What We Won: America's Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979–89

8. Endgames Without End

128 chapter eIght endgaMes WIthout end the afghan War went on without the Soviet army. Moscow and Washington provided arms to the communists and mujahedin for another three years, then both lost interest. Afghanistan would descend into a bloody and endless civil war among the various mujahedin factions, with Abdul Rashid Dostum as a key participant. Later a new movement, the Taliban, would emerge and take over most of the country. Endless strategies to win the war would be devised by one side or another, but none succeeded and resulted in a real endgame. Then the 9/11 attacks brought the United States back to Afghanistan and into yet another long war without an endgame. The tangled history of Afghanistan after 1989 is beyond the scope of this book, which focuses on the covert war in the 1980s. Nonetheless, some review of the last two decades of war in Afghanistan is needed to understand why the CIA war in the 1980s succeeded and to determine what lessons the war offers for the future. Bush’s War George Bush inherited a world in transition, one that was changing at a dizzying pace from the world of Ronald Reagan. The cold war, which had dominated global politics for a half-century, was coming to a rapid end. Bush came into office with impressive credentials for the job: he had been director of central intelligence, ambassador to China, and ambassador to the UN as well as a congressman and vice president of the nation. He assembled a solid team to run his foreign policy from the White House, including Brent Scowcroft, an experienced air force officer, 08-2595-4 ch8.indd 128 4/30/14 2:13 PM endgaMes WIthout end 129 as national security adviser and Bob Gates, from the CIA, as deputy national security adviser. Afghanistan was still a key issue in early 1989, when the Soviet withdrawal and the covert war were still under way. But, as usual, it was Pakistan that commanded more attention in Washington. On November 16, 1988, Benazir Bhutto won Pakistan’s first relatively fair and free elections in a decade, becoming prime minister at 35 years of age. She inherited from Zia an army and an ISI that were deeply suspicious of her. She, in turn, was deeply suspicious of the army and the ISI, which she despised for her years in prison and exile after her father’s execution. She felt that her victory had come despite a concerted effort by the ISI and Osama bin Laden to defeat her and elect her opponent, Nawaz Sharif.1 She was right. After she took office, the ISI told her that the mujahedin would sweep to victory quickly once the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan in 1989. The CIA gave President George Bush the same estimate.2 However, it did not turn out that way. The communist government in Kabul, which did not fall from power until 1992, outlived the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Early in his administration, Bush invited Bhutto to Washington for a formal state visit, the first of his administration and the highest honor that he could pay a visiting foreign leader. He assured her that the CIA would continue to provide arms for the mujahedin and that Pakistan would continue to have the backing of the United States. U.S. policy, which had helped defeat the Soviets, stayed on autopilot, determined to quickly defeat the Afghan communists next. It failed. The key reason for the failure was a strategic miscalculation by Hamid Gul, the new ISI director. Gul decided that since the Soviets were gone, the mujahedin should move from guerilla to conventional warfare, and the CIA agreed to support that strategy. The first target would be the city of Jalalabad, on the road from the Khyber Pass to Kabul. The siege that followed would be a terrible mistake. The mujahedin were simply not ready to conduct a conventional military siege against an enemy with artillery, tanks, Scud missiles, and air power. The Afghan communist army held off the mujahedin, and the stalemate led to bitter recriminations among the mujahedin factions. After that debacle, Bhutto engineered Gul’s removal from his position as director of the ISI. Gul would go on to become a public advocate for the Taliban, the Kashmiri insurgency, and Osama bin 08-2595-4 ch8.indd 129 4/30/14 2:13 PM 130 endgaMes...