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UK discussed plans to help mujahideen weeks after Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
Cabinet documents released after 30 years …
(The Guardian) – Within three weeks of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, was negotiating how to channel covert military aid towards the “Islamic resistance” that was fighting the Russians.
Details of how swiftly clandestine weapons routes were opened up to aid the mujahideen emerge from secret cabinet documents released to the National Archives today under the 30-year rule.
The files show how extensive military and diplomatic efforts – co-ordinated with western allies – were made to defeat the USSR and the lengths to which Thatcher went to discourage participation in the 1980 Olympics.
Shortly after KGB special forces seized control of Kabul on 27 December 1979, the foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, expressed the view: “The Russians are resorting to the big lie by saying that they intervened at the invitation of Afghan authorities … we should take every opportunity to make them uncomfortable and bring home to them the consequences of their actions.”
In mid-January Armstrong sent a “secret, personal” note to the prime minister on a meeting in Paris between senior US, French, German and British officials.
“There was some discussion of support for Afghan resistance to the invading Soviet troops,” he explained. “For obvious reasons, I am circulating it separately from the record for the rest of the discussion.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US national security adviser, recommended providing Afghan fighters in “forward positions” just inside the Pakistan border with “surface to air missiles to defend themselves against air attack”.
The French proposed channelling military aid via the Iraqis. The aim of the west, they said, should be to keep the Islamic world “aroused about the Soviet invasion that would be served by encouraging a continuing guerrilla resistance”.
Armstrong said intervention “would make more difficult the process of Soviet pacification of Afghanistan and [ensure] that process takes much longer than it would otherwise do; and the existence of a guerrilla movement in Afghanistan would be a focus of Islamic resistance which we should be wanting to continue to stimulate”.
There were further “secret four powers talks” in London. On 1 February Carrington informed Thatcher that one of the main ideas being pursued was “support for patriots inside Afghanistan through the covert supply of arms and training. French officials favour this. The Chinese are also interested; and the US are active in this respect. Muslim money is already flowing and may be sufficient.”
The West German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, described the US position as “thoroughly dangerous” and a “clear and present danger of a third world war”.
The west’s arming of the mujahideen in Afghanistan has been seen as one of the contributing factors in the rise of al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden was a prominent Saudi financier of the mujahideen.
On July 3, 1979, U.S. President Carter signed a presidential order authorizing funding for anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan. Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm, train, and finance the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989.
The program relied heavily on using the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as an intermediary for funds distribution, passing of weapons, military training and financial support to Afghan resistance groups. Along with funding from similar programs from Britain’s MI6 and SAS, Saudi Arabia, and the People’s Republic of China, 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.
Thank you, Oui. Your research often reveals some gems of information. The Brzezinski maneuvering to entrap the Soviets in a Vietnam situation in Afghanistan is extremely interesting. I’m a little skeptical about his claim that the involvement in Afghanistan lead directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union and eastern bloc.
How strange that history should repeat itself, proving yet again that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Now we have the US and Western allies trapped in Afghanistan, with no end in sight.
The thirty-year release of Australia’s 1980 Cabinet papers occurred today, too. They show the then Liberal & Country Party (ie conservative) coalition government of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser supporting a hard line on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, including offering extra military bases to the US and orchestrating the boycott of the Moscow Olympics. At the same time, Australia decided not to agree to the US request to halve wheat sales to the Soviet Union, presumably due to the Country Party concern about the impact on Australian farmers. According to the Murdoch-owned The Australian the Cabinet papers show the Soviet invasion triggered a big rise in Australian defence funding and strong declarations of support for the US, with increased Australian surveillance and patrols in the Indian Ocean.
Former Prime Minister Fraser has made a reputation in recent years by becoming a real liberal and criticising his successors in office – be they conservative or Labor. Now he says that we should have learned from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and realised long ago that the war there is unwinnable.
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After the Vietnam War (bombing of Hanoi and use of napalm) and during the Watergate hearings in Congress I learned that men in power aren’t so bright I always assumed them to be. This statement of Brzezinski is another illustration. Support for the Mujahideen, ISI, Pakistan and permitting Khan to develop the nuclear bomb. All ingredients were present and after the US presence on Saudi soil during the first Gulf War led directly to the creation of al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attack. Now the Western world blames the Islamic people for all terror in the Middle East.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
You are absolutely right about the lack of foresight about the long-term effects of supporting the mujahideen.
Brzezinski may be right, though, about the relative significance of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. I think that it has been deliberately exagerated as a threat for domestic political purposes in the West. He makes a very good point that Islam is not a unified global religion.
True. It is the US that provides the unity by waging religious war against it.