Though it happened just over 20 years ago, today’s media has all but forgotten that Afghanistan’s Taleban was largely the creation of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a hard-drinking, party-loving Texas congressman who helped funnel billions of dollars in arms to “freedom fighters” like Osama Bin Laden and Mulla Mohammad Omar.
The congressman was Charles Wilson, a colorful and powerful Democrat from the East Texas Bible Belt. During the 1980s, Wilson was a member of a congressional appropriations subcommittee. From that position of power he funneled billions of dollars in secret funding to the CIA, which used the money to purchase weapons to help the Mujahedeen drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan.
In those days, the Mujahedeen were viewed by the US as “freedom fighters”, and were so-named by President Ronald Reagan, who praised them for “defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability.”
In that Cold War environment, chasing the Russians out of the country trumped all other considerations. Among the weapons funded by Congress were hundreds of Stinger missile systems that Mujahedeen forces used to counter the Russians’ lethal Mi-24 Hind helicopter gun ships. And there were also tens of thousands of automatic weapons, anti-tank guns, satellite intelligence maps. According to Crile, Wilson brought his own belly dancer from Texas to Cairo to entertain a high Egyptian official, who was secretly supplying the Mujahedeen with millions of rounds of ammunition for the AK-47s the CIA was smuggling into Afghanistan.
From a few million dollars in the early 1980s, support for the resistance grew to about $750 million a year by the end of the decade. Decisions were made in secret by Wilson and other lawmakers on the appropriations committee. To help make his case, Wilson exploited one of the decade’s scandals, the Iran-contra affair, arguing that Democrats who were voting to cut off funding for the contras in Nicaragua could demonstrate their willingness to stand up to the Soviet empire by approving more money for the Afghan fighters.
Many Muslims from other countries volunteered to assist various Mujahedeen groups in Afghanistan, and gained significant experience in guerrilla warfare. Some of these veterans have been significant factors in more recent conflicts in and around the Muslim world.
The effort was successful. On Feb. 15, 1989, Gen. Boris Gromov, commander of the Soviets’ 40th Army, walked across Friendship Bridge as the last Russian to leave Afghanistan. The CIA cable from the Islamabad station to the agency’s headquarters said, ‘’We won.’’ Wilson’s own note said simply, ‘’We did it.’’
Thus, the largest covert operation in the CIA history ended with Russia’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But, in a new book — “Charlie Wilson’s War” — author George Crile says the American-financed war against the Soviets in Afghanistan also helped create the political vacuum that was filled by the Taleban and extremists, who turned their deadly terrorism against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
After the Soviet withdrawal, the CIA tried to buy back the weapons they had supplied, but were largely unsuccessful.
When the Soviet Union pulled its troops out, however, the Mujahedeen did not establish a united government; its members broke into two loosely-aligned opposing factions, the Northern Alliance and a radical splinter group known as the Taleban. In the ensuing civil war for control of the country, the Mujahedeen was ousted from power by the Taleban in 1996.
The Mujahedeen regrouped as the Northern Alliance and in 2001 with US and international military aid, ousted the Taleban from power and formed a new government.
A wealthy man named Osama Bin Laden was a prominent Mujahedeen organizer and financier; his Maktab Al-Khadamat (MAK) (Office of Services) funneled money, arms, and fighters from around the world into Afghanistan, with the assistance and support of the American, Pakistani, and Gulf governments. Bin Laden broke away from the MAK in 1988, and the rest, as they say, is history.
In the 1980s, opposition to the Soviet Union and communism was virtually universal among Americans. But the Wilson story is a perfect illustration of good intentions resulting in bad consequences. Wilson’s war succeeded in arming the very people responsible for the terrorist attacks in the US on Sept. 11, 2001, and who ended up shooting at US and coalition troops.
Professor Abdullahi An-Na’im of Emory University Law School told IPS, “Good intentions are not good enough, and we should always be humble and accept the possibility of being wrong. The lesson of the law of ‘unintended consequences’ of our previous policies is to realize in our current policies that ends never justify the means. Pragmatic reasons for any policy must always be consistent with moral rationale. If bad means appear to achieve good ends in the short term, then it is simply that we have failed to appreciate the real costs which in fact outweigh the presumed benefits.”
