The Sellout of Afghanistan


The New American
June 18, 1990


Will there ever be an end to United States betrayal of anti-communist freedom fighters around the world? Apparently not until the very last one has been thrown to the Russian bear. Just as it appeared that the nadir had been reached with China, Angola, and Namibia, Secretary of State James Baker moved to put in place the final sell-out of Afghanistan. In a surprise reversal of U.S. policy, Baker dropped the U.S. demand for the ouster of the sadistic Soviet puppet President Najibullah before negotiations for a transitional government can begin. Dismayed members of the Senate moved quickly in an attempt to forestall Baker's proposal. A letter drafted by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) and signed by seven other Senators, including minority leader Senator Robert Dole (R-KS), excoriated the disastrous policy shift:


The endorsement of any so-called transitional government which includes Najibullah and/or his close associates would put the United States into the unconscionable position of legitimizing a regime which presided over the brutalization of the Afghan people and the destruction of the very fabric of their society over a decade of killing and armed occupation.


The new government now being set up under United Nations auspices is being formulated by the communist Kabul regime headed by Najibullah and neighboring Pakistan. The six major mujahideen parties, the people of Afghanistan, and the government-in-exile in Peshawar are not represented, nor have they ever participated in any of the talks deciding their fate during the past eight years. As Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-NH), long the Senate's leading advocate of mujahideen victory, put it:


The State Department's proposal is a serious mistake, a tragic mistake, and undercuts a decade of bipartisan policy. It places Najibullah and his communist cronies in a commanding position to influence the form of any government that emerges.


History of Treachery

This kind of treachery in regard to Afghanistan is hardly new. Dating back to the Carter Administration before the Soviet invasion of 1979 and continuing through the Reagan and Bush years, U.S. policy has followed the familiar pattern of supporting the freedom fighters rhetorically while undercutting their interests in favor of the Soviets. More than fifty percent of the Afghan population of 15 million has been killed or dispersed, or has died from disease or famine. Two to three million have died horribly in Soviet and Afghan communist carpet bombings, artillery bombardments, and massacres. Five to six million are refugees living in camps in Pakistan and Iran. Two million or more have been driven from their homes and are living as homeless "internal refugees." Over 50,000 have been forcibly shipped to the Soviet Union for communist training; of these, more than half were kidnapped children between the ages of four and eight. The whole socio-economic-cultural roots of the country have been ripped out.

Situated on the southern border of the Soviet Union, with the Arabian Sea nation of Pakistan on the east and the Persian Gulf nation of Iran on the west, Afghanistan has been coveted for centuries, first by the Czars and then by the Soviets, as a necessary step toward access to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

Afghanistan under its Islamic rulers has carried on a half-accommodating, half-fearful relationship with its powerful northern neighbor for many years. Underlying their more recent policy was the fateful delusion that they could use Soviet economic and military aid to enhance their own power, outwit the communists, and then discard them. During the 1950s and 1960s, agreements were signed that opened the door to Soviet economic penetration, then domination.

Millions flowed into Kabul for the construction of airports, river ports, bridges, dams, factories, hydroelectric stations, and -- with the help of financing from the United States -- major highways linking the Soviet Union with Afghanistan's cities. Each agreement tied Afghanistan closer and closer to the Soviet Union. Each required thousands of Soviet personnel in Afghanistan to instruct, advise, manage, and construct. Thousands of Afghans went to the Soviet Union for technical training and "cultural exchange." By 1970 Afghanistan had become heavily dependent on the Soviet Union -- one hundred percent for armaments, ninety percent for petroleum, and fifty percent for all international trade.

"Genuine Nonalignment"

During this period, "discussion" groups for Afghanistan's educated elite -- civil servants, army officers, professors and students -- were openly conducted by two Afghan KGB agents, Noor Mohammed Taraki and Babrak Karmal, who later organized the communist Afghan People's Democratic Party and, not surprisingly, became the first two communist rulers of Afghanistan, both by force of arms.

The most decisive Kabul/Soviet agreement was that which provided for the equipping of Afghanistan's military with Soviet weapons and material and the training of Afghan officers in the Soviet Union. The indoctrination of the Afghan armed forces in Marxism-Leninism inevitably followed and made possible the Afghan communist coup of 1978, when Taraki killed Prince Daoud and seized the government.

The Carter Administration described the savage Taraki regime as "more nationalistic than communist"; the New York Times reported that President Carter was "rightly unruffled." The Washington Post declared that Taraki was an "agrarian reformer formidably opposed to Soviet intervention," with "genuine nonalignment as his aim."

When the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, was murdered in February 1979, Jimmy Carter (CFR) refused to halt U.S. aid to the communist government and allowed Taraki to prohibit an investigation. The following month, the people of Herat, the third largest city in the country, rebelled against the communist government and killed forty Soviet officials. The first of thousands of subsequent Soviet air strikes was launched from the Soviet Union at this time; over 20,000 innocent men, women, and children were wiped out. In April, the people of the village of Kerala rose up against the communists; Afghan soldiers, acting under Soviet command, massacred the entire male population in the first of many such mass murders of the war. In August, Afghan army troops at a fortress in Kabul mutinied and were smashed by Soviet helicopters and tanks. But Jimmy Carter remained "unruffled."

Soviet Invasion

In September, rival communist leader Hafizullah Amin, whom Taraki had tried to kill, staged a coup and killed Taraki instead. But Amin's rule was brief. He was an educated man who had received a master's degree from Teachers College at Columbia University in New York, where he had become an ardent communist. Although equally as brutal as any other communist, he let it be known that he planned to rule a communist Afghanistan independently. Signs of an invasion promptly began to appear. Soviet troops were sent to critical communication links. Reservists were called to active duty. Two battalions of Soviet armor and artillery were airlifted to Kabul's air base, built with U.S. dollars. Thirty thousand troops were massed on the border. Still Carter did nothing.

On December 24, 1979, the airborne invasion began with large transports arriving every few minutes. Amin was killed by a specially trained KGB force; Babrak Karmal was installed in his place. Immediately afterward, the Soviet motorized divisions crossed the border and headed for the cities. They came in trucks manufactured at the Kama River truck plant, which was financed by the U.S. Export Import Bank and the Chase Manhattan Bank. They drove on roads built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Token Disapproval

And from that day to this the U.S. government has continued to maintain diplomatic relations with the Kabul Soviet puppet regime, giving it space on Embassy Row in Washington while both Ronald Reagan and George Bush have refused to recognize the mujahideen government-in-exile. The U.S. has done nothing to oust this illegitimate, terrorist regime from the United Nations; nor has it done anything to secure observer status -- which even the PLO enjoys -- for the mujahideen. Until recently, the Kabul regime enjoyed Most Favored Nation trade status, while U.S. goods including aircraft components, chemical products, and engine parts have been allowed to reach Kabul. As a token show of disapproval of the invasion, Carter cut off shipments of wheat to the Soviets in 1980, but Reagan soon restored them in ever larger amounts at ever lower prices, subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer.

As part of the important business of conditioning the public, Secretary of State George Shultz (CFR) backed up the Soviet propaganda claim that its troops had been "invited" into Afghanistan. In 1986, after six years of despicable slaughter, Shultz declared that "we recognize that Afghanistan is in the Soviet sphere of influence" and that "the Soviet Union has a right to a non-hostile Afghanistan on its southern border." "Any negotiated settlement," Shultz said, "must take into consideration Soviet sensitivities." Truly effective aid such as food and medicine and anti-aircraft weapons to protect against helicopter gunships and MIGs, would "jeopardize U.N. negotiations."

When Reagan took office in 1981, Carter's passive acceptance of the Soviet conquest had already given the Soviets a year in which to gain control of Afghanistan's cities. Reagan gave them another year. It was not until 1982 that Reagan made his first move; he put the CIA in charge of a covert operation of military assistance. Then he handed the implementation over to third-level bureaucrats. Alexander Haig (CFR), Secretary of State, also bowed out by ruling that most aspects were "operational" and therefore could be handled only by the CIA in the field.

Or so the story went when it surfaced two years and 325 million tax dollars later that the CIA had been delivering inferior, unworkable foreign weapons to the desperate mujahideen. Those who had been mystified as to why this nation felt obliged to provide help secretly -- as though the U.S., rather than the Soviets, had reason to be ashamed -- began to see the light. CIA operatives had gone into China and Poland with cash and bought copies of Soviet SAM-7s that couldn't be traced to the U.S. The only problem was that they had a 100 percent malfunction rate, a fact which had already been discovered in Angola. "We'd give them to these guys (mujahideen)," said one U.S. official, "and they'd go out and get killed."

Meanwhile, the mujahideen and the villagers were completely at the mercy of Soviet air power; HIND helicopter "flying tanks" were raining down death and destruction, destroying whole villages -- all the inhabitants, animals, crops, every living thing -- in a matter of minutes. The heavy machine guns that were the mujahideen's only functioning weapons had failed to down a single helicopter in four years time.

"Covert" Support

When this perfidy surfaced in Congress in 1985 -- largely through the efforts of Senator Humphrey -- and the CIA was questioned about its role, the agency said it had kept the aid "covert" for fear of "provoking the Soviets" and "low in volume" because "long supply trains to the mujahideen might actually hamper their fighting ability." It also came to light that the resistance had attempted to buy weapons directly from an American manufacturer, but, due to a mysterious set of State Department regulations, the sale of American firearms to the anticommunist Afghans was prohibited. George Shultz. explained that allowing a private U.S. company to make such a sale would change State's policy from "covert" into an overt posture of support; and what would the Soviets think?

The exposure of this betrayal resulted in enormous pressure being put on Reagan by certain members of Congress to provide what obviously was the crucial weapon, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Stingers are light-weight, shoulder-fired, state-of-the-art, heat-seeking missiles, with sensors that lock on to the target. The State Department, the CIA, the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many members of Congress all opposed the provision of Stingers. "They could be intercepted," they said, "and used by terrorists against civilian aircraft." They conveniently overlooked the fact that this type of missile is a basic weapon for Soviet guerrillas worldwide.

"Diversion" of Aid

It was not until March 1986 that the decision was finally made to send a limited number of Stingers. The Wall Street Journal headlined the story: Reagan Ready To Risk Ties With Soviets. Aid was increased to $600 million per year (the cost per Stinger being $75,000), a drop in the bucket compared to the several billions per year being spent by the "bankrupt" Soviet Union, now headed by Gorbachev. By the fall of 1986 a few Stingers actually began showing up in mujahideen camps; although their shipment has been halted several times by the State Department, they have helped slow down, but not stop, the holocaust.

From the beginning, the Reagan Administration decided that all aid must be channeled exclusively through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), trained and controlled by the CIA. It was claimed that -- since Afghanistan's other neighbors are the Soviet Union, Iran, and China -- Pakistan offered the only possible conduit. Strangely overlooked were the hundreds of our C-130s, C-141s and C-5s, all with air-drop capability specifically designed for exactly this kind of task. When an airlift was finally mentioned, it was dismissed as being "too provocative." So it was that a year later, July 13, 1987, the Wall Street Journal ran a small paragraph reading:


Pakistan has diverted for its own use millions of dollars of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles intended for U.S. backed Afghan rebels, intelligence sources said. Last year, only one third of the 600 Stingers the U.S. shipped through Pakistan arrived in Afghanistan.


Although some observers estimated that the true amount siphoned off was closer to ninety percent, and although Pakistan is the third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, Ronald Reagan made no move of any kind.

Hekmatyar and Hezb-i-Islam

Diversion, a polite word for theft, has been only part of the problem with Pakistan. The other part has historical roots. Although there are ten ethnic groups in Afghanistan, by far the largest (eight million) is the Pushtuns, who spill over into Pakistan. In 1893, when the British drew the border of Afghanistan, Pushtun territory was split; some lies in what is now Pakistan. Ever since the split, there has existed an irridentist movement, among communists and non-communists alike, for a Pushtunistan that would incorporate Pakistani territory into the new nation. In the 1970s, playing upon that divisiveness for their own ends, communists in Kabul befriended Pushtun separatists; President Zia of Pakistan responded by supporting anti-Pushtunistan insurgents against the Kabul government. By 1979, when the Soviet invasion took place, a resistance network was already in place, headed by Zia's favorite, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now commander of the Hezb-i-Islam resistance party.

Hekmatyar, reportedly a member of the Afghan communist party before turning to radical Islamic politics, is an anti-Western fundamentalist cut from the same extremist cloth as the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom he supported. His goal is a centrally controlled Islamic theocracy with authority centered in himself. Although he has long been known to have killed more mujahideen than the Soviets, he gets the lion's share of U.S. aid, 25-30 percent, with the rest divided among the six other major resistance parties. According to Sibgatullah Mojadidi, president of the government-in-exile, American aid has helped Hekmatyar kill hundreds of innocent people in Peshawar alone, with the knowledge of police but protected by the Pakistani government.

One of his most brutal crimes took place in July 1989 when six senior commanders and 28 key officers of the rival Massoud resistance group were ambushed, tortured, and assassinated in a grotesque massacre. Some had their eyes gouged out before being shot. This act, too gross for the administration to gloss over, reportedly "sparked a high level controversy in Washington" and "posed a profound dilemma for policymakers." What to do? Cut off all aid to the freedom fighters? "They are losing credibility," one top official said. "This could severely damage U.S. support."

An enraged Representative Bill McCollum (R-FL), member of the Congressional Task Force on Afghanistan, was one who knew what to do. He fired off a blistering letter to James Baker demanding to know who in the U.S. government had made the decision to support Hekmatyar; what controls Washington has over the delivery of supplies; what the relationship is between Washington and ISI; and on what basis supplies are sent to the different groups. This letter is particularly interesting in revealing how much has been kept hidden even from Congressmen, whose job it is to know this subject.

The ISI and the CIA moved quickly to defuse the situation by assuring Congress that U.S. aid to Hekmatyar had been cut off; what they failed to add was that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had made a deal for the Saudis to supply Hekmatyar with $435 million in arms.

Lately Hekmatyar has been conspiring with dissident communists in Kabul and the ISI. Evidently seeing it as the only way that he, rather than any of the other commanders, would gain power in the (unlikely) event of the demise of the communist regime, Hekmatyar supported Defense Minister General Shahnawaz Tanai in an attempted coup on March 16th. Although a few dissident pilots bombed Kabul, the Soviet puppet President Najibullah escaped injury, the coup failed, and Tanai fled to the security of Hekmatyar's base. It is reported that ISI offered $15,000 apiece to commanders to join Hekmatyar, for a total of roughly $100,000 -- in all probability American tax dollars,

Lion of Panjshir

If there were any sincerity in the U.S. position, George Bush would be strongly supporting the Jamiat-e-Islami party headed by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir, whose men control virtually all of northeastern Afghanistan. Known as the best organized and most successful of the commanders, Massoud is also the most moderate and pro-Western. He and his men govern Takliar province in the old, decentralized way, through traditional council meetings in which the people have a voice. Central power has always been resisted in this land of fiercely independent clans, isolated even from each other by the forbidding territory of majestic mountains and precipitous valleys. Massoud has built up strong grass-roots support by establishing law and order through a civil administration that is in the hands of locals. He has also developed a mechanized army that is the best in the field.

But Massoud is strongly anti-communist and a Pushtun. Refusing to take orders from ISI, he has not received even a single AK-47 bullet within the past year. Late in 1989, desperate for ammunition, he bought five truckloads with his own money. When they were delivered to his depot in northern Pakistan, a mysterious explosion occurred, destroying all the ammunition and killing 40 of his men. The U.S. responded by "putting pressure" on the ISI, and more than 50 truckloads of ammunition were "earmarked" for Massoud. They never arrived; Washington pleaded helplessness.

The interests of Pakistan and Washington transparently converge: One desires a strong Islamic, anti-Pushtun leader in Kabul; the other wants to keep the mujahideen divided and prevent the emergence of a popular anti-communist leader who would pose a real challenge to Gorbachev's puppet in Kabul.

When Pakistani President Zia Ul-Haq was blown up in his plane along with American Ambassador Arnold Raphel in August 1988, the Reagan Administration was quick to show its power. The State Department clamped a lid on the investigation, refusing to provide experts and warning Pakistani authorities against speaking out.

"Peace Process"

Genuinely helpless in the midst of all this violence and intrigue is the Afghan Interim Government, the government-in-exile of the mujahideen headquartered in Peshawar. Without recognition, it has no stature or authority. When its leaders met with Reagan and urgently requested recognition, the President, in a display of breathtaking hypocrisy, argued that this was "not appropriate" because it would "make it look as though the Interim Government were a U.S. creation." He also brushed aside their request for a voice in the "peace process," continued to back Pakistan and the Kabul regime as the only participants, and made no move to oust Kabul as a recipient of World Bank and IMF funds.

When the Geneva Peace Accord was finally signed in April 1988, the 50,000 mujahideen, who had had nothing to say about it, greeted it with scorn. According to S.J. Masty, a Peshawar editor, "The talks between Pakistan and Kabul were meaningless. The Soviets didn't need an agreement to leave ... having accomplished their objective, they were ready to leave anyhow." The CIA, however, celebrated with a victory party in Washington. "This was one of the most successful operations in our history," said CIA head William Webster (CFR), in what must be the most remarkably true double entendre ever uttered.

Although the Soviet pullout has been described as a tactical defeat leaving no alternative but withdrawal, the truth, of course, is quite the opposite. The Soviets left only because they had secured a permanent, reliable satellite loyal to Moscow, fulfilling their lasting interest. "U.N. negotiated peace," in fact, has come to be a euphemism for establishing communism. For his pusillanimous part in fastening totalitarianism upon the Afghan people by "guaranteeing" the Accord, Ronald Reagan was enabled to leave office with a foreign policy "victory" greater than Grenada, while the warmonger Gorbachev gained enhanced standing as a "peacemaker."

Propaganda War

Only there is no victory and there is no peace. Dozens of transport planes arrive in Kabul daily with stepped-up aid to the tune of $300,000 per month. Although the Soviets claim to have withdrawn all "uniformed" troops, no one knows how many there were; estimates vary from 115,000 to 175,000. No one knows how many Central Asians are wearing Afghan uniforms. About $3 billion worth of armaments are in place in the cities, which the communists still control. Although the mujahideen control the devastated countryside, the refugees can't return home because of over 30 million mines and booby-trapped toys.

The Soviets have the maps of the mines, but James Baker has been "unable to obtain them." Neither does he send mine-clearing devices, because of "bureaucratic resistance." Mammoth Scud missiles, capable of reaching Pakistan and destroying an entire city, are still in place. MIGs from Soviet bases reach their targets in Afghanistan in eight to ten minutes. Right now constant raids are taking place, especially in the Herat area, creating a flood of new refugees.

Nevertheless, the U.S., which cut off almost all aid to the mujahideen after the Soviet withdrawal, is lending credence to the present propaganda twist that, since "peace" has been "restored," what is going on now must be a "civil war." Therefore, the mujahideen must be the problem -- rather than those who have exterminated half of the population. Najibullah, thought to be responsible for 35,000 "disappeareds" while head of the Afghan secret police, is being given a new public persona; the media are recasting him as a "nationalist" and devout Muslim, while the mujahideen are being transformed into murderous fanatics and "agents of foreign powers," no less!

Afghanistan Betrayed

"Overlooked" by the media is the Soviet rape of the land in Afghanistan; egress to the Persian Gulf has not been the only objective. Rich in natural gas, copper, uranium, gems, and minerals, Afghanistan has been ruthlessly exploited without compensation. Ninety-five percent of natural gas production is piped directly into the Soviet Union, while highly valued lapis lazuli and emeralds are sold for high prices on the international market. Thus Afghanistan has been forced to pay for its own conquest.

With the final pieces being put in place by the Bush/Baker Insider team, the Afghanistan story of genocide and scorched earth is coming to a close. Stripped of ammunition and isolated, the mujahideen, except for Hekmatyar, are nearly helpless. The "transitional government" being set up by Najibullah and Pakistan will only increase Kabul's control. The U.S. role in all this has been one of unmitigated betrayal. While mouthing support for the freedom fighters, the Insiders have undercut them at every turn in order to bring another nation under totalitarian control in preparation for world merger with themselves at the top.