA-7 light
antiaircraft weapons, and then arranged for shipment to Pakistan. Most of
the weapons dated to the Korean War or earlier. The amounts were
significant -- 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983, according to
Yousaf -- but a fraction of what they would be in just a few years.
Beginning in 1984, Soviet forces in Afghanistan began to experiment
with new and more aggressive tactics against the mujaheddin, based on the
use of Soviet special forces, called the Spetsnaz, in helicopter-borne
assaults on Afghan rebel supply lines. As these tactics succeeded, Soviet
commanders pursued them increasingly, to the point where some U.S.
congressmen who traveled with the mujaheddin -- including Rep. Charles
Wilson (D-Tex.) and Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) -- believed that the war
might turn against the rebels.
The new Soviet tactics reflected a perception in the Kremlin that the
Red Army was in danger of becoming bogged down in Afghanistan and needed
to take decisive steps to win the war, according to sensitive intelligence
that reached the Reagan administration in 1984 and 1985, Western officials
said. The intelligence came from the upper reaches of the Soviet Defense
Ministry and indicated that Soviet hard-liners were pushing a plan to
attempt to win the Afghan war within two years, sources said.
The new war plan was to be implemented by Gen. Mikhail Zaitsev, who was
transferred from the prestigious command of Soviet forces in Germany to
run the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the spring of 1985, just as Mikhail
Gorbachev was battling hard-line rivals to take power in a Kremlin
succession struggle.
Cracking the Kremlin's Strategy
The intelligence about Soviet war plans in Afghanistan was highly
specific, according to Western sources. The Soviets intended to deploy
one-third of their total Spetsnaz forces in Afghanistan -- nearly 2,000
"highly trained and motivated" paratroops, according to Yousaf. In
addition, the Soviets intended to dispatch a stronger KGB presence to
assist the special forces and regular troops, and they intended to deploy
some of the Soviet Union's most sophisticated battlefield communications
equipment, referred to by some as the "Omsk vans" -- mobile, integrated
communications centers that would permit interception of mujaheddin
battlefield communications and rapid, coordinated aerial attacks on rebel
targets, such as the kind that were demoralizing the rebels by 1984.
At the Pentagon, U.S. military officers pored over the intelligence,
considering plans to thwart the Soviet escalation, officials said. The
answers they came up with, said a Western official, were to provide
"secure communications [for the Afghan rebels], kill the gunships and the
fighter cover, better routes for [mujaheddin] infiltration, and get to
work on [Soviet] targets" in Afghanistan, including the Omsk vans, through
the use of satellite reconnaissance and increased, specialized guerrilla
training.
"There was a demand from my friends [in the CIA] to capture a vehicle
intact with this sort of communications," recalled Yousaf, referring to
the newly introduced mobile Soviet facilities. Unfortunately, despite much
effort, Yousaf said, "we never succeeded in that."
"Spetsnaz was key," said Vincent Cannistraro, a CIA operations officer
who was posted at the time as director of intelligence programs at the
National Security Council. Not only did communications improve, but the
Spetsnaz forces were willing to fight aggressively and at night. The
problem, Cannistraro said, was that as the Soviets moved to escalate, the
U.S. aid was "just enough to get a very brave people killed" because it
encouraged the mujaheddin to fight but did not provide them with the means
to win.
Conservatives in the Reagan administration and especially in Congress
saw the CIA as part of the problem. Humphrey, the former senator and a
leading conservative supporter of the mujaheddin, found the CIA "really,
really reluctant" to increase the quality of support for the Afghan rebels
to meet Soviet escalation. For their part, CIA officers felt the war was
not going as badly as some skeptics thought, and they worried that it
might not be possible to preserve secrecy in the midst of a major
escalation. A sympathetic U.S. official said the agency's key
decision-makers "did not question the wisdom" of the escalation, but were
"simply careful."
In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision
Directive 166, and national security adviser Robert D. McFarlane signed an
extensive annex, augmenting the original Carter intelligence finding that
focused on "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces, according to several
sources. Although it covered diplomatic and humanitarian objectives as
well, the new, detailed Reagan directive used bold language to authorize
stepped-up covert military aid to the mujaheddin, and it made clear that
the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in
Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal.
New Covert U.S. Aid
The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms
supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, according to
Yousaf -- as well as what he called a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and
Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's
ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to
help plan operations for the Afghan rebels. At any one time during the
Afghan fighting season, as many as 11 ISI teams trained and supplied by
the CIA accompanied the mujaheddin across the border to supervise attacks,
according to Yousaf and Western sources. The teams attacked airports,
railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges and roads, the sources
said.
CIA and Pentagon specialists offered detailed satellite photographs and
ink maps of Soviet targets around Afghanistan. The CIA station chief in
Islamabad ferried U.S. intercepts of Soviet battlefield
communications.
Other CIA specialists and military officers supplied secure
communications gear and trained Pakistani instructors on how to use it.
Experts on psychological warfare brought propaganda and books. Demolitions
experts gave instructions on the explosives needed to destroy key targets
such as bridges, tunnels and fuel depots. They also supplied chemical and
electronic timing devices and remote control switches for delayed bombs
and rockets that could be shot without a mujaheddin rebel present at the
firing site.
The new efforts focused on strategic targets such as the Termez Bridge
between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. "We got the information like
current speed of the water, current depth of the water, the width of the
pillars, which would be the best way to demolish," Yousaf said. In
Washington, CIA lawyers debated whether it was legal to blow up pylons on
the Soviet side of the bridge as opposed to the Afghan side, in keeping
with the decision not to support military action across the Soviet border,
a Western official said.
Despite several attempts, Afghan rebels trained in the new program
never brought the Termez Bridge down, though they did damage and destroy
other targets, such as pipelines and depots, in the sensitive border area,
Western and Pakistani sources said.
The most valuable intelligence provided by the Americans was the
satellite reconnaissance, Yousaf said. Soon the wall of Yousaf's office
was covered with detailed maps of Soviet targets in Afghanistan such as
airfields, armories and military buildings. The maps came with CIA
assessments of how best to approach the target, possible routes of
withdrawal, and analysis of how Soviet troops might respond to an attack.
"They would say there are the vehicles, and there is the [river bank], and
there is the tank," Yousaf said.
CIA operations officers helped Pakistani trainers establish schools for
the mujaheddin in secure communications, guerrilla warfare, urban sabotage
and heavy weapons, Yousaf and Western officials said.
The first antiaircraft systems used by the mujaheddin were the
Swiss-made Oerlikon heavy gun and the British-made Blowpipe missile,
according to Yousaf and Western sources. When these proved ineffective,
the United States sent the Stinger. Pakistani officers traveled to the
United States for training on the Stinger in June 1986 and then set up a
secret mujaheddin Stinger training facility in Rawalpindi, complete with
an electronic simulator made in the United States. The simulator allowed
mujaheddin trainees to aim and fire at a large screen without actually
shooting off expensive missiles, Yousaf said. The screen marked the
missile's track and calculated whether the trainee would have hit his
airborne target.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of such training and battlefield
intelligence depended on the mujaheddin themselves; their performance and
willingness to employ disciplined tactics varied greatly. Yousaf
considered the aid highly valuable, although persistently marred by
supplies of weapons such as the Blowpipe that failed miserably on the
battlefield.
At the least, the escalation on the U.S. side initiated with Reagan's
1985 National Security Directive helped to change the character of the
Afghan war, intensifying the struggle and raising the stakes for both
sides. This change led U.S. officials to confront a difficult question
that had legal, military, foreign policy and even moral implications: In
taking the Afghan covert operation more directly to the Soviet enemy, how
far should the United States be prepared to go?
(c) 'Washington Post', 1992. Posted for Fair Use Only
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