GULBUDDIN AND THE CIA

As many recent commentaries have noted, there was no unified command of Afghan “Mujahaddin” freedom fighters resisting the Soviet occupation of their country in the 1980s. There were about half a dozen major groups and a host of smaller ones.

The legendary commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, assassinated by OBL (Osama Bin Laden) agents just before The Atrocity, belonged to the “Jamiat” group led by Burhanuddin Rabbani. Qari Baba, the famous commander in Ghazni who looked like a cross between Buddha and Genghiz Khan, was part of the Harakat group. Ramatullah Safi was the most outstanding commander of the Gailani group. Abdul Haq was the same for the Younis Khalis group.

With one exception, all of these groups and commanders pretty much cooperated with each other. Their political leaders met and worked together (I attended some of their meetings), their commanders and bands of fighters did the same (which I witnessed in the field). Rarely did they fight amongst themselves, but focused instead on their common enemy, the Shuravi — Afghan for Soviet Russians.

The exception was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the “Hezbis.” I went inside Afghanistan with every major Mujahaddin group – except for the Hezbis. I met Gulbuddin and interviewed him in August 1984 – and found him to be an Islamic Fascist, an admirer of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and a hater of America.

Everywhere I went inside Afghanistan in the 1980s, the story was always the same: the Hezbis spent their time fighting other Mujahaddin groups for turf instead of the Shuravi. Rather than fight for the freedom of Afghanistan, Gulbuddin hoarded his weapons, planning a takeover of his country once the other Mujahaddin had liberated it for him.

It may — or it may not — come as a surprise to learn that the CIA was obsessively insistent that the lion’s share of arms and support they gave to the Afghan Mujahaddin went to Gulbuddin. The term “obsessive” is in no way hyperbolic. The CIA’s obsession to support Gulbuddin in vast preference to all other Mujahaddin leaders bordered on the pathological.

Every CIA agent I ever talked to — especially the armchair analysts at Langley – – was insufferably condescending whenever I would state that Gulbuddin’s people did no fighting, that the other groups were begging for weapons while the Hezbis had an oversupply of weapons they didn’t use. The agents would patronizingly assure me their “intel” contradicted what I and every other independent observer who actually went into Afghanistan saw with our own eyes – – so we all must be wrong.

A number of United States Congressmen also had figured out that the CIA was lying about Gulbuddin’s effectiveness, and were well aware of the great danger he was to the future of Afghanistan. I once delivered a personally written note from one such Congressman to Burhanuddin Rabbani. We had met a number of times before, but on this occasion we had a long discussion. The note was an explicit request for Rabbani to have his people spare no effort to assassinate Gulbuddin.

“If you do not do this,” I explained to Rabbani and his chief aide, “Engineer” Abdul Rahim, “any victory the Afghans achieve over the Shuravi will result in chaos and disaster. Gulbuddin has to be killed, killed dead, if Afghanistan is to have any future and any freedom.”

After our discussion, the Congressman’s letter, of which no copies were made, was burned before my eyes. A few days later, Gulbuddin’s Toyota Land Cruiser blew up in Peshawar, Pakistan. Gulbuddin’s driver was killed, but Gulbuddin, although injured, survived. Subsequent attempts also failed.

When the Shuravi were forced to retreat in defeat in February, 1989, freedom for Afghanistan seemed clearly on the horizon. Yet right on schedule, Gulbuddin began his war for power. While Rabbani, as leader of the strongest and best organized freedom fighter group, attempted to put together a coherent government in Kabul, Gulbuddin began shelling the city. The CIA and their Pakistan counterpart, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) forced Rabbani to accept a coalition government with Gulbuddin as Prime Minister, and with it, the resignation of Massoud as his Defense Minister. Massoud’s departure as Defense Minister precipitated Afghanistan’s collapse into the utter chaos that made the Taliban possible.

Afghanistan, it must be understood, is an artificially created country, an ethnic hodge-podge glued together for the purpose of keeping the British Raj and the Russian Empire apart and not touching. Look at the map and you’ll see this narrow sliver of Afghan territory, the “Wakhan Corridor,” on the top right corner that goes all the way to China, barely separating what is now Tadjikistan (but in the late 1800s Russian Central Asia) and what is now Pakistan (but then British India).

Pakistan is similarly artificial, another ethnic stir-fry created as a refuge for Indian Moslems who didn’t want to be ruled by Indian Hindus (who outnumbered them 2-to-1) when India got its independence after WWII.

North of the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan, the ethnic majorities are Tadjik and Uzbek. South the main tribe is the Pushtuns. Pakistan is composed of Baluchi nomads in its south western deserts bordering Iran, Sindhis in the southern Indus region, Punjabis in the central Indus – and along the border with Afghanistan it’s all Pushtun. The Pak government has never exercised true sovereignty over the Pushtun area, known as the NWFA (North West Frontier Agency), and has always been terrified of the demand for an independent “Pushtunistan” breaking Pakistan apart.

It was this fear that caused the Paks to freak out when Afghanistan went completely anarchic. Gulbuddin was their Pushtun guy. The Tadjiks — Rabbani and Massoud – – were out. The Paks had gotten their wish and the Chinese proverb about being careful for what you wished for had become nightmarishly apropos. In desperation, they turned to a group of nutcase fanatics calling themselves “students” (“taliban”) although most of them were thoroughly illiterate. The ISI saw an opportunity for a business relationship in the bargain – – a joint venture to operate the heroin business.

Sixty percent of the world’s heroin comes out of Afghanistan. That only happens with the full cooperation of the governments involved — in this case the Taliban government in Afghanistan and the ISI “government within a government” in Pakistan. With the money from the heroin trade, the Taliban were able to bribe opposing commanders and proceeded to take over the country with hardly a battle. Only Massoud resisted. The Taliban chased Gulbuddin out of Kabul and into exile with his Islamic Fascist friends in Iran.

The point to all of this history is that the CIA’s buddy Gulbuddin has publicly announced – on September 18, one week after The Atrocity – his support for Osama Bin Laden and his intention to return to Afghanistan to join Al Qaeda.

The CIA owes Afghanistan an abject apology for its disgraceful support of this evil man. Were it not for this support, Afghanistan would have had a chance to stabilize in the 1990s, the Taliban would have not come to power, Al Qaeda would not have established a sanctuary under Taliban protection, and given that, The Atrocity of September 11 might never have occurred.

[Update: Gulbuddin re-entered Afghanistan to join with re-grouped Taliban forces in February, 2002. In May, 2002, a CIA Predator drone located Gulbuddin and fired a Hellfire missile, missing him but killing a number of his followers. On September 5, 2002, he organized an assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Kharzai in Kabul, killing a over a dozen people.

On February 19, 2003, the State Department issued this statement:
Designation of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as a Terrorist

The U.S. Government has information indicating that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has participated in and supported terrorist acts committed by al-Qa’ida and the Taliban. Because of his terrorist activity, the United States is designating Hekmatyar as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under the authority of Executive Order 13224. At the same time, the United States will request that the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee include Hekmatyar on its consolidated list of entities and individuals associated with Usama bin Laden, al-Qa’ida, and the Taliban, which would obligate all Member States to impose sanctions, including assets freezes, under UN Security Council Resolutions 1267, 1390, and 1455.

On April 5, 2004, US forces in Afghanistan announced the capture of Gulbuddin’s senior commander Amanullah. Gulbuddin himself remains at large. The CIA has yet to issue an explanation, much less an apology, for its support of Gulbuddin in the 1980s.]