The Afghan Devil's Bargain

12-7-24

Excerpted from my book, Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf, Chapter 8: Project Frankenstein.

Afghanistan’s geographic location makes it a strategic piece of real estate. It was a bridge between the Eurasian landmass for Russian, Chinese and British traders. Later is served as a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and Persian Gulf oil.

Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Britain’s Lord Timberlane all sent troops into Afghanistan at various times. All were defeated. The country of Afghanistan was founded in 1747 and ruled by a bloodline monarchy, which may be connected to the Roshaniya. In 1933 King Mohammed Zahir Shah took the throne, ruling the country in feudalistic fashion until he was deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud in 1973. [308]

In April 1978 Daoud was killed in a revolution led by socialist leader Nur Muhammad Taraki, who became President and embarked on an ambitious land reform program to help poor Afghan sharecroppers, who were traditionally forced to work land owned by the king and his cronies. Taraki built schools for women who were banned from education under the monarchy. He opened Afghan universities to the poor and introduced free health care. When counter-revolutionary bandits began to burn down universities and girl’s schools, many Afghan’s saw the hand of the CIA. As the campaign of sabotage intensified, Kabul revolutionaries called on Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to send troops to repel the bandits. Brezhnev refused.

In 1979 pro-Taraki militants, convinced of a CIA destabilization plot, assassinated CIA Kabul Chief of Station Spike Dubs. Indeed, in April 1979, a full seven months before the much-ballyhooed Soviet “invasion” of Afghanistan occurred, US officials met with Afghan warlords bent on overthrowing Taraki. On July 3, 1979 President Carter signed the first national security directive authorizing secret aid to Afghan warlords. Carter NSA Zbigniew Brzezinski said he convinced Carter that in his, “...opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”[309]

Taraki appointed Tabizullah Amin as Cabinet Minister in charge of land reform. Amin, who Soviet KGB Chief Yuri Andropov came to believe was a CIA deep cover agent provocateur, launched a brutal campaign of terror against political opponents. This turned world opinion against the previously welcomed Tariki government. Andropov believes the CIA had Amin infiltrate the Kabul government intent on discrediting the revolutionaries.

Taraki traveled to Moscow to consult with the Soviets on a strategy to get rid of Amin. The day he returned to Kabul Amin had Taraki executed and seized power. A few weeks later CIA-backed warlords massacred dozens of Afghan government officials in the western city of Herat. The combination of these two events finally convinced Brezhnev to send troops into Afghanistan. [310]

In December 1979 Soviet tanks rolled across the Panjshir Valley, while KGB operatives stormed the Royal Palace in Kabul. They assassinated Tabizullah Amin and installed Babrak Karmal as the new leader of Afghanistan. Brzezinski now had the justification he’d been looking for to begin overtly arming the counter-revolutionaries in Afghanistan. Though the Afghan conflict killed two million people, Brzezinski later boasted, “That (Carter’s secret directive) was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap.”[311]

In 1979, as the Shah was losing his iron grip over Iran and Vernon Walters was forming the contras in Honduras, CIA agents streamed into Peshawar in Pakistan’s NW Frontier Province. The city lay at the foot of Khyber Pass, the gateway to Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghan refugees had flooded into Peshawar to escape the looming war. With help from the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), the CIA scoured the refugee camps looking for modern-day Islamic fundamentalists Assassins who were prepared to intensify the guerrilla war on Kabul’s socialist government and now, to repel the Soviets from Afghanistan.

The Company found what it needed in Hezb-e-Islami, a force of feudal-minded Islamist fighters assembled and trained by the Pakistani military with CIA oversight. Their leader was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fanatic who in the early 1970’s had ordered his followers to throw acid into the faces of Afghan women who refused to wear their burkas. In 1972 Hezb-e-Islami murdered hundreds of left-wing students in Afghanistan then fled to Peshawar, where they escaped prosecution under the protection of the US-allied Pakistan military government. [312] The group was feared and despised by Afghans and Pakistanis alike, who viewed them as a terrorist organization.

The US armed the terrorists with Soviet weapons purchased from Egypt, China and Czechoslovakia. Pakistan’s military dictator Zia ul-Huq allowed the CIA to open an intelligence station facing the Soviet Union and to use Pakistani military bases from which the CIA could fly reconnaissance over Afghanistan. These same bases were used to give advanced guerrilla warfare training to Hekmatyar’s troops, whom the Reagan State Department would soon name the mujahadeen. They used the term in hopes that the word’s heroic connotations within Islam would win the Muslim world over to Hekmatyar’s murderous troops. President Zia, whom the US Congress had cut aid to in the mid-1970’s, citing drug corruption and a relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons, was now back on the US gravy train.

Dean Henderson is the author of seven books, including, Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf, Illuminati Agenda 21, Nephilim Crown 5G Apocalypse and Royal Bloodline Wetiko & The Great Remembering.