How the USA Created Its Own Enemy

 by James Curwood

Mujahideen leaders with Ronald Reagan in the White House

Most people know about the story of 9/11, Afghanistan and the 13 years the US was embroiled in Afghanistan and is often described as a 21st century version of the Vietnam war, however not many people know about the fact that the US played a pivotal role in securing its own doom and defeat in Afghanistan since 1979. Operation Cyclone, as it was codenamed, is one of the factors of US involvement in Afghanistan that is often forgotten about and not learnt. This operation would shape the Middle East for decades, maybe even centuries to come. Operation Cyclone’s objective was introduced by Jimmy Carter’s government to help fund and arm Afghan rebels (or called the mujahideen) who were fighting and resisting against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan after they launched a full scale invasion in July 1979 to support the local pro-communist soviet government. The aim of Cyclone was to help the Mujahideen push the Soviets out of Afghanistan and stop the spread of Communism so the funding of the Mujahideen made perfect sense at the time but would end up to have drastic consequences in the future decades. 

The American support was initially small scale with only money and russian made AK-47’s and other guns being sent to the Mujahideen as Carter wanted to keep the operation a secret, however the support for the mujahideen took a turn after Ronald Reagan came to power in 1981 as he introduced the Reagan doctrine. The Reagan Doctrine which was a strategy and piece of foreign policy that went onto dominate the entirety of the 1980’s, stated that the US would give aid and support to anti-communist guerillas and resistance movements against communist governments to “roll back” soviet-backed communist governments in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. This changed the course of US involvement as it meant that the CIA and American no longer had to hide their involvement with the Mujahideen and could start sending more and more weapons and also these could be more advanced weapons, for example the US built stinger anti aircraft stinger missile was sent to the Mujahideen from 1986 and had a decisive impact in repelling the Soviets and their air force. By the end of Operation Cyclone’s run it had become one of the longest running and most expensive CIA operations ever undertaken. $20 billion dollars in US funds and $3 billion in tax payers money were funnelled into the Mujahideen over the 13 years of war and by 1987 the aid to the Mujahideen was coming to $700 million a year. Reagan met with the Mujahideen leaders in 1983 in the oval office. However the US was not solely responsible for funding the Mujahideen as the Saudi Royal family, UK government and India were also big contributors to the group. Operation Cyclone was a success in its objective of costing the Soviet government unnecessary deaths with there being 35,000 Soviet soldiers lost in the war and unnecessary costs as the costs for the Soviets in the war in Afghanistan as costs were rising faster than total defence spending for the entire Soviet army. From 1979 to 1986 the war had cost the Russians 15 billion rubles and 2.5% of their whole defence budget and this led to the retreat of Russia in 1992 after the collapsing of the Soviet Union.

However the situation in Afghanistan took a drastic turn after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan the mujahideen fell into infighting with different tribes trying to take power and gain control over the rest and the faction that won this mini civil war is a very familiar name. The Taliban. The Taliban was led by a former Mujahideen commander in Mohammad Omar who had received money and arms under Operation Cyclone and used those to take control of Kabul (the capital) and almost all of Afghanistan and set up a government. The problem for the US came after the 9/11 attacks when the US shifted their attention and full focus on finding Osma Bin Laden and bringing him to justice, the US later found out he was hiding in Afghanistan, however the Taliban government failed to handover Bin Laden and the other leaders of Al Qaeda after a request from the Americans as the two terrorist organisations were closely linked to one another and even so close that in 1999 the UN security council adopts Resolution 1267, creating the so-called al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee, which links the two groups as terrorist entities. This meant that the US had to invade Afghanistan and even though they easily beat back the Taliban government they continued resisting US occupation for the almost 2 decades the US were in Afghanistan causing American casualties with the weapons the Americans gave them. Also because of the American war in Afghanistan there were many refugee camps set up along the border of Pakistan and the United States contributes millions of dollars in humanitarian dollars of aid into these camps. However, hardline fundamentalist clerics from muslim countries e.g. Saudi Arabia sensed an opportunity to indoctrinate thousands of young afghan men into religious fundamentalism and convert them to their glorious cause. One of these foreign hardline fundamentalist was Osama Bin Laden who recruited many fighters in these camps all because of the war that America caused and of course these fighters recruited to fight would go on and fight and kill the Americans and to make it even worse the Americans neglected warnings of these radical men and ignored the dangers. 

All of this just shows how America from the beginning funded their own future enemy and caused decades of pain for the families of fallen soldiers and billions in budgets lost just to spite the soviets. I will leave this article with a theory/allegations that is not backed up by many but still has credit and if true would show that America truly did create its own enemy, these allegations are that the CIA directly funded Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda with weapons and advice and this claim was written by the former foreign secretary for the UK from 1997 to 2001 in Robin Cook (the crown prince of Saudi Arabia also supports this view) and he writes “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the '80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage war against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan”.