Afghan Warlords, Formerly Backed By the CIA, Now Turn Their Guns On U.S. Troops
They defeated the Soviets with Washington’s help, but now they attack Americans as the new occupiers
KABUL—The war in Afghanistan reached a wrenching milestone this summer: For the second month in a row, U.S. and coalition troop deaths in the country surpassed casualties in Iraq. This is driven in large part, U.S. officials point out, by simple cause and effect. Marines flowed into southern Afghanistan earlier this year to rout firmly entrenched Taliban fighters, prompting a spike in combat in territory where NATO forces previously didn't have the manpower to send troops. "We're doing something we haven't done in seven years, which is go after the Taliban where they're living," says a U.S. official.
But amid a well-coordinated assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai and large-scale bombings last week in the capitals of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. forces are keenly aware that they are facing an increasingly complex enemy here—what U.S. military officials now call a syndicate—composed not only of Taliban fighters but also powerful warlords who were once on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency. "You could almost describe the insurgency as having two branches," says a senior U.S. military official here. "It's the Taliban in the south and a 'rainbow coalition' in the east."
Indeed, along with a smattering of Afghan tribal groups, Pakistani extremists, and drug kingpins, two of the most dangerous players are violent Afghan Islamists named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, according to U.S. officials. In recent weeks, Hekmatyar has called upon Pakistani militants to attack U.S. targets, while the Haqqani network is blamed for three large vehicle bombings, along with the attempted assassination of Karzai in April.
Ironically, these two warlords—currently at the top of America's list of most wanted men in Afghanistan—were once among America's most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army during its occupation of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985.
"He was the most radical of the radicals," recalls former Rep. Charlie Wilson, immortalized in the recent film Charlie Wilson's War for his role in directing U.S. military aid to anti-Soviet Afghan warlords. "He didn't hate us as much as he hated the Soviets," he adds, "but he sure didn't like us much." In his early years, the warlord distinguished himself by throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women. Today, a senior defense official says Hekmatyar is "as vicious as they come." In 2002, the CIA shot a Hellfire missile from an unmanned drone in an effort to kill him.
U.S. officials had an even higher opinion of Haqqani, who was considered the most effective rebel warlord. "I adored Haqqani. When I was in Afghanistan, Haqqani was the guy who made sure I would get out," says Wilson. "He was a marvelous leader and very beloved in his territory."
Haqqani was also one of the leading advocates of the so-called Arab Afghans, deftly organizing Arab volunteer fighters who came to wage jihad against the Soviet Union and helping to protect future al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Today, U.S. military officials are not certain that Haqqani is alive, though he was featured in an undated video that recently surfaced. "Either way, the Haqqani we're fighting now is the son"—34-year-old Sirajuddin Haqqani—says the senior U.S. military official. "He gets a lot of benefit from his father's prestige."
Today, the Haqqani network is driving the recent rise in violence in eastern Afghanistan, according to U.S. military officials. Haqqani "is definitely the strongest" enemy in the border provinces of Paktia, Paktika, and Khost, known among military officials as p2k. The senior U.S. military official notes that Haqqani is increasingly moving to more-asymmetric means of attack to avoid straight-on shootouts with better-armed U.S. forces, a general tactical guidance that came from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar last year. To that end, U.S. military officials estimate that they have seen a 10 percent rise in use of roadside bombs, which now account for one third of the attacks against coalition forces in the country.
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Reader Comments
Rights
People in other countries or even this country have a right to rebel and to interpede upon their rebellion is the same as restricting freedom. The government should not try to force its will upon other countries as it has done before, but instead it should leave other countries to their internal affairs and focus on our own.
Turn it all into glass
You might have seen my banner above the Dulles Toll Road that said F___ the middle east. (Explicative removed)
Maybe if we stopped being the world police, we wouldn't have so many problems.
We should probably spend a little more time securing our own borders.
Which "Ex-Allies"?
Re: "CIA's Ex-Allies Have Become Deadly Foes", by Anna Mulrine, US News, 21-28 July 2008.
There are few things about the US chattering class that can get my blood boiling faster and hotter than its incessantly myopic concentration on "US troop levels" in Afghanistan. In this case, I was further baited by the entirely misleading term "ex-allies" in the article's title. At first I thought the term was referring to our brave "ex-allies" in that ridiculously useless anachronism still euphemistically called "NATO" - now made up of nearly useless Old European girly men and Sunday soldiers who, in Afghanistan, are little more than traffic cops playing "soldier", but only where they are certain not to get hurt.
The reason that "troop levels" in Afghanistan are below what would seem prudent is solely because the Old Europeans, following their very long-standing duplicitous practice, have consistently dragged their feet on meeting their original and subsequent troop, equipment and financial commitments to that very troubled nation -- commitments which secured them a seat at the US military command table. "Promise the moon; deliver a stone." This is the way the pompous Old European brass are always able to get "command" of the only soldiers in the West who are actually willing to fight - American and UK ground soldiers and Marines.
And the American chattering class always bends over backwards to give the Old Europeans a pass on meeting their fair-share commitments and instead place the entire burden on the backs of American ground soldiers. This makes the American chattering class the best propaganda and public relations machine the self-involved Old Europeans ever had. It's as if that chattering class is dedicated solely to grinding down their own military! After all, it was this same chattering class which in 1990 was campaigning so loudly for cutting the US military strength in half – summarily firing a million people -- and spending the resultant "peace dividend" on domestic vote-buying wants.
The two Afghani leaders discussed in the article are predictably and adroitly reacting to realities on the ground. They are, at the very least, smart enough to "seize the moment", which is more than can be said of the pathetic American political, foreign affairs and chattering class "leadership", screaming silly orders from the very safe rear.
In case no one has noticed, Afghanistan, like Bosnia, Kosovo, etc., is IN OLD EUROPE's BACK YARD!! Why is it necessary for the US military to go half way around the world to meet Old Europe's responsibilities in their own neighborhood, to be the only actual fighting force that does the fighting AND dying, to be the only country that actually delivers on its promises? The European Union now has both a population and an economy greater than the US – but it STILL meets only about 20% of European defense costs and almost none of the actual fighting soldier contribution. Hello?! The gigantic European defense industry has now even moved very heavily to the US in order to feed at the American taxpayer trough because its own people are too smart to buy all those expensive toys that will never be used.
With a brainless chattering class still singing the same old song from the 1980s, the United States has become the dumbest country on the planet. Was the simple dichotomy of the "Cold" War so enticing that everyone longs to return to it? Is the complexity of the new world too confusing for our legions of poorly educated and intellectually challenged? Is this why we so stupidly keep pushing Russia into a corner, rather than join that actually proud nation deeply in need of help for common world objectives? Or would that make solution of dozens of major global problems far too easy? Just how stupid is it possible to get?
If the United States still had a single actual leader left capable of actual original thought, one who actually leads from the front instead of religiously following the polls of naive Americans and a sclerotic chattering class, instead of still following long out-dated text books, we would have walked away from that silly "NATO" charade in the early 1990s, when it's mission had concluded, and forged a totally new alliance designed specifically for the real world of the 21st century around a US-Russia-UK axis. The Old Europeans would be welcome to join that central core, but ONLY on a fully equitable basis. And US ground soldiers would be able to stand with other actual soldiers of both Russia AND the UK, while ordering the others to "shape up or ship out".
Instead, we keep running on brainless autopilot with thinking done for us by our long-gone grandfathers -- for totally different world realities. It's as if all the twits in DC (and New York) learned all the right answers on the old tests, but can't figure out how to come up with new tests for new realities, much less think outside the old tests. As an American fighting man with his own brains, I find this embarrassingly humiliating. Is there NO ONE left in DC, or in that huge chattering class, with an independently functioning brain? Why is all the rhetoric still the exact same rhetoric from the 1980s? The "Cold" War is over!
It's long past the time to embrace the realities of an entirely different world – a world in which the US is no longer the only player on the block, a world which will inevitably see the US decline steadily in global influence. It's time to stop beating a dead horse and re-think and re-shape our entire world view - one if which the simpleminded answer to everything is NOT to send American ground soldiers all over the globe to die! Never before in American history has this nation been so totally devoid of bold innovative thinking leadership as it has been for the past fifteen years. This has been a completely dismal period on one great missed opportunity after another, a period of a whole nation running on auto-pilot an incredible 15 years after the course should have changed dramatically. I am a "pre-Boomer, born before WW II, and I keep wondering if the nation will survive long enough to see the super-spoiled do-nothing Baby Boomers finally get out of the way. All you have to do is look at their zero "solution" to the 1970s energy crisis to see what they are capable of.
You can take your "more US troops" and stick it in your ear! Sure, "there should be another 20,000 marines" in Afghanistan. But what idiot says these marines have to be American Marines? And this notion that the US Army can simply pull divisions of Regular ground soldiers out of Iraq and scoot them over to Afghanistan is ignorantly idiotic at best. These few real American fighting men are NOT machines, and they have more than earned their right to come home. Send other soldiers out of the States if they are needed. If there are not enough of them, then how many of the pontificating chattering class, our hallowed "opinion makers" still harping on yesteryear's tired old themes, are willing to sign up for the job? Far better yet, have them force the Old Europeans to ante up. How many of our "brilliant" chattering class are finally willing to start holding Old Europe's feet to the fire, to have them finally start re-paying some old debts? I spent most of my life defending them; what have they ever done for me or my nation?
Or is Anna Mulrine just another of those millions of self-anointed "special" people who always expect "someone else" to do the hard stuff they want done? There is only ONE way to lead – from the front, through experience, by example. Do it, or, please, shut up. And, most of all, THINK! Don't just recite the old text books to me. But, please, don't try to sell me a "leader" with a magic tongue who has little more actual experience than any other privileged teenager.
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