Blowback - S4 Episode 4 - "They're Yours Now"

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Operation Cyclone whips through Afghanistan — until a deal is finally struck.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

I do but keep the peace, put up thy sword. Or manage it to part these men with me. Peace? Peace. I hate the word. As I hate hell, all Montague's. And thee. Bing bang!

Bing! Welcome to Speak about this lunch sign. Speak about this lunch sign. Welcome to blowback. I'm Brendan James. I'm Noah Colwyn. And this is Season 4 episode. for, they're yours now. Last episode, we witnessed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It was meant

to last a few months, but the weak left-wing government in Afghanistan was in no shape at all to fight a growing insurgency, the mujahideen, which was funded by foreign powers. And so the war ground on. The Reagan White House tripled down on the CIA's operation to back the Afghan jihadis, more guns, more money, and closer relationships with warlords like Goldbideen Hekhmat-Yar, military dictators like Pakistan's General Zia, and Gulf Kingdoms like Saudi Arabia. As Washington pumped more and more into Afghanistan, Moscow was in fact desperate to get out. A year into the war, Soviet diplomats tried to start up talks with Pakistan, hoping to bring everyone to the table. And at the dawn of 1983, where we began this episode, the U.S.

The Tsar is preparing to take a peace proposal to the United Nations. But how would a Soviet peace initiative gel with the plans of the Reagan administration and its allies? After all, by now the anti-Soviet jihad is doing gangbusters. It's revitalized the power in reach of the CIA, and it's restored anti-communist fervor in the world as the contra program in Central America crumbles. And it's built a new network of Islamic fundamentalism that can enforce America. American and Saudi interests in Asia. Operation Cyclone, America's project of jihad, now grows bigger every day.

In this episode, we'll take a closer look at its inner workings, the guns, the drugs, and how they got to where they needed to go, because by now, the architects of the jihad want to maximize the return on investment. The longer the Soviets stay in Afghanistan, the better. The longer the war goes on, the better. The more chaos, destruction, and death, the better. Peace won't just come to us, stock. We are going to have to meet it halfway. Ville for victory.

Every time the Soviets Every time the Soviets make a peace move, I get scared. Governor Thomas Dewey, 1951. By February 1983, the Soviet Union, Soviet Union was desperate for Afghanistan peace talks at the United Nations. A year earlier, the decrepit general secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, had been replaced by the cold, patient, and perceptive Uri and drop-off. And this was a critical moment for the USSR. Brezhnev, while in some ways made a historical scapegoat for every problem the country had faced

since Khrushchev, he had certainly lived out his final years as the perfect image of a clueless geriatric. Now that Andropov was in charge, the one-time KGB chief was eager to clean house in the Soviet Union. Neither a Brezhnev conservative nor a pro-Western liberal, Andropov wanted to invest in more efficient technology, mop-up corruption, and rejuvenate and diversify the Communist Party. One thing that Andropov did not have was time, right Roger Kieran and Thomas Kenny. Three months after taking office, Andropov developed serious kidney problems. You get the sense that Andropov and his polyp bureau knew that time was of the essence.

The new Soviet leader had already ordered a high-level policy review, which concluded that the Afghanistan quagmire could not be resolved through military means. On a visit to Canada, his top protege privately told his hosts that the invasion was a mistake. This was an early, candid statement. on the war from Andropov's favorite pupil, a young go-getter named Mikhail Gorbachev. Next, Andropov told the Secretary General of the UN with considerable force, writes diplomat Roderick Braithwaite, that the Soviet Union had no intention of keeping its troops

in Afghanistan indefinitely. Speaking very slowly and emphasizing each word, he added that he sincerely wanted to put an end to the end to the war. this situation. But against this press for a Soviet withdrawal in 1983, Washington was already striking back at Andropov's peace offensive. Andropov was feared more in Reagan's Washington and Thatcher's London for his ability to actually less intentions than to aggravate them, Wright, Fitzgerald and Gould. Following his offer to reduce intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe, the powers that

be, driving the new Cold War, viewed Andropov, with deepest suspicion. Former American negotiator Paul Warnke advises, quote, look back sometime at some of the articles when Andropov took over. They refer to him as scary Uri, you know, the product of the KGB, bad days are here again, and there's nothing to support that.

And drop off's good intentions, writes Braithwaite, were undermined by his own failing health. And by a Soviet jet accidentally shooting down a Korean passenger plane on September 1, 1988. Good evening, I'm Ted Koppel, and this is Nightline. Words can scarcely express our revulsion at this horrifying act of violence. Tonight, the United States is still waiting for the Soviet Union to explain why it shot down a Korean jetliner with 269 people on board. Flight KAL-007.

President Reagan called this tragedy a quote-unquote massacre, and the American, government went to work spreading doctored evidence that falsely accused the Soviets of shooting down flight KAL-007 in cold blood. Alvin A. Snyder, one-time media executive turned director of the U.S. Information Agency, would later confess to this in the Washington Post in 1996. Here he is, in his own words. As director of worldwide television for the U.S. Information Agency, I was summoned to a secret meeting at the State Department to discuss a TV production. Entering a small conference room

through a heavy metal door with a combination lock at its center, I was given an audio tape. I was instructed to produce a video document based on the contents of the tape that would be shown two days later at the UN Security Council. Working with other producers, we fashioned a slick video, which was played at the Security Council on September 6th and beamed around the world by satellite. Snyder reveals that the original tapes proved that the Soviet pilot and ground control thought the plane was an American reconnaissance plane,

and furthermore that the Soviet pilot had tried everything possible to communicate with the passenger plane. But the doctored tapes from the U.S. government cut out all that dialogue. They were used instead to fool the U.N. Security Council into believing that the Russians had intentionally targeted innocent civilians.

Snyder says one Soviet journalist told me that our video was the biggest propaganda blow ever suffered by the Kremlin during the Cold War, something from which the Soviets never fully recovered. Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald agree. The bad publicity generated from the shootdown and its manipulation had put the last nail in Andropov's efforts to end the Cold War in Afghanistan in 1983. But Flight Zero-Zer7 was just the flashiest aspect of a general U.S. shunning of Soviet peace moves. All during summer of 1983, writes Philip Panoski, quote, there had been hopeful signs for

a settlement. Suddenly, in July, Secretary of State George Schultz ended it. Talks that had gone on for months between UN Special Representative Diego Cordoves and the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan, quote, went up in smoke. Ironically, writes Cordoves himself, during the very period when Indropov was groping for a way to disengage from Afghanistan, supporters of stepped-up American involvement were in ascendance in the Reagan administration. We spoke with Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid about the Soviet it moves for peace in the face of an ascendant American-backed Mujahideen?

Well, I think, you know, you're absolutely right in your analysis. I mean, clearly what happened was that there were some very hardline lobbies all across the world. I mean, the Muslim world, the Saudis, the Gulf Emirates, they supported a prolonged war against us, obvious. They wanted to see the end of this communist regime. Iran had its own reasons for wanting to put. prolonged the war. Pakistan had its own reason. But most importantly, the Americans had. Republicans

were in patrol, Ronald Reagan, and successive American administrations were keen to have a victory. And they were getting a victory simply because the Soviets were losing. This was not a war that the Soviets could sustain. Irish writer Fred Halliday, having covered the war as early as 1980, wrote, some Western diplomats admit in private that this is what they think, favor, continuing to stir the Afghan pot while asking the Russians to negotiate on unacceptable terms. Very early on, they developed a lobby in Moscow that we are losing the war. We should get out. If we don't get out now, we will be shamed into surrendering to the Americans as better

we do in negotiating settlement. And so the Russians encourage the United Nations to set up a team to negotiate between the Americans, the Russians, the Mujahideen, and the Afghan Communist government. By February 1984, Andropov's kidneys gave out, and he was dead. For the time being, he would be replaced by the far less with it, Constantine Chernenko, who sat on his hands as the war slogged on. Compared to two years ago, I found the Mujahidei, much better armed. Some groups even have anti-aircraft missiles like these SAMs, although it's doubtful if the international symbols this way up fragile and keep dry

mean much to the Afghans, especially when everything has to be brought in over the mountains by packhaw. At the top of the Afghan operation, above even Gustav Rakotos, was of course CIA director Bill Casey. And Casey's giddiness for the jihad, was in fact causing some within the CIA itself to question the operation. No less than Deputy Director John McMahon, hardly a commie sympathizer, was beginning to worry that Casey was simply engaging in, quote, fun in games.

Casey made no bones about the fact that he wanted the war to go on and on and on. Army Chief of Staff General Edward C. Meyer recalls, Quote, Casey would say that he wanted to get the Soviets out, but he actually wanted them to send more and more Russians down there and take casualties. And it wasn't just Bill Casey and his CIA hardliners. President Reagan needed a big show in Afghanistan, not only to needle the Soviets, but to take oxygen away from the growing scandal around U.S. adventures in Central America.

The Pentagon, too, was, quote, ecstatic with war booty the CIA was capturing, writes George Crile. Whatever the Soviets were using in Afghanistan was thought to offer a window into how the Red Army would fight when the big one broke out on the NATO frontier. By 1984, peace talks had been sufficiently smothered, and the Afghan operation continued to swell in size. Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson was sweet-talking Congress and doing deals around the globe. Behind the scenes, his new pal, Gus Everkotos, head of the CIA operation. He came up with new weapons, new bombs, and new tactics and terror for the jihadis. But to really kick things up a notch, Avrakotos would require a new specialist, a real numbers guy, a whiz kid, a guy named Michael Vickers.

The first time Avricotos saw Michael Vickers, he was not impressed. He was the only nerdy-looking guy in the whole group. Most of these guys are Neanderthals. He looked like a bookworm. An unassuming young man with a knack for logistics, Vickers had spent 10 years a green beret, the first five on the NATO front line, studying the Soviets,

and, quote, preparing for guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines, writes George Kryle. However humble he came across, he could boast quite the list of internal citations, a 160 on the military's IQ test, special forces soldier of the year, fluent in Czech and Spanish,

training in demolition, light and heavy weapons, raids and ambushes, high-altitude free fall parachuting, and advanced mountain climbing, and three years running counter-terrorism missions out of Southern Command in Panama. Avricotos turned Vickers loose on the CIA's Afghan operation, and he immediately saw the matrix. Increasing the absolute numbers of Mujahideen was not the answer. Less was, in fact, much more. Instead of giving the same arms an ammo to 400,000 or more conventional guerrillas, Vickers decided to create an elite force of 150,000.

Ultimately, Vickers announced that, to produce this leaner, meaner, moose, the CIA should be prepared to ratchet up to a budget as high as $1.2 billion a year. As we'll see, Vickers' new system would streamline and enhance the jihad in many ways, but it's doubtful that even his supermath could prevent the sheer amount of leakage the jihad was generating. Quote, adding to the danger of intended or unintended consequence of the U.S. weapons supplies was the amount of weapons being siphoned off or simply stolen from the pipelines. Conservative estimates put the number at 20% in 1986. Jimmy Carter's one-time CIA director estimated that if only 20% got through, he wouldn't have been surprised.

Pakistan itself skimmed the money to fund the so-called Islamic bomb, a project that would haunt the U.S. years down the line. The Pakistani ISI smiled and nodded, sending the money straight to the laboratories of AQ Khan, godfather of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, and soon, one of the most notorious nuclear black marketeers in the world, wanted by none other than Pakistan's ally, the United States of America. got something that might interest you got a selection of good things on sale stranger while the Soviets sank deeper into the quicksand Charlie Wilson was bopping around the globe on the hunt for bigger and better weapons for his friends in Afghanistan

offers came in from both east and west At the Paris Air Show, Wilson haggled with the Swiss company Erlecon, an outfit summed up by Avricotos as, quote-unquote, international scumballs, and Nazi collaborators. Erlacon's anti-aircraft guns, along with British-made blowpipe missiles, were the first real upgrades to the Mujahideen's arsenal against the Soviet's deadly M.I.24 hind gunships. Later, in 1984, Wilson heard from his friend, Egyptian defense minister Abu Qazala, who he'd met through defense contractor General Dynamics. F-16s are made in Texas, you see. Even Gus Avricotos had to tip his hat to the Egyptians game. During one meeting, the Egyptian g-men, quote, kept running in and out of a perfumed room next door.

Gus finally asked, who the fuck do you have in there? And it turns out they have the Iraqis in one room. and the Iranians and another. Muhammad was selling weapons to us to kill Russians in Afghanistan, selling weapons to Iraq to kill Iranians, and selling weapons to Iranians to kill Iraqis. There were, however, a couple stumbling blocks here in Egypt. When Wilson and his crew finally got to the weapons demonstration set out for them,

held in the 110-degree desert with white tables, umbrellas, and boxes of Kentucky-fried chicken, it was, to put it gently, an embarrassment. The Americans had asked for a modern anti-aircraft gun that could still be portable in a low-tech tribal environment. The Egyptians had obliged, with pack mules meant to transport ZSU-23 anti-aircraft pieces. But when the demonstrations started,

well, those fucking mules started going backward, Avricotos remembers. They were in danger of going ass overhead backward, whereupon 20 Egyptians appeared from no, trying to hold the mules and push them back. They almost lost all the Egyptians as well. Quote, Wilson himself ordered an end to the exercise. In an effort to spare the Egyptians further embarrassment,

Gus said with enthusiasm, quote, This chicken is great. As the Americans left, the defense minister Ghazala pulled Wilson aside and told him apologetically, someone's going to die. I'm sure a few heads rolled that day, Wilson later said. Still, the visit was not a total bust. For example, the bicycle bombs. Quote, they had hundreds of ways to conceal bombs, or, if you will, terrorist devices,

Avrikoto said. The reports of Soviets using, quote-unquote, toy bombs to attract children were a myth, which you can still find repeated in books such as George Cryles. But the U.S. Egyptians supplied bicycle bombs were very real. Do I want to order bicycle bombs to park in front of an officer's headquarters, of Rakotosest? Yes, that's what spreads fear. The Egyptians' list of weapons, quote, also included screaming mimi's, plastic mines, mines that popped out of the ground, trip mines, and wire mines. And, using the Soviet Union's weapons against it, they threw in the unspeakably

loud and disorienting Katusha rockets, aka Stalin's organs. And these would come in handy for turning the lights out in Kabul, as the CIA called it, by having the moose blow up the electric grid. Guns were not the only moneymaker in Afghanistan. As we've seen, a major source of off-the-books funding came in the form of drug money. According to the Financial Times, in the 1980s at the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistan's ISI started a special sell for the U.S.I. of heroin for covert actions. The cell promoted the cultivation of opium and the extraction of heroin in Pakistani territory, as well as Afghan territory under Mujahideen control.

Witnesses confirmed that the drug was shipped out of the area on the same Pakistani army trucks that shipped in covert U.S. military aid, writes Peter Dale Scott. An FBI official claimed that, quote, eight tons of Afghan-Pakistani morphine base from a single Pakistani source supplied the Sicilian Mafia-Pitza connection in New York, allegedly responsible for 80% of the heroin reaching the U.S. between 1978 and 1984. As heroin laboratories opened along the Afghan-Pakistan border, writes Alfred McCoy, author of the seminal book The Politics of Heroin, production grew nearly tenfold. to 800 tons annually.

Within a year, Pakistani heroin supplied 60% of America's illicit demand, in an even greater share of Europe's. As the Mujahideen captured prime agricultural areas inside Afghanistan, the guerrillas ordered peasant supporters to grow poppies, doubling the country's opium harvest to 575 tons between 1982 and 1983. And White House Drug Advisor David F. Musto later said that, even before Reagan supercharged the operation, the Carter White House had foreseen the drug consequences. He protested at the time, quote, shouldn't we try to avoid what we had done

in Laos? The heroin trade was not only a source of revenue, but a weapon of war in and of itself. The product was purposefully moved into Soviet-occupied areas to get the troops hooked on heroin. One Soviet journalist wrote that troops, quote, all seemed to be. to be carrying an extra bullet to shoot themselves if captured, and many were becoming drug addicts. And the Afghans were selling them dope. Strong dope.

And who brokered these big drug deals and funneled the profits? You probably know by now. Quote, finance through a little-known bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, right Fitzgerald and Gould, BCCI acted as a go-between for Washington, Hong Kong, Peshawar, and Switzerland. laundering money for drugs and facilitating arms sales to Nicaraguan Contras and Afghan

Mujahideen groups. And after 1983, Pakistani leader Zia gave permission for Pakistani traffickers to begin depositing their drug profits in BCCI as well. And the drug trade hit Pakistan hard. Quote, from zero heroin addicts in 1979, writes John Cooley, numbers rose to 5,000 users in 1980, 70,000 in 1983, and then, in the words of Pakistan's own narcotics control board, went, quote, completely out of hand to over 1.3 million addicts by 1985. By the end of the 1980s, writes McCoy, the Washington Post would report that the U.S.

had failed to take action against the heroin traffic, quote, because of its desire not to offend a strategic ally, Pakistan's military establishment. Let's be honest. I mean, let us be fucking honest. This is a crucifixion. This is political. And don't tell me it's not. By 1985, Afghanistan was becoming a lot of people's favorite pet project inside the

U.S. government. And with its success, came rivalries. For example, the jihad had always been an exciting thing for Washington's emerging club of neoconservatives. Through Team B, the alternate intelligence review commissioned in the 70s by CIA director George H.W. Bush, the neocons had gained notoriety for their claims that Soviet influence and military might were far greater than U.S. intelligence said. Their evidence was routinely dismissed by their colleagues as flawed or even fabricated. Still, this group outlived Team B, and became a small but influential force in American government.

Listeners to our first season on the Iraq War will recognize some of their names. Paul Wolfowitz, who had now become Assistant Secretary of State under Reagan, Oliver North, tireless DOD financier of the Nicaraguan Contras, and Richard Pearl, known at the Pentagon simply as the Prince of Darkness. These neocons had by now begun to worry CIA officer Gus Avicotos. Gus was running the jihad day to day, and he found that the neocons fanaticism led them to ideas that were so over the top, it threatened to ruin the whole operation. Perhaps the most notable example was the time that Avicotos had to stop them from resurrecting

a Nazi plan to bring down the Red Army. The plan, typical of the neocons, was grandiose. based on a German operation from World War II. During that war, a Soviet general had defected to the Nazis and formed what was known as the Russian Liberation Army, made up of Nazi collaborators, Soviet POWs, and leftovers from the right-wing Russian white armies. Well, now, in 1985, Pearl, North, and Company

devised a pitch to resurrect this obscure piece of Nazi history and to amass a turncoat army of ex-Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. To hear them tell it, a wide-reaching network inside the country would then recruit and propagandize and flip as many Russian soldiers as possible to join up with the Mujahideen. This did not pass the smell test for Avrocodos. Quote, to begin with, anyone defecting would have to be a crook, a thief, or someone who wanted to get cornhold every day, because nine out of ten prisoners were dead within 24 hours, and they were always turned into concubines by the Mujahideen.

I felt so sorry for them. I wanted to have them all shot." Yet CIA director Bill Casey, who himself had a taste for the dramatic, aired the Pearl North pitches in several White House meetings. Avrocodos, protective of his budget against these rival princes of darkness, assembled his own presentation and stormed into one of these meetings. He arrived, armed with five huge photographic blowups, writes George Criall. Before unveiling them, He explained that they would provide a useful understanding

of the kind of experience that a Soviet soldier could expect to have should he surrender to the Mujahideen. One of the photographs showed two Russian sergeants being used as concubines. Another had a Russian hanging from the turret of a tank with a vital part of his anatomy removed. Another showed one of the Mujahideen approaching a Soviet soldier with a dagger in his hand. Avricotos then put the question straight up. If you were a sane fucking Russian, would you defect to these people?

Avricotus's argument won the day. Unstated was the apparent fact that the CIA collected photographic evidence of the sexual violence and torture perpetrated by their Afghan clients. But the point had been made. Avricotus says that Bill Casey even privately told him, quote, I think your point is quite valid. What asshole would want to defect to those animals? By this crucial year of 1985, the jihad was getting over 50% of the CIA's entire operations budget.

Within a year, it would keep climbing to almost 70%. Here's Kryle. This was the year the Soviets might actually have succeeded. Their escalation of bombing and gunships, plus the interesting introduction of Soviet Spetsnas, basically red berets. Quote, this was an escalation that scared us, Everkota says. And we had to ask ourselves, what would be left for them to do other than to invade Pakistan or to use tactical nukes? But the USSR neither invaded Pakistan nor resorted to tactical nukes.

And so the Americans were free to ratchet things up once again. The Majahadine in the Pakistani training camps were not only received. giving a flood of lethal weapons, writes Kriall, they were also being trained to wage a war of urban terror, with instruction in car bombings, bicycle bombings, camel bombings, and assassination. Field agents were headed into the Mujahideen camps with new strategies on how to kill Soviets. Quote, I told them to just teach the Mujahideen how to kill, says Avicotos, but don't ever tell me how you're doing it in writing. Just do it. Avicotos agreed to the idea of using Soviet soldiers' belt buckles as a way of measuring

the body count, writes George Crile. And he loved the rewards the Pakistanis offered for these trophies. Cash, more guns, sometimes even alcohol, whatever a given commander or warrior most wanted. The U.S. was even supplying textbooks to Afghanistan with a jihadi flavor. The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, reported the Washington Post years later. The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers, and mines have served since then as the Afghan school system's

core curriculum. Meanwhile, the U.S. government was publicly touting the humanitarian aid it was sending to Afghanistan. This was the domain of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, a branch of the U.S. government meant to help developing nations with food aid and disaster relief. But the organization's deeper utility was summed up by Charlie Wilson, who said to a USAID officer, quote, I want to use American doctors as bait, so they'll be captured and force our chicken shit government to give the Muge and anti-aircraft cannon. The USAID officer said later, I had to pinch myself. He said this in a room full of people.

But USAID was, in fact, another arm of the Pentagon and the CIA. Its director, through the ostensibly humanitarian organization, was supplying the Mujahideen with Toyota pickups and smuggling other goodies. He was, quote, operating a kind of shadow CIA program, writes Cryal. Charlie Wilson sometimes thought that the USAID director might actually be able to, be a CIA man. He may have been right. This was a guy whose first USAID job had been in Vietnam alongside the Phoenix program, the network of U.S. death squads that cleansed Vietnamese villages en masse. Wilson called USAID's program in Afghanistan, quote, the noblest smuggling operation in history. All of this increased activity was reflected in a national security decision directive

issued by the White House in early 1985, which stated that Operation Cyclone may well last the rest of the decade. Quote, after 1985, the American deliveries of arms multiplied by a factor of 10, writes Braithwaite. By now, he continues, the Mujahideen cause began to move out of the executive branch, win patrons in Congress, in both parties, and become a major issue in U.S. domestic politics. This made it harder for the American government to negotiate flexibly with the Russians when the time came. End quote. And that time was coming. Just as the White House rubber-stamped that directive, the Soviet Politburo welcomed its new General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev.

This time, the Soviets seemed to have opted for a long-term change. The man who took charge within hours of Konstantinienko's death represents a new generation. But what else does he represent? And what, if anything, should we expect of those U.S. Soviet arms talks, which get underway as scheduled tomorrow morning? Mikhail Gorbachev had not participated in the vote to invade Afghanistan. He was in his early 50s by the time he became General Secretary. He'd risen through the ranks, eventually becoming a protege of Uri and Dropov.

He belonged to a generation of party men who were now grappling with so-called new thinking, a re-evaluation of Soviet political practice and international strategy. Gorbachev's contacts with the new thinkers in the years before he came to power not only had Andropov's blessing, writes Artemi Kalanovsky. They were in part ordered and supervised by him. Perhaps now the old man could end the war from beyond the grave. A good example of the new thinking on Afghanistan comes from a memorandum submitted by a Gorbachev aid. Our military presence in Afghanistan places an enormous financial burden on the USSR and can lead to serious ideological consequences.

It damages our relations with the Muslim world and gives the Americans an ideal opportunity to exhaust us by forcing us to wage an endless war. end quote. Meanwhile, writes Kalinovsky, many hardliners had been pushed aside. Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov had passed away in 1984. Andre Grameko was asked to give up his job at the foreign ministry in 1985. Gorbachev was now surrounded by colleagues who, quote, probably shared and drop off's belief that the Afghan war had been a mistake. At the same time, Gorbachev and his colleagues were deeply worried about how third world allies would perceive the USSR abandoning Afghanistan. Quote, nothing illustrates this better than Gorbachev's relationship with the Indian

Premier Rajiv Gandhi, writes Kalinovsky. India, along with the USSR and Afghanistan itself, had the most to fear from a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. A triumphant, resurgent Pakistan, confident that it had won an ideological victory and helped defeat the mighty red army would surely start causing more trouble. While curious about Gorbachev, the Americans dug in their heels. According to Kalinovsky, quote, even after Gorbachev hinted at a more conservative Soviet role in the third world,

Reagan maintained his commitment to supporting anti-communist forces, and he spoke openly about rolling back Soviet influence, telling freedom fighters in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Nicaragua, and Angola that they would have American support, end quote. Recent meetings between U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz and Soviet foreign minister Edward Shavarnadza did not bode well. Schultz refused to stop aid to the rebels as a condition for Soviet withdrawal. But Gorbachev pondered the problem over the summer of 1985

and entered the fall convinced that a, quote, quick withdrawal was necessary. In October, Gorbachev hosted Afghan president, Babrak Karmal, in Moscow. The meeting was tense. Gorbachev appeared standoffish, and by this point, Karmal had the stench of a loser on him. During the meeting, the Soviet leader laid out some harsh truths, writes Kallinovsky. The Afghan revolution had little popular support and needed to try a new approach quickly. Gorbachev recommended a return to, quote, free capitalism.

unquote, to Afghan and Islamic values, to sharing power with oppositional and even currently hostile forces. His advice to Carmel may have been the first time a Soviet leader had urged a client to turn to capitalism and religion. Gorbachev told Carmel that in plain terms, Afghanistan would have to be able to defend itself by the summer of 1986. Soviet troops, Gorbachev said, would not be in Afghanistan forever. According to those in the room, Carmel went white and cried out, If you leave now, next time, you will have to send a million soldiers. Gorbachev was just as forceful to his own Politburo.

The next day, during a session, he read aloud letters from the families of the dead. Officers, and even one general, said that they were no longer able to explain to their men what the war was about, writes Braithwaite. Gorbachev put the question to his Soviet colleagues. In whose name are we in Afghanistan? Do the Afghans themselves want us to do our, quote-unquote, international duty in their country? Is it worth the lives of our boys who don't understand what they're fighting for? What are you doing throwing young recruits against professional killers and gangsters? The Politburo made a mistake, and it is up to you, to put it right.

No one could disagree. And so, in the fall of 1985, Soviet withdrawal became Soviet policy. Gorbachev would go public with it months later in February 1986 at the 27th Party Congress. He called the war, quote, a bleeding wound, and he signaled that the Soviet Union would withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as the parties came to a diplomatic settlement. But what settlement? And how is that settlement going to happen? Andropov had tried to get one going for two whole years, and the U.S.-S.-Saudi-Pakistani Axis was in a far stronger position now.

A compromised withdrawal, leaving religious fanatics in charge, with the Majahadine slaughtering Russian soldiers on the way out, this would be a disaster. The withdrawal had to happen, but just how much and how long would Washington make the Soviets pay? The Soviet position at this time differed little from Yuri Andropov. three years earlier, per Kalinovsky. First, outside interference had to stop, a condition that required an agreement with the United States and Pakistan.

Second, there had to be some international recognition of the Afghan regime, even if the character of that regime would be allowed to change, at least within certain bounds. And third, the Afghan regime had to outlast the Soviet troop presence. The Americans, on the other hand, quote, wished to wipe out the memory of defeat in Vietnam by making the Russians pay the highest possible price in blood and humiliation, writes Braithwaid. At whatever cost in Russian or indeed Afghan lives,

it is not surprising that the negotiations went on much longer than Gorbachev had envisaged. In May of 1985, the Soviets sent strong signals to the United Nations Secretary General for talks. By June, channels were opened, but there was no breakthrough. Quote, Moscow seemed more interested in a dialogue, writes Kalinovsky, but both sides agreed that nothing could be done until Pakistan was on board. And President Zia did not care for the proposed time frame for the withdrawal.

And so, round one of negotiations stalls out. These talks, which I was very deeply involved because I was, you know, monitoring the UN, very closely. These talks took place in Geneva. A very prolonged negotiation. Everybody wanted their two bits of action, and it took many years to put a final agreement. And in the meantime, the war rolled on with a stronger and more vicious insurgency. Only a few months after Gorbachev took over as General Secretary, the Mujahideen commander, Jalaluddin Hakani, writes Kalanowski, attempted one of the more daring attacks of the entire war.

Hacconi was by now the CIA's favorite commander and was called, quote, goodness personified by Charlie Wilson. He would earn another distinction years later as, quote, the number three target of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. His bloody bid to capture the city of Host in the southeast revealed the weakness of both the Soviets and Mujahideen. Though Hacconi's men would suffer defeat this time, Back at Langley, the world's most dangerous pencil pusher, Michael Vickers, had a big smile on his face.

The Soviets were doing their best to Trump at Coast into a major PR victory, writes Crile. But Vickers believed this battle was nothing more than a predictable setback for a guerrilla force. He said the Red Army would now have little choice but to pack up and leave Kost, because if they stayed, they'd just become a fat target for the mass of guerrillas right across the border in Pakistan. And, sure enough, the Soviets and their Afghan allies soon pulled out, and the Mujahideen moved back in. The supply lines from Pakistan were re-established, and the war went on. The Mujahideen, Vickers thought, had proven that they could become the, quote, army of techno-garillas that he had set out to create.

In July 1986, after another round of stalled talks, the Soviets tried to prove they were serious. They withdrew six regiments, around 8,000 troops. That showed that the Soviets did not intend to stay or break through to the warm ocean, as was commonly thought, writes Braithwaite. Meanwhile, to prime the pump for a political settlement, the Soviets backed a new Afghan president. Muhammad Najibullah. The incumbent Babrak Karmal had originally seemed like a conciliatory figure who could bring a coalition of Afghan society together.

But by this point, fairly or not, he was viewed as weak, ineffective, or worse. Najibullah, nicknamed Ox for his beefy physique, was in contrast viewed as highly competent and, importantly, undogmatic as a communist. The Indian ambassador said that he, quote, exuded confidence, and facts and figures were at his fingertips, gave the impression of being efficient, competent, assertive, and alert. He was even respected by the CIA station chief in Islamabad. The laymotief that the Soviets had pitched to Karmal was the same for Najibullah.

Widen your social base. Try to get the support of the clergy. Give up the leftist bent in economics. Learn to organize the support of the private sector. As it turns out, like his predecessor, Najibullah would himself scheme to keep the Soviets in the country as long as possible. His desire to hold on to power and his distrust of non-Pashtun politicians led him to reject alliances and trusses favored by his Soviet advisors, writes Kalinovsky. Officially, however, Najibullah oversaw the policy of national reconciliation, which was a Soviet plan to open up politics in Afghanistan, to allow some kind of compromise and coalition.

with the country's largely Islamic opposition. So it came to pass that Mikhail Gorbachev, not Ronald Reagan, had tried to set up capitalism in Afghanistan in the 1980s. And Moscow also made good on its promise of independence, pulling out the scores of Soviet advisors peppered throughout every nook and cranny of the Afghan government. Foreign Secretary Edward Shevardnadze gave a report in December 1986. A friendly feeling toward the Soviet people, which had existed in Afghanistan for decades, little remains. Many people have died, and not all of them were bandits. Not one problem has

been solved in favor of the peasantry. In essence, we fought against the peasantry. The state apparatus is functioning poorly. Our advice and help is ineffective. Everything that we have done and our doing, is incompatible with the moral character of our country. As I watched Juma Khan, wounded by a mortar in the unsuccessful siege of the fort at Hisarak, preparing for the long trek out over the mountains to Pakistan, I came to two conclusions. First, that Afghan courage and morale are still enormously high, but second, unless they can find an answer to the Russians' helicopter gunships, their morale may begin to crack eventually.

In September 1986, Michael Vickers resigned from the CIA to attend business school. His parting gift was the Stinger missile. Of course, victory has a thousand fathers. The Stinger was developed by the good folks at General Dynamics. in Texas. And by the spring of 1986, it was assembled and shipped out from factories such as Building 600 in Rancho Cucamunga, California. An all-female crew of workers bottled up the fires of hell, and jihadis halfway around the world popped open crates full of big, heavy, green tubes. President Zia, too, deserves some credit for the Stinger strategy. Per his agreement with Zabignu

Brazinski, so many years earlier, he still held approval of all major weaponry, and he still held approval of all major weaponry, and he cleared the Stinger's transport into Afghanistan. Then there was the CIA's new Islamabad station chief, Milt Bearden, who was on the ground to supervise the training. Bearden, who once described himself as, quote, a 20th century American version of the British East India Company political agent, had been personally recruited by Gustavrocodos. Like Gus, he'd made a name for himself running guns and schmoozing dictators,

and he was Texan. And on the Afghan side, there was the ISI-trained and Hekmatjar Allied commander, Engineer Gaffar, who executed the first Stinger attack on a Soviet gunship. The CIA had given Gaffar a video camera to record the encounter. Crouching in scrub rocks on a barren plane near the Jolobat airport in eastern Afghanistan, just two hours drive from the Pakistan border. Wright Steve Cole, engineer Gaffar and his pals shoulder-mounted the stingers,

which were powered by batteries and guided by the most effective portable heat-seeking system yet invented. Spying a Soviet chopper in the air, Ghaffar sighted his missile, pushed its black rubber uncage button, and pulled the trigger. His first shot pinged, misfired, and rattled in the rocks a few hundred yards away.

But another flashed across the plane and smashed into the helicopter, destroying it in a fireball. More missiles flew in rapid succession, and two other helicopters fell, killing their Russian crews. CIA director Bill Casey sent a copy of the Stinger videotape to the White House, where it was screened for President Reagan, who, by all accounts, preferred pictures to words. The shooters cried, Allahou Akbar, as they fired the afternoon. Afghan war's first stingers. By the time Gaffar had hit the third helicopter, the videotape looked like, quote, some kid at a football game, as Milt Bearden put it. The tape's last sequence showed Gaffar's crew unloading Kalashnikov rounds into the crumpled corpses of the

Soviet crew as they lay sprawled on the tarmac. The role of the stingers, however, is debated. Some say that they've been overrated, and were only actually a marginal upgrade for the rebels on their existing arsenal. Others call them the turning point of the war. What we wanted was to make the Soviets pucker up their asses, said Charlie Wilson. And according to some Soviet journalists, the crews of the Soviet gunships were terrified of flying in range of a stinger for the remainder of the war. Turning point or not, Wilson was certainly happy with the stingers. He'd finally found the right gear to reduce Soviet choppers to twisted metal. And President Reagan had enjoyed his CIA-sponsored snuff film. And for the WizKid death dealer Mike Vickers,

the success of the Stingers signaled that his job here was done. Throughout the 1980s, Al-Keefa Center in Brooklyn, New York, formed a base of operations for the jihad in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and it was run by the so-called Afghan Arabs. This included, among a few others, Osama bin Laden, and his mentor, the Palestinian Islamist Abdullah Azam. Their organization, the Maktab al-Hidemat, or the Afghan Services Bureau, was in content and form essentially a forerunner of al-Qaeda. Take it from Richard Clark, U.S. counterterrorism czar under both Clinton and Bush II.

In his book, Against All Enemies, Clark writes, America sought the importation into Afghanistan and Pakistan of an army of Iran. The Saudis took the lead in assembling the group of volunteers. The Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turkey, relied on Osama bin Laden to recruit, move, train, and indoctrinate the Arab volunteers in Afghanistan." Once recruited by Al Kifah in Brooklyn, these guys were trained by, among others, CIA agent and FBI informant Ali Muhammad,

who taught them how to hijack airliners and smuggle box cut onto airplanes. Even those who downplay U.S. connections to Bin Laden in these years, such as bin Laden's biographer Peter Bergen, admit that his associate, Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman, who recruited from the Brooklyn Center, received CIA support. Rahman himself was issued several visas from CIA officers working undercover as U.S. embassy officials in Sudan. A U.S. official later told the village voice, quote,

He's here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA. The agent pointed out that Sheikh Rahman had been granted a tourist visa and later a green card, despite the fact that he was on a State Department terror watch list that should have barred him from the country. He's untouchable, the agent concluded. According to Jane's Intelligence Review, the FBI kept tabs on the training of jihadist. through the Afghan Services Bureau, and, according to investigative journalist Peter Lance, ended surveillance altogether once the Soviets finally left Afghanistan. By 1988, President Najibullah had tried his best, per the National Reconciliation policy,

to reconcile the nation. The year before, the Afghan government had announced a ceasefire and invited its opponents to negotiate. A general amnesty was also announced later that month. Restrictions on private commerce, which Soviet officials had urged the Afghans to loosen, were lifted. In mid-1987, a new law on political parties was passed, essentially granting legal status to all parties that did not take up arms against the state or any other parties, per Kalinovsky. The counter-revolution was now referred to as, quote, the opposition, instead of, say, an armed band of hirlings as they were before.

A loyajerga, the traditional Afghan council, approved the country's new constitution, and in April of 1988, elections took place for a new parliament. But most of the armed opposition certainly did not take these initiatives seriously, writes Kalinovsky. They boycotted the April 1988 elections. All of this was to make a political settlement with the U.S. and Pakistan possible so that withdrawal could be done competently and without the appearance of abandoning allies.

At a 1987 Politburo meeting, Gorbachev said, quote, we could leave quickly and blame everything on the previous leadership, which planned everything. But we can't do that. They're worried in India. They're worried in Africa. imperialism, they say, if it wins in Afghanistan, will go on the offensive. As it turns out, this had already happened. Since 1985, the hive mind of the CIA began to ask, what if these amazing Islamic techno-garillas could be deployed elsewhere,

perhaps beyond the borders of Afghanistan, maybe even inside of the Soviet Union itself? Director Bill Casey had by now become obsessed with the idea of cutting into this soft underbelly of the Soviet Union, shipping arms and staging attacks directly inside of the USSR. The whole idea of using Afghanistan as a proxy war had after three years now morphed into plans to attack the Soviets directly. This plan, according to Reagan apparatchik Peter Schweizer, surprised even the usually gung-ho Pakistani government. government. Putting together a military operation and carrying it into the Soviet Union had never

been done, Reichweiser. The diplomatic and military repercussions could be colossal. Pakistan, as a sponsor of the mujahideen, could become a target for military retaliation, but so could its sponsor, the U.S., particularly if it became known in the Kremlin that this was a Reagan initiative. The attacks, an echo of the strategies of the safari club and Zabignau Bersinski, went ahead. Casey's assistant, Robert Gates, one day to become CIA director and subsequently Secretary of Defense, confirmed that Afghan rebels, quote, began cross-border operations into the Soviet Union itself. Afghan Mujahideen moved north of the Amudaria River into the Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,

staging rocket attack. against villages. These cross-border campaigns were carried out by none other than Gulbedeen Hekbatyar, reports Ahmed Rashid. Ex-CIA spook Robert Baer thinks that one of the key commanders in this CIA adventure was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the infamous associate of Osama bin Laden. And the door swung both ways. Hundreds of Uzbek and Tajik Muslims were slipped into Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to train

and join the Mujahideen, and of course, bring their skills back home. This state decision, writes Peter Dale Scott, did far more than bin Laden's ideological speeches to enhance the autonomous development of an Islamist foreign legion. The CIA encouraged the Saudis and Pakistanis to keep up these operations whenever possible. This escalation, much like the rest of the war, was not simply ideological. Perhaps access to the Caspian Basin was becoming a valuable thing as the Soviet Union continued to crumble, or maybe someday, collapse entirely. According to a colleague of Casey's, the attacks had simply, quote, scared the crap out of Moscow.

And in this moment, you can see just how secret CIA operations can get, even within the CIA itself. In fact, the agency's deputy director of operations, phoned Milt Bearden, the CIA Islamabad station chief, and grilled Bearden, demanding to know, quote, were you in any way involved in an attack on an industrial site deep inside the Soviet Union in Uzbekistan any time in the last month? Bearden delivered a trained response. We stand by our position that, once the stuff's delivered to the Pakistanis, we lose all control over it. By summer of 87, the Afghan army was falling apart, and the Americans and the Pakistanis were doing all they could to undermine the policy of national reconciliation, writes Braithwaite.

In September, Foreign Minister Chevronautze told U.S. Secretary of State Schultz, straight up, negotiations or not, we will leave Afghanistan. It may be in five months or a year. Schultz was struck with this news, writes Steve Cole. but believed it would fall foul of the right-wingers in Reagan's cabinet. He kept it to himself for weeks for fear that he would be accused of going soft on Moscow. And so months of war went on. Gorbachev finally got a meeting with Reagan in Washington three months later.

But the president wriggled out of any commitment. Reagan, writes Braithwaite, even suggested, bizarrely, that the Kabul government should disband its army. Gorbachev left Washington with the impression that the Americans were happy to leave the Russians to flounder and even to hamper the departure of Soviet troops. But behind the scenes, the U.S. administration had begun to consider negotiations, or at least some had. The confusion reflected the split between the bleeders and the dealers in the Reagan administration, as well as differences between State Department officials on the one hand

and CIA officials and the vocal Afghan lobby in Congress on the other. This double-sidedness of American policy created still more confusion even after three years of stunted talks. And so in February 1988, Corbachev made a unilateral move, a statement on Soviet television that the withdrawal from Afghanistan would start in May. The only thing that was required was an agreement by March 15th. Gorbachev was here putting himself out on a limb, hoping that he could win the Americans over.

After all, a firm date for Soviet withdrawal had always been what the Reagan administration said it wanted, and the nature of the announced pullout was significant too. About half the troops would leave in the first of two deadlines, leaving no room for the Soviets to reverse the retreat. This diplomatic Hail Mary appeared to work. Even with the Soviets between Iraq and a hard place, no one on the other side, neither the Pakistanis nor the Americans,

wanted to be left out at deciding the fate of post-war Afghanistan. Still, once talks were underway in Geneva, Switzerland, it became clear that Gorbachev had used up his last bit of leverage by getting everyone to the table. While the announcement furthered the negotiations at the Geneva level, writes Kalinovsky, the U.S. did not agree to stop supplying arms to the opposition. Couldn't the U.S. respond by meeting one of Moscow's demands, the Soviets asked? Secretary of State Schultz consulted with the deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs.

Lieutenant General, Colin Powell. They came back with a simple answer. No. And that was the price of peace. I've just received a briefing from my national security advisors on the contents of the proposed Geneva agreements on Afghanistan that would provide for the complete withdrawal of Soviet occupation forces from that country. The Polyp Bureau approved the decision to sign the Geneva Accords on April 1, 1988. Two days later, Foreign Minister Shavarnanza flew to Kabul to get Najibullah to sign. That took him three more days. In fact, the Afghan foreign minister personally refused to sign.

Quote, in his hotel room, he put on a great show of emotion, ripping napkins and screaming that the Afghan people would never forgive him. I want to inform you that the documents are now finalized. President Najibullah had more than a little bit of his own. little reason to feel nervous, the Americans had simply refused to stop the flow of guns and money to the warlords, all of whom would soon have a clear shot at Kabul. And sure enough, when the U.S., Pakistan, and the Soviet Union signed the Geneva Accords on April 14, 1988, the Majahadine refused to sign and accepted none of the terms.

The first phase of the Soviet withdrawal was complete. by August 15, 1988, with about half of the troops officially taken out. And the remaining would return home during the second phase, scheduled to take place in February, 1989. Between the first and second phases of withdrawal, General Mohamed Zia O'Hawk, President of Pakistan and Godfather of the Majahedin, was killed in an airplane crash, along with the U.S. ambassador, to Pakistan.

State authorities ruled its sabotage. American intelligence had grounds to investigate, due to the dead ambassador, but journalist Ronan Farrow claims that the FBI was ordered by Secretary of State Schultz to, quote, stay away. The CIA certainly did, and to this day, Zia's death remains the subject of speculation and suspicion. Zia's legacy, however, had lived on. Pakistan had become a regional player, achieved a clandestine nuclear program,

and the Mujahideen were still getting full support. Attacks on Soviet forces did continue, and mass graves of Red Army soldiers would later turn up. The CIA's Milt Bearden remembers taunting, a Soviet diplomat who said to him, quote, These attacks against our troops as they withdraw must stop. Bearden simply responded, And if they don't? The CIA man had the Soviets number. The USSR could only grin and bear these final losses.

The withdrawal was a massive undertaking, but unlike guerrilla warfare, one that the Soviets were pretty good at. The Red Army executed their withdrawal on time and in an orderly fashion. By February 3, 1989, all Soviet aircraft had vacated Pagram Airport. The next day, the last combat troops had left Kabul. Some soldiers would remain near the Soviet border, but they wouldn't be there much longer either. On the morning of February 15th, the commander of the Soviet's 40th Army put on a clean uniform.

The remaining soldiers and officers from his column did the same. Together they drove across Friendship Bridge, which probably didn't have quite the same ring to it as when it was first built. They officially crossed north of the Amudaria River, leaving Afghanistan. And just like that, the withdrawal was complete. The return of troops to the Soviet Union played more like a funeral than a celebration. Things were grim in the USSR, and no one could fool themselves that this was not a defeat. You could see it in the faces of the Red Army. Most men looked hollow, some from combat, some from drug use, some out of pure shame.

General Sebrov, who had been in Afghanistan since December 1979, quote, was not impressed by the official speeches, the crowds, and the flowers, per Roger Braithway. Quote, he summed things up bitterly. Everyone had contributed to the destruction, but a significant part of the blame lay on us. We had been greeted with sympathy and friendship when we, we went in. Now, ordinary Afghans threatened and insulted us as we departed. The mood was the exact opposite in the halls of Langley. Superpowers aren't supposed to lose, but today the Soviet Union concluded its retreat from Afghanistan.

The CIA's secret war begun so many years before had been won. Gus Avricotos, who had slipped into retirement before the final victory, received a call from a fellow officer and a fellow Greek. Quote, He who dares wins. And Charlie Wilson watched the TV, quote, filled with images of Russians in fur hats moving in the APCs and tanks, and the Soviet military commander crossing Friendship Bridge.

Wilson raised a glass of Dom Perignon to the televised image of the Soviet commander. Quote, Here's to you, you motherfucker. We'll meet again. Don't know where. Don't know when. The people of Afghanistan had little time to celebrate or to grieve. By now, hundreds of thousands of people had died.

More recent estimates place casualties at 500,000, others as many as one million. But the war, in fact, hadn't ended at all. The mujahideen were fixing their sights on the capital. President Najibullah was still sucking at the Soviet teat, but the freedom fighters were still getting full support. From the United States, they had driven out the big snake. Now all they had to do was choke out the little one. And they'd have help.

Weeks after the Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan, now led by Oxford-educated Benazir Budo, would back in assault on the Kabul government. The Afghan operation was changing again, growing, mutating into something else. But even as they set their crosshairs on Najibullah, the Majahedin were already turning their knives on each other. Soon, Kabul, the last city to be spared destruction, would be in flames. This was the dawn of the era of the warlords. Good night. Good night.

But nice. But nice. Good night. Yeah. Goodbye.