1980s Afghan war

 1980s Afghan war (war)

Soviet troops return after the end of the war
Date	24 December 1979 - 15 February 1989
Location	Afghanistan
Participants	CIA, KGB, Soviet Union, US, Afghanistan, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Mujahideen
Description	Another episode of the Soviet Union and US imploding a third world country from inside by fuelling a civil war with weapon smuggling. Afghanistan has yet to recover.

The 1980 Afghan War, also known as the Soviet-Afghan War, was a war with many effects on the long term which outlived the Cold war it was originally and officially fought for. Fought in the Soviet-controlled Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) from 1979 to 1989. An estimated 520000 at least were killed, with high numbers going up to 2 million.

Official Narrative

Feature History - Soviet-Afghan War

At the end of December 1979, the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan and immediately assumed complete military and political control of Kabul and large portions of the country. This event began a brutal, decade-long attempt by Moscow to subdue the Afghan civil war and maintain a friendly and socialist government on its border.

Presented as extend of the Cold War, marking the only time the Soviet Union invaded a country outside the Eastern Bloc—a strategic decision that was presented as a "shock" in western CCM. Called an extension of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which held that once a country became socialist Moscow would never permit it to return to the capitalist camp. The United States and its European allies, now had a reason to follow the country into Afghanistan by "containment".

Factors

Brzezinski personal ruse

Months before President Carter signed the covert aid directive on July 3, 1979, President Jimmy Carter National Security Advisor Brzezinski had begun to receive quite explicit information from CIA assets in his native Poland that the situation there was on the verge of an explosion. These developments prompted him to turn his thoughts toward both crises simultaneously, with the ultimate goal to develop a strategy that would protect his homeland at all costs. In the final analysis, Brzezinski was correct in his assessment that aiding the Mujahideen and turning up the heat on the Soviets in Afghanistan would later prevent the Kremlin from sending its troops into Poland in order to squelch the burgeoning labor movement known as Solidarity.

Amin

Operation Storm-333: The Secret Soviet Plot To Assassinate The Afghan President

Chair of the Afghan Communist party's Revolutionary council Hafizullah Amin and his leadership came under scrutiny end of the 70s. Amin was already a place holder and strong man of de facto and grand secretary president Nur Muhammad Taraki and Mohammad Daoud Khan. The government of Amin and Taraki was placed into power with force, eliminating, executing and silencing opponents. The Amin-Taraki government, repeatedly requested troops in Afghanistan in 1979. Zbigniew Brzezinski was already giving clandestine support from the CIA, which fuelled an increased believe in toppling the government there.

Internal opposition

Like often, Afghanistan's terrain provided dozens of groups with perfect cover to base themselves there. The local poor populations had no proper mental opposition to the several promises of all these groups with advanced weapons and CIA funding. Many local farmers and village elders soon joined these groups and let their kids become students to go back to the non-atheist ways of non communist Afghanistan, as burqa's, mosques, Sharia debts and usury and bride prices and forces marriages were banned.

Amin was accused of being a CIA agent after the CIA armed local trained farmers, who kept distancing themselves from the new Communist way Afghanistan officially was suppose to turn into to for Kabul control. The CIA allegedly later on said the KGB planted that story.

Insurrections fuelled by the new stream of money, weapons and distrust in the government caused Amin's government to execute 10000s of people per uprising.

Pakistan

Pakistan's ISI privately began deep lobbying the U.S to send materiel to every Islamist rebels that could dispose Amin. The ISI convinced Carter to sign two presidential findings in July 1979 permitting the CIA to spend $695,000 on non-military assistance (including "cash, medical equipment, and radio transmitters") in 1979, which was used to provide propaganda videos and movies for the western current affairs programs.

Invasion

The Soviets first send clandestine troops without any military outfits, and some became bodyguards for General Secretary Taraki. Taraki was shot after a disagreement with Amin in September of 79 following a conversation with Leonid Brezhnev. Brezhnev was shocked apparently that Amin killed Taraki because Taraki had offered to calm down Amin murderous crackdowns in local demonstrations and riots by expelling him to a foreign Ambassador position to curb regional rise of local rebels and their mysterious funding and demonstrations.

The weird intervention by Amin caused Russian generals behind the Russian presidents back to invade, also with the fear that it was the United States via Pakistan sponsoring the rebels known as Mujahideen so effectively that they would take over Kabul soon. Although even US CCM didn't know if or when a coup had happened killing Taraki. The KGB, GRU and 700 soviet soldiers clandestinely drove to the palace Christmas of 1979 to assassinate Amin and succeeded 2 days later.

The Soviets then occupied the cities, and halted the advance of the Mujahideen, whom only remained in low-level warfare battles in the mountains. Soon the Soviets began realizing that Guerllia warfare against a host on their home land was very difficult to win; In 1980, attacks against Soviet soldiers in Kabul became common, with roaming soldiers often assassinated in the city in broad daylight by civilians. In the summer of that year, numerous members of the ruling party would be assassinated in individual attacks. The Soviet Army quit patrolling Kabul in January 1981 after their losses due to bombing attacks, handing the responsibility over to the Afghan army. Meanwhile new Afghan leader Karmal tried to distance himself from Amin and gain the hearts of the Afghan's rebels marching on the city by arguing in western newspapers Amin was a CIA spy.

The US kept funding more and more rebel groups until the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled out from Afghanistan.

Operation Cyclone

USA created terrorism, White House talks about CIA Operation Cyclone

Full article: Operation Cyclone

Operation cyclone was an enormous CIA-led effort to fund and supply the Mujaheddin. The CIA later started Operation MIAS to get the supplied stinger missiles back, which were thought to enter the black market and be used in other conflicts around the world.

MIAS

Operation MIAS failed to buy back some weapons, and acted quite late in 1989. The decision of the CIA to route U.S. aid through Pakistan led to massive fraud as weapons sent to Karachi were frequently sold on the local market rather than delivered to the Afghan rebels. Soon, papers like the Chicago Tribune reported how local militia chiefs used weapons as gang members for all their private wars. Local elders - even religious ones - readily agreed to procure a Stinger within days or even a Soviet-made Scud missile if the client paid up front.

At a certain point the US was running special army units to confiscate weapons throughout the Afghan villages. Many village elders refused as the stingers were "status symbols", with the security chief of Kabul and commander of the once powerful Hizb-I-Islami in the late 1980s crying for help as he feared young people would turn the weapons into people magnets for training grounds for suicide bombers and terrorists. Haq already had warned Iranian CIA-backed militias were one of the early ones who had the money to convince the elders to buy dozens of stingers.

Legacy

Full article: Strategy of tension

Full article: “War on Terror”

Full article: Gladio B

From 1989 to 1992, an Afghan civil war emerged, between the government of Mohammed Najibullah (who had succeeded Babrak Karmal) and the Taliban led mountain rebels. Najibullah lost, and the Taliban took Kabul, stormed the UN compounds he was hiding in and executed him. The Taliban soon became a hub for all intelligence agencies creating a strategy of tension by arming young men who believed in terrorist attacks. The often forgotten link and admission from whistleblowers like Sibel Edmonds indicates the groups to be steered, financed and even created by Alphabet agencies all along.

Recent mentions

Hannity brags about Iran-Contra and Operation Cyclone and compared Trump to Reagan - Fox News

Sean Hannity on FOX News came with a rare exposure and obfuscation of the suffering caused by the CIA in 2022 during the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine arguing for a new black project involving clandestine weapon smuggling and creations of "freedom fighters".

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Graham E. Fuller	“The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvellously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia”	Graham E. Fuller	2005

 

Known Participants

4 of the 8 of the participants already have pages here:

Participant	Description
Afghanistan	"The graveyard of empires" - Afghanistan has a reputation for undoing ambitious military ventures and humiliating would-be aggressors.
Al-Qaeda	A sketchy term that has been repeated endlessly by the corporate media. Its close connections to Western intelligence agencies are never examined. "The Brotherhood" of the modern era.
CIA	The most high profile of the US intelligence agencies, a covert agent of foreign policy. Funded by a 'black budget' derived from the global drug trade, the CIA is experienced at assassination, blackmail, instigating coups and other such covert deep state actions. Its scrutiny in the early 1970s however led to the development of more secure bases for the most sensitive deep state operations.
US	The United States is the single biggest military spender in the world, with a higher 2020 expenditure than the next ten countries combined. Its infrastructure has been described to be in disrepair since the late 1980s.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Afghanistan 1979-1992	book extract	2003	William Blum

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.