In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

by Seth G. Jones

  The ISI’s War

  The Soviet invasion had an enormous impact on Pakistan. Deeply troubled by the incursion of Soviet troops, President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq asked for an intelligence assessment from Lieutenant-General Akhtar Abdul Rehman Khan, the director-general of the ISI. Major General William Cawthorne, a British Army officer who served as army deputy chief of staff for the new state of Pakistan, had formed the ISI in 1948.27 Cawthorne had created the ISI within the Pakistan Army to help address the lack of intelligence and military cooperation, which had proven disastrous for Pakistan in the 1947 India-Pakistan War.

  Akhtar argued that the Soviet invasion threatened Pakistani security: if the Soviet army conquered Afghanistan, it would only be a short step to Pakistan. Akhtar recommended backing the Afghan resistance and turning Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. Zia agreed, but only up to a point. He did not want to goad the Soviets into a direct confrontation with Pakistan. This meant keeping Pakistani support covert and prohibiting Pakistani forces from engaging in direct combat in Afghanistan. Over the course of the war, however, Pakistani soldiers did accompany mujahideen during special operations. They acted as advisers and helped the mujahideen blow up pipelines and mount rocket attacks on airfields. Akhtar selected ISI Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf to coordinate training, strategy, and operational planning for the mujahideen inside Afghanistan—and later inside the Soviet Union.28

  The ISI had been a relatively small organization throughout the previous three decades. But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan transformed the ISI into a powerful intelligence organization.29 Led by key individuals, including Akhtar and Mohammad Yousaf, the ISI was involved in all aspects of the anti-Soviet conflict. Virtually all foreign assistance—including that from the CIA—went through the ISI. The Soviets were well aware of the ISI’s role, and one Soviet military-intelligence assessment indicates that they also knew of Western involvement: “A working group has been created in Islamabad which includes officials of the General Staff and military intelligence of Pakistan and representatives of the U.S., British, and Egyptian embassies. At a meeting of the group they discuss specific operations to conduct subversive operations and the participation of individual countries in organizing the rebel movement on [Afghan] territory.”30

  In early 1984, Zia, Akhtar, Yousaf, and other key ISI figures called a meeting with seven of the most powerful Afghan mujahideen leaders to better coordinate the insurgency. One of the great challenges for the Pakistan government, including the ISI, was the haphazard nature of the Afghan resistance, which consisted of a disorganized network of mujahideen constantly roiled by personal rivalries and grievances. In 1984, Zia’s patience finally snapped, and he issued a directive that the insurgents were to form a seven-party alliance, what some CIA operatives called the “Peshawar Seven.” He did not say what he would do if they failed to follow his order, but they seemed to understand that support from Pakistan was hanging in the balance. “Every Commander must belong to one of the seven Parties, otherwise he got nothing from us at ISI,” recalled Yousaf, “no arms, no ammunition and no training.”31

  Just as Americans know it today, Soviet leaders were aware how important a motivation Islamic fundamentalism was for insurgent leaders.32 Indeed, four of the seven parties were composed of Muslim fundamentalists: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami; Burhanuddin Rabbani’s Islamic Society of Afghanistan; Abdul Rasul Sayyaf’s Islamic Union for the Freedom of Afghanistan; and Yunus Khalis’s breakaway wing of Hezb-i-Islami. The moderate parties included Mawlawi Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi’s Movement of the Islamic Revolution; Pir Sayyid Ahmad Gailani’s National Islamic Front of Afghanistan; and Sibghatullah Mujadiddi’s Afghanistan National Liberation Front. Cooperation was not easy, but the ISI tried to minimize infighting. Between 1983 and 1987, the ISI trained roughly 80,000 mujahideen in Pakistan. Their distinctive battle cry became “Allah o Akbar. Mordabad Shuravi” (God is Great. Death to the Soviets).33

  One of the most ruthless of these leaders was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The youngest of seven children, he had a thick black beard and penetrating eyes. Hekmatyar, who spoke excellent English, was renowned for his staunch Islamic views and a disdain for the United States that was surpassed only by his hatred of the Soviets. In 1985, on a visit to the United States, he had refused to meet with President Ronald Reagan—despite repeated requests from Pakistan’s leaders—out of concern that he would be viewed as a U.S. puppet. During the Afghan War, the KGB established a special disinformation team to split apart the seven mujahideen leaders, and Hekmatyar was one of its prime targets.

  Milton Bearden, who served as the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989 and worked with the mujahideen, described Hekmatyar as “the darkest of the Afghan leaders, the most Stalinist of the Peshawar Seven, insofar as he thought nothing of ordering an execution for a slight breach of party discipline.” Reflecting on his visits with Hekmatyar, Bearden acknowledged that “it would only be Gulbuddin Hekmatyar whom I would have to count as an enemy, and a dangerous one. And, ironically, I would never be able to shake the allegations that the CIA had chosen this paranoid radical as its favorite, that we were providing this man who had directly insulted the President of the United States with more than his share of the means to fight the Soviets.”34 William Piekney, the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan before Bearden, similarly recalled: “I would put my arms around Gulbuddin and we’d hug, you know, like brothers in combat and stuff, and his coal black eyes would look back at you, and you just knew that there was only one thing holding this team together and that was the Soviet Union.”35

  Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami was built on the Ikhwan model of Islamic revolution. Hekmatyar, a Ghilzai Pashtun, entered the College of Engineering at Kabul University but failed to complete his studies, instead spending the majority of his time on political activism and Islam. He became a disciple of Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and advocated a pure Islamic State. He was radicalized during his studies at the university, where, according to legend, his zealousness began to show its face: one story claims he sprayed acid on several female students for refusing to wear the veil. Others, however, have chalked up this story to black KGB propaganda. 36 After a brief period of involvement with Afghan Communists, Hekmatyar became a disciple of Sayyid Qutb, the Islamic scholar and leading intellectual of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s who inspired Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden.37 Hekmatyar’s followers addressed him as “Engineer Hekmatyar,” even though he failed to complete his degree because he was imprisoned in 1972 for criticizing the monarchy.

  In 1973, when Zahir Shah’s government was overthrown by Daoud Khan, Hekmatyar was freed from prison and took refuge in Pakistan’s border city of Peshawar with Rabbani, Qazi Muhammad Amin Waqad, and other budding jihadi leaders.38 During that period, he developed a close relationship with Pakistan. “We had good information that he was being directly funded by Pakistan,” acknowledged Graham Fuller, the CIA station chief. “This was critical because the Soviets had provided a range of assistance to individuals such as Daoud. Hekmatyar was Pakistan’s answer to Daoud.”39

  According to ISI agent Mohammad Yousaf, Hekmatyar’s organization was dependable and merciless: “One could rely on them blindly. By giving them the weapons you were sure that weapons will not be sold in Pakistan because he was strict to the extent of being ruthless…. Once you join his party it was difficult to leave.”40 From the 1980s to the early 1990s, Hezb-i-Islami received more funds than any other mujahideen faction from Pakistan intelligence. The power base of Hezb-i-Islami did not extend much beyond the network of the Islamists, but its approach to politics was that of a true political party.

  Hezb-i-Islami had suffered a major split in 1979. Yunus Khalis broke away from Hekmatyar and ostensibly accused him of avoiding combat, though he kept the title of Hezb-i-Islami for his section of the organization.41 The accusation was ironic, since Hekmatyar would eventually become the most cold-blooded of the mujahid
een leaders and would go on to fight the United States after its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Khalis was born in 1919 in the Khogyani district of Nangarhar Province. Although he never acquired a university theological education, he became the mullah of a mosque in Kabul and was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood organization in Afghanistan. At the beginning, Khalis’s organization was little more than a regional schism comprising the Khogyani of Nangarhar Province and the Pashtun from Paktia Province and south of Kabul. But he later developed a somewhat broader following.

  War of a Thousand Cuts

  The mujahideen, with ISI assistance, relied on two of the oldest tactics of warfare: the raid and the ambush. Soviet conscripts referred to the Afghan mujahideen as dukhi, or ghosts.42 Since the Soviets were vulnerable to guerrilla warfare, the local troops slowly picked them apart in rural areas through a campaign of sabotage, assassinations, targeted raids, and stand-off rocket attacks. As Mohammad Yousaf acknowledged, “Death by a thousand cuts—this is the time-honoured tactic of the guerrilla army against a large conventional force. In Afghanistan it was the only way to bring the Soviet bear to its knees; the only way to defeat a superpower on the battlefield with ill-trained, ill-disciplined and ill-equipped tribesmen, whose only asset was an unconquerable fighting spirit welded to a warrior tradition.”43

  In rural areas, the situation worsened over time for the Soviets as mujahideen forces gained popular support and control.44 The Soviets never committed the forces needed for a purely military conquest of the mujahideen, and, according to one assessment, they would have needed more than 300,000 troops to attain even a small chance of controlling the mujahideen.45 The Red Army managed to occupy some areas temporarily, such as Panjshir in April 1984, and they pulverized other areas. But they were never able to clear and hold territory. More important, the Soviet troops alienated local Afghans, failing to win their support or respect. A CIA assessment concluded: “The Soviets have had little success in reducing the insurgency or winning acceptance by the Afghan people, and the Afghan resistance continues to grow stronger and to command widespread popular support. Fighting has gradually spread to all parts of Afghanistan.”46

  Initial Soviet assessments of the war were optimistic, but by 1985, Soviet leaders had become increasingly concerned.47 At a Politburo session on October 17, 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev read letters from Soviet citizens expressing growing dissatisfaction with the war in Afghanistan. At that same session, Gorbachev also described his meeting with Babrak Karmal in which he said the Soviet Union would pull its troops from Afghanistan.

  “Karmal was dumbfounded,” Gorbachev noted. “He had expected anything but this from us, he was sure we needed Afghanistan even more than he did, he’s been counting on us to stay there for a long time—if not forever.”

  This is why Gorbachev believed it was essential to repeat his message. “By the summer of 1986 you’ll have to have figured out how to defend your cause on your own,” Gorbachev continued to Karmal, who was beside himself with shock. “We’ll help you, but with arms only, not troops. And if you want to survive you’ll have to broaden the base of the regime, forget socialism, make a deal with truly influential forces, including the Mujahideen commanders and leaders of now-hostile organizations.”48

  Gorbachev’s ultimatum was grounded in good intelligence, and Soviet military assessments were bleak. Sergei Akhromeyev, the Soviet deputy minister of defense, told the Politburo: “At the center there is authority; in the provinces there is not. We control Kabul and provincial centers, but on occupied territory we cannot establish authority. We have lost the battle for the Afghan people.”49 At the Party Congress in February 1986, Gorbachev referred to the war as a bleeding wound. The Soviet military, he said, “should be told that they are learning badly from this war” and that “we need to finish this process as soon as possible.”50 Criticism of the Afghan War also increased from within the Soviet Union’s military establishment. Colonel Kim Tsagolov, for example, sent an open letter to Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov complaining that the Soviet military had failed to stabilize Afghanistan and the Soviet Union had paid too heavy a price in blood and treasure.51

  There was some resistance to withdrawal. Several Soviet politicians believed that withdrawal would be a serious blow to Soviet legitimacy and pride both domestically and internationally, but it was too late.52 In 1986, Gorbachev announced a partial withdrawal of 6,000 troops from a force that had risen to 115,000.53 In November of that year, Soviet officials finally lost faith in Babrak Karmal as leader of Afghanistan and replaced him with Muhammad Najibullah, a Ghilzai Pashtun born in Kabul who was known for his cold brutality and intimidation of political opponents. The KGB had appointed him head of KhAD, the secret police, in 1980, and had given him the code name POTOMOK. Najibullah, apparently embarrassed about the reference to Allah in his last name, asked to be called “Comrade Najib.” Under Najibullah’s control, KhAD arrested, tortured, and executed thousands of Afghans, and Amnesty International assembled evidence of “widespread and systematic torture of men, women and children.”54

  In December 1986, Najibullah was summoned to Moscow and told to strengthen his position at home because Soviet troops would be withdrawn within two years. He attempted to introduce a national reconciliation program, but with little success. On April 14, 1988, the Soviet Union signed the Geneva Accords, along with the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Designed to “promote good-neighborliness and co-operation as well as to strengthen international peace and security in the region,” the accords covered issues ranging from refugee return to the normalization of relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. As part of the accords, the Soviets agreed to withdraw their forces within nine months, beginning in May.55 On February 15, 1989, the last Red Army units rolled across the Termez Bridge toward the USSR. General Boris Gromov, who commanded the Soviet 40th Army, was the last soldier in his column to cross the Amu Darya River.56

  A Flamboyant Congressman from Texas

  Outside support was critical in undermining Afghan governance and defeating the Red Army. We have already seen the role of Pakistan’s ISI in providing tactical and strategic support. The CIA had known for years that the Red Army did “not have enough troops to maintain control in much of the countryside as long as the insurgents have access to strong external support and open borders.”57 The Soviets saw the support flowing across the border from Pakistan, and the United States encouraged it. As it became clear that the Afghan War was hurting the Soviets, the United States began to covertly support the Afghan insurgents. U.S. aid to the mujahideen began at a relatively low level but then increased as the prospect of a Soviet defeat appeared more likely, totaling between $4 billion and $5 billion between 1980 and 1992.58 The CIA had provided about $60 million per year to the Afghan mujahideen between 1981 and 1983, which was matched by assistance from the Saudi government. But everything changed in 1984.

  The major catalyst was Charlie Wilson, a flamboyant congressman from Texas, who saw the war as a chance to punish the Soviet Union for Vietnam. His congressional district lay in the heart of the Bible Belt in Trinity, Texas, about eighty miles north of Houston. Like many in his district, Wilson did not see much of a distinction between hellfire and Communism; the Soviet Union had nearly replaced Lucifer himself as the epitome of evil in Wilson’s mind. As a senior Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Committee, he was well placed to increase U.S. assistance, and he pushed for an additional $40 million in aid to the mujahideen. “By this time I had everyone in Congress convinced that the mujahideen were a cause only slightly below Christianity,” Wilson boasted. “Everyone on the subcommittee was enthusiastic. I gave them the sense they could lead the way on a just cause.”

  “The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people’s decision to fight,” he continued. “The Afghans made this decision on Christmas and they’re going to fight to the last, even if they have to fight with stones. But we’ll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones.”
59

  Beginning in 1985, the United States increased its support to the Afghans to $250 million per year, thanks to Wilson, CIA Director William Casey, and growing public support. This shift culminated in National Security Directive 166, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan and set a clear U.S. objective in Afghanistan: to push out the Soviets.60 The CIA was deeply involved in the distribution of wealth, providing money, arms (including heavy machine guns, SA-7s, and Oerlikon antiaircraft cannons), technical advice on weapons and explosives, strategic advice, intelligence, and sophisticated technology such as wireless interception equipment. Most of this assistance went through the ISI, rather than directly from the CIA to the mujahideen.61

  One of the most useful U.S. weapons was the shoulder-fired Stinger missile. The Stinger fired an infrared, heat-seeking missile capable of engaging low-altitude, high-speed aircraft. Its combat debut had occurred in May 1982 during the Falklands War, fought between Great Britain and Argentina, and British Special Forces had been clandestinely equipped with several missiles. The CIA had initially opposed providing U.S.-manufactured weapons—especially the Stingers—to the mujahideen because they risked starting a major confrontation with the Soviets. The Pentagon had also opposed the deployment of Stingers out of concern that the Soviets would capture one and steal the technology. By 1986, however, U.S. policymakers saw the destruction caused by the Soviet Mi-24 Hind gunships and decided that introducing Stingers would make such a difference on the battlefield that it was worth the risks. At a meeting in January 1986, Pakistan’s President Zia told CIA Director Casey: “This is the time to increase the pressure.” In mid-February, the United States ordered the Defense Department to provide the CIA with 400 Stingers for use by the mujahideen.62