The Spynest Documents: Destabilizing Afghanistan

TITLE:		The Spynest Documents: Destabilizing Afghanistan
AUTHOR:		Steve Galster
SOURCE:		Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 30
DATE:		Summer 1988
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The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was regarded by the United States then, as it still is today, as a blatant, unprovoked act of Soviet aggression and "expansionism." As a secret intelligence report issued several days after the invasion put it, Moscow's "key motivation was to bring its long‑standing strategic goals within reach. Control of Afghanistan would be a major step toward ... domination of the Asian sub-continent."[i] For the past eight years the White House and Congress have continually invoked this view to justify their consistently increasing support for the Afghan covert aid program--a program that now dwarfs U.S. covert activities in Nicaragua, Angola, Kampuchea and the rest of the world combined. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan is seen merely as a sign that the application of the Reagan Doctrine there has foiled the Soviets' "grand" strategy.

However, classified documents seized in Iran during the takeover of the U.S. Embassy, along with an abundance of declassified materials, reveal that the Soviet decision to invade did not stem from a thirst for expansionism; rather, it was a response to actions by the United States and its allies who, starting shortly after the April ("Saur") Revolution in 1978, tried to destabilize the new pro‑Soviet regime in Kabul by covertly supporting the anti‑Soviet Afghan resistance. The case of Afghanistan illustrates how U.S. covert action can be disastrously counterproductive.

The communist takeover in Afghanistan in April 1978 presented the U.S. with a policy dilemma summed up in a secret memo to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance at the time:

"We need to take into account the mix of nationalism and communism in the new leadership and seek to avoid driving the regime into a closer embrace with the Soviet Union than it might wish. On the other hand, anti-regime elements in Afghanistan will be watching us carefully to see if we acquiesce in or accept the communist takeover."[ii]

The memo also noted that "Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and others of our friends will see the situation clearly as a Soviet coup."[iii] Thenceforth, a debate ensued within the Carter administration as to how the U.S. should react to the situation in Afghanistan. Moderate elements, led by Vance, urged self-restraint in Afghanistan so as not to attract more Soviet attention there; hard‑liners led by National Security Adviser Brzezinski warned the President that to stand back from Afghanistan, especially in light of the growing instability in Iran, would project the image to America's regional allies that the U.S. had written off the region as not essential to American interests.


Not knowing which way to lean at first, the President compromised (perhaps by not deciding) by allowing Brzezinski to seek an alternative regional strategy while the State Department was to establish "correct" relations with the new Afghan regime (Democratic Republic of Afghanistan or D.R.A.). Brzezinski took advantage of his strong supervisory role of the CIA and proceeded immediately to establish a covert support network for the resistance consisting of several anti-Soviet governments. (Brzezinski maintained close supervision of these and other CIA activities through the NSC's Special Coordinating Committee (SCC).[iv] In May, one month after the D.R.A. came to power and nineteen months before the Soviet invasion, Brzezinski met with Deng Xiaoping in China and reached an "understanding" on mutual security issues, including Afghanistan.[v] This "understanding" must have included Pakistan because the following month the first Afghan rebel camps were set up in Peshawar (soon to be staffed by Chinese military instructors).[vi]

Initially Brzezinski and the CIA found it difficult to provide significant assistance to the guerrillas. Pakistan refused to allow too much outside support on its soil out of fear of Soviet retaliation, and the State Department, with the President's tacit approval, was still trying to pursue normal relations with the D.R.A.. But Brzezinski pressed the issue with both the President and the State Department and by the end of March 1979 he had "prevailed."[vii] Several weeks later, he notes in his memoirs, Brzezinski pushed a decision through the SCC to "be more sympathetic to those Afghans who were determined to preserve their country's independence."[viii]

While deliberately opaque as to what this meant, it is clear when examining the surrounding evidence that the decision entailed stepping up assistance to the Afghan rebels in order to destabilize the D.R.A.. Apparently, however, Brzezinski was able to do more than just convince State Department officials that the rising Soviet influence in Afghanistan threatened American national security. He also got them to see that the Afghan situation presented a valuable political opportunity for the U.S. As a State Department report later put it, "the overthrow of the D.R.A. would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviets' view of the socialist course of history as being inevitable is not accurate."[ix]


Starting no later than April 1979, several weeks after Brzezinski's SCC decision, U.S. foreign service officers began to meet with Afghan rebel leaders on a periodic basis to determine their needs.[x] The rebels' most obvious problems were their lack of weapons and their inability to create a unified opposition. The obvious answer to both problems was more money and a sure supply of weapons. The rebels had already made one attempt at unifying in June 1978. However, because of the incongruous nature of the different factions, who were as used to fighting each other as much as they were the government, the coalition crumbled within six weeks.[xi]

By May, after having directed several resistance leaders to potential donors for their cause, the State Department reported that China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran had pledged their assistance.[xii] Saudi Arabia offered the rebels several million dollars up front if they could quickly re‑forge an alliance.[xiii] The rebels used these and other funds to purchase weapons from the Pakistanis and the Chinese, whose supplies were close at hand. Also, pressure was applied to Pakistan to relax its restrictions on being a sanctuary and a supplier. CIA field reports show that Pakistani Director of Military Operations, Brigadier Mian Mohammad Afzal, was brought onto the CIA payroll to ensure Pakistani cooperation.[xiv] Afzal reported to the CIA in October that in a series of meetings between President Zia ul‑Haq and Chinese officials, plans were developed to ensure Pakistan's continued role as a sanctuary and to further supply the resistance with weapons from Pakistan's stock.[xv] The CIA closely monitored subsequent transactions between resistance leaders and Pakistani military personnel in Peshawar.[xvi]

In addition to facilitating the funding by other countries, the CIA itself was almost certainly funding the resistance as early as August 1979. At this time, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a secret report which concluded that "the United States's larger interests ... would be served by the demise of the Taraki‑Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan."[xvii] The State Department had obviously swept aside any inhibitions it may have had about deliberately destabilizing the D.R.A.. Weeks later, the CIA office in Los Angeles wired to Kabul a request from a CIA‑paid Afghan to send money to an Afghan rebel account in Iran with the name of the bank and the account number included.[xviii] This cable also revealed that many Afghans had been undergoing "Douglas" espionage training in Washington to assist the CIA in Afghanistan.


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The U.S. Pushes Ahead
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On the propaganda front, the CIA was busy funding and orchestrating public demonstrations throughout South Asia and Europe to denounce the "Soviet puppet" regime in Kabul.[xix] And deep inside Afghanistan, the CIA was helping Afghan expatriates set up a dissident radio station to broadcast anti‑government messages throughout the country.[xx]


The decision by the U.S. to ignore its original warning to "avoid driving the [Afghan] regime into a closer embrace with the Soviet Union" and to instead covertly aid the regime's opponents is especially curious in light of two things. First, the U.S. was well aware that the resistance could never serve as a viable alternative to the D.R.A. leadership. The rebel leaders themselves had confided to State Department officials in secret meetings in Pakistan that they likened a dissident provisional government to "putting five different animals in the same cage."[xxi] Second, and more significant, while the U.S. was clandestinely supporting the military efforts of the resistance, U.S. officials in Afghanistan were discovering that the Soviets were making desperate attempts to bring about a political solution to the situation.

One month after Brzezinski's SCC decision, American intelligence reports suggested that "the Soviets [were] already moving forward with plans to engineer replacement of the ... Khalqi leadership."[xxii] Shortly thereafter, East German Ambassador Hermann Schwiesau told the American Embassy in Kabul that the Soviets were hoping to replace the unpopular Amin with a broader‑based government.[xxiii] At about the same time, the U.S. Embassy reported that the Soviets were including a former Afghan royal minister in their "National Front" negotiations, implying that the Soviets were trying to forge, as they are today, a broad‑based coalition government in Kabul that would be willing and able to respect their security interests (i.e., remaining outside an American alliance), thus rendering a Soviet presence unnecessary.

Instead of concluding from these observations that the U.S. should refrain from intervening in Afghanistan in the midst of the Soviets' troubles there, hard‑line U.S. officials saw the situation as an opportunity to stick it to the Soviets while they were vulnerable. Such an approach, it was believed, would not provoke Soviet intervention. The Soviets themselves had told U.S. officials that an invasion "might solve one problem but would create another."[xxiv] The American Embassy in Moscow strongly agreed with that assessment and doubted the Soviets would risk their other foreign policy priorities for a war in Afghanistan.[xxv]

But as hard as they both tried, neither the Soviets nor the resistance were able to unseat Amin. This and the growing instability in both Afghanistan and Iran were making the Americans and the Soviets very nervous about each other's intentions in the region. Seeing that the resistance alone could not protect America's regional interests from Soviet "aggression," the U.S. decided to cover all bases by courting President Amin. If the U.S. could lure Amin out of the Soviet sphere, it was thought, then the Soviets would be unable to use Afghanistan as a launching pad for invading Iran or Baluchistan.


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Washington Courts Amin
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The U.S. knew that Amin was becoming increasingly wary of the Soviets, especially after he deposed and assassinated Communist Party leader Nur Mohammad Taraki, the Soviets' favored choice for President, in September. So beginning in September 1979, Bruce Amstutz, the American charge d'affaires in Kabul, began to hold friendly meetings with Amin to show him that he need not worry about his unhappy Soviet allies as Ion as the U.S. maintained a strong presence in Afghanistan.[xxvi] The strategy worked. On September 27 Amin made a special appeal to Amstutz for improved relations with the U.S.[xxvii] Two days later in New York, Afghan Foreign Minister Wali quietly expressed the same sentiments to State Department officials David Newsom and Harold Saunders.[xxviii]

The Soviets became increasingly concerned about the war below their border and Amin's stubbornness and incompetence in dealing with it. Amidst the growing instability, it appeared to the Soviets that Amin was preparing to leave the Soviet orbit and approach the U.S. for help. They were probably right. On October 30, the American Embassy in Kabul reported after having talked with Amin that he seemed extremely eager to improve U.S.‑Afghan relations and was "painfully aware of the exiled leadership the Soviets [were] keeping on the shelf."[xxix] Suddenly realizing the potential consequences of their strategy, the American officials quickly backed away from Amin. Abandoned, Amin then turned to Pakistan for help. In early December he sent "frantic messages" to President Zia asking for an immediate meeting, obviously making a last‑ditch effort to escape the Soviet grasp.[xxx] Zia declined to go but planned to send his foreign minister, Agha Shahi, who was to have flown to Kabul on December 22 31 but was prevented from doing so by bad weather.[xxxi]

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan three days later, Congress immediately decided to fully back the Afghan rebels to oppose what President Carter called "the greatest threat to world peace since World War ll." What Congress and other Americans failed to realize then, as they still do today, is that the U.S. was not only a victim of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan by covertly challenging Soviet influence there before the invasion ‑ it was a cause as well.

NOTES
[i]. Declassified United States Defense Intelligence Agency Summary Report, January 7, 1980.
[ii]. Declassified United States Department of State Memo, April 30,1978.
[iii]. Ibid.
[iv]. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principles: Memoirs of the National Security Council Adviser, 1977‑1981 (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983), p.73.
[v]. Ibid., p. 212.
[vi]. See Bruce Amstutz, Afghanistan: The First Five Years (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, 1986), p. 40.
[vii]. Brzezinski, op. cit., n. 4, p. 426.
[viii]. Brzezinski, op. cit., n. 4, p. 427.
[ix]. Classified Department of State Report, August 16,1979. This document and many others were captured in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and are still being published as part of a 60‑plus volume set entitled "Documents from the Den of Espionage" (sometimes simply referred to as the "spynest documents"). Few of these sets are available in the U.S. as they were initially considered contraband by the U.S. government and are now difficult to obtain because of the U.S. embargo on Iranian products. Herein referred to as Spynest Documents.
[x]. Classified Department of State cable, May 14, 1979, Spynest Documents, vol. 29, p.99. This cable refers to a previous meeting with a rebel leader in Islamabad on April 23, 1979.
[xi]. New York Times, July 1, 1978; Amstutz, op. cit., n. 9, p. 92.
[xii]. Spynest Documents op cit., n. 9.
[xiii]. Washington Post, January 5,1980; United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office Background Briefs, "Afghanistan Opposition Groups," August 1980, p. 3.
[xiv]. Classified CIA Field Report, October 30, 1979, Spynest Documents, vol. 30, op. cit., n. 9.
[xv]. Ibid. During this meeting the Chinese officials requested that Pakistan halt the supply of Chinese‑made weapons to the rebels while China was involved in sensitive negotiations with Moscow. The Chinese re‑emphasized to President Zia, however, the importance of continued Pakistani assistance for the rebels.
[xvi]. Classified CIA Field Report, October 31,1979, Spynest Documents, op. cit., vol. 30.
[xvii]. Classified Department of State Report, August 16, 19'79. Spynest Documents, vol. 30, op. cit., n. 9.
[xviii]. Classified CIA cable, August 31,1979, Spynest Documents, vol. 30, op. cit., n. 9.
[xix]. Classified CIA cables, September 28, October 2 and October 3, 19'9. Spynest Documents, vol. 30, op. cit., n. 9.
[xx]. Classified State Department cables, May 14 and August 9, 1979, Spynest Documents op. cit., n. 9, vol. 29; Selig Harrison, " The Soviet Union in Afghanistan in Containment: Concept and Policy (Washington D.C.: National Defense University, 1986), p. 464.
[xxi]. Classified State Department cable, August 16, 1979, Spynest Documents, op. cit., n. 9, vol. 30.
[xxii]. From a declassified cable cited in Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American‑Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985), p. 902.
[xxiii]. Classified State Department cable, July 18,1979, Spynest Documents, op. cit., n. 9, vol. 29.
[xxiv]. Classified State Department cable, June 25, 1979, Spynest Documents, op. cit., n. 9, vol. 29.
[xxv]. Classified State Department cable, May24, 1979, Spynest Documents, op. cit., n. 9, vol. 29.
[xxvi]. Classified State Department cables, September 11, September 22, September 23, two on September 27 and October 28, 1979, Spynest Documents, op. cit., n. 9, vol. 30.
[xxvii]. Classified State Department cable, September 27, 1979, Spynest Documents, op. cit., n. 9, vol. 30.
[xxviii]. Classified State Department cable, September 29, 1979, Spynest Documents, op. cit., n. 9, vol. 30.
[xxix]. Classified State Department cable, October 30, 1979, Spynest Documents, op. cit., n. 9, vol. 30.
[xxx]. Indian Express February 13, 1980.
[xxxi]. Ibid.