A Flamboyant Congressman from Texas
Outside support was critical in undermining Afghan governance and defeating the Red Army. We have already seen the role of Pakistan’s ISI in providing tactical and strategic support. The CIA had known for years that the Red Army did “not have enough troops to maintain control in much of the countryside as long as the insurgents have access to strong external support and open borders.”57 The Soviets saw the support flowing across the border from Pakistan, and the United States encouraged it. As it became clear that the Afghan War was hurting the Soviets, the United States began to covertly support the Afghan insurgents. U.S. aid to the mujahideen began at a relatively low level but then increased as the prospect of a Soviet defeat appeared more likely, totaling between $4 billion and $5 billion between 1980 and 1992.58 The CIA had provided about $60 million per year to the Afghan mujahideen between 1981 and 1983, which was matched by assistance from the Saudi government. But everything changed in 1984.
The major catalyst was Charlie Wilson, a flamboyant congressman from Texas, who saw the war as a chance to punish the Soviet Union for Vietnam. His congressional district lay in the heart of the Bible Belt in Trinity, Texas, about eighty miles north of Houston. Like many in his district, Wilson did not see much of a distinction between hellfire and Communism; the Soviet Union had nearly replaced Lucifer himself as the epitome of evil in Wilson’s mind. As a senior Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Committee, he was well placed to increase U.S. assistance, and he pushed for an additional $40 million in aid to the mujahideen. “By this time I had everyone in Congress convinced that the mujahideen were a cause only slightly below Christianity,” Wilson boasted. “Everyone on the subcommittee was enthusiastic. I gave them the sense they could lead the way on a just cause.”
“The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people’s decision to fight,” he continued. “The Afghans made this decision on Christmas and they’re going to fight to the last, even if they have to fight with stones. But we’ll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones.”59
Beginning in 1985, the United States increased its support to the Afghans to $250 million per year, thanks to Wilson, CIA Director William Casey, and growing public support. This shift culminated in National Security Directive 166, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan and set a clear U.S. objective in Afghanistan: to push out the Soviets.60 The CIA was deeply involved in the distribution of wealth, providing money, arms (including heavy machine guns, SA-7s, and Oerlikon antiaircraft cannons), technical advice on weapons and explosives, strategic advice, intelligence, and sophisticated technology such as wireless interception equipment. Most of this assistance went through the ISI, rather than directly from the CIA to the mujahideen.61
One of the most useful U.S. weapons was the shoulder-fired Stinger missile. The Stinger fired an infrared, heat-seeking missile capable of engaging low-altitude, high-speed aircraft. Its combat debut had occurred in May 1982 during the Falklands War, fought between Great Britain and Argentina, and British Special Forces had been clandestinely equipped with several missiles. The CIA had initially opposed providing U.S.-manufactured weapons—especially the Stingers—to the mujahideen because they risked starting a major confrontation with the Soviets. The Pentagon had also opposed the deployment of Stingers out of concern that the Soviets would capture one and steal the technology. By 1986, however, U.S. policymakers saw the destruction caused by the Soviet Mi-24 Hind gunships and decided that introducing Stingers would make such a difference on the battlefield that it was worth the risks. At a meeting in January 1986, Pakistan’s President Zia told CIA Director Casey: “This is the time to increase the pressure.” In mid-February, the United States ordered the Defense Department to provide the CIA with 400 Stingers for use by the mujahideen.62
In September 1986, a force of roughly thirty-five mujahideen led by a commander named Engineer Ghaffar fired the first Stingers in Afghanistan. They crept through the underbrush and reached a small hill a mile northeast of Jalalabad airfield in eastern Afghanistan. Their targets were eight Mi-24 gunships scheduled to land that day. Ghaffar could make out the soldiers in the airfield’s perimeter observation posts, and he and his men waited patiently for three hours until the helicopters arrived. They fired five missiles and downed three helicopters, as one mujahideen, shaking nervously with excitement, videotaped the attack. This first Stinger attack marked a major turning point in the war. Over the next ten months, 187 Stingers were used in Afghanistan, and roughly 75 percent hit aircraft.63
In addition to Wilson and Casey, a growing coterie of U.S. government officials played a role in turning Afghanistan into the USSR’s Vietnam. One was Zalmay Khalilzad. In 1984, he had accepted a one-year fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations and joined the State Department, where he worked for Paul Wolfowitz, then the director of policy planning. From 1985 to 1989, Khalilzad served in the Reagan administration as a senior State Department official advising on the Soviet War in Afghanistan. “The Stingers sent a big message,” Khalilzad later remarked. “It was an open secret that we were involved, but the intelligence channel gave us deniability. The Stingers removed that. American power and prestige had become engaged, we had crossed a threshold. But, at the same time, there was a lot of soul-searching as to whether or not this was going to make it harder for the Soviets to back down.”64
Other countries also played roles. Saudi Arabia gave nearly $4 billion in official aid to the mujahideen between 1980 and 1990, while millions of dollars also flowed from unofficial sources: Islamic charities, foundations, the private funds of Saudi princes, and mosque collections. 65 The Soviets were, of course, well aware of the U.S., Pakistani, Chinese, and Saudi activities. A report by Gromyko, Andropov, Ustinov, and Ponomarev in 1980 concluded that the United States and China were working closely with Pakistan, where “the most important bases of the Afghan bandit formations” were located.66 A separate report by Ustinov to the CPSU Central Committee noted that the “USA and its allies are training, equipping, and sending into [Afghan] territory armed formations of the Afghan counterrevolution, the activity of which, thanks to help from outside, has become the main factor destabilizing the situation in Afghanistan.”67
Soviet intelligence agents monitored U.S. assistance at training camps in Pakistan, as well as U.S. and other arms shipments through Pakistani ports, especially Karachi.68 The KGB had orders to hunt for Afghan mujahideen with connections to U.S. intelligence and “undertake appropriate work with them” to extract information.69 In the end, Soviet leaders reached the conclusion that if they pulled out of Afghanistan, the United States would not go in with military forces.70 They were correct—at least for another decade. Instead, Afghanistan deteriorated into a bitter civil war as various militia groups fought over control of the country.
CHAPTER THREE Uncivil War
IN LATE 1986, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates placed a twenty-five-dollar bet with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Michael Armacost that the Soviet Union would not pull out of Afghanistan before the end of the Reagan administration. Gates, a rising star in the administration, would go on to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President George H. W. Bush and then secretary of defense under his son, President George W. Bush.