The CIA Covert Mission in Afghanistan, 1979-1992
Three Phases of Cover Operations Against the Soviets
May 8, 2009
Under President Jimmy Carter the United States’ foreign policy objective with relation to the Soviet Union was to continue the policies of détente and containment. However, the somewhat static American-Soviet relations changed markedly in 1979, when the Soviets committed ground forces to buttress its floundering client in Kabul.
Soviet Policy Exposed
The CIA had already infiltrated Afghanistan, both immediately prior to Russia’s overt military intervention and earlier still in the early 1970s. But the Soviet’s uncharacteristic use of outright aggression outside the Warsaw Pact area metamorphosed American Cold War strategy. With Soviet troops precariously exposed to possible foreign manipulation outside the respected Soviet sphere of influence, President Carter provided fledgling CIA funding, arms, and logistical support via Pakistani intelligence to the disparate Afghan resistance groups.
Reagan Administration Involvement
Then, during the Reagan Administration, the American- and Saudi-funded Afghan resistance truly blossomed in scope and effect. Afghan rebels and mujahideen fighting throughout Afghanistan eventually made the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan the Soviet Union’s “one-quarter Vietnam.” About 15,000 Soviet soldiers died and about 50,000 were wounded during the war, while invasion and occupation costs were about $96 billion.
Three Phases of the CIA Mission
The CIA’s strategy in Afghanistan can be separated into three phases. The goal of the first phase (1979-1984) was to harass and contain the Soviet occupation army. The mission was plausible deniability. Resistance groups were supplied with money, logistical support, and weapons originating in Warsaw Pact countries, and Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) acted as the middleman between the CIA and the mujahideen.
The goal of the second phase (1984-1989) was to roll back Soviet military power from Afghanistan. This was achieved by dramatically increasing funding, supplying the mujahideen with American weaponry, and beginning direct CIA-rebel contacts.
The goal of the third phase (1989-1992) was to ensure that the government of post-Soviet Afghanistan was not Moscow-oriented. The CIA’s sustained funding and support of various warlords and rebels was essential to this phase.
Soviets Leave, Americans Lose Interest
Then, as Russia’s funding and support began to ebb, and as civil war among the various tribal leaders, warlords, and mujahideen leaders became ever more ominous, the United States began to see Afghanistan as a failed state of mountains, guns, anarchy, and heroin.
Without a Cold War to wage, American interest in Afghanistan faded. Since CIA covert operations in Afghanistan were never linked to official foreign policy goals, the likelihood of blowback became higher. The rise to power of the Taliban and the transformation of the mujahideen into global agents of Islamic revolution by the barrel of the gun are two such blowback effects of the CIA mission in Afghanistan.
Source:
Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, New York: Penguin Press, 2004
