Estados Unidos. Central Intelligence Agency. - Unholy wars: Afghanistan, America and international terrorism

UNHOLY WARS

Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous For mercenaries are disunited, thirsty for power, undisciplined, and disloyal; they are brave among their friends and cowards before the enemy; they have no fear of God, they do not keep faith with their fellow men; they avoid defeat just so long as they avoid battle; in peacetime you are despoiled by them, and in wartime by the enemy Mercenary commanders are either skilled in warfare or they are not: if they are, you cannot trust them, because they are anxious to advance their own greatness, either by coercing you, their employer, or by coercing others against your own wishes. If, however, the commander is lacking in prowess, in the normal way he brings about your ruin Experience has shown that only princes and armed republics achieve solid success, and that mercenaries bring nothing but loss.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Unholy Wars

Afghanistan, America
and International Terrorism

THIRD EDITION

John K. Cooley

First published 1999 by Pluto Press

345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling,

VA 201662012, USA

Third edition published 2002

Copyright John K. Cooley 1999, 2000, 2002

The right of John K. Cooley to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 1918 6 Hardback

ISBN 978 0 7453 1917 9 Paperback

ISBN 978 1 8496 4177 7 PDF eBook

ISBN 978 1 7837 1502 2 Kindle eBook

ISBN 978 1 7837 1501 5 EPUB eBook

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Cooley, John K., 1927

Unholy wars : Afghanistan, America, and international terrorism / John K. Cooley.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0745319181 (hbk)

1. United StatesForeign relationsAfghanistan. 2. Afghanistan Foreign relationsUnited States. 3. Espionage, AmericanIslamic countries. 4. Terrorism. 5. United States. Central Intelligence

Agency. I. Title.

JZ1480.A57A3 1999

958.1045dc21

9850370

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth EX10 9QG

Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Towcester

Printed in Canada by Transcontinental Printing

Contents

Map 1 Afghanistan after the 1989 cease-fire.

Map 2 Movements of CIA-trained guerrillas and drugs outwards from Afghanistan after the 197989 Afghanistan war.

to Vania Katelani Cooley

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to publications of friends, colleagues and manyother persons I have never met. They are journalists, travelers, scholars, diplomats and members or former members of government and the military. They are mentioned in the endnotes.

Among those so mentioned and others who are not, deserving special thanks are Helga Graham, author of excellent books on the Mideast; my old friend and neighbor during my years as a news correspondent in Beirut, David Hirst of the Guardian and his colleague on that newspaper, Martin Woolacott. In Cairo I was helped generously by the distinguished Egyptian author and publicist, Muhammad Hasseinine Haykal and many others, including journalist and former ABC News producer Miss Hinzada al-Fikry, now teaching journalism and mass communications at the American University in Cairo.

Flora Lewis, both in her syndicated column in the International Herald Tribune (IHT) and in private conversations offered great encouragement when it was needed most, as she knows. Robert Donahue, editor of the IHTs editorial page, has allowed me to publish my ideas on the theme of this book in the premium space he commands. In Germany, Wilhelm Dietl, investigative reporter and author, expert and frequent traveler in South Asia, generously opened to me his unique files and archives. At ABC News, my old friend anchorman Peter Jennings, investigative team chief Chris Isham and a few other colleagues have always been supportive. Dr. William R. Polk, former professor of Arab history at Harvard University and Mideast advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, has been a constant friend and scholarly guide.

In Washington DC, Georgetown University professors Michael Hudson and Hisham Sharabi are foremost among many helpers. Charles Cogan, a retired senior CIA official in the Afghanistan war program, now a visiting scholar at Harvard University and elsewhere, was informative, courteous and helpful. William Charles Maynes, now president of the Asia Foundation, has always been supportive. So have Tom Hughes, former president and Selig Harrison, former senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Eric Rouleau, ex-Mideast editor of Le Monde, and former French ambassador to Tunisia and Turkey, is another old friend who has always helped.

Robin Raphel, widow of former US Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel, an American victim of the 197989 Afghan war, former assistant secretary of state for South Asian Affairs and now US Ambassador in Tunisia, graciously received me in Tunis in the spring of 1998, giving generously of her time and her insights. At Brown University, Professor Jim Blight and his associate, graduate student Michael Corkery, shared with me transcripts and thoughts about the Oslo meetings of Russian and US diplomats in the early 1990s, dealing with the origins of the 197989 Afghanistan war. Declassified Soviet documents on this subject were obtained and passed to me by the ABC News Moscow bureau. Senior Russian diplomat Alexander Zotov steered me to Soviet historians who helped. During research and production work for ABC News documentaries on terrorism and the Mideast, I benefitted from US government expertise not ordinarily available to journalists. Highly placed individuals evidently opposed publication of my earlier work on this subject. Their opposition, real or suspected, spurred my enthusiasm for my task.

I would have been lost without the technical help with the manuscript of Samir Srouji and Alexander Halliday, both students in Nicosia. Natalie Kovalenko provided fine translations from the Russian.

Others who cannot be named provided extremely valuable information and judgements. They know who they are, and I hope to repeat my gratitude to them in person.

Finally, Roger van Zwanenberg, the director of Pluto Press, my publisher, deserves my thanks for his patience with my delays and for his constant support. My son, Dr Alexander Cooley, an assistant professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University and my daughter, Katherine Anne Cooley, a news anchorwoman on French television in Paris, both gave me substantial and well-informed advice and help. Opinions and any errors of fact or judgement are, of course, entirely my own responsibility.

John K. Cooley
Athens, Greece,
April 2002

Preface to the Third Edition

In September 2001, following the worst terrorist attack against it in its history, the United States for the second time in a generation became embroiled in an air and ground war in Afghanistan. This time, the war was not a proxywar against Russian invaders. It was a direct one, fought with allies who had varying degrees of commitment, against the presumed terrorist attackers. By the winter of 200102, the new Afghan war had caused innumerable civilian casualties in Afghanistan. It had thrown many of the worlds one billion or more Muslims into a state of new political ferment. The war, and the terrorist assault against America which caused it, had bred a state of global insecurity and instability, fed by fears of biological warfare after the autumn anthrax outbreaks in the US and had accelerated a global economic downturn which had begun long before the war, into a global economic recession.