The Spying Game by Al Cimino

Author:Al Cimino
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing Limited
Published: 2017-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

CIA involvement in Afghanistan

Succeeding Carter in 1981, Ronald Reagan quickly increased the intelligence budget and by 1985 it was at least $1,500 million. The number of committees overseeing covert action was cut from eight to two. The reason for this turnaround was the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. For the CIA, this was another secret war and it became involved in supplying arms to the mujahideen, the Afghan insurgents, through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. Soon American agents were directly involved.

CIA director William Casey visited three secret training camps along the Afghan border in Pakistan in October 1984, where he watched mujahedeen rebels firing heavy weapons and learning to make bombs with plastic explosives and detonators supplied by the agency. During his visit, he shocked his Pakistani hosts by proposing that they take the Afghan war into the Soviet Union itself. He would supply propaganda material to stir up Muslims in the southern republics. Soon the CIA was shipping thousands of Korans, along with tracts on Uzbek nationalism and Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan, through Afghanistan.

In March 1985, Reagan decided to step up covert action in Afghanistan and signed National Security Decision Directive 166, allowing the CIA to enter the country and set up its own relationships with the Afghan fighters. Instead of just harassing the Soviet occupiers, the CIA was to employ US hi-tech weapons and military expertise to demoralize the Red Army. As well as killing Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan, CIA supplies were used to make strikes against military installations, factories and storage depots inside the Soviet Union itself.

The reason for this escalation was secret intelligence about the political situation inside the Kremlin and details of the new Soviet war plans in Afghanistan. Fearing that the Red Army was getting bogged down, the Soviets intended to adopt more aggressive tactics, using their special forces, the Spetsnaz, in helicopter-borne assaults on the rebels’ supply lines. This intelligence was said to come from the upper reaches of the Soviet Defence Ministry and indicated that Kremlin hardliners were pushing the plan in an attempt to win the Afghan war within two years.

The CIA gave the mujahedeen satellite reconnaissance pictures of Soviet targets in Afghanistan and battlefield plans for Soviet military operations based on satellite intelligence and intercepts of Soviet communications. The agency also supplied secret communications networks to the rebels, long-range sniper rifles, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, a targeting device for mortars linked to a US Navy satellite, tons of C-4 plastic explosive and timers for urban sabotage and sophisticated guerrilla attacks. The following year, they supplied US-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

During the 1980s, the US sent more than $2 billion in equipment and money to the mujahideen in the largest covert action programme since the Second World War. Meanwhile CIA specialists travelled to the ISI headquarters near Rawalpindi, where they helped Pakistani intelligence officers plan operations for the Afghan rebels. Then ISI teams trained and supplied by the CIA accompanied the mujahideen across the border to attack airports, railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges and roads.

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