1979- the world casts a wary eye towards Afghanistan. The year prior Nur Muhammad Taraki had seized
power and installed a communist government, much to the Soviet Union's pleasure. However, Taraki's government has turned brutally
oppressive, with mass executions and extrajudicial arrests. The move sparks an insurgency, widely labeled
as the Afghan Mujahideen. While the name has a religious significance,
the truth is the rebel forces are split along ideological lines- with some practicing hardcore
fundamentalism and others embracing secularism. They are united however in their wish to overthrow
the Taraki regime. In April, Nur Muhammad Taraki is removed from
power forcefully, and replaced by Hafizullah Amin a few months later in September. At first Amin tries to quell the growing rebellion
with friendly overtures, but his security forces disappear thousands of people behind
the scenes. The abuses only increase as time goes on,
and the rebellion festers. Amin is so unpopular that the Soviet Union
begins to suspect he's a CIA plant, purposefully placed in power in order to collapse the Afghan
communist government. On December 25th, 1979, the Soviet Union invades
Afghanistan. Its goal is simple: remove Amin from power
and establish a legitimate, communist government. Two days later, Soviet special forces locate
and assassinate Haifuzllah Amin. The war, if it can be called that, should
be over in a matter of months. It would last ten years. The United States is initially caught off
guard by the Soviet invasion. Its intelligence efforts in the region have
been to date an almost complete failure. The CIA and other intelligence agencies have
been largely focused on Central and South America due to communism paranoia and the
effort to keep the perceived threat out of America's own backyard. To date, the CIA has funneled half a million
dollars worth of medical and non-lethal aid to the mujahideen, but not supported the insurgency
in any significant way. Soviet fears of American intervention in Afghanistan
are hilariously overblown- but that will soon change. Discussions about Soviet interventionism in
Afghanistan have been taking place for months, though nobody suspected a full-blown invasion
was truly imminent. America has a very real interest in making
the Afghan situation difficult for the Soviets, but differ on how important it truly is. For some, Afghanistan is a chance to pay back
the Soviet Union for its interference in Vietnam, a war that cost the US dearly in manpower
and capital. Others fear that increasing aid to the mujahideen
would only encourage the Soviets to more directly intervene. An April 5th memo by National Intelligence
Officer Arnold Horelick lays out the stakes: “Covert action would raise the costs to
the Soviets and inflame Moslem opinion against them in many countries. The risk is that a substantial US covert aid
program could raise the stakes and induce the Soviets to intervene more directly and
vigorously than otherwise intended.” Preliminary meetings with mujahideen leadership
have already been undertaken, but still the US has played a cautious hand in Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion changes all of that. Texas Democrat Congressman Charlie Wilson
watches the invasion taking place from a hot tub in Las Vegas. A playboy at heart, Wilson nonetheless is
shocked at the brutality of Soviet bombing of Afghan civilians, and vows to do something
to help the Afghan people. With the best of intentions, he sets out to
build a Washington coalition with one purpose: push for the direct military support of the
mujahideen in Afghanistan. Seeing an opportunity for payback and to force
the Soviet Union to lose its focus in Africa, the program to aid the mujahideen, now code-named
Operation Cyclone, is approved. At first Operation Cyclone aims to keep US
involvement in the war within the realm of plausible deniability. To this effect, the program initially focuses
on providing training and logistical support to the mujahideen, as well as equipping them
with Soviet-made weapons purchased by the CIA covertly. With Iran on one side though and the Soviets
directly north, this leaves the US with only Pakistan as a route into the country. This is a difficult position for the US, as
Pakistan's recent development of nuclear weapons has put a severe strain between the two nations. In order to improve relations, it’s decided
that Pakistan would be granted near-full control over the dissemination of American aid to
the mujahideen. Some within the CIA, State Department, and
other agencies express concern over the decision, as Pakistan clearly favors the more fundamentalist
forces inside Afghanistan itself. Their concerns are ignored, with inevitable
disastrous future consequences. In order to coordinate the influx of American
funding, equipment, and weapons, Pakistan's President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq turns to the
Inter-services Intelligence agency, at the time a Pakistani intelligence agency struggling
for legitimacy. The massive responsibility of coordinating
millions of dollars in US aid however skyrockets the agency's legitimacy, cementing it as an
instrument of power in Pakistan for decades to come. This too would eventually be a mistake. Massive refugee camps are set up along the
Pakistan border, and the United States contributes millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to
these camps. Sensing an opportunity however, hardline fundamentalist
clerics from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations converge on the camps, slowly indoctrinating
tens of thousands of young Afghan men into religious fundamentalism. One of these Saudi holy men bears the name
Osama Bin Laden, who's family owns a construction firm worth millions of dollars and has close
ties to the Saudi government. Despite early warning signs that Bin Laden
and others are preaching a dangerous fundamentalist form of Islam to vulnerable young men who'll
soon be armed to the teeth, the United States ignores these warnings and continues on with
almost no oversight of Pakistan's dissemination of US aid. Even worse, the US now directly helps spread
the message of radical Islam, believing it to be a valuable recruitment tool. Right here in America, the CIA enlists Egyptian
double agent Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed and sends him to recruit American Muslims to fight in
Afghanistan, operating out of the Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn. Mohamed preaches a fiery message of holy war
to impressionable youths, bolstering the ranks of the mujahideen. Around the world, the CIA encourages similar
recruitment efforts, helping funnel tens of thousands of volunteer fighters to Pakistan. Mohamed would eventually make his way to Pakistan
as well, where he would use his U.S. Army training to instruct both Ayman al-Zawahiri,
the founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and Osama Bin Laden. Inside Afghanistan, the grinding war against
the Soviet occupation continues on. American aid is now supplemented by the British,
Saudi Arabia, and even China- who's own relations with the Soviet Union have seriously deteriorated. The British, leading the second-greatest effort
after the Americans, have thrown much of their support behind Ahmad Shah Massoud. Massoud is a brilliant guerrilla commander,
instrumental in the defeat of several Soviet offensives, and is a growing national hero
to the Afghan people. However, his fearsome militia is increasingly
being infiltrated by hardline fundamentalists. While Massoud himself is a moderate, he has
no choice but to accept the troops available to him. The MI6 thus arm Massoud's militia with thousands
of rifles, mines, explosives, radios, and 50 missile launchers with 300 missiles. The British even use the SAS to train Massoud's
militia directly. One thing is becoming clear though- moderate
voices within the Afghan resistance are becoming increasingly scarce. Pakistan and America may be allied in their
wish to see the Soviets evicted from Afghanistan, but their long-term vision for the nation
differs greatly. For one, America doesn't have one. It's not even remotely invested in the long-term
state of Afghanistan, even as it becomes increasingly clear that the Soviet Union can't maintain
this invasion forever. This leaves the door wide open for Pakistan
to shape the future Afghanistan as it sees fit. For starters, it views the nation as a vital
buffer between itself and Iran. It also needs a future Afghanistan that will
not become a close US ally. Pakistan fears that the United States, who
does not look favorably on Pakistan after its development of nuclear weapons, might
use Afghanistan as a staging ground for its own invasion in a bid to strip Pakistan of
nuclear arms. Thus it must make sure that the future Afghanistan
is one hostile to US interests. Luckily, the indoctrination of tens of thousands
of Afghan youths and volunteer mujahideen by extremist clerics provides the opportunity
they need. The ISI works busily to build strong relationships
with the most fundamentalist of militias, funneling American weapons and money to them
directly while choking off moderate forces. Pakistan is not particularly invested in the
growing fundamentalist Islamic movement within the mujahideen, but the movement proves to
be a powerful binding force and the promise of a strong future government for the nation-
which will be greatly indebted to Pakistan of course. Even as warnings of rising fundamentalism
continue to rise, they are ignored, and in 1985 President Ronald Reagan ends all pretenses
by announcing America's global support of anti-Soviet resistance movements. Even as much as a few years ago this would
have been impossible, and tantamount to a declaration of war against the Soviet Union-
but news back home in the USSR are not good. The country is experiencing increasing political
unrest, and the war in Afghanistan as well as the Soviet's support for communist guerilla
movements around the world are straining the Soviet economy. Reagan senses an opportunity to strike a definitive
blow against the Soviet Union. With the declaration of the Reagan Doctrine,
the flow of weapons and money to the mujahideen increases exponentially. Free of the restraint of having to support
the movement covertly, the CIA no longer has to limit its efforts by purchasing Soviet-made
weapons. Reagan's proclamation allows the US to now
arm the mujahideen with more modern, and far more capable weapons. For years the Soviet air force has wreaked
havoc against the mujahideen. Soviet Hind attack helicopters though have
been particularly deadly opponents, hunting down and annihilating mujahideen forces even
in their traditional safe zones high up in the mountains. Starting in 1985, the US arms the mujahideen
with the Stinger shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile system, and almost immediately Soviet
aircraft losses skyrocket. The effectiveness of the weapon would be hotly
debated for decades to come, but one thing is for sure- after its introduction in Afghanistan,
the Soviet air force no longer operated as brazenly as it had before. This allows the mujahideen to make serious
inroads in its fight against the Soviets. It's only with the introduction of the Stinger
to the mujahideen, and the reports of mounting Soviet aircraft losses, that America begins
to show some concern over its to-date completely unchecked tidal wave of money and weapons
to Afghanistan. There are growing worries that the Stingers
will eventually make their way out of the country and be used to shoot down civilian
or military aircraft- perhaps even American ones. For the first time, the US takes note of the
rising wave of dangerous fundamentalism amongst the mujahideen- though ultimately America
continues to leave Pakistan in charge of who receives what. Inevitably, the Soviet Union is forced to
limp out of Afghanistan in 1989, suffering over 14,000 dead and 50,000 wounded. The war is over, the mujahideen successful. Yet even as moderates like Ahmad Shah Massoud
are being forced into the peripheries of post-Soviet Afghanistan, the only concern that the United
States shows in what happens next is in the retrieval of the Stinger missile units provided
to the mujahideen. In what would become the single most baffling
foreign policy decision in 20th century history, President Ronald Reagan and successor H.W.
Bush show absolutely no interest in the shaping of future Afghanistan. Even as civil war breaks out between extremist
fundamentalists and the vastly outnumbered moderates, the United States pays no attention. With the direct aid and support of Pakistan,
extremist forces take over most of the country, leaving what has become the moderate United
Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, or Northern alliance, in control of only 5
to 10 percent of the nation. With the formation of the Taliban government,
Pakistan has achieved its strategic goals in the nation, all on America's dime. On September 9th, 2001, moderate leader and
national hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, once backed directly by MI6, is assassinated by the Taliban
and Al-Qaeda, who both fear that in their coming attack against America and the US's
inevitable response, Massoud will be installed as a popular leader to unite the nation against
the Taliban. Now go watch How I survived an actual military
warzone, or click this other video instead!
