OPERATION CYCLONE

1. Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone was the code name for
the United States Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance
the jihadists, in Afghanistan from 1979 to
1989, prior to and during the military
intervention by the USSR in support of its
client, the Democratic Republic of
Afghanistan. The program leaned heavily

2. towards supporting militant Islamic
groups that were favored by the regime of
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring
Pakistan, rather than other, less
ideological Afghan resistance groups that
had also been fighting the Marxist-
oriented Democratic Republic of
Afghanistan regime since before the
Soviet intervention.[1] Operation Cyclone
was one of the longest and most
expensive covert CIA operations ever
undertaken;[2] funding officially began with
$695,000 in 1979,[3][4] was increased
dramatically to $20–$30 million per year

3. in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year
in 1987.[1][5][6] Funding continued after
1989 as the mujahideen battled the forces
of Mohammad Najibullah's PDPA during
the civil war in Afghanistan (1989–
1992).[7]

4. Operation Cyclone
Part of Soviet–Afghan War
Operational scope Weapons sales,
financing of Afghan
Mujahideen forces.
Location Afghanistan
Planned by Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) and
Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA)
Target Government of
Afghanistan and USSR
invasion force
Date 1979–1989
Outcome Delivery of

5. thousands of tons of
weaponry worth
billions of US dollars.
Eventual Soviet
withdrawal from
Afghanistan.
Continued funding
for Mujahideen
during Civil War
period 1989-1992.
Background

6. Communists under the leadership of Nur
Muhammad Taraki seized power in
Afghanistan on April 27, 1978.[8] The new
regime—which was divided between
Taraki's extremist Khalq faction and the
more moderate Parcham—signed a treaty
of friendship with the Soviet Union in
December of that year.[8][9] Taraki's efforts
to improve secular education and
redistribute land were accompanied by
mass executions (including many
conservative religious leaders) and
political oppression unprecedented in
Afghan history, igniting a revolt by

7. mujahideen rebels.[8] Following a general
uprising in April 1979, Taraki was deposed
by Khalq rival Hafizullah Amin in
September.[8][9] Amin was considered a
"brutal psychopath" by foreign observers;
the Soviets were particularly alarmed by
the brutality of the late Khalq regime, and
suspected Amin of being an agent of the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
although that was not the case.[8][9][10] By
December, Amin's government had lost
control of much of the country, prompting
the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan,

8. execute Amin, and install Parcham leader
Babrak Karmal as president.[8][9]
In the mid-1970s, Pakistani intelligence
officials began privately lobbying the U.S.
and its allies to send material assistance
to the Islamist insurgents. Pakistani
President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's ties
with the U.S. had been strained during
Jimmy Carter's presidency due to
Pakistan's nuclear program and the
execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in April
1979, but Carter told National Security
Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary

9. of State Cyrus Vance as early as January
1979 that it was vital to "repair our
relationships with Pakistan" in light of the
unrest in Iran.[5] According to former CIA
official Robert Gates, "the Carter
administration turned to CIA ... to counter
Soviet and Cuban aggression in the Third
World, particularly beginning in mid-1979."
In March 1979, "CIA sent several covert
action options relating to Afghanistan to
the SCC [Special Coordination
Committee]" of the United States National
Security Council. At a March 30 meeting,
U.S. Department of Defense representative

10. Walter B. Slocombe "asked if there was
value in keeping the Afghan insurgency
going, 'sucking the Soviets into a
Vietnamese quagmire?'"[4] When asked to
clarify this remark, Slocombe explained:
"Well, the whole idea was that if the
Soviets decided to strike at this tar baby
[Afghanistan] we had every interest in
making sure that they got stuck."[11] Yet an
April 5 memo from National Intelligence
Officer Arnold Horelick warned: "Covert
action would raise the costs to the Soviets
and inflame Moslem opinion against them
in many countries. The risk was that a

11. substantial U.S. covert aid program could
raise the stakes and induce the Soviets to
intervene more directly and vigorously
than otherwise intended."[4] In May 1979,
U.S. officials secretly began meeting with
rebel leaders through Pakistani
government contacts. A former Pakistani
military official claimed that he personally
introduced a CIA official to Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar that month (Freedom of
Information Act requests for records
describing these meetings have been
denied).[12] Additional meetings were held
on April 6 and July 3, and on the same day

12. as the second meeting, Carter signed a
"presidential 'finding'" that "authorized the
CIA to spend just over $500,000" on non-
lethal aid to the mujahideen, which
"seemed at the time a small
beginning."[5][4][6]
Brzezinski later claimed that "We didn't
push the Russians to intervene, but we
knowingly increased the probability that
they would."[13][14][15] According to
Brzezinski, he became convinced by mid-
1979 that the Soviets were going to invade
Afghanistan regardless of U.S. policy due

13. to the Carter administration's failure to
respond aggressively to Soviet activity in
Africa, but—despite the risk of unintended
consequences—support for the
mujahideen could be an effective way to
prevent Soviet aggression beyond
Afghanistan (particularly in Brzezinski's
native Poland).[11] The full significance of
the U.S. sending aid to the mujahideen
prior to the invasion is debated among
scholars. Some assert that it directly, and
even deliberately, provoked the Soviets to
send in troops.[16][17][18][19][20] Bruce Riedel,
however, believes that the U.S. aid was

14. intended primarily to improve U.S.
relations with Pakistan, while Steve Coll
asserts: "Contemporary memos—
particularly those written in the first days
after the Soviet invasion—make clear that
while Brzezinski was determined to
confront the Soviets in Afghanistan
through covert action, he was also very
worried the Soviets would prevail. ... Given
this evidence and the enormous political
and security costs that the invasion
imposed on the Carter administration, any
claim that Brzezinski lured the Soviets into
Afghanistan warrants deep

15. skepticism."[5][6] Carter himself has stated
that encouraging a Soviet invasion was
"not my intention."[21] Gates recounted:
"No one in the Carter Administration
wanted the Soviets to invade Afghanistan
and no one, as I can recall at least, ever
advocated attempting to induce them to
invade ... Only after the Soviet invasion did
some advocate making the Soviets 'bleed'
in their own Vietnam."[11]
Carter expressed surprise at the invasion.
According to Riedel, the consensus of the
U.S. intelligence community during 1978

16. and 1979—reiterated as late as September
29, 1979—was that "Moscow would not
intervene in force even if it appeared likely
that the Khalq government was about to
collapse." Indeed, Carter's diary entries
from November 1979 until the Soviet
invasion in late December contain only
two short references to Afghanistan, and
are instead preoccupied with the ongoing
hostage crisis in Iran.[5] In the West, the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was
considered a threat to global security and
the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf.[9]
Moreover, the failure to accurately predict

17. Soviet intentions caused American
officials to reappraise the Soviet threat to
both Iran and Pakistan, although it is now
known that those fears were overblown.
For example, U.S. intelligence closely
followed Soviet exercises for an invasion
of Iran throughout 1980, while an earlier
warning from Brzezinski that "if the
Soviets came to dominate Afghanistan,
they could promote a separate
Baluchistan ... [thus] dismembering
Pakistan and Iran" took on new
urgency.[10][5]

18. In the aftermath of the invasion, Carter
was determined to respond vigorously. In
a televised speech, he announced
sanctions on the Soviet Union, promised
renewed aid to Pakistan, and committed
the U.S. to the Persian Gulf's defense.[5][4]
Carter also called for a boycott of the
1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which
raised a bitter controversy.[22] British prime
minister Margaret Thatcher
enthusiastically backed Carter's tough
stance, although British intelligence
believed "the CIA was being too alarmist
about the Soviet threat to Pakistan."[5] The

19. thrust of U.S. policy for the duration of the
war was determined by Carter in early
1980: Carter initiated a program to arm
the mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI and
secured a pledge from Saudi Arabia to
match U.S. funding for this purpose. U.S.
support for the mujahideen accelerated
under Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan,
at a final cost to U.S. taxpayers of some
$3 billion. The Soviets were unable to quell
the insurgency and withdrew from
Afghanistan in 1989, precipitating the
dissolution of the Soviet Union itself.[5]
However, the decision to route U.S. aid

20. through Pakistan led to massive fraud, as
weapons sent to Karachi were frequently
sold on the local market rather than
delivered to the Afghan rebels; Karachi
soon "became one of the most violent
cities in the world." Pakistan also
controlled which rebels received
assistance: Of the seven mujahideen
groups supported by Zia's government,
four espoused Islamic fundamentalist
beliefs—and these fundamentalists
received most of the funding.[9] Despite
this, Carter has expressed no regrets over
his decision to support what he still

21. considers the "freedom fighters" in
Afghanistan.[5]
Although Gates described Director of
Central Intelligence (DCI) Stansfield Turner
and the CIA's Directorate of Operations
(DO) as contemplating "several
enhancement options"—up to and
including the direct provision of arms from
the U.S. to the mujahideen through the ISI
—as early as late August 1979,[23] and an
unnamed Brzezinski aide acknowledged in
conversation with Selig S. Harrison that
the U.S.'s nominally "non-lethal"

22. assistance to the mujahideen included
facilitating arms shipments by third-
parties,[24] Coll, Harrison, Riedel, and the
head of the DO's Near East–South Asia
Division at the time—Charles Cogan—all
state that no U.S.-supplied arms intended
for the mujahideen reached Pakistan until
January 1980, after Carter amended his
presidential finding to include lethal
provisions in late December
1979.[25][26][27][28]
Program

23. President Reagan greatly expanded the
program as part of the Reagan Doctrine of
aiding anti-Soviet resistance movements
abroad. To execute this policy, Reagan
deployed CIA Special Activities Division
paramilitary officers to equip the
Mujihadeen forces against the Soviet
Army. Although the CIA and Texas
A mujahideen resistance fighter shoots an SA-7,
1988.

24. Congressman Charlie Wilson have
received the most attention for their roles,
the key architect of the strategy was
Michael G. Vickers, a young CIA
paramilitary officer working for Gust
Avrakotos, the CIA's regional head who
had a close relationship with Wilson.
Vicker's strategy was to use a broad mix
of weapons, tactics, logistics, along with
training programs, to enhance the rebels'
ability to fight a guerilla war against the
Soviets.[29][30] Reagan's program assisted
in ending the Soviet occupation in
Afghanistan.[31][32] A Pentagon senior

25. official, Michael Pillsbury, successfully
advocated providing Stinger missiles to
the Afghan resistance, according to recent
books and academic articles.[33]
The program relied heavily on the
Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-
Haq, who had a close relationship with
Wilson. His Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
was an intermediary for funds distribution,
passing of weapons, military training and
financial support to Afghan resistance
groups.[34] Along with funding from similar
programs from Britain's MI6 and SAS,

26. Saudi Arabia, and the People's Republic of
China,[35] the ISI armed and trained over
100,000 insurgents between 1978 and
1992. They encouraged the volunteers
from the Arab states to join the Afghan
resistance in its struggle against the
Soviet troops based in Afghanistan.[34] All
support to the Sunni Mujahideen was
funneled through the government of
Pakistan, given that the Shiite Mujahideen
had close ties to Iran at the time. Given
American-Iranian tensions during the
period, the US government aided solely the
Sunni Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

27. Reports show civilian personnel from the
U.S. Department of State and the CIA
frequently visited the Afghanistan-
Pakistan border area during this time, and
the US contributed generously to aiding
Afghan refugees. CIA director William
Casey secretly visited Pakistan numerous
times to meet with the ISI officers
managing the mujahideen,[36] and
personally observed the guerrillas training
on at least one occasion.[37] Coll reports
that

28. Casey startled his Pakistani
hosts by proposing that they
take the Afghan war into enemy
territory -- into the Soviet Union
itself. Casey wanted to ship
subversive propaganda through
Afghanistan to the Soviet
Union's predominantly Muslim
southern republics. The
Pakistanis agreed, and the CIA
soon supplied thousands of
Korans, as well as books on

29. Other direct points of contact between the
US government and mujahideen include
the CIA flying Hekmatyar to the United
States,[38] where he was hosted by State
Department official Zalmay Khalizad.[39]
Hekmatyar was invited to meet with
President Reagan but refused, and was
Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan
and tracts on historical heroes
of Uzbek nationalism, according
to Pakistani and Western
officials.[37]

30. replaced at the White House's October
1985 conference with mujahideen by
Younis Khalis, who publicly invited Reagan
to convert to Islam.[40] CIA agent Howard
Hart developed a personal relationship
with Abdul Haq[41] which led to the Afghan
meeting both Ronald Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher.[42][43] Assistant
Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage
regularly met with mujahideen, particularly
Burhanuddin Rabbani.[44] CIA agents are
also known to have given direct cash
payments to Jalaluddin Haqqani.[45]

31. The U.S.-built Stinger antiaircraft missile,
supplied to the mujahideen in very large
numbers beginning in 1986, struck a
decisive blow to the Soviet war effort as it
allowed the lightly armed Afghans to
effectively defend against Soviet
helicopter landings in strategic areas. The
Stingers were so renowned and deadly
that, in the 1990s, the U.S. conducted a
"buy-back" program to keep unused
missiles from falling into the hands of
anti-American terrorists. This program
may have been covertly renewed following
the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in late

32. 2001, out of fear that remaining Stingers
could be used against U.S. forces in the
country.[46]
On 20 July 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet
troops from the country was announced
pursuant to the negotiations that led to
the Geneva Accords of 1988,[47] with the
last Soviets leaving on 15 February 1989.
Soviet forces suffered over 14,000 killed
and missing, and over 50,000 wounded.
Funding

33. The U.S. offered two packages of
economic assistance and military sales to
support Pakistan's role in the war against
the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The first
six-year assistance package (1981–87)
amounted to US$3.2 billion, equally
divided between economic assistance and
military sales. The U.S. also sold 40 F-16
President Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujahideen
leaders in the Oval Office in 1983

34. aircraft to Pakistan during 1983–87 at a
cost of $1.2 billion outside the assistance
package. The second six-year assistance
package (1987–93) amounted to $4.2
billion. Out of this, $2.28 billion were
allocated for economic assistance in the
form of grants or loan that carried the
interest rate of 2–3 per cent. The rest of
the allocation ($1.74 billion) was in the
form of credit for military purchases. More
than $20 billion in U.S. funds were
funneled into the country to train and arm
the Afghan resistance groups.[48]

35. The program funding was increased yearly
due to lobbying by prominent U.S.
politicians and government officials, such
as Charles Wilson, Gordon Humphrey,
Fred Ikle, and William Casey. Under the
Reagan administration, U.S. support for
the Afghan mujahideen evolved into a
centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, called
the Reagan Doctrine, in which the U.S.
provided military and other support to
anti-communist resistance movements in
Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.

36. The mujahideen benefited from expanded
foreign military support from the United
States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other
Muslim nations. Saudi Arabia in particular
agreed to match dollar for dollar the
money the CIA was sending to the
Mujahideen. When Saudi payments were
late, Wilson and Avrakotos would fly to
Saudi Arabia to persuade the monarchy to
fulfill its commitments.[49]
Levels of support to the various Afghan
factions varied. The ISI tended to favor
vigorous Islamists like Hekmatyar's Hezb-

37. i-Islami and Haqqani. Some Americans
agreed.[49][50] However others favored the
relative moderates like Ahmed Shah
Massoud. These included two Heritage
Foundation foreign policy analysts,
Michael Johns and James A. Phillips, both
of whom championed Massoud as the
Afghan resistance leader most worthy of
US support under the Reagan
Doctrine.[51][52][53]
The U.S. shifted its interest from
Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Soviet
Aftermath

38. troops. American funding of Hekmatyar
and his Hezb-i-Islami party was cut off
immediately.[54] The U.S. also reduced its
assistance for Afghan refugees in
Pakistan.
In October 1990, U.S. President George H.
W. Bush refused to certify that Pakistan
did not possess a nuclear explosive
device, triggering the imposition of
sanctions against Pakistan under the
Pressler Amendment (1985) in the Foreign
Assistance Act. This disrupted the second
assistance package offered in 1987 and

39. discontinued economic assistance and
military sales to Pakistan with the
exception of the economic assistance
already on its way to Pakistan. Military
sales and training programs were
abandoned as well and some of the
Pakistani military officers under training in
the U.S. were asked to return home.[34]
As late as 1991 Charlie Wilson persuaded
the House Intelligence Committee to give
the Mujahideen $200 million for fiscal year
1992. With the matching funds from Saudi
Arabia, this amounted to a contribution of

40. $400 million for that year. Afghan tribes
were also delivered weapons which the US
captured from Iraq in the Gulf War.[55]
The U.S. government has been criticized
for allowing Pakistan to channel a
Criticism
Critics assert that funding the mujahideen played a
role in causing the September 11 attacks.

41. disproportionate amount of its funding to
the controversial Hekmatyar,[56] who
Pakistani officials believed was "their
man".[57] Hekmatyar has been criticized
for killing other mujahideen and attacking
civilian populations, including shelling
Kabul with American-supplied weapons,
causing 2,000 casualties. Hekmatyar was
said to be friendly with Osama bin Laden,
founder of al-Qaeda, who was running an
operation for assisting "Afghan Arab"
volunteers fighting in Afghanistan, called
Maktab al-Khadamat. Alarmed by his
behavior, Pakistan leader General Zia

42. warned Hekmatyar, "It was Pakistan that
made him an Afghan leader and it is
Pakistan who can equally destroy him if
he continues to misbehave."[58]
The CIA and State Department have been
criticized for their direct relationship with
Hekmatyar, beyond ISI contact,[38][39] in
spite of his being one of the leading heroin
smugglers in the region.[59]
In the late 1980s, Pakistani prime minister
Benazir Bhutto, concerned about the
growing strength of the Islamist

43. movement, told President George H. W.
Bush, "You are creating a Frankenstein."[60]
Some have alleged that bin Laden and al
Qaeda were beneficiaries of CIA
assistance. This is challenged by experts
such as Coll—who notes that declassified
CIA records and interviews with CIA
officers do not support such claims—and
Peter Bergen, who argues: "The theory that
bin Laden was created by the CIA is
invariably advanced as an axiom with no
Alleged connections of CIA
assistance to Bin Laden

44. supporting evidence."[61][62] Bergen insists
that U.S. funding went to the Afghan
mujahideen, not the Arab volunteers who
arrived to assist them.[62]
However, Sir Martin Ewans noted that the
Afghan Arabs "benefited indirectly from
the CIA's funding, through the ISI and
resistance organizations,"[63] and that "it
has been reckoned that as many as
35,000 'Arab-Afghans' may have received
military training in Pakistan at an
estimated cost of $800 million in the
years up to and including 1988."[64] Some

45. of the CIA's greatest Afghan beneficiaries
were Arabist commanders such as
Haqqani and Hekmatyar who were key
allies of bin Laden over many years.[65][66]
Haqqani—one of bin Laden's closest
associates in the 1980s—received direct
cash payments from CIA agents, without
the mediation of the ISI. This independent
source of funding gave Haqqani
disproportionate influence over the
mujahideen.[45] Haqqani and his network
played an important role in the formation
and growth of al Qaeda, with Jalalhuddin
Haqqani allowing bin Laden to train

46. mujahideen volunteers in Haqqani territory
and build extensive infrastructure there.[67]
Ahmad Shah Massoud
Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama
bin Laden
Afghan Civil War
Afghan training camp
Badaber Uprising
Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary
Story of the Largest Covert Operation in
History
See also

47. Charlie Wilson's War (film)
Gary Schroen
Howard Hart
Jalaluddin Haqqani
Joanne Herring
Milton Bearden
Timber Sycamore
United States involvement in regime
change
1. Bergen, Peter, Holy War Inc., Free
Press, (2001), p.68
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48. 2. Barlett, Donald L.; Steele, James B.
(13 May 2003). "The Oily Americans" .
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3. "Summary of Conclusions of a Special
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Retrieved 24 November 2019.
4. Gates, Robert (2007). From the
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the Cold War. Simon & Schuster.
pp. 142, 144–145.
ISBN 9781416543367.

49. 5. Riedel, Bruce (2014). What We Won:
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105. ISBN 978-0815725954.
6. Coll, Steve (2004). Ghost Wars: The
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and Bin Laden, from the Soviet
Invasion to September 10, 2001.
Penguin Group. pp. 46, 581.
ISBN 9781594200076. cf. Brzezinski,
Zbigniew (26 December 1979).
"Reflections on Soviet Intervention in

50. Afghanistan" (PDF). Retrieved
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7. Crile, p 519 & elsewhere
8. Kaplan, Robert D. (2008). Soldiers of
God: With Islamic Warriors in
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Doubleday. pp. 115–117.
ISBN 9780307546982.
9. Kepel, Gilles (2006). Jihad: The Trail
of Political Islam. I.B. Tauris. pp. 138–
139, 142–144. ISBN 9781845112578.
10. Blight, James G. (2012). Becoming
Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the

51. Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988. Rowman &
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ISBN 978-1-4422-0830-8.
11. White, John Bernell (May 2012). "The
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Brzezinski: How A Native Pole Used
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Homeland" . pp. 7–8, 12, 29, 45–46,
80–83, 97. Retrieved 10 October
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12. Evans, Michael. "Afghanistan: Lessons
from the Last War" .
nsarchive.gwu.edu. Retrieved
11 March 2018.

52. 13. David N. Gibbs, "Afghanistan: The
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International Politics 37:233 - 246,
June 2000
14. Braithwaite, Rodric (11 September
2013). "Afgantsy: The Russians in
Afghanistan 1979-89" . Oxford
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15. cf. "The Afghan war and the 'Grand
Chessboard' Pt2" . The Real News. 15
January 2010. Retrieved 16 February
2017.

53. 16. Worley, Worley, Duane Robert (15 July
2015). "Orchestrating the Instruments
of Power: A Critical Examination of
the U. S. National Security System" . U
of Nebraska Press. Retrieved
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17. Riaz, Ali (11 March 2018). "Faithful
Education: Madrassahs in South
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18. Bacevich, Andrew J. (5 April 2016).
"America's War for the Greater Middle
East: A Military History" . Random

54. House Publishing Group. Retrieved
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19. Shipley, Tyler. "Empire's Ally: Canada
and the War in Afghanistan, Jerome
Klassen and Greg Albo , eds., Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2012, pp.
432" . Canadian Journal of Political
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doi:10.1017/S0008423914000055 .
Retrieved 11 March 2018 – via
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20. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of
Political Islam (Harvard University
Press, 2002), p.394

55. 21. Alterman, Eric (25 October 2001).
" 'Blowback,' the Prequel" . The Nation.
Retrieved 16 February 2017.
22. Toohey, Kristine (8 November 2007).
The Olympic Games: A Social Science
Perspective . CABI. p. 100. ISBN 978-
1-84593-355-5.
23. Gates, Robert (2007). From the
Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story
of Five Presidents and How They Won
the Cold War. Simon & Schuster.
pp. 146–147. ISBN 9781416543367.
"By the end of August, Pakistani
President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq was

56. pressuring the United States for arms
and equipment for the insurgents in
Afghanistan. ... Separately, the
Pakistani intelligence service was
pressing us to provide military
equipment to support an expanding
insurgency. When Turner heard this, he
urged the DO to get moving in
providing more help to the insurgents.
They responded with several
enhancement options, including
communications equipment for the
insurgents via the Pakistanis or
Saudis, funds for the Pakistanis to

57. purchase lethal military equipment for
the insurgents, and providing a like
amount of lethal equipment ourselves
for the Pakistanis to distribute to the
insurgents. On Christmas Eve and
Christmas Day, 1979, the Soviets
intervened massively in Afghanistan.
A covert action that began six months
earlier funded at just over half a
million dollars would, within a year,
grow to tens of millions, and most
assuredly included the provision of
weapons."

58. 24. Harrison, Selig S. (1995). "How The
Soviet Union Stumbled into
Afghanistan". Out of Afghanistan: The
Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal.
Oxford University Press. pp. 37–38.
ISBN 9780195362688. "Herat
strengthened Brzezinski's argument
that the rebels enjoyed indigenous
support and merited American help. In
April, he relates in his memoirs, 'I
pushed a decision through the SCC to
be more sympathetic to those
Afghans who were determined to
preserve their country's independence.

59. [Walter] Mondale was especially
helpful in this, giving a forceful pep
talk, mercilessly squelching the rather
timid opposition of David Newsom.'
Brzezinski deliberately avoided saying
whether the upgraded program
included weapons, since Moscow has
long sought to justify its invasion by
accusing Washington of destabilizing
Afghanistan during 1978 and 1979.
Strictly speaking, one of his aides
later told me, it was not an American
weapons program, but it was
designed to help finance, orchestrate,

60. and facilitate weapons purchases and
related assistance by others."
25. Coll, Steve (2004). Ghost Wars: The
Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan,
and Bin Laden, from the Soviet
Invasion to September 10, 2001.
Penguin Group. p. 58.
ISBN 9781594200076. "The CIA's
mission was spelled out in an
amended Top Secret presidential
finding signed by Carter in late
December 1979 and reauthorized by
President Reagan in 1981. The finding

61. permitted the CIA to ship weapons
secretly to the mujahedin."
26. Harrison, Selig S. (1995). "Soviet
Occupation, Afghan Resistance, and
the American Response". Out of
Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the
Soviet Withdrawal. Oxford University
Press. p. 53. ISBN 9780195362688.
"Within days of the invasion, President
Carter made a series of symbolic
gestures to invoke American
outrage ... No longer skittish about a
direct American role in providing
weapons support to the Afghan

62. resistance, Carter also gave the CIA
the green light for an American–
orchestrated covert assistance
program to be financed in part by
congressional appropriations and in
part with Saudi Arabian help."
27. Riedel, Bruce (2014). What We Won:
America's Secret War in Afghanistan,
1979–1989. Brookings Institution
Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0815725954.
"As the president was jogging on
February 12, 1980, his press secretary,
Jody Powell, interrupted his run to tell
him that the Washington Post had a

63. story in the works about the CIA's
operation to feed arms to the
mujahideen rebels through Pakistan.
In short, less than a month after the
first arms arrived in Karachi, the
secret was about to be published by
the media. As Carter noted, the
Pakistanis 'would be highly
embarrassed.' Secretary Vance
appealed to the Post to hold the story,
but it ran a few days later, watered
down a bit."
28. Blight, James G.; et al. (2012).
Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran

64. Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-
1988. Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers. pp. 19, 66. ISBN 978-1-
4422-0830-8. "Charles Cogan: There
were no lethal provisions given to the
Afghans before the Soviet invasion.
There was a little propaganda,
communication assistance, and so on
at the instigation of the ISI. But after
the Soviet invasion, everything
changed. The first weapons for the
Afghans arrived in Pakistan on the
tenth of January, fourteen days after
the invasion. Shortly after the

65. invasion, we got into the discussions
with the Saudis that you just
mentioned. And then when [William J.]
Casey became DCI under Reagan at
the beginning of 1981, the price tag
went through the ceiling."
29. Crile, George (2003). Charlie Wilson's
War: The Extraordinary Story of the
Largest Covert Operation in History.
Atlantic Monthly Press, page 246, 285
and 302
30. "Sorry Charlie this is Michael Vickers's
War", Washington Post, 27 December
2007

66. 31. "Anatomy of a Victory: CIA's Covert
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32. Victory: The Reagan Administration's
Secret Strategy That Hastened the
Collapse of the Soviet Union
(Paperback) by Peter Schweizer,
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994 page
213
33. Heymann, Philip (2008). Living the
Policy Process. Oxford University
Press. ISBN 0-19-533539-2.

67. 34. Pakistan's Foreign Policy: an Overview
1974-2004. PILDAT briefing paper for
Pakistani parliamentarians by Hasan-
Askari Rizvi, 2004. pp19-20.
35. Interview with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski-
(13/6/97). Part 2. Episode 17. Good
Guys, Bad Guys. 13 June 1997.
36. Howard B. Schaffer, Teresita C.
Schaffer, How Pakistan Negotiates
with the United States: Riding the
Roller Coaster (US Institute of Peace
Press, 2011), p. 131
37. Steve Coll, "Anatomy of a Victory:
CIA's Covert Afghan War" Washington

68. Post, July 19, 1992
38. Anna Mulrine, "Afghan Warlords,
Formerly Backed By the CIA, Now Turn
Their Guns On U.S. Troops" US World
and News Report, July 11, 2008
39. Mashal, Mujib. "Hekmatyar's never-
ending Afghan war" .
www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved
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40. Zalmay Khalizad, "Mujahedeen and
the Halls of Power" in The Envoy:
From Kabul to the White House, My
Journey in a Turbulent World (St.
Martin's Press, 2016)

69. 41. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret
History of the CIA, Afghanistan and
Bin Laden
42. Kaplan, Robert D. (24 December
2008). "Soldiers of God: With Islamic
Warriors in Afghanistan and
Pakistan" . Knopf Doubleday
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16
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45. Vahid Brown, Don Rassler,
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Nexus, 1973-2012 (Oxford University
Press, 2013), pg. 68-69
46. "Afghanistan: Kabul Confirms New
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49. Crile, see index
50. Edward Girardet, Killing the Cranes,
2010, Chelsea Green
51. "Winning the Endgame in Afghanistan,"
by James A. Phillips, The Heritage
Foundation Backgrounder #181, 18
May 1992. Archived 18 January
2006 at the Wayback Machine

72. 52. "Charlie Wilson's War Was Really
America's War" . Retrieved 11 March
2018.
53. "Think tank fosters bloodshed,
terrorism," The Daily Cougar, 25
August 2008.
54. Kepel, Jihad, (2002)
55. Lewis, Jon E. (16 January 2014).
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Stories of Covert Military Operations,
from the Bay of Pigs to the Death of
Osama bin Laden . Little, Brown Book
Group. ISBN 9781780337869.

73. 56. Bergen, Peter, Holy War Inc., Free
Press, (2001), p.67
57. Graham Fuller in interview with Peter
Bergen, Bergen, Peter, Holy War Inc.,
Free Press, (2001), p.68
58. Henry S. Bradsher, Afghan
Communism and Soviet Interventions,
Oxford University Press, 1999, p.185
59. Selden, Mark; So, Alvin Y. (26 October
2004). "War and State Terrorism: The
United States, Japan, and the Asia-
Pacific in the Long Twentieth
Century" . Rowman & Littlefield

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60. "The Road to September 11" . Evan
Thomas. Newsweek. 1 October 2001.
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Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan,
and Bin Laden, from the Soviet
Invasion to September 10, 2001 .
Penguin. p. 87 .
ISBN 9781594200076. "If the CIA did
have contact with bin Laden during
the 1980s and subsequently covered
it up, it has so far done an excellent
job."

75. 62. Bergen, Peter (2006). The Osama bin
Laden I Know: An Oral History of al
Qaeda's Leader. Simon and Schuster.
pp. 60–61. ISBN 9780743295925.
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76. 65. Anand Gopal, et al, "Taliban in North
Waziristan" in Talibanistan:
Negotiating the Borders Between
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nsarchive.gwu.edu. Retrieved
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77. Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless
otherwise noted.
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