What We Won: America's Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979–89

$0(5,&$¶66(&5(7:$5,1$)*+$1,67$1 ± Bruce Riedel This book is downloaded from www.Bawarketabtoon.com Email: [email protected] There comes a time when you have to choose between turning the page and closing the book. –Josh Jameson n February 1989, the CIA’s chief in Islamabad famously cabled headquarters a simple message, “We Won.” It was an understated coda to the most successful covert intelligence operation in American history. IIn What We Won, CIA and National Security Council veteran Bruce Riedel tells the story of America’s secret war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in a struggle that proved to be the final and decisive battle of the cold war. By answering the question—why did this intelligence operation succeed so brilliantly?— Riedel presents a nuanced narrative about the conflict to show how, counterintuitively, America won this intelligence battle. Riedel has the vantage point few others can offer: he was ensconced in the CIA’s Operations Center when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. The invasion took the intelligence community by surprise. But the response, initiated by Jimmy Carter and accelerated by Ronald Reagan, was a masterful intelligence enterprise. Many books have been written about intelligence failures—from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Much less has been written about how and why intelligence operations succeed. The answer is complex. It involves both the weaknesses and mistakes of America’s enemies, as well as the good judgment and strengths of the United States Riedel introduces and explores the various personalities pitted against each other— the Afghan communists, the Russians, the Afghan mujahedin, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis. And then there are the (continued on back flap) Americans—in this war, no Americans fought on the battlefield. The CIA did not send officers into Afghanistan to fight or even to train. In 1989, victory for the American side of the cold war seemed complete. Looking back, now we can see that a new era was initiated in Afghanistan in the 1980s—the era of the global jihad. This book examines the lessons we can learn from the Afghan intelligence operation, while it also considers what came next in Afghanistan—and what is likely yet to come. BRUCE RIEDEL is senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project. Riedel joined Brookings following a thirty-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency. He served as a senior adviser to four U.S. presidents on South Asia and the Middle East, working as a senior member of the National Security Council. In 2009 President Obama made him chairman of a strategic review of American policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is author of the Brookings best seller The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future. COVER PHOTOGRAPH: © REUTERS/SERGEI KARPUKHIN COVER: SESE-PAUL DESIGN 00-2595-4 fm.indd 1 4/30/14 2:14 PM 00-2595-4 fm.indd 2 4/30/14 2:14 PM AmericA’s secret WAr in AfghAnistAn, 1979–89 bruce riedel brookings institution press Washington, D.C. 00-2595-4 fm.indd 3 4/30/14 2:14 PM Copyright © 2014 the brookings institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 www.brookings.edu All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Brookings Institution Press. The Brookings Institution is a private nonprofit organization devoted to research, education, and publication on important issues of domestic and foreign policy. Its principal purpose is to bring the highest quality independent research and analysis to bear on current and emerging policy problems. Interpretations or conclusions in Brookings publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Riedel, Bruce O. What we won : America’s secret war in Afghanistan, 1979–89 / Bruce Riedel. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8157-2584-8 (hardcover : acid-free paper)—ISBN 978-0-8157- 2595-4 (paperback : acid-free paper) 1. United States—Foreign relations— Afghanistan. 2. Afghanistan—Foreign relations—United States. 3. Espionage, American—Afghanistan—History—20th century. 4. United States. Central Intelligence Agency—History—20th century. 5. National security—United States—History—20th century. 6. United States—Military policy. 7. Afghani- stan—History—Soviet occupation, 1979–1989. 8. United States—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 9. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—United States. I. Title. E183.8.A3R54 2014 327.730581—dc23 2014011190 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed on acid-free paper Typeset in Sabon Composition by Cynthia Stock Silver Spring, Maryland 00-2595-4 fm.indd 4 4/30/14 2:14 PM In loving memory of Milton and Ruth Signe Riedel 00-2595-4 fm.indd 5 4/30/14 2:14 PM 00-2595-4 fm.indd 6 4/30/14 2:14 PM contents Introduction and Acknowledgments ix PArt 1: the PlAyers 1 The Afghan Communists 3 2 The Main Enemy: The Soviets 20 3 The Afghan Mujahedin 40 4 The Pakistanis: Zia’s War 56 5 The Saudis: Financiers and Volunteers 74 PArt 2: the u.s. WAr 6 Jimmy Carter’s War 93 7 Reagan and Casey 110 8 Endgames without End 128 9 Lessons of the Secret War 141 Notes 157 Index 177 vii 00-2595-4 fm.indd 7 4/30/14 2:14 PM 00-2595-4 fm.indd 8 4/30/14 2:14 PM introduction And AcknoWledgments the war in Afghanistan that took place between 1979 and 1989 was a pivotal event in modern history. The defeat there of the Soviet 40th Red Army proved to be the final battle of the cold war, a struggle between the United States and its allies on one hand and Russia and its allies on the other that lasted from 1945 to 1990. For those four decades, the cold war dominated global politics. It was a conflict between democracy and com- munism that shaped the history of millions of people across the globe, and the modern U.S. national security state—including institutions like the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency—was fashioned to fight it. The Soviet army left Afghanistan in February 1989; the Berlin Wall fell in November of the same year; East and West Germany were reunited a year later; and the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991. The near-constant threat of global nuclear war between the two superpow- ers that had dominated world politics for four decades vanished almost overnight. Victory for the U.S. side in the cold war seemed complete. The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was followed so quickly by the collapse of the Soviet state that one former U.S. ambassador observed that the “defeat led to the rapid collapse of a five-hundred-year-old system [and] the last great European empire came to an end.”1 The Afghan war also marked the beginning of a new era, the era of global jihad. The Afghan war was not the first in which Muslims defeated a Western power (the Algerian war for independence from France pre- ceded it), but it was an Islamic triumph over a superpower. What is now known as the global jihad movement began as an unintended (by the ix 00-2595-4 fm.indd 9 4/30/14 2:14 PM x introduction And AcknoWledgments United States) consequence of the Afghan war. This new threat—global jihad and especially al Qaeda—has seen another restructuring of the U.S. national security state. Once again new institutions have been created to ensure national security, including the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Counterterror- ism Center. Armed drones and global surveillance systems have become instruments of U.S. policy. At the core of the Afghan war in the 1980s—what might be called the first part of the conflict, because it did not end with the defeat of the Soviets in 1989—was an intelligence war between the United States and its allies and the Soviets and their ally, the Afghan communist party. The Central Intelligence Agency was given the mission—first by President Jimmy Carter and then by his successor, President Ronald Reagan—of turning Afghanistan into a “Russian Vietnam.” In 1989, when the Sovi- ets crossed the border to go home after the most successful covert intelligence operation in U.S. history, the CIA’s chief in Islamabad famously cabled headquarters this simple message: “WE WON.” Both presidents had a clear definition of “victory.” Carter wanted Afghanistan to become a Soviet quagmire, a drain on its resources that would discourage further aggression in South Asia and isolate the Soviet Union diplomatically. Reagan initially had the same definition, but he upped the ante in his second term when the goal became defeating the Soviet army and driving it out of Afghanistan for good. All of those goals were achieved by early 1989. The defeat in Afghanistan helped precipi- tate the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, although, of course, its collapse had many causes besides the defeat. Nonetheless, it can never be known whether the USSR would have survived if its army had not lost the Afghan war. Those issues lie beyond the scope of this work; they are for other experts to debate. It is very clear that many Russians remain angry at the results of the war. In his 2005 state-of-the-nation address, Russian president Vladimir Putin called the demise of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Putin served as a KGB intelligence officer in East Ger- many from 1985 to 1990, while the war in Afghanistan was going on, and he undoubtedly followed the progress of the clandestine war closely.

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