Harry Targ
"The War in Afghanistan: How It Started and How It Is Ending”
“Weeks after Al Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11, President George W. Bush announced that American forces had launched attacks against the terrorist group and Taliban targets in Afghanistan.” David Zucchino, New York Times, August 8, 2021.htps://www.nytimes.com/article/afghanistan-war-us.html?referringSource=articleShare, (
Why did the United States invade Afghanistan? The New York Times Story Begins 20 Years too late
When the Soviet Union sent 85,000 of its troops to Afghanistan in late December, 1979, President Carter declared that the United States was forced to return to Cold War military preparedness. But, in fact, the Carter administration had been escalating military commitments and operations throughout 1979, months before the Soviet action.
In a brief televised address two weeks after the Soviet invasion, the President
denounced it as “a deliberate effort by a powerful atheistic government to
subjugate an independent Islamic people.” He said it threatened “both Iran and
Pakistan” and was “a stepping-stone” for the Soviets possible control “over
much of the world’s oil supplies.”
The President followed his brief condemnation with a lengthy State of the Union
address to the American people on January 21, 1980. In it he announced some
extraordinary changes in United States foreign policy that constituted a
decisive return to Cold War with the Soviet Union.
The changes Carter initiated included the following: reduction of grain sales
to the Soviet Union; curtailment of high technology trade with them;
postponement of ratification of the SALT II arms control agreement; enlarging
strategic forces; beefing up NATO forces; establishing a Caribbean Joint Task
Force Headquarters; unleashing the CIA; installing a program of draft
registration; and providing more military assistance to Pakistan, South Korea,
and Thailand.
Perhaps the most important policy change was the establishment of a 100,000
person military “rapid deployment force” which could be instantly mobilized in
crisis situations. And he proclaimed that the Persian Gulf was vital to U.S.
security interests and would be protected; what became known as the Carter
Doctrine.
All these announced changes were billed by administration spokespersons as a
response to the duplicitous Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Ultimately, they
said, the Soviets wanted to invade Iran, secure Persian Gulf oil, secure warm
water ports, and expand their Asian empire. The U.S., they argued, had to
respond to this expansion of the Cold War.
But a careful examination of the events of 1979 prior to the Soviet invasion
suggests a different timeline and interpretation. In January, 1979, the Shah of
Iran, the closest of U.S. allies, was toppled in a revolution. Carter aides
initially had urged him to send troops to Teheran to save our Persian Gulf cop
from ouster but the revolution came too fast to save the Shah.
After Iran, in the Caribbean and Central America revolutions occurred in tiny
Grenada (March, 1979) and historically anti-Communist Nicaragua (July, 1979).
There was a coup by military reformers in El Salvador (October, 1979). In early
November, 1979, Iranian students took approximately 70 U.S. government
representatives hostage.
The administration perceived itself as being threatened by the spread of
hostile regimes and movements and the collapse of the vital ally in Iran was
deemed the most critical to U.S. interests. As a result of all these crises,
Carter began military rearmament, secured new bases, tried to undermine the
changes occurring in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and allowed
the Shah of Iran to enter the United States in October, 1979 for medical
treatment.
Inside the Carter administration, foreign policy decision makers feared the
collapse of U.S. power around the world. However, they felt the United States could
not respond because of the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome.” That is, decision
makers believed that most Americans opposed a return to militarism and
interventionism.
Then, fortunately for the Carter team, the Soviet Union, fearful of the
collapse of an allied regime in Kabul and increasingly seeing itself as
encircled by China in the East and a beefed up NATO in the West, sent troops
into Afghanistan. The Soviet Union fell into a trap set by the Carter
Administration.
What was the nature of this trap? Well, Jimmy Carter’s National Security
Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in an interview given to the French
newspaper, Le Nouvel Observateur in January, 1998, said that
official CIA accounts which say the United States began to support rebels in
Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion were lies. In fact, he said, “…it was
July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to
the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.” The National Security advisor
said he wrote the President “…that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a
Soviet military intervention.”
Brzezinski told Carter that the Soviets would probably intervene in Afghanistan
if we funded rebels and that they, the Soviets, would then be buried in their
own Vietnam. In retrospect, he said, the Soviet incursion led to the collapse
of the Soviet Union and its “empire.” He suggested that the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism was of minor concern compared to the threat of international
communism.
Reflecting back thirty years, the following conclusions seem justified. First
the United States returned to an aggressive Cold War policy not after the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan but before it.
Second, President Carter announced a broad array of aggressive policies toward
the Soviet Union after the Soviet invasion but these were in place or in the
process of development before the Soviet moves of December, 1979.
Third, the United States began funding the various fundamentalist groups to
fight against the secular and modernizing regime in Kabul before the Soviets
sent troops. And that led subsequently, as the Center for Defense Information
estimated, to the United States funneling $2 billion to rebel forces in
Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Fourth, the war on the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul destroyed efforts to
modernize the tradition-bound country. Women, who had become active
participants in public life and the economy in the 1980s lost control of their
lives after the pro-Soviet regime collapsed. In general, an estimated one
million Afghans died in the 1980s from war and repression and some five million
fled the country.
We know about what happened after the troubled 1980s in Afghanistan. The Soviet
troops withdrew. After a time, the secular regime in Kabul was ousted from
power. Competing fundamentalist militias vied for control of the state. The
Taliban consolidated their power by 1996. Then the United States launched its
public war on Afghanistan in October, 2001. But, the record suggests, the
United States initiated its war on the country as far back as July, 1979.
The pain and suffering of the peoples of Afghanistan have a long history before
and since the United States intervened in their political lives in 1979. Many
outside powers share responsibility for their plight. But today’s situation
directly relates to the covert war the United States encouraged and funded from
the summer of 1979.
