Ghost Wars (106 page)

26. Milton Bearden, "Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires"; Bergen,
Holy War,
p. 57, citing in part translations of a slim biographical portrait of bin Laden in Arabic first published in 1991.

27. Ayman al-Zawahiri,
Knights Under the
Prophet's Banner,
FBIS translation.

28. Quotations are from Arab journalists and from activists.

29. "Up to $25 million per month" is an estimate from Bearden in "Afghanistan." The question of which of the Afghan mujahedin parties received what percentage of ISI weapons was debated at great length during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hamid Gul, Yousaf, and more than half a dozen U.S. officials directly involved all asserted that by the late 1980s, ISI and the CIA operated the pipeline by a rough rule of thumb: Hekmatyar received about 20 to 25 percent; Rabbani a similar amount; Younis Khalis and Sayyaf somewhat less. The three "moderate" factions recognized by ISI received 10 percent or less each. After 1987, ISI moved with CIA encouragement toward a system of "operational packaging" in which commanders, rather than political leaders, sometimes received weapons directly. What do all these statistics and supply system variations add up to? By all accounts the four main Islamists in the resistance-Hekmatyar, Rabbani, Khalis, and Sayyaf-received the greatest share of the official ISI-CIA-GID supply line. Hekmatyar himself probably did not receive as much raw material as the CIA's critics sometimes asserted, although he and Sayyaf clearly had the most access to private Arab funding and supplies, and Hekmatyar received preferential treatment by ISI's Afghan bureau for training and operations, especially after 1989. No detailed statistics about the CIA's covert supplies have ever been formally published by the U.S. government.

30. Interviews with U.S. officials, including former congressional aides who made visits to Pakistan while Bearden was station chief.

31. Interviews with U.S. officials familiar with ISI's Afghan bureau during this period.

32. Bearden's dialogue with Hekmatyar is from Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy,
pp. 282-83. Anderson, "a pretty good commander . . . as many scalps" and Bearden, "much, much more time . . . very angry with me," are from
Afghan Warrior: The Life and
Death of Abdul Haq,
a film by Touch Productions broadcast by the BBC, 2003. In his memoir, Bearden recalls his dialogue with Hekmatyar as confrontational and unyielding. The author has heard another account of their meetings from a well-informed U.S. official. This version supports Bearden's published account but is slightly different in tone. In this version Bearden tells Hekmatyar, "You don't like me, and I don't like you. I'm accused of giving you the lion's share. I wouldn't give you a fucking thing, but you've got commanders that are good." Hekmatyar replies, "I didn't say I didn't like you."

33. The English translations are from Politburo records provided by Anatoly Chenyaev of the Gorbachev Foundation to the Cold War International History Project.

34. Barnett R. Rubin,
The Search for Peace
in Afghanistan,
pp. 83-84, partially quoting Shultz's memoirs.

35. Interview with Gates, March 12, 2002, Cleveland, Ohio (SC).

36. Gates,
From the Shadows,
pp. 424-25.

37. Archives and Politburo documents, from Anatoly Chenyaev of the Gorbachev Foundation, Cold War International History Project.

38. Gates,
From the Shadows,
pp. 430-31.

CHAPTER 9: "WE WON"

1. Biography details and quotation are from interviews with Edmund McWilliams, January 15 and February 26, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

2. The cable, "From Amembassy Kabul to Secstate WashDC," January 15, 1988, is in the author's files.

3. Robert M. Gates,
From the Shadows,
pp. 431-32.

4. Director of Central Intelligence, "USSR: Withdrawal from Afghanistan," Special National Intelligence Estimate, March 1988, originally classified Secret; published by National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.

5. Interview with Milton Bearden, November 15, 2001, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC).

6. The Gul quotation is from an interview with Gul, May 23, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC). The Defense Intelligence Agency profile was declassified and provided to the author in 1992. That Gul was close to Saudi intelligence then and later is from the author's interviews with Ahmed Badeeb and Saeed Badeeb, February 1, 2002, Jedda, Saudi Arabia (SC). That Americans thought he was sympathetic is from interviews with U.S. officials at the Islamabad embassy between 1989 and 1992. "Moderate Islamist" is from Milt Bearden and James Risen,
The Main Enemy,
p. 292.

7. Interview with Gul, May 23, 2002. Bearden, "only real strength . . . strayed into Afghanistan," is from Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy,
pp. 235 and 238. Bearden's support for sending high-tech weapons to eastern Afghanistan, ibid., pp. 278-79.

8. Original interview with Sig Harrison published in
Le Monde Diplomatique
and quoted in Charles G. Cogan, "Shawl of Lead,"
Conflict.

9. Interviews with Milton Bearden, March 25, 2002, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC).

10. Martin Ewans,
Afghanistan: A Short History
of Its People and Politics,
p. 170.

11. Interviews with Bearden, March 25, 2002, and other U.S. and Pakistani officials. "Tell them not" is from the interview with Bearden. "Big-chested homecoming . . . Arizona plates" is from Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy,
p. 345.

12. Interviews with U.S. officials. Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy,
pp. 350-51.

13. Interview with Robert Oakley, February 15, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

14. Ibid. See also Dennis Kux,
The United
States and Pakistan,
p. 292.

15. Ahmed Rashid,
Taliban: Militant Islam,
Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,
p. 89, citing an intelligence report presented to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1992.

16. Who McWilliams saw and what they told him are from interviews with McWilliams, January 15, 2002.

17. Barnett R. Rubin,
Fragmentation of Afghanistan,
p. 249.

18. Interviews with U.S. officials.

19. Interviews with Yahya Massoud, May 9 and 21, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW).

20. Cable in author's files. "For God's sake" is from an interview with Hamid Gailani, May 14, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW).

21. Interview with McWilliams, January 15, 2002.

22. The account of the embassy's reactions and the controversy over the earlier episode in Kabul are from interviews with several U.S. officials, including McWilliams, on January 15, 2002. The internal investigation described two paragraphs later is from McWilliams. Bearden's quoted views about Massoud are from Bearden and Risen,
Main
Enemy,
p. 279. That Bearden saw Hekmatyar as "an enemy," ibid., p. 283. In his memoir Bearden not only describes Hekmatyar "as an enemy, and a dangerous one," but he also discounts "allegations that the CIA had chosen this paranoid radical as its favorite." But the record shows no evidence of CIA pressure on Hekmatyar during this period, and other U.S. officials say that CIA records from these months show a persistent defense of Hekmatyar by the agency.

23. Artyom Borovik,
The Hidden War,
pp. 161-62. KGB chief 's tennis, ibid., p. 242. Polish ambassador, ibid., p. 239. Officer reading from book about 1904 Japan war, ibid., p. 233. Gromov on Massoud, ibid., p. 246. Last fatality, ibid., p. 278.

24. Bearden, "Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires,"
Foreign Affairs,
pp. 22-23.

25. Interview with Bearden, November 15, 2001. Also Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy,
pp. 358-59.

26. From Robert Gates's unpublished original manuscript, p. 31/20, quoting Shevardnadze's memoir.

CHAPTER 10: "SERIOUS RISKS"

1. The account of two stations inside the embassy and the details of payments to Afghan commanders are from interviews with U.S. officials.

2. Multiple published accounts of the failed attack on Jalalabad describe the role of ISI, discussions within the Pakistani government, and the problems of the Afghan interim government. See Dennis Kux,
The United
States and Pakistan, 1947-2000,
pp. 298-99; Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin,
The
Bear Trap,
pp. 227-31; Barnett R. Rubin,
The
Fragmentation of Afghanistan,
p. 250; and Olivier Roy,
Afghanistan: From Holy War to Civil War,
p. 72. As Roy writes, "The Pakistani soldiers who pressed the guerrillas to join the conventional war in 1989 looked on Afghanistan as a 'headquarters operations map' upon which one moves little blue, red and green flags over a space where units are interchangeable and objectives quantifiable. As seen by Afghans, this was [a space] of tribes, ethnic groups, zones of influence of one chief or another."

3. The figure of "about $25 million" is from Rubin,
Fragmentation of Afghanistan;
he quotes U.S. diplomats citing reports that Saudi intelligence spent $26 million. The Gul quote is from the author's interview with Hamid Gul during 1992.

4. The characterizations here and in preceding paragraphs are drawn from interviews with Robert Oakley, February 15, 2002,Washington,D.C. (SC); Benazir Bhutto, May 5, 2002, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (GW); Mirza Aslam Beg, May 23, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC); and Hamid Gul, May 23, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC); as well as with other U.S. officials and Pakistani officers. The conversation between Bhutto and Akhund, "I wonder if . . . turn out" is from Iqbal Akhund,
Trial and Error,
p. 38.

5. "Not some Johnnies" and "prepared to allow" are from Kux,
The United States and Pakistan,
p. 298. "Eyes blazing with passion" and "one week" are from the interview with Bhutto, May 5, 2002. "There can be no ceasefire . . . becomes
Darul Amn"
is from Akhund,
Trial and Error,
p. 177. In his memoir Bearden writes that he traveled through the Khyber Agency during the Jalalabad siege and found the battle "a halfhearted effort that senselessly piled up casualties on both sides." Milt Bearden and James Risen,
The Main Enemy,
p. 362. Bearden also writes that as he left Pakistan that summer, he presented Hamid Gul with a U.S. cavalry sword and tried to help Gul choose a university in America for his oldest son to attend. Some years later, Bearden acknowledges, "the CIA would describe the plucky little general as 'the most dangerous man in Pakistan.' And that, too, would be right." Ibid., p. 367.

6. Information on the Sarobi plan, the Peshawar meeting, and the truck supplies are from interviews with U.S. officials.

7. Interview with Gary Schroen, July 31, 2002, Washington D.C. (SC).

8. The estimate of the dollar value of Soviet monthly aid during this period is from Larry P. Goodson,
Afghanistan's Endless
War,
p. 70.

9. CIA Stinger and sludge operations are from interviews with U.S. officials.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid. Some U.S. officials interviewed referred to the Bush administration's renewed finding as "the bridge finding," meaning that it bridged U.S. covert policy from the Soviet occupation period, now ended, with the final defeat of Najibullah, a Soviet client. Besides setting Afghan "self-determination" as an objective of CIA covert action, the Bush finding also set out humanitarian objectives for U.S. policy, as NSDD-166 had done earlier. These included the voluntary return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan and Iran. The full scope of this finding is not known, but it seems to have been a fairly modest revision of Reaganera objectives, undertaken mainly to account for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

12. Interview with Edmund McWilliams, January 15, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

13. "To SecState WashDC Priority, Dissent Channel," June 21, 1989.

14. While reporting in Pakistan during this period, and later in London, the author heard this argument repeatedly from British diplomats and intelligence officers involved in the Afghan program.

15. "Just because a few white guys" is from a written communication from Milton Bearden to the author, July 5, 2003.

16. The characterization of the view of CIA officers is from interviews with Milton Bearden, November 15, 2001, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC), and several other U.S. officials.

17. Oakley said that his "problem with McWilliams" was that McWilliams had a naïve, unrealistic desire to change U.S. policy that had been endorsed by the White House. By 1991, Oakley's own views seem to have shifted more in McWilliams's direction, but by then McWilliams was long gone from the embassy.

18. Letter from McWilliams to Oakley, July 23, 1989.

19. Interviews with U.S. officials.

20. The account of the Anderson-Bearden trip is from interviews with several U.S. officials, including Bearden, March 25, 2002, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC). Bearden later wrote and published a novel in 1998,
Black
Tulip: A Novel of War in Afghanistan,
based on his tour as station chief in Islamabad. Bearden's fictional hero, Alexander, has a close encounter with a group of Algerian volunteers in the same eastern area of Afghanistan. In the novel Bearden writes a fantasy of revenge. An anti-Arab Afghan mujahedin commander lures the Algerians to a feast around a campfire and supplies a goat with "two claymore mines packed neatly inside the chest cavity." Most of the Algerians are killed when the mines detonate, and a survivor is tortured and killed by Afghans.

21. Interviews with U.S. officials.

22. Ibid.

23. Richard MacKenzie, reporting for
The
Washington Times,
broke the story of the massacre on July 11, 1989, to the author's chagrin. See also Barnett R. Rubin,
The Fragmentation of
Afghanistan,
pp. 250-51.