Notes on the CIA's Secret War in Afghanistan

John Prados

The new war against terrorism has taken up where the United States left off some years ago in its campaign against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Events of the initial campaign of the terror war, which concluded with the fall of the Tora Bora cave complex in December 2001, as well as developments that can be anticipated in the larger conflict, can be illuminated by reference to the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) efforts in the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s. These notes attempt to touch on key elements of that experience that should be borne in mind today, including the purposefulness of United States programs, the problems inherent in hurried efforts, the crosscutting impacts of local politics and customs, the nature of modern military operations, and the tendency of the solutions of the moment to spawn later difficulties.1	1
The CIA operation of the 1980s began as a spoiling operation. In April 1978, during the Carter administration, Afghan Communists overthrew a left-leaning but moderate dictatorship that had itself resulted from a coup against the Afghan monarch. Not satisfied with the slow progress in turning the nation toward socialism, the factions of the Communist party then began to fight each other. Meanwhile, within weeks of the so-called April revolution, Muslim fundamentalists and tribal groupings with no love for the Communists began a resistance movement. The CIA program sought to augment that resistance.	2
Soviet involvement in Afghanistan long predated both the April revolution and the antimonarchist coup of 1973. Beginning in 1955, the Russians had furnished both economic and military aid in amounts totaling $2.5 billion by 1979, and the Soviet Union had become Afghanistan's leading trading partner. At the time of the April revolution there were already a thousand Russian technical experts and military advisers in the country.2 Much as the political machinations of local clients had deepened the American stake in South Vietnam, the Communist coups in Kabul committed the Soviet Union more deeply in Afghanistan. Washington perceived an opportunity to turn the Afghan commitment into a running sore for Moscow.	3
While some sources claim the American effort began very early, more concrete evidence of U.S. feelers to the Muslim guerrillas emerges only from early 1979, about the time of the kidnapping and murder of the American ambassador in Kabul, Adolph Dubs.3 President Jimmy Carter's National Security Council (NSC) considered options for a CIA operation in March and April, and the president approved a proposal forwarded by Zbigniew Brzezinski that July. A decision to expand the project followed a meeting of the NSC Special Coordinating Committee on December 17, 1979. Thus the inception of the CIA project in Afghanistan preceded the Soviet intervention, with three motorized and airborne divisions and other units, that came on December 25, 1979.	. . .