As Moscow feared, the political drama unfolding in Tehran reverberated across the surrounding region. In less than a year, three of the four states that shared a border with Iran would be at war. For the men who sat in the Kremlin, none of Iran’s neighbors appeared more troublesome than Afghanistan. Whereas the events in Iran reversed the tide of secular revolution, Afghanistan’s story seemed more in line with prevailing Marxist narratives. There, a 1978 revolution had brought a Communist Party into power. The new regime opened the door to a dramatic increase in Soviet influence in the region. But appearances could be deceiving. Even as Communist leaders consolidated control in the Afghan capital, Islamic rebels gained strength in the countryside. By the end of 1979, the regime faced a mounting insurgency. Leaders in Moscow, for their part, hoped to defend the Marxist regime in Kabul and use it as a bulwark against the Islamic radicalism radiating out of Tehran. But as rebellion spread through the hinterlands, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) grew increasingly embattled.
During the second half of 1979, Moscow, Washington, and Islamabad went to war in Afghanistan. A sense of mutual insecurity—heightened by the Iranian Revolution—drove leaders in all three capitals to intervene in local Afghan power struggles. While the Soviets worked to build the regime in Kabul into a bulwark against U.S. and militant Islamic influence, the Americans and Pakistanis set up a pipeline of aid to the Mujahideen, Afghan guerrilla fighters struggling against the Soviet Army. None of the major players could have predicted the outcome of their decisions. In the closing years of the Cold War, Afghanistan would become the last great battlefield of the superpower struggle. The Soviets staged their largest intervention of the Cold War in a bid to save the PDPA regime in Kabul. The United States responded by bankrolling a rebellion that would grow into a jihad against the Soviets. America’s allies in this program, the Pakistani, Chinese, and Saudi governments, used the conflict in Afghanistan as a means of increasing their regional influence. In the process, Pakistan would emerge as a major player in the Islamic world and restore a measure of pride lost during the 1971 defeat in Bangladesh. The war in Afghanistan helped launch a global jihadist movement whose fury would reverberate long into the next century. The battle for Afghanistan transformed the Cold War and the world that followed.
THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES
Insurgencies were nothing new in Afghanistan. Indeed, ungoverned spaces (rather than tight state control) were the norm in the country.
The so-called graveyard of empires occupies the eastern reaches of the Hindu Kush Mountains at the convergence of South and Central Asia, the Middle East, and China. A dry land made more formidable by scorching summer heat and icy winter winds, Afghanistan is made up of craggy mountains, verdant valleys, and deep, cold rivers. Although the nation is majority Sunni Muslim, it is split along ethnic and tribal lines, with Pashtuns and Tajiks representing the largest ethnic group. Afghanistan’s daunting geography, crisscrossed by forbidding mountain ridges, has bolstered these divisions.
Like so many states throughout the Third World, Afghanistan’s modern borders were laid out by European imperial authorities. For centuries, the land was home to the ancient Silk Road connecting China in the East, India in the South, and Persia and Europe in the West. Its high rocky passes guard the main overland approaches to India, making it the historical frontier between the Russian and British Empires in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout the nineteenth century, the British and Russian Empires had staged a rivalry for influence in Afghanistan. The so-called Great Game ensured that the nation remained a buffer state between the Russian Empire and British colonial interests in India. Generations of foreign interference combined with Afghanistan’s imposing terrain to create a nation in which a comparatively weak central government ruled over a conglomeration of largely isolated and autonomous “village-states.”1 For most Afghans, tribal ties were more important than connections to the distant government in Kabul. Power struggles and policy debates in the capital had little impact on the residents of dusty villages tucked into the country’s remote valleys.
Though many Afghans were uninterested in the outside world, the outside world remained interested in them. The Cold War renewed Afghanistan’s geopolitical significance as a buffer state perched along the southern frontier of the Soviet Union. During the 1950s, as Dwight Eisenhower developed his Northern Tier Strategy, which sought allies in the Middle East and Central Asia who would form a bulwark against Soviet expansion, Afghanistan appeared as a potential prize to both Washington and Moscow. By the late 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev feared that the United States might seek to transform the nation into an American military base, a forward position in Washington’s bid to “encircle” the USSR.2
While Afghanistan was hardly a central theater of the Cold War struggle in the early 1960s, those in the Kremlin remained eager to bolster their influence there. After the founding of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan in 1965, Soviet leaders worked to strengthen ties with Afghan Communists. In 1973, the PDPA helped Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud Khan stage a bloodless coup against King Zahir Shah, which eliminated the monarchy and made Afghanistan a republic. Over the next five years, Daoud worked to build the fractious country into a stronger, more modern state. Pakistani leaders supported rebel groups inside Afghanistan as part of a low-level conflict between the two nations, while a rift that had begun between the Parcham and Khalq wings of the PDPA in the 1960s continued as a source of tension. Convinced that Afghanistan needed to modernize before it could become socialist, the Parcham faction advocated gradual reforms. In contrast, the more radical Khalq faction sought an immediate—and if necessary, violent—socialist revolution in Afghanistan.
In the summer of 1975, a ragtag collection of tribal leaders staged a nationwide uprising against Daoud’s regime. The rebellion was poorly coordinated, and its leaders were enamored of notions of heroic, left-wing guerrilla warfare. As a result, the rebels lacked support from the clergy and the majority of the peasants. They made easy targets for government troops who moved in to crush the insurgents. State forces arrested hundreds of youths and dozens of intellectuals, many of whom were imprisoned and executed without trial. The only region where the rebels managed to make gains was the northeast. Daoud’s brutal response restored order at the same time that it taught the insurgents a valuable set of lessons: the support of the clergy would be instrumental to any successful rebellion, and the rebels would have to work closely with the peasantry and the military. Still, the hundreds of leaders killed in the subsequent crackdown would be sorely missed in the coming decade, when another, more successful, rebellion would be launched.3
While he worked to manage internal disputes (banning the Parcham and Khalq in 1976), Daoud tried to improve Kabul’s ties with powerful players on the international stage. In 1974, he visited Moscow, where he secured a half-billion-dollar aid package from Soviet leaders eager to foster good relations with their neighbor. He also reached out to the Shah in Iran, from whom he received the promise of $2 billion in aid. In a move that troubled leaders in the Kremlin, Daoud scheduled a trip to Washington in September 1978. The planned visit was the most worrisome event in a series of actions that Moscow interpreted as a potential drift toward the United States. During another visit to Moscow the following year, the Afghan leader stormed out of a meeting with Brezhnev. To the Kremlin, it appeared as if Iran and the CIA were pulling Daoud into the Western camp. Daoud’s defection would risk turning Afghanistan into yet another Western base along the Soviet Union’s vulnerable southern frontier.4
In mid-April 1978, with tensions rising, a prominent Afghan Communist leader, Mir Akbar Khaibar, was assassinated. Rumors spread through the country that the murder had been ordered by the regime as the beginning of a widespread crackdown against the PDPA. Antiregime demonstrations erupted throughout the country in response to the killing. The following week, security forces arrested seven leading Communists; this was followed by a purge of hundreds of pro-Communist government employees. On April 27, Communist military officers launched a coup against the regime that killed Daoud and much of his family. Three days later, military commanders handed the reins of government to Nur Muhammad Taraki, leader of the Khalq faction of the PDPA, who announced the creation of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The Saur Revolution, as the coup came to be known, brought a Marxist regime to power in Kabul and set the stage for a struggle that was to last into the next century.5
THE PATH TO SOCIALISM
The Saur Revolution presented Moscow with a dilemma. Although the KGB had probably been aware of the coming coup, its execution was haphazard and premature. The revolution brought to power a regime controlled by a divided Communist Party led by squabbling, inexperienced leaders in an underdeveloped country riven by tribal disputes—hardly an auspicious foundation upon which to build a socialist utopia. Nevertheless, Afghanistan’s strategic importance seemed indisputable, and the Kremlin was not inclined to ignore a fellow Marxist regime that had just seized control of a country that shared a long border with the Soviet Union. In a meeting with the Soviet ambassador to Kabul, Taraki insisted that “Afghanistan, following Marxism-Leninism, will set off on the path of building socialism and will belong to the socialist camp.” However, he added, it would be necessary to announce these goals to the Afghan people somewhat “later,” so as not to spark resistance. Still, Soviet officials were troubled by the enduring split in the PDPA between the Parcham and the Khalq.6 Nevertheless, Moscow prepared to send large amounts of development aid to Afghanistan. In July, a delegation from the USSR Academy of Sciences arrived in Kabul. Taraki greeted the delegation warmly. He explained that Moscow was working to help the PDPA “make the dreams of the Afghan people come true; to develop realistic plans and implement them in practice.”7
U.S. officials saw trouble on the horizon. Infighting between the Afghan Communists threatened the new regime as it worked to consolidate its power. “In the longer run,” the State Department predicted, “the Afghan tribes, stirred by traditional religious leaders, could create disorder in the countryside for the ‘godless communists’ in Kabul.”8 The U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Adolph Dubs, warned that the new government was “overwhelmingly dependent on the Soviet Union.” Taraki and the PDPA were “ideologically inspired” by the Soviets and increasingly dependent on Moscow for financial and technical assistance. The new leadership in Kabul hoped to implement a Soviet model of development centered on the collectivization of agriculture. The Marxist leadership “represents a minority of the Afghan population,” the ambassador stated, and “there is considerable opposition to the regime inside Afghanistan in the middle class, the clergy, and the tribes.” In light of this opposition, there was a very real possibility of “assassinations, terrorist acts, and guerrilla warfare in the mountainous tribal areas” of the country. In the interim, Moscow would seek to encourage development in Afghanistan while establishing a “Soviet dominated regime.” Considering the importance of the Persian Gulf for Western security interests, the ambassador argued, “it is incumbent upon us to do everything we can to shore up Iran and Pakistan against the new threat to their security posed by the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan.”9
A November 1978 speech by Afghan deputy prime minister Hafizullah Amin did little to ease U.S. suspicions. In an address that Ambassador Dubs called “obsequious and effusive,” Amin proclaimed the Saur Revolution as a “continuation of the path of the Great October Revolution” that had brought the Bolsheviks to power in Moscow. The speech “clearly identifies the Afghan revolutionary movement with that of its northern neighbor,” Dubs wrote. In doing so, government leaders had “clearly offended many Afghans by openly declaring their state to be socialist, and by appearing to toady to the Soviets.” Commenting on a reception at the Soviet embassy, complete with an “unending supply of vodka,” Dubs speculated that the regime’s fears of tribal unrest and rebellion might be driving Kabul into Moscow’s arms. “Concerned by continued disturbances in the tribal areas and by alleged evidence that anti-[government] elements are being assisted from the outside, the new regime may acutely feel that it is threatened and that it must, therefore, rely on the Soviet Union as its ultimate protector.” Dubs could have had no idea that he would, in the space of a few months, become a casualty of this very unrest.10
Much of the population’s anger with Kabul stemmed from the regime’s development programs. The PDPA’s modernization schemes aimed at breaking traditional and tribal structures of authority in a bid to centralize power in Kabul. Regional rivals would be eliminated, and Afghanistan’s historically diffuse political authority would be replaced by a strong, modern state led by the Communist Party. National literacy campaigns and ideologically based school curriculum reforms would create a population committed to the PDPA’s Marxist vision. The new regime simultaneously brought Pashtun leaders into positions of power. “It was the most-Pashtun . . . government Afghanistan had ever had,” notes political scientist Barnett Rubin. Between July and December 1978, the regime rolled out a broad series of reforms, including land reform, the creation of agricultural cooperatives, new regulations for rural mortgages, and revisions to marriage statutes. These changes aimed to overthrow traditional networks of social and economic power and replace them with state-controlled mechanisms. The regime coupled these efforts at political transformation with a sweeping campaign of repression. Starting with the April coup, dozens of former officials were thrown in jail or executed. The regime then moved against Islamists, Maoists, and Parchamists whom it considered potential political rivals. Students, teachers, army officers, and minorities came next.11
Yet opposition to the PDPA’s programs continued to mount through the beginning of 1979. A secret U.S. memorandum reported that the “localized tribal fighting” that had begun in the wake of the Saur Revolution “has since grown into a countrywide insurgency.” Struggling government forces were increasingly dependent on Soviet aid and military advisors. Should the situation grow worse, it was “conceivable” that Kabul might request direct Soviet intervention in the coming year. Moscow would be reluctant to intervene directly, however, for fear of being “bogged down indefinitely trying to shore up a discredited regime.” Meanwhile, antigovernment fighters “operate with impunity in over half the country” and had managed to overrun a handful of government positions. Although they lacked central leadership, tribal insurgents were well versed in guerrilla warfare and able to subsist in the countryside indefinitely. “Faced with the hostility of the great majority of the traditionally independent population,” the memo predicted, “the regime . . . has no better than an even chance to complete its second year in power.”12 Though it was more prevalent in the countryside, the increasingly violent resistance had even reached the streets of the capital.
ROUSING THE MASSES
Sometime around 8:30 on the morning of February 14, 1979, an armed man dressed as a police officer stopped the car carrying U.S. ambassador Adolph Dubs at an intersection in Kabul. Four men forced their way into the car and then ordered the driver to proceed to the Kabul Hotel. The kidnappers hustled Dubs through the crowded lobby and up to a room on the second floor. Officials from the U.S. embassy rushed to the hotel, where they met Afghan police arriving on the scene. Police officers established contact with the gunmen at 9:15 and initiated a series of sporadic negotiations while snipers and an assault team took positions outside. U.S. officials urged the police and Soviet officials on the scene to exercise restraint. It was clear, however, that the police intended to storm the room. Negotiations continued for several hours, during which time Bruce Flatin, a political counselor in the U.S. embassy, was able to communicate with Dubs through the door’s keyhole. Flatin became alarmed, however, when Afghan police told him to instruct Dubs to wait ten minutes and then head to the bathroom or fall to the floor. Fearing an assault, Flatin pleaded for caution, but the police insisted that they had received orders to attack. Shortly before 12:50 p.m., police began moving civilians away from the scene. Soon thereafter, “heavy gunfire” erupted in the room, hallway, and across the street. Some forty seconds later, it was over. U.S. officials moving through clouds of cordite smoke made their way into the room to find a lifeless Dubs slumped beside a wardrobe with bullet holes above his right eye, in his chest, and in his wrist. The police were beating one of the kidnappers who had been captured in the initial stage of the standoff, while the blood-soaked bodies of the other gunmen were carted off.13
Dubs’s killing set off a flurry of activity in Washington. Much of the anger was directed at Soviet officials who, the Americans argued, had been more interested in eliminating the kidnappers than saving the ambassador. The New York Times suggested that the ambassador’s death threatened to strain relations between Moscow and Washington. The simultaneous U.S. decision to evacuate nonessential personnel from Tehran owing to mounting violence in the Iranian Revolution contributed to a mood of growing tension in the region.14 For the time being, however, Afghan and Soviet officials had bigger problems than an angry White House. In the weeks following Dubs’s death, fighting between Afghan forces and rebels intensified. Some of the fiercest battles were taking place between government troops and the Peshawar-based Afghan National Liberation Front, which had called for a jihad against the regime. Rebel fighters in Kunar, Paktia, and Herat Provinces had attacked government troops and forced Kabul to send reinforcements to the areas. Fighting was expected to intensify as the Afghan New Year and the anniversary of the Saur Revolution approached.15
The bloodiest fighting broke out in the western city of Herat. On the morning of March 15, 1979, the area’s peasants, upset over the local impact of Kabul’s land reforms, began congregating around the city’s mosques. Religious leaders inflamed the growing crowd, which soon began attacking symbols of the state and seizing government buildings. The demonstrators were joined by elements of the army’s Seventeenth Division, which staged a mutiny against the central government. In short order, the rebels gained control of the city, which they were to hold for the next week. Lacking any clear leader, the rebellion degenerated into a state of near anarchy as looters roamed through the ancient bazaar and mobs massacred Soviet advisors in the city. Widely varied estimates place the number of Soviet personnel killed at anywhere from a handful to two hundred. From its epicenter in Herat, the revolt soon spread to the surrounding countryside. On March 20, government forces brandishing Qurans and green flags entered the city while warplanes bombarded the suburbs. In the brutal campaign to retake Herat, somewhere between five thousand and twenty-five thousand people were killed.16
In the midst of the rebellion, Taraki pleaded with Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin to send Soviet troops to put down the uprising. Taraki argued that Iran and Pakistan had incited the rebels. Moscow could send soldiers from the Central Asian Republics, Tajiks and Uzbeks, in Afghan uniforms. “No one will recognize them,” Taraki insisted. Kosygin refused. “Two hours later the whole world will know about this,” he argued. “Everyone will begin to shout that the Soviet Union’s intervention in Afghanistan has begun.” The USSR might be able to airlift weapons and tanks, but Taraki was unsure whether the regime could marshal enough Afghan officers to drive them.17 Three days later, as government troops battled with rebel forces in Herat, Brezhnev told Taraki that Moscow would not intervene militarily in Afghanistan. “This would only play in[to] the hands of the enemies,” he warned, “yours and ours.” Rather, the Kremlin would continue to support Taraki’s regime as it took steps to unify the PDPA and expand its base. At the same time, he insisted, Kabul should work to break the power of the “reactionary clergy” and “split their ranks.”18 Meanwhile, on the ground, Afghan patrols, supported by Soviet military advisors, worked to crush the power of the rebels.
The town of Kerala rests at the foot of the Hindu Kush Mountains, some twelve miles northwest of the ancient mule trail that snakes through the Raghani Pass connecting Pakistan to Afghanistan. In 1979 it was home to some five thousand Pashtun inhabitants who worked in the surrounding wheat fields. Like many peasants in the area, the residents of Kerala were sympathetic to the antigovernment insurgents hiding out in the surrounding hills—a fact that did not escape Afghan military patrols. On April 20, a contingent of two hundred government troops, along with twenty Soviet advisors, entered the town. The soldiers demanded that all the men inside assemble for a meeting and sent the town’s women to the mosque. While tanks and armored personnel carriers blocked the town’s exits, government troops demanded that the town’s male population renounce support for the rebels and swear allegiance to Kabul. The villagers refused. At some point, the soldiers appear to have decided to make an example of Kerala. “They forced all the men to line up in crouching positions in the field just outside the town and then opened up with their machine guns from behind,” one survivor told reporters. “Then they spread out through the town gunning down all the remaining men they could find.” Minutes later, as the town’s women screamed, an army bulldozer began plowing the bodies, some still clinging to life, into a mass grave in a nearby field. Survivors estimated that some 1,170 men and boys, the majority of the town’s male population, were slaughtered.19
The regime’s bloody counterinsurgency campaign did little to quell the rebellion. In June, the U.S. embassy reported that insurrection remained rampant. The regime maintained a modicum of order in the large cities, but the countryside belonged to the guerrillas. “At the present time,” the report warned, “the government . . . probably rules less than one-half of this country.” The guerrillas had also managed to disrupt the regime’s control over the nation’s sparse system of roads. “Rebel forces have been able to seize short sections of highway and hold them for three-to-five hours.” But the regime was likely to retain control of Kabul, the embassy explained, as long as the rebels remained disorganized and cut off from substantial outside aid. The capital remained “an oasis of relative calm,” disrupted only by the frequent departure of helicopter gunships, the presence of security personnel on high alert, and occasional nighttime firefights.
The rebels, or Mujahideen—translated literally as “holy warriors” but used to refer to both religious and secular fighters in the Afghan insurgency—comprised a broad range of groups. Some resented the regime’s “cultural imperialism” and “increasing Pushtunization,” while others mainly opposed the PDPA’s land reform program. Still other rebels were “traditionalists” intent on defending Islamic society against the regime’s social reform programs. “Many of these rebels seem to share some convictions in common,” the U.S. embassy report continued, “such as universally held perception that they are defending Islam and [that the Khalq officials] are godless infidels who have sold out Afghanistan to Russian imperialism.” For the time being, though, the military and police forces remained loyal to Kabul. “As long as the majority of Afghan troops and pilots can stomach the slaughter of their own people,” the report concluded, the regime could probably survive. “The rebels still do not look like winners, but as Afghan history has so often illustrated, things can change quickly here.”20
Soviet leaders were growing increasingly frustrated with the situation in Afghanistan, which they blamed on counterrevolutionaries and “reactionary circles of Muslim religion.” The rebels, one Soviet diplomat noted, “make use of the conservative and reactionary traditions of Islam” to mobilize resistance against the regime. Iranian, Pakistani, and Chinese support for the rebels made matters worse. A “Maoist clique” within the Mujahideen had received training in China that it was now using to stage “diversion and terrorist actions” against the regime.21 In May, the Soviet Politburo authorized a fifty-three-million-ruble military aid package to Kabul that included artillery, ninety armored personnel carriers, nearly fifty thousand machine guns, a thousand grenade throwers, and almost seven hundred aviation bombs; it also authorized another fifty thousand rubles in medical equipment. Moscow remained reluctant, however, to send helicopters and planes with Soviet crews to fight in Afghanistan for fear of driving up support for the Mujahideen and drawing criticism in the international sphere.22 In June, the Soviets again urged Taraki and the PDPA to unify their party leadership in an effort to bridge internal divisions and stabilize the political situation in Afghanistan. At the same time, Moscow warned Kabul to guard against dangerous rumors that the PDPA was cracking down on Muslims in Afghanistan. “Both domestic and foreign Muslim reactionaries are playing on this,” they warned, in an attempt “to rouse the masses of believers against the PDPA.” Kabul should reach out to Muslim leaders and encourage them to throw their support behind the revolution at the same time that the regime worked to allay popular fears that socialism represented a threat to Islam in Afghanistan.23
Unbeknownst to the Politburo, its main adversary had just decided to join the fight. On July 3, Carter authorized a limited CIA propaganda and psychological warfare campaign in support of the Afghan rebels. The president also gave the go-ahead to provide them with nonmilitary aid through third-party governments—most notably, Pakistan. The initial allocation of half a million dollars was exhausted in six weeks. By late August, Pakistani leaders were calling on Washington to begin sending military aid to the insurgents. Carter had taken a first step in what would become a massive covert operation to provide aid to the Islamic militants in Afghanistan some six months before the Soviet invasion.24
Beyond destabilizing the regime in Kabul, U.S. aid to the Mujahideen served to strengthen ties with Pakistan. In the wake of the recent revolution in Iran and Afghanistan’s drift toward Moscow, Washington’s relationship with Islamabad had come to seem more important. To Carter and other American officials, Pakistan now appeared as one of Washington’s few allies in a region that was turning increasingly hostile to U.S. interests. The White House also encouraged its European allies and Beijing to coordinate with Islamabad as a means of counterbalancing Soviet power in Southwest Asia. In the wake of the Iranian Revolution, Washington would partner with Islamabad.25 But aid to the Mujahideen came at a cost. In November, the U.S. embassy in Kabul offered a gloomy, and prescient, conclusion about Afghanistan’s future: “[A]nimosities are by now so deep that long-term domestic and perhaps regional instability is probably a certainty. By the same token, an insurgent ‘victory’ would bring about its own brand of instability and bloodshed, and would probably be marked by economic, social, and political disruptions and anarchy for years to come. The ultimate victims of the ongoing struggle will be the Afghan people.”26
STORM 333
Soviet officials were losing patience with a regime in Kabul that seemed to refuse to unify its ranks. In early September, the KGB outlined a plan to remove Hafizullah Amin, serving as the minister of national defense, whom it judged to be the primary source of the regime’s problems. Kabul’s military repression, a KGB report argued, was undermining the regime’s authority and alienating the population. But Amin had other plans. On September 14, 1979, he arrived at the presidential palace with his bodyguard, Sayed Daoud Tarun, in tow. As the two ascended the staircase, a gunfight erupted between Tarun and Taraki’s guards. Tarun was cut down, but Amin managed to escape to the Ministry of Defense. He then ordered troops to surround the palace and arrest Taraki. Amin’s forces moved out through the capital, arresting Taraki’s supporters in what was now obviously a coup d’état. Observers later speculated that the gunfight on the palace steps was in fact a deliberate provocation designed to give Amin an excuse to launch the coup. Several weeks later, Amin ordered his former colleague’s execution. Guards used a pillow to suffocate Taraki while he was still in his dressing gown. The regime then reported that he had died of a “brief and serious illness.” Taraki’s murder incensed leaders in the Kremlin. “What a bastard,” fumed Brezhnev, “to murder the man with whom he made the revolution.” Moscow’s comparatively moderate ally in Kabul had been slain by a brutal leader who seemed intent on driving the country into a full-scale civil war. Soviet officials now began to seriously consider moving against Amin.27
The Kremlin watched as the insurgency continued to mount. In October, units from the Seventh Infantry Division outside Kabul mutinied. The regime controlled only about 20 percent of the country. While Soviet leaders still worried about the dangers of a military intervention, the alternative prospect of watching the PDPA regime slowly implode might be worse. As the KGB gathered members of an alternate Afghan government in Moscow, to be led by exiled Parcham leader Babrak Karmal, the Politburo held meetings to determine the best course of action. If the Kremlin decided to remove Amin, Moscow already had the troops in place to do it. In April, Soviet officials had sent Spetsnaz special forces troops and the so-called Muslim Battalion, made up of soldiers from the Central Asian Republics of the Soviet Union, in the hope that they would be better able to relate to the Afghan population, to Afghanistan. On December 10, Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov relayed orders from the Politburo to the military to prepare to send seventy-five thousand to eighty thousand troops across the border. Two days later, KGB chairman Yuri Andropov told the Politburo that Amin may have been recruited by the CIA to create a “New Great Ottoman Empire” on the southern flanks of the USSR. That same day, NATO decided to deploy Pershing II intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe.28
On December 24, 1979, in the face of significant protest from Soviet officials, Ustinov signed a directive authorizing the deployment of Soviet combat troops in Afghanistan. In light of the “military-political situation in the Middle East,” the directive announced, Moscow would move its forces into Afghanistan to give “international aid to the friendly Afghan people and also create favorable conditions to interdict possible anti-Afghan nations from neighboring countries.” But the directive was merely a formality. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was already under way.29
Beginning on December 10 and continuing until the end of the month, the Kremlin began moving Soviet forces into Afghanistan. Soviet paratroopers, Spetsnaz, and the Muslim Battalion were charged with seizing critical objectives in Kabul, such as communications facilities, while Moscow concentrated forces for the main thrust of the invasion across the border. On December 25, the Soviet Fortieth Army began moving over a pontoon bridge constructed across the Amu Darya River into Afghanistan. Meanwhile, bases in Uzbekistan and the then-named Belorussia launched a massive airlift of troops to the Bagram Airfield, outside Kabul. While troop columns from the Tenth Motorized Rifle Division proceeded south through the Hindu Kush, the airlifted forces would secure the capital. Plans to eliminate Amin were already under way. On December 13, one of the president’s Soviet cooks slipped poison into his cola. The attempt succeeded only in sickening Amin’s nephew, who was evacuated to Moscow for medical treatment. The next attempt was set for December 27. Code-named Storm 333, the plan called for Spetsnaz and KGB units to stage a direct assault on Amin’s residence in the Tajbeg Palace, outside Kabul.30
At 6:20 p.m. that same day, Soviet forces crept up to three Afghan tanks guarding the palace. Snipers killed the Afghan sentries while Soviet soldiers seized the unmanned tanks. At 7:15, the lead units fired two red flares—the signal for the attack to begin. Antiaircraft guns fired on the palace to create a diversion while units from the Muslim Battalion advanced in infantry fighting vehicles. Palace guards directed a hail of gunfire at the advancing force, but the Soviets pressed on. After reaching the doors, the Soviet troops stormed into the building and, amid the screams of women and children, began shooting out the lights. Witnesses recalled seeing a confused Amin, connected to IVs and suffering from a second botched KGB poisoning, roaming the corridors. The Soviet doctors treating him, unaware that their countrymen had poisoned him, took the president to the bar and removed the tubes from his arms. As the assault continued, Soviet forces fought their way deeper into the palace. After the gunfire subsided, Amin’s body was identified. He had been killed in the bar alongside his five-year-old son. Ten Soviet troops had been killed, along with an estimated 250 Afghan defenders. Though bloody, the battle at the palace was only the beginning.31
“A REGIONAL CRISIS”
Officials in Washington watched the Soviet takeover of the country with alarm. On December 26, 1979, the CIA briefed senior officials from the State Department, the White House, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan. More than two hundred Soviet cargo planes had landed at the Kabul airport the previous day, bringing with them substantial numbers of combat troops. “The greatest risk that we face is a quick, effective Soviet operation to pacify Afghanistan,” the assembled officials concluded. “Our objective, then, should be to make the operation as costly as possible for the Soviets.”32 CIA analysts suggested that the Soviets would have their hands full in Afghanistan: “The Communist revolutionaries have tried to overturn tradition rather than adapt it, to eliminate local autonomy, to destroy the elite class by confiscating its land, and to undermine the authority of the Muslim religious establishment. These actions have aroused the resistance of the fiercely independent Afghans. The present no-win situation—persistent insurgency and fragile Communist control of urban areas—is expected to continue.”
Ultimately, political power in Afghanistan would remain dispersed. The Communists would hold power in the cities, but tribal authorities would control the countryside. “Afghanistan will not be ruled very much differently than it was in the past,” the report concluded.33
Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, offered a more alarmist appraisal. The United States was “now facing a regional crisis [emphasis in original]” he told the president in a secret memorandum. “Both Iran and Afghanistan are in turmoil, and Pakistan is both unstable internally and extremely apprehensive externally.” By sending its troops into Afghanistan, Moscow had moved one step closer in its “age-long dream” of having bases on the Indian Ocean. The fall of the Shah in Iran had led to the “collapse of the balance of power in Southwest Asia, and it could produce [a] Soviet presence right down to the edge of the Arabian and Oman Gulfs.” Moscow’s intervention posed “an extremely grave challenge” to the United States. While he noted that there was a chance Afghanistan “could become a Soviet Vietnam,” Brzezinski remained skeptical. The Mujahideen lacked the unified leadership, external support, and foreign sanctuaries that the Viet Cong had enjoyed. Nevertheless, he stressed that the Mujahideen should receive support. “This means more money as well as arms shipment to the rebels and some technical advice.” Brzezinski suggested that Pakistan and China could serve as facilitators in supporting the guerrillas. He also suggested reaching out to “Islamic countries” to launch a “propaganda campaign and . . . a covert action campaign to help the rebels.” In three pages, written two days after the Soviet invasion, Brzezinski had outlined what would become the largest CIA covert operation of the Cold War.34
On December 28, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance wrote a widely circulated telegram warning U.S. embassies around the world of the evolving situation in Afghanistan. Moscow had launched a “massive Soviet airlift” that had already moved more than a division of troops into the capital. News of the coup against Amin circulated amid reports of fighting between Soviet and Afghan forces near the Radio Kabul Building and outside Amin’s residence. Soon after, Soviet soldiers appeared posted at key intersections and outside government buildings throughout Kabul. Meanwhile, Soviet radio transmitters had announced that Babrak Karmal had succeeded Amin as the president of the Revolutionary Council. Indications of a buildup of “at least five divisions” at the Afghan borders “suggests that the Soviets have additional military objectives beyond the change of government in Kabul.”35 That same day, Carter told British prime minister Margaret Thatcher that “Moscow had changed a buffer nation into a puppet nation under Soviet direction. This would have profound strategic consequences for the stability of the entire region.”36
The following week, Carter delivered his reaction to the Soviet intervention in a nationally televised address. The president opened with a reference to the shared “outrage” over the ongoing hostage crisis in Iran before turning to “another very serious development which threatens the maintenance of the peace in Southwest Asia.” Moscow’s aggressive moves in Afghanistan risked destabilizing the entire region. “A Soviet-occupied Afghanistan threatens both Iran and Pakistan and is a stepping-stone to possible control over much of the world’s oil supplies,” he told the nation. Because of this, Carter announced, he would be issuing an embargo on grain exports to the USSR and increasing economic and military aid to Pakistan. In talking points on the speech, the White House stressed that the Kremlin’s invasion “places the Soviets within fighter range of the Persian Gulf—our oil lifeline.” The following month, January 1980, U.S. officials would announce their intention to boycott the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics if Soviet forces did not withdraw from Afghanistan.37 Meanwhile, the CIA warned that the Soviets had demonstrated the ability to “exploit their superiority in conventional forces to achieve objectives in peripheral land areas . . . with relative impunity.” Officials ordered new military estimates on potential Soviet attacks against Iran, Pakistan, and the Balkans.38 Administration officials feared that Moscow’s moves in Afghanistan were the start of a campaign, launched in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, designed to bring Soviet forces to the shores of the Persian Gulf. Driven by these anxieties, the Carter White House embarked on a dramatic expansion of U.S. power in the Middle East.
On the evening of January 23, 1980, Carter appeared before Congress to deliver his annual State of the Union address. “The 1980s have been born in turmoil, strife, and change,” he announced to the nation and the world. “At this time in Iran, fifty Americans are still held captive, innocent victims of terrorism and anarchy. Also at this moment, massive Soviet troops are attempting to subjugate the fiercely independent and deeply religious people of Afghanistan. These two acts—one of international terrorism and one of military aggression—present a serious challenge to the United States of America and indeed to all the nations of the world.”
By linking the hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter signaled the White House’s view that Southwest Asia was in the midst of a regional crisis. The president also called upon Iranian leaders to recognize that the “real danger to their nation lies in the north, in the Soviet Union and from its troops now in Afghanistan.” Nevertheless, Washington was determined to defend its assets in the region. “Let our position be absolutely clear,” Carter announced. “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” The president’s pledge would come to be known as the Carter Doctrine, an announcement to the world that the United States considered the Persian Gulf and the surrounding territories to fall within its security perimeter.39
The Defense Intelligence Agency echoed these dire assessments in a heavily redacted report written the following month. If it managed to establish a secure position in Afghanistan, the agency argued, the USSR would take a “major step toward overland access to the Indian Ocean and to domination of the Asian sub-continent, which in turn would place the Soviets in a position for drawing the oil-producing countries of the Persian Gulf into their orbit of power.” From their base in Kabul, the report warned, Soviet forces could destabilize the entire region. “Given the continued dependence on Middle East oil by the US and its allies,” the authors concluded, “the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan translates into a direct threat to the West.”40
Yet U.S. fears were exaggerated. In truth, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was relatively small. As former CIA officer Bruce Riedel later wrote, the Soviet Fortieth Army, reconstituted in 1979 for the purpose of the Afghan operation, initially consisted of approximately 80,000 men. At its peak, Soviet forces in Afghanistan numbered 110,000 split into three motorized rifle divisions, one airborne division, four infantry brigades, two airborne brigades, six hundred tanks, eighteen hundred armored vehicles, and five hundred aircraft. “For a country the size of Texas or France,” he noted, “that was a small force.” In comparison, Moscow had sent 500,000 men to put down the 1968 uprising in Czechoslovakia. The Kremlin had chosen to fight the war on a shoestring budget. Moscow devoted an average of 2.5 percent of the USSR’s yearly military expenditures to the war in Afghanistan. The CIA, meanwhile, estimated that the Soviets had never committed more than 3 percent of their total military forces to Afghanistan. By devoting such meager resources to the conflict, Riedel argued, Moscow effectively chose to cede the countryside to the Mujahideen.41 This was not a force fit to pacify Afghanistan, let alone conquer the entire region.
SOVIET TACTICS AND STRATEGY
During the opening phase of the war, Soviet commanders focused on the deployment of the Fortieth Army. The first Soviet armored vehicles crossed the Amu Darya River near Termez as twilight fell on Christmas Day 1979. The main body of the invasion continued crossing throughout the night, taking control of the area around Kunduz before turning south toward Kabul on the evening of the twenty-seventh. That same night, a Soviet Motorized Rifle division south of Kushka crossed into Afghanistan and advanced on the city of Herat. This western thrust of the invasion continued south to Farah, before proceeding southeast to Kandahar, where it would link up with divisions pushing south from Kabul in a giant encirclement linking the northern, eastern, and western sectors of the country, while notably maintaining a distance from the Pakistan border regions in the south.
The bulk of the Soviet Fortieth Army had entered Afghanistan as of mid-January. Early on, Soviet commanders committed over a third of their strength to the tasks of securing key government and military facilities and maintaining lines of communication and transportation. Soviet garrisons were concentrated in large population centers and devoted much of their energy to defending major roads, escorting convoys, and securing airfields. The Soviets did not expect to encounter heavy resistance. They wrongly assumed that their deployment would “sober up” the Mujahideen and allow Afghan government troops to handle the bulk of the combat operations. Instead, Soviet garrisons encountered heavy resistance and found themselves working alongside Afghan forces that were, according to the Soviet General Staff, “weak and ineffective.” Almost immediately, the Fortieth Army found itself engaged in heavy combat with rebel formations.42
During the first weeks of the war, the Mujahideen launched large-scale, conventional attacks on Soviet forces. While such tactics had been successful against the Afghan Army, Soviet troops represented far tougher adversaries. After suffering heavy losses, rebel commanders quickly reverted to guerrilla tactics, splitting their forces into units of twenty to one hundred men and adopting hit-and-run tactics against heavily armed Soviet garrisons. The rebels also pulled back into the mountains, which provided rugged terrain better suited to guerrilla tactics. By fighting in areas that were impassable for Soviet tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, the Mujahideen could negate many of the Fortieth Army’s technological advantages. The Mujahideen proved particularly adept at setting ambushes for Soviet patrols and launching surprise raids. The insurgents generally avoided engagements with superior forces. When pressed, the rebels retreated. When forced to fight, either in defense of critical bases or in the case of encirclement, the Mujahideen engaged in close-quarters combat with Soviet troops, thereby preventing Soviet artillery and aircraft from supporting soldiers on the ground. In response, Soviet commanders decided to concentrate on eliminating the rebel’s regional strongholds.43
These large-scale operations comprised the second and bloodiest stage of the war, lasting from 1980 to 1985. Soviet commanders continued to focus on holding cities and roads while pacifying the surrounding countryside. In retaliation for frequent ambushes along the roads, Soviet forces razed neighboring villages. In time, the highways were lined with the shells of burned-out vehicles and ruined buildings. Soviet commanders also planted hundreds of thousands of mines throughout the country in an effort to protect their garrisons and interdict Mujahideen supply routes. Many of the explosives were plastic “butterfly mines,” scattered by aircraft across large swaths of territory.44
The increasing violence sparked opposition among the population. In February 1980, the Karmal regime began cracking down on political dissent in the capital. Political activists encouraged shopkeepers to shutter their stalls and distributed antigovernment leaflets denouncing the regime and calling on the Soviets to leave the country. On February 21, state security forces arrested two hundred suspected members of the underground in a bid to crush the movement. As night fell, cries of “Allahu Akbar” rang out through the streets in a show of defiance against the authorities. The next morning, crowds formed in Kabul’s old quarter and began marching toward the city center. They were met by government troops along the Salang Watt thoroughfare, who used loudspeakers to order the procession to disperse and fired warning shots into the air. After the crowds refused to disband, some of the troops opened fire. The demonstrators then fled into the warren of surrounding streets, some taking refuge in mosques, others looting shops. Demonstrators swarmed through other sections of the city as well. In an apparent mutiny, police officers in the Khushal Maina neighborhood came out in support of the protestors. Soviet troops appeared around midday in armored vehicles while helicopters swooped overhead. Sporadic clashes continued until nightfall, when security forces restored order. Though estimates of the dead ran as high as two thousand, the real number, according to one eyewitness, was probably closer to four hundred. The uprising marked the beginning of increased state repression and urban resistance in the capital. “Not a night passed without shops being looted or houses searched [by government forces] and their inhabitants molested or insulted and their valuables taken,” remembered one resident.45
THE MUJAHIDEEN
Initial resistance to the Soviet occupation was largely spontaneous. For centuries, Afghans had found themselves caught between intrusive foreign empires, and fierce independence had long ago become ingrained in their national culture. When the Soviets arrived at the end of 1979, the Mujahideen were made up of mostly local volunteers operating in unorganized bands. Led by tribal and village leaders and fighting with colonial-era rifles, stolen government guns, muskets, and swords, they staged raids on government garrisons to steal weapons and loot supplies. Many of these materials ended up in bazaars throughout the country as the rebels sold off their spoils to provide for their families back home. But the Soviet occupation transformed this unorganized, local resistance by internationalizing the war. Leaders in neighboring countries (particularly Pakistan) worried about creeping Soviet influence on their frontiers. Likewise, governments in the region and farther afield, such as in the United States, Egypt, China, and Saudi Arabia, worried that the Soviet intervention was the first step in a campaign aimed at expanding Moscow’s influence in the Middle East. The Soviet intervention opened the door for a variety of outside forces to enter Afghanistan through the auspices of providing aid to rebel fighters. This foreign aid transformed the Mujahideen into organized, well-armed, well-financed guerrilla groups. But it also connected the rebels to outside ideological influence, much of it Islamic in character.46
Throughout the Cold War, U.S. officials had toyed with the idea of using Islam as a means to mobilize the Muslim world against the Soviet Union. By choosing to invade a Muslim country, State Department officers recognized, the Kremlin risked angering Islamic communities around the world. In January 1980, only days after the Soviet intervention, the Egyptian government convened an emergency meeting to consider the best response to the invasion. Egyptian officials resolved to establish training facilities and financial aid for the Afghan Mujahideen and to convene an Islamic summit on developments in Afghanistan. Three weeks later, some ten thousand people participated in an anti-Soviet demonstration at the state-controlled Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, beneath a banner that read, “Soviets, Kabul Will Be Your Grave.” Leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood addressed the crowd, and Islamic students called for Cairo to sever all ties with Moscow.47
While Muslim groups around the Arab world began organizing against the Soviet intervention, Afghanistan’s neighbor, Pakistan, provided the principal staging ground for what was to become a global jihad against the Soviet occupation. And Pakistan’s president, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, would be its mastermind. Zia would be the longest-serving head of state in Pakistan, ruling the country for over eleven years. His arched eyebrows sat atop a stern gaze made more severe by the carefully manicured mustache typical of many military officers trained in the British system. Born in the Punjab, Zia had served with the British Indian Army in Burma during World War II, before joining the Pakistani military in 1947. In 1967, he was posted in Jordan, where he worked training the Hashemite military forces. Zia rose to prominence in September 1970, when he led government forces against Palestinian guerrillas in the Jordanian Civil War—also known as Black September. The posting also kept him away from the disastrous 1971 India-Pakistan War, leaving him among the few military leaders untainted by the defeat. A new government in Islamabad, under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, brought Zia back to Pakistan and raised him to the rank of major general. Five years later, Bhutto made Zia army chief of staff. In July 1977, Zia led a military coup against the increasingly unpopular Bhutto, arresting the prime minister and placing the military in control of Pakistan.
Once in power, Zia launched a sweeping campaign to bring Islam into the Pakistani state and military. He strengthened ties to the Islamic party Jami’at-e-Islami and institutionalized Islam within the military. Under Zia, the army’s motto was changed to “Faith, Obedience to God, and Struggle in the Path of Allah.” Meanwhile, the number of Islamic schools in Pakistan ballooned from around nine hundred in 1971 to more than eight thousand by 1988. Zia also enlarged Pakistan’s intelligence bureau, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), from around two thousand staff in 1978 to some forty thousand by 1988. By the end of his rule, ISI had grown into a massive and feared organization that penetrated all sectors of the Pakistani state and society. One ISI official would later describe the agency as “probably the most powerful and influential organization in the country.” Zia would also guide the regime through what was about to become a massive covert war with Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The convergence of Zia’s Islamization of the Pakistani state and Islamabad’s central role in channeling international support to the Mujahideen would help transform the war and the larger region.48
For leaders in Islamabad, the Soviet push into Afghanistan seemed to represent a very real threat. If the Kremlin truly was seeking to expand its influence in South Asia and to create a beachhead on the Persian Gulf, Pakistan might represent the next logical target after Afghanistan. But if the Soviet Army was bogged down fighting a bloody and expensive war in Afghanistan, Moscow would be dissuaded from pushing southward into Pakistan. Zia understood, however, that too much aid to the Mujahideen might provoke the Kremlin into attacking Pakistan. He told ISI to make sure that the conflict in Afghanistan continued to “boil at the right temperature.” A staff of several dozen officers and a few hundred junior military personnel dressed in plainclothes ran the secret war out of an ISI office in Rawalpindi, directing arms shipments, setting up financial transactions, and coordinating contacts among U.S., British, and Saudi intelligence and Mujahideen commanders. Meanwhile, the ISI set up a total of seven camps in Pakistan that would train more than eighty thousand rebel fighters by the end of the war. The most dangerous jobs, however, went to the clandestine ISI military advisors who fought alongside Mujahideen inside Afghanistan. To provide Islamabad plausible deniability if they were killed or captured, these advisors wore no uniforms and carried no identity cards.49
But Zia’s strategy reached beyond the immediate war. As journalist Steve Coll later argued, Pakistani officials were “fighting a different war than we were.” Pakistan sat on the front line of the war against the Soviet Union, and the battle for Afghanistan carried enormous regional implications for Islamabad. In particular, Zia and his colleagues focused on what would happen after a Soviet withdrawal. “They feared that the vacuum that Afghanistan might become would be a staging ground for Indian mischief and Indian hostility toward Pakistan,” Coll explained. India loomed as Islamabad’s “existential rival” against which Pakistan had fought and lost three wars, most recently in 1971. Pakistani officials looked to promote militant Islamic groups in Afghanistan as a means of containing Indian influence in a post-Soviet Afghanistan.50
While the ISI coordinated the secret war in Afghanistan, the United States served as its quartermaster. By 1986, Washington was spending six hundred million dollars a year (an amount that Arab Gulf states matched) to support the war. Pakistan was quickly transformed into a “strategic hub of American policy” in the region. The massive influx of aid propped up Zia’s regime but also helped create a thriving black market for illicit arms. Karachi served as the port of call for CIA small-arms shipments. Rampant corruption at the local and state level ensured that many of the weapons made their way into the city’s bazaars, where they helped contribute to skyrocketing levels of crime. Those arms that made it into Mujahideen hands in Afghanistan were delivered on trucks that, once emptied, were loaded with Afghan heroin that made its way back into Pakistan. The war transformed Karachi into a city crawling with drug traffickers, ISI agents, Afghan rebels, and foreign intelligence officers.51
This CIA-ISI aid pipeline transformed Afghanistan as well. While U.S. and Arab governments bankrolled much of the war, ISI coordinated the distribution of aid to no fewer than seven competing Mujahideen organizations. This arrangement left Pakistani officials in charge of deciding which rebel groups received weapons and, ultimately, gave ISI a hand in deciding how those weapons should be used. In practice, ISI sent nearly two-thirds of military aid to Islamic groups. Zia’s Islamization of the Pakistani state and military bled into Afghanistan through the CIA-funded pipeline. Rebel leaders who refused Islamabad’s directives could expect to see their aid packages cut. In short order, the pro-Pakistani, Islamic Mujahideen organizations became the best-armed, best-funded rebel groups in Afghanistan. Nationalist and secular forces found themselves competing against better-supplied Islamic rivals with deep ties to ISI. Furthermore, because Islamabad’s goal was to create a Soviet quagmire in Afghanistan, ISI officials chose to reinforce the division of Mujahideen forces. Rather than create a unified command structure that would have allowed the rebels to control their own affairs and raised the prospect of fueling Pashtun nationalism, Pakistan continued to divvy supplies among rival Mujahideen groups. In addition to flooding the country with weapons, the CIA-ISI program promoted warlordism, Islamization, and division and increased Pakistani influence inside Afghanistan.52
CIA and ISI officials worked with the commanders of seven principal Mujahideen organizations through the Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahideen, or as CIA officers called them, the Peshawar Seven. The seven rival guerrilla factions functioned as an uneasy coalition united by a shared desire to drive the Soviet Fortieth Army out of Afghanistan. Six of the seven groups were Pashtun—Pashtuns represented the demographic plurality in Afghanistan, making up some 40 percent of the total population—with the Jami’at-e-Islami serving as the only Tajik organization. Three commanders, in particular, would emerge as leaders in the movement: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and Ahmad Shah Massoud. Each was affiliated with an Islamic party. Each, moreover, later emerged as a challenger for power in Afghanistan after the war ended.
Hekmatyar was the ISI’s favorite. Born in 1947 in northern Afghanistan, he quickly distinguished himself as a talented youth. From 1970 to 1972, he pursued an engineering degree at Kabul University, before being arrested for the murder of a fellow student. After his release the following year, Hekmatyar joined the organization Muslim Youth, where he emerged as the rival of another student at Kabul, Ahmad Shah Massoud. Hekmatyar split away from the organization in 1975 to form the more radical Hezb-e Islami party. After the failed uprising in 1975, Hekmatyar and many of his supporters fled to Pakistan, where they established connections with the ISI. Following the Kremlin’s invasion of Afghanistan, the Zia regime naturally looked to Hekmatyar and the Hezb-e Islami as allies in the war against the Fortieth Army. Hezb-e Islami claimed to have twenty-seven provincial organizations in Afghanistan, but its strength was concentrated in Paktia and Nangarhar Provinces. “He was a nasty guy,” one CIA officer remembered. “In the late seventies he was a Pakistani agent and the Pakistanis used him as an instrument.” U.S. officials, who had little understanding of Mujahideen politics, simply went along with Islamabad’s recommendations. Journalist Peter Bergen explained that “Hekmatyar’s party had the dubious distinctions of never winning a significant battle during the war, training a variety of militant Islamists from around the world, killing significant numbers of mujahideen from other parties, and taking a virulently anti-Western line.” In 1982, State Department intelligence noted that Hekmatyar’s forces had engaged in frequent “turf fights” with other rebel groups, so much so that rival Mujahideen had begun to coordinate “partly in self-defense against [Hekmatyar’s] followers.” Hekmatyar’s priorities, in retrospect, seem to have focused less on fighting the Soviets than on being in a position to take power once they left.53
Ahmad Shah Massoud presented a stark contrast to Hekmatyar. Born in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley and raised in Kabul, the Tajik leader was perhaps the most effective Mujahideen military commander. He studied engineering at Kabul University, where he joined Muslim Youth. When Hekmatyar split away from the organization to form the Hezb-e Islami in 1975, Massoud remained loyal to the more moderate Jami’at-e-Islami, led by Burhanuddin Rabbani. Moderate and pragmatic, Massoud led the military wing of the party, and his battlefield prowess quickly earned him an international reputation. While he was no darling of the Pakistani ISI, journalists seemed taken with the young commander. “Massoud has displayed such leadership and knowledge of guerrilla warfare,” one foreign correspondent wrote, “that he has earned a reputation here in Afghanistan not unlike that of Che Guevara.” Another commented, “I wouldn’t be surprised if in all of Afghanistan, the Russians fear—I mean truly fear—only one man: Massoud. He represents the best hope for the country, the best hope of developing a movement that can restore Afghan independence.”
An earnest and by all accounts mild-mannered man, Massoud usually appeared in a military jacket, combat trousers, and a traditional rounded Afghan cap. His forces controlled the sixty-mile-long Panjshir Valley, which commanded the approaches to two of the major passes through the Hindu Kush and was home to the largest concentration of Tajiks in Afghanistan. It also sat in a position to menace the Salang Tunnel, a treacherous 1.6-mile-long passage cut into the mountains through which the Soviets moved massive amounts of supplies. As a natural choke point, the tunnel and its surroundings became one of the war’s most important strategic positions.
As the commander of the Mujahideen in the Panjshir, Massoud (nicknamed the Lion of Panjshir) became one of the most important Afghan leaders of the war. In organizing his troops, he instituted a new military structure that split his forces into separate military commands, with guerrilla garrisons, mobile commando units, and a special strike force. More than simply a military leader, he displayed uncommon political acumen, appointing economic, political, and religious committees in each of the districts he controlled. The committees collected taxes, distributed welfare, ran schools, and administered a judicial system. Unlike most other Mujahideen commanders, Massoud impressed reporters as moderate, democratic, and relatively pro-Western. His reputation would continue to grow as he survived multiple assassination attempts launched by the KGB, the ISI, and rival Mujahideen leaders. His luck would run out, however, on September 9, 2001—two days before the 9/11 attacks—when two suspected agents from Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization, posing as journalists, detonated a suicide bomb during an interview with the guerrilla commander.54
While Hekmatyar and Massoud were the most prominent Mujahideen commanders during the war, another, Jalaluddin Haqqani, would rise to prominence in the decades after. An ethnic Pashtun from Afghanistan’s southeastern Paktia Province, Haqqani earned advanced degrees in religious studies at the Dar al-’Ulum Haqqaniyya madrasa outside Peshawar. While Hekmatyar and Massoud had engineering backgrounds, Haqqani was a religious scholar. Following the 1978 revolution, Haqqani, together with many of his former comrades from Haqqaniyya, formed what became known as the Haqqani network. Haqqani’s forces controlled a significant stretch of the tribal highlands in the Loya Paktia region, along the border with Pakistan. This territory formed an ideal staging area for Pakistani aid—it was largely impervious to Soviet incursions and reasonably close to Kabul and Jalalabad. Working with the Haqqani network and Saudi contractors, ISI used CIA and Arab funds to build the formidable Zhawar base and supply depot in Khost. Approximately 20 percent of the total CIA and ISI aid sent into Afghanistan was allocated to Haqqani’s forces operating out of Zhawar. There, Haqqani used his religious training, strategic position, and access to massive resources to fuse Islamic theology with the struggle against the Soviet occupation. His most notable success was in establishing lasting ties with Islamic patrons in the Arab world. Though these ties generated aid and supplies in the early 1980s, by the later years of the war, Haqqani was bringing in substantial numbers of Arab volunteers to join the jihad against the Soviet occupation. He was among the first and most successful Mujahideen to argue that support for the Afghan jihad was a religious obligation for all observant Muslims. Under his guidance, Afghanistan would become the training ground for a new generation of Arab Islamic fighters. Haqqani, together with the so-called Afghan Arabs, would play a critical role in globalizing the jihad.55
Though it was officially clandestine, Soviet leaders were well aware of the CIA-ISI aid pipeline. In October 1980, Soviet defense minister Ustinov issued a report outlining the “foreign interference” in Afghanistan. In the wake of the 1978 revolution, he reported, Washington; its NATO allies; and China, Pakistan, Iran, and several Arab states had “launched subversive actions” against the PDPA regime. “The USA and its allies,” he wrote, “are training, equipping and sending into DRA territory armed formations of the Afghan counterrevolution . . . [which] had become the main factor destabilizing the situation in Afghanistan.” American, Chinese, Pakistani, and Egyptian instructors were training more than sixty thousand Mujahideen at forty-two sites across Pakistan. Iran was operating some thirteen rebel training camps in its territory. Meanwhile, Washington was sending weapons to the rebels through third-party countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The CIA was particularly interested in using “religious movements and groups in the struggle against the spread of Communist influence,” and the “Afghan section” in the U.S. consulate in Karachi was encouraging the disparate Mujahideen factions to form a single unified command.56 Soviet intelligence warned that the CIA had begun infiltrating rebels trained in Texas and California in January 1980 and had completed the construction of a training camp in Sarab Rud, Pakistan, in March.57
IF KHOMEINI’S IRAN FORMED THE EPICENTER OF THE great sectarian revolt, Afghanistan constituted its largest battlefield. The war against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan would become the crucible out of which a new kind of revolutionary war would emerge. In hidden bases deep in the Hindu Kush Mountains, a new breed of insurgent would be born. This transformation was nurtured by a global network of support made possible by the unique geopolitical realities of the late Cold War. Although still in its nascent stages, the covert program to aid the Mujahideen consummated the shadowy partnership between the Mujahideen and U.S., Pakistani, Chinese, and Saudi intelligence services. For most of the next decade, Washington, Islamabad, Beijing, and Riyadh bankrolled a network of Islamic militants engaged in a brutal struggle against the Soviet Army. It was now clear that the Soviets faced a far tougher fight in Afghanistan than they had anticipated. As the winter of 1980 approached, all sides dug in for a long, brutal war.