CTC Sentinel 2(5)

MAY 2009 . VOL 2 . ISSUE 5 COMBATING TERRORISM CENTER AT WEST POINT CTC SENTINel OBJECTIVE . RELEVANT . RIGOROUS Contents Comparing the U.S. and Soviet FEATURE ARTICLE Experiences in Afghanistan 1 Comparing the U.S. and Soviet By Bruce Riedel Experiences in Afghanistan By Bruce Riedel REPORTS 4 Quetta: The Headquarters of the Afghan Taliban By Mukhtar A. Khan 7 Examining Saudi Arabia’s 85 Most Wanted List By Christopher Boucek 10 Revisiting Al-Qaìda’s Anthrax Program By René Pita and Rohan Gunaratna 14 The Limits of Iranian Influence Among Gulf Shià By Laurence Louër 17 The Funding Methods of Bangladeshi Terrorist Groups By Paul Cochrane 20 Avoiding Suicide Terrorism in Bangladesh By Ryan Clarke and Shafqat Munir Soldiers with the 101st Division Special Troops Battalion, 101st Airborne. - Photo Courtesy of the U.S. Army 23 Recent Highlights in Terrorist Activity 28 CTC Sentinel Staff & Contacts country rarely fights the United States is fighting a Taliban- the same war twice in one led insurgency in Afghanistan that generation, especially from operates from a safe haven in Pakistan. opposite sides. Yet that Many suggest that the outcome will be Ain many ways describes the U.S. role the same for the United States as it was in Afghanistan today. In the 1980s, for the Soviet Union—ultimate defeat at the Central Intelligence Agency, the hands of the insurgency. Pakistan’s working from a safe haven in Pakistan, role as a safe haven is remarkably engineered the largest covert operation consistent in both conflicts, but focusing About the CTC Sentinel in its history to help defeat the Soviet exclusively on that similarity misses th 1 The Combating Terrorism Center is an 40 Red Army in Afghanistan. Today, the fundamental differences between independent educational and research the two wars. This article will address institution based in the Department of Social those differences, and will also assess 1 The story of the first Afghan war has been told from Sciences at the United States Military Academy, how Pakistan’s role is impacting the many angles. George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War: The West Point. The CTC Sentinel harnesses United States’ possibilities for success Extraordinary Story of how the Wildest Man in Congress the Center’s global network of scholars and today. and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of our Times practitioners to understand and confront underplays Ronald Reagan’s and Bill Casey’s role but contemporary threats posed by terrorism and is full of insights into the U.S. side of the war. Robert other forms of political violence. Gates’ memoirs From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s The Soviet side of the war has long been neglected but fi- Story of Five Presidents and How they Won the Cold War has nally received attention from Gregory Feifer in The Great The views expressed in this report are those of a more balanced view. Also important is Milt Bearden’s Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan. Most important is the authors and not of the U.S. Military Academy, two books on the war, The Main Enemy: The Inside Story the Pakistani version, written by the ISI commander of the Department of the Army, or any other agency of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB and The Black the battle, Mohammad Yousaf, with Mark Adkin in The of the U.S. Government. Tulip: A Novel of the War in Afghanistan. Bearden was the Bear Trap: Afghanistan’s Untold Story in which the CIA is CIA chief of station in Islamabad at the end of the jihad. a duplicitous and timid partner for the ISI. 1 MAY 2009 . VOL 2 . ISSUE 5 Goals and Objectives it would face.3 Its goal was to shore up Tactics and Support The first and perhaps most critical a communist regime that was on the The Soviets responded to Afghan difference between the two wars is edge of collapse in the face of a national opposition with a ferocity and brutality over goals and objectives. The United uprising. The Soviet leadership wanted that made the situation even worse. At States intervened in Afghanistan an Afghanistan that would be similar least 1.5 million Afghans were killed, in 2001 on the side of the Northern to other Soviet satellite states and another five million or so fled the Alliance to topple the Taliban Islamic under virtual Soviet imperial rule with country to Iran and Pakistan (one out Emirate of Afghanistan only after the only the façade of independence. The of three Afghans), and millions more country had been used as a base for Soviets may also have had ambitions were displaced inside the country. A the 9/11 attacks on the United States. to use Afghanistan as a base to project country that began the war as one of the The U.S. goal, endorsed by the United authority further south. poorest in the world was systematically Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty impoverished and even emptied of its Organization (NATO), was self-defense The Soviet invasion and the attempt people. The Soviet Air Force carpet against a government that had allowed to impose communism on a rural and bombed cities such as Kandahar, where its territory to be used for an act of largely illiterate Islamic country with the population fell from 250,000 to a history of xenophobia produced the 25,000.5 Millions of land mines were “While the Soviets faced predictable result: a mass national planted all over the country, with no uprising. With the exception of small records kept of where they had been laid. a national uprising, the pockets of the urban middle class and Nothing even approaching this level U.S.-led coalition faces a a few minority regions—most notably of horror is happening in Afghanistan the Uzbek province of Jowzjan where today. minority insurgency that a tough local warlord, Abdul Rashid is segregated from much of Dostum, raised a pro-Soviet militia— In part because of that brutality, the virtually the entire country was Soviet invasion was condemned by the country. Moscow’s task violently opposed to the new occupation virtually the entire world except for was much more difficult and its atheist ideology. its client states. The campaign to assist the Afghan insurgency, the mujahidin, than the one facing NATO In contrast, polls show most Afghans enjoyed the backing of countries around today.” have supported the coalition forces the world including China, the United that overthrew the Taliban, although Kingdom, France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, that support is now dwindling as the Iran and others. coalition has failed to provide law and war against another state. From the order and reconstruction.4 The Taliban NATO forces in Afghanistan today have beginning, the United States has had no are not widely popular either; support the support of the United Nations and ambition to dominate or subjugate the for the Taliban is mostly restricted operate under a UN Security Council Afghan people, or to stay in Afghanistan to the Pashtun belt in southern and mandate. The International Security once the threat posed by al-Qaìda eastern Afghanistan. It has virtually no Assistance Force (ISAF), created and the Afghan Taliban is defeated. appeal to the 60% of Afghans who are by the United Nations in 2001, has President Barack Obama reiterated this not Pashtun. Therefore, the Soviets’ troops from 41 countries currently in fact in his speech outlining the new U.S. most difficult battlespace—the famous Afghanistan, including U.S. forces, policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan on Panjshir Valley, home of the legendary NATO contributions, and troops from March 27, 2009.2 Ahmad Shah Massoud (the Lion of the non-NATO states such as Australia, Panjshir)—is today quiet and devoid Sweden and the United Arab Emirates. The Soviet invasion in 1979 was a of Taliban because it is an exclusively Efforts are underway to get more states, different matter. It is now understood Tajik area. especially in the Muslim world, to send that Moscow blundered into Afghanistan troops. with little appreciation of the difficulties In short, while the Soviets faced a national uprising, the U.S.-led coalition Much of the hardest fighting in the faces a minority insurgency that is current war has been conducted by 2 In his March 27, 2009 speech, President Obama said: segregated from much of the country. non-American troops. The British in “We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or Moscow’s task was much more difficult Helmand Province, the Canadians in to dictate its future. We are in Afghanistan to confront than the one facing NATO today. Kandahar and the Dutch and Australians a common enemy that threatens the United States, our in Uruzgan have been fighting for the friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan and last several years in the heartland of Pakistan who have suffered the most at the hands of vio- the Taliban’s Pashtun belt. They have lent extremists. So I want the American people to under- taken considerable casualties in the stand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, process. Indeed, for much of the last dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghani- 3 Gregory Feifer, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Af- five years the principal battle against stan, and to prevent their return to either country in the ghanistan (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). future.” See “President Obama’s Speech on Afghanistan 4 Anthony Cordesman, “Afghan Public Opinion and the 5 On the cost of the war, see Robert Kaplan, Soldiers of and Pakistan,” U.S.

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