Charlie Wilson and Ronald Reagan’s War by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Thursday, 27 December 2007
10.08.01: Gulbuddin and the CIA, D.J.W. - - As many recent commentaries have noted, there was no unified command of Afghan "Mujahaddin" freedom fighters resisting the Soviet occupation of their country in the 1980s. There were about half a dozen major groups and a host of smaller ones. The legendary commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, assassinated by OBL (Osama Bin Laden) agents just before The Atrocity, belonged to the "Jamiat" group led by Burhanuddin Rabbani. Qari Baba, the famous commander in Ghazni who looked like a cross between Buddha and Genghiz Khan, was part of the Harakat group. Ramatullah Safi was the most outstanding commander of the Gailani group. Abdul Haq was the same for the Younis Khalis group. With one exception, all of these groups and commanders pretty much cooperated with each other. Their political leaders met and worked together (I attended some of their meetings), their commanders and bands of fighters did the same (which I witnessed in the field). Rarely did they fight amongst themselves, but focused instead on their common enemy, the Shuravi -- Afghan for Soviet Russians.
The exception was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the "Hezbis." I went inside Afghanistan with every major Mujahaddin group - except for the Hezbis. I met Gulbuddin and interviewed him in August 1984 - and found him to be an Islamic Fascist, an admirer of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and a hater of America. Everywhere I went inside Afghanistan in the 1980s, the story was always the same: the Hezbis spent their time fighting other Mujahaddin groups for turf instead of the Shuravi. Rather than fight for the freedom of Afghanistan, Gulbuddin hoarded his weapons, planning a takeover of his country once the other Mujahaddin had liberated it for him.
It may -- or it may not -- come as a surprise to learn that the CIA was obsessively insistent that the lion's share of arms and support they gave to the Afghan Mujahaddin went to Gulbuddin. The term "obsessive" is in no way hyperbolic. The CIA's obsession to support Gulbuddin in vast preference to all other Mujahaddin leaders bordered on the pathological. Every CIA agent I ever talked to -- especially the armchair analysts at Langley - - was insufferably condescending whenever I would state that Gulbuddin's people did no fighting, that the other groups were begging for weapons while the Hezbis had an oversupply of weapons they didn't use. The agents would patronizingly assure me their "intel" contradicted what I and every other independent observer who actually went into Afghanistan saw with our own eyes - - so we all must be wrong.
A number of United States Congressmen also had figured out that the CIA was lying about Gulbuddin's effectiveness, and were well aware of the great danger he was to the future of Afghanistan. I once delivered a personally written note from one such Congressman (Charlie Wilson - FlA) to Burhanuddin Rabbani.(1) We had met a number of times before, but on this occasion we had a long discussion. The note was an explicit request for Rabbani to have his people spare no effort to assassinate Gulbuddin. "If you do not do this," I explained to Rabbani and his chief aide, "Engineer" Abdul Rahim, "any victory the Afghans achieve over the Shuravi will result in chaos and disaster. Gulbuddin has to be killed, killed dead, if Afghanistan is to have any future and any freedom." After our discussion, the Congressman's letter, of which no copies were made, was burned before my eyes. A few days later, Gulbuddin's Toyota Land Cruiser blew up in Peshawar, Pakistan. Gulbuddin's driver was killed, but Gulbuddin, although injured, survived. Subsequent attempts also failed.
When the Shuravi were forced to retreat in defeat in February, 1989, freedom for Afghanistan seemed clearly on the horizon. Yet right on schedule, Gulbuddin began his war for power. While Rabbani, as leader of the strongest and best organized freedom fighter group, attempted to put together a coherent government in Kabul, Gulbuddin began shelling the city. The CIA and their Pakistan counterpart, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) forced Rabbani to accept a coalition government with Gulbuddin as Prime Minister, and with it, the resignation of Massoud as his Defense Minister. Massoud's departure as Defense Minister precipitated Afghanistan's collapse into the utter chaos that made the Taliban possible.
Afghanistan, it must be understood, is an artificially created country, an ethnic hodge-podge glued together for the purpose of keeping the British Raj and the Russian Empire apart and not touching. Look at the map and you'll see this narrow sliver of Afghan territory, the "Wakhan Corridor," on the top right corner that goes all the way to China, barely separating what is now Tadjikistan (but in the late 1800s Russian Central Asia) and what is now Pakistan (but then British India).
Pakistan is similarly artificial, another ethnic stir-fry created as a refuge for Indian Moslems who didn't want to be ruled by Indian Hindus (who outnumbered them 2-to-1) when India got its independence after WWII.
North of the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan, the ethnic majorities are Tadjik and Uzbek. South the main tribe is the Pushtuns. Pakistan is composed of Baluchi nomads in its south western deserts bordering Iran, Sindhis in the southern Indus region, Punjabis in the central Indus - and along the border with Afghanistan it's all Pushtun. The Pak government has never exercised true sovereignty over the Pushtun area, known as the NWFA (North West Frontier Agency), and has always been terrified of the demand for an independent "Pushtunistan" breaking Pakistan apart.
It was this fear that caused the Paks to freak out when Afghanistan went completely anarchic. Gulbuddin was their Pushtun guy. The Tadjiks -- Rabbani and Massoud - - were out. The Paks had gotten their wish and the Chinese proverb about being careful for what you wished for had become nightmarishly apropos. In desperation, they turned to a group of nutcase fanatics calling themselves "students" ("Taliban") although most of them were thoroughly illiterate. The ISI saw an opportunity for a business relationship in the bargain - - a joint venture to operate the heroin business.
Sixty percent of the world's heroin comes out of Afghanistan. That only happens with the full cooperation of the governments involved -- in this case the Taliban government in Afghanistan and the ISI "government within a government" in Pakistan. With the money from the heroin trade, the Taliban were able to bribe opposing commanders and proceeded to take over the country with hardly a battle. Only Massoud resisted. The Taliban chased Gulbuddin out of Kabul and into exile with his Islamic Fascist friends in Iran.
The point to all of this history is that the CIA’s buddy Gulbuddin has publicly announced - on September 18, one week after The Atrocity - his support for Osama Bin Laden and his intention to return to Afghanistan to join Al Qaeda. The CIA owes Afghanistan an abject apology for its disgraceful support of this evil man. Were it not for this support, Afghanistan would have had a chance to stabilize in the 1990s, the Taliban would have not come to power, Al Qaeda would not have established a sanctuary under Taliban protection, and given that, The Atrocity of September 11 might never have occurred.
------------
Footnote by FlA & Co.
(1) Whenever I (Dr. Jack Wheeler) came back from Afghanistan throughout the 1980s, along with various people in the Reagan White House, the Pentagon and Congress, I would always brief Charlie Wilson. My years of ranting at him about Gulbuddin finally got through to him in early 1987 – because it wasn't just me. "Why do you and everyone else who's been inside [Afghanistan] tell me one thing, and the same thing, about the Hezbis, while the CIA tells me the opposite?" he mused. “Because the CIA is lying to you, Charlie," I replied. "What do you suggest?" he asked. After a discussion, he took out a piece of paper, wrote a letter, put it in an envelope and said, "Take this to Rabbani." Burhanuddin Rabbani was the leader of the Jamiat mujahedeen, ones who did a lot of the fighting. Massoud was a Jamiat commander.
It wasn't long before I was in Islamabad to hand Rabbani the letter. Its contents can be surmised from this excerpt from "Gulbuddin and the CIA," which at the time could not mention any names. A number of United States congressmen also had figured out that the CIA was lying about Gulbuddin's effectiveness, and were well aware of the great danger he was to the future of Afghanistan. I once delivered a personally written note from one such congressman to Burhanuddin Rabbani. We had met a number of times before, but on this occasion we had a long discussion. The note was an explicit request for Rabbani to have his people spare no effort to assassinate Gulbuddin. "If you do not do this," I explained to Rabbani and his chief aide, Abdul Rahim, "any victory the Afghans achieve over the Shuravi [Soviets] will result in chaos and disaster. Gulbuddin has to be killed, killed dead, if Afghanistan is to have any future and any freedom."
After our discussion, the congressman's letter, of which no copies were made, was burned before my eyes. A few days later, Gulbuddin's Toyota Land Cruiser blew up in Peshawar, Pakistan. Gulbuddin's driver was killed, but Gulbuddin, although injured, survived. Subsequent attempts also failed. If Crile had written more of the truth, it would have made a better book and movie. The same goes for the crux of the plot, providing the mujahedeen with Stinger missiles.
# # #
Tom Hanks Tells Hollywood Whopper in 'Charlie Wilson's War'
By Melissa Roddy, AlterNet
December 21, 2007
- - Alternet is an anti right-wing news organization. Interesting this article appeared on their site. - FlA
Posted for FlAttorney by TAB
I sure can't and I've been around for awhile!
If George Crile "had written more of the truth", any more of the truth, book wouldn't sell many copies and we wouldn't see the movie adapted from it because Hollywood (in this case Tom Hanks, Aaron Sorkin, George Soros et al,) as Aaron Sorkin said in his other script, "can't handle the truth", and wouldn't be interested in making, producing and financing the truth and nothing but the truth.
In his fictional story, "based on a true story", Grile used just enough of the truth to make a "hero" out of a personally flawed southern Democrat (oh, what parallels one can draw!), while at the same time subtly implying that Reagan and his administration were somehow responsible for bad guys (Gulbuddin, Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden et al) organizing and being financed and supplied by us in Afghanistan, which later (around 1995) led to takeover by Taliban and still later (around 1998) let to Osama's relocation of al-Qaeda HQ and training camps in Afghanistan...
The inconvenient truth is that because Charlie Wilson was deeply personally flawed and in constant danger of losing his office and, therefore, his meal ticket to power, women, junkets and possibly even his own freedom were constantly in jeopardy, he could easily be blackmailed and used and was used by CIA, Pakis and Afghans nd whoever else - for deeds, some good and some evil, by people, some good and some evil.
That's the real inconvenient truth about Charlie Wilson, but it wouldn't be easy to find in Charlie Wilson's War as told to us (even when modified under pressure) by George Grile, Aaron Sorkin, Tom Hanks and George Soros, because it wasn't his "war" - Charlie Wilson happened to be the right guy ("personally flawed") in the right place (Congress, where funding authority lies for covert operations) at the right time (Afghanistan's mujahideen resistance against Soviet invasion) who was taken along for the ride because he was useful in getting funding for it.
In Hollywood, when the story doesn't fit or doesn't sell, they do a rewrite... After almost two decades, that it's no longer possible to keep silent, deny or diminish the fact that Soviet Union's defeat in Afghanistan was a huge step in the dissolution of Evil Empire, so the need for a new story line and a "real hero" somehow suddenly emerged from fertile imagination of Hollywood liberals. What we are witnessing here is another one of Hollywood's rewrites of history. If the choice is between telling the truth or telling the story, when the story sounds better than the truth, Hollywood (and many "journalists") will tell the story.
Sorry, Charlie... You couldn't win "Charlie Wilson's War" as there was no such thing, except in the hearts and minds of Hollywood.