There has been a lot of finger-pointing lately. What caused the historic foreign policy disaster in Afghanistan? Was it Trump’s fault, Biden’s fault, the Saudi’s fault, were we betrayed by Pakistan? No, it was none of the suspects being blamed here and in the media.
The fate of Afghanistan was sealed in 1979 by Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. A pro-Soviet government had come to power after the Saur Revolution of 1978 in Afghanistan. The new government declared equal rights for women and had women in leadership positions, it replaced the traditional Islamic flag of Afghanistan with a flag that was a clone of the Soviet flag and it outlawed usury disrupting the credit system farmers were dependent on. Predictably, this triggered a violent reaction from rural religious conservative tribal areas of the country.
Brzezinski saw an opportunity in this scenario to provoke the Soviets to intervene in Afghanistan and lure the Soviets into a ‘trap’. Brzezinski wrote to President Carter:
“We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.”
Brzezinski planned on turning Afghanistan into a new Vietnam, only this time it would be the Soviets that would be stuck in the quagmire.
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention”
Brzezinski got what he wanted. He turned Afghanistan into Vietnam. But what about the Afghanis? More than 2 million Vietnamese civilians died in the Vietnam war. How many Afghan civilians would be collateral damage in the USA's new proxy war with the Soviets? It turns out that the Vietnam analogy was prescient. 2 million Afghan civilians would die in the failed Russian intervention.
Provoking the Russian invasion was only part of the strategy. The US needed to insure the Russians would not be able to defeat the ill-equipped Mujahadeen. The US joined forces with the Saudis in funding and arming a Jihadi army. Saudi extremists like Osama bin Ladin traveled to the Afghan Pakistan border with US support. The Saudis opened madrasas across Pakistan that would preach the perverted version of Islam practiced by Al Qaeda and ensure an endless supply of fighters. Then of course the US needed to have members of the Pakistani Security Services that would support the US-backed Jihadi militants. The last thing the US wanted was a bunch of Pakistanis interested in civil society, liberal democracy, and women's rights gumming up the works and interfering with their anti-Communist Jihad.
Once the Russians were defeated the US left Pakistan to deal with the consequences of its actions. The US left behind a Jihadist Terrorist state in Afghanistan with a widespread Jihadist production machine in Pakistan. All built and financed with US taxpayer dollars.
Zbigniew Brzezinski : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
The callous disregard for the millions of lives lost and the misery and lives it will cost long into the future is breathtaking. Sadly it is typical of American arrogance in foreign policy and racist willingness to sacrifice countless people (as long as they are not white) for the delusional foreign policy goal of the moment.
It was decades before the blowback of our actions in Afghanistan finally reached American shores on 911. After 911 America rediscovered Afghanistan and of course, we expected Pakistan to fall in line and follow us off whatever new cliff we were determined to go over this time around. The Pakistanis were still dealing with the fallout of the last American intervention. Should anyone be surprised that the Pakistanis were going to prioritize their own stability and survival over a new American disaster in the making?
Naturally, as always our ‘intelligence’ services ignored the facts on the ground and concocted the worst possible plan based on delusions that had no basis in reality. You can read more about the lost opportunities in Afghanistan in this post: There were multiple opportunities to avoid disaster in Afghanistan, no one took them. Ironically we volunteered to walk into the same ‘trap’ we laid for the Russians. Fighting the same Jihadi army we built and financed with the same result. If it were not so tragic it would be hilarious.