Finally finished the book Charlie Wilson’s War, a sprawling, 500-page work about the Soviet war in Afghanistan published in ‘03, and the tale it tells is wild.

The war

The most successful Islamic jihad in modern history, Afghanistan vs. the Soviets, was run by the CIA, which along with the Saudis pumped in up to ~$800M/year over ~8 years, until the end of ‘88. As successful as it was, Soviets still out-killed Afghans 30:1 — 25,000 Soviet deaths vs. the genocide of a million Afghans.

It was a dirty war, neither side admitted the conflict until the very end; the Soviets brought soldiers’ coffins back home on the condition their parents could not inscribe ‘died in Afghanistan’ on their tombstones. Much the same propaganda motive is now behind the Pentagon’s media blackout of soldiers’ coffins and fudging the number of war deaths and injuries.

The mujahedeen were tough, barbaric and prone to tribal infighting. They were given to Hannibal Lecter-like practices such as peeling Soviet soldiers’ skin up from the waist and tying it around their heads, or leaving limbless Soviet soldiers alongside highways as a warning. They favored sodomizing POWs. After winning the war, the commanders immediately turned the CIA-supplied weapons against each other.

The book’s claim that the loss in Afghanistan brought down the USSR seems overblown, as the USSR’s economic core was already rotting. After all, the central argument of fiscal conservatism is capitalist, that free market systems are intrinsically stronger.

Blowback

The CIA trained Afghans in urban terrorism — bicycle and wheelbarrow bombs — which they’re now using against American troops. Pakistan served as cross-border refuge for the Taliban, which they’re doing once again. The Soviets bombed Pakistan border towns and threatened to invade Pakistan unless they ’stop killing Soviet soldiers,’ the same warnings the U.S. is issuing Iran over Iraq today.

The CIA was warned by Afghans against giving money to religious fundies, but they didn’t care. The plurality of our dollars went to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, still a Taliban warlord who’s one of the suspects in the Benazir assassination. We also funded the warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani. Osama bin Laden was a latecomer, not a central player in the war.

Neocons were just as delusional back then as they are today, pushing a propaganda scheme to get Soviet soldiers to surrender. But Afghans were so widely known to torture and massacre their captives, both they and the CIA were openly derisive of the neocons’ plans.

Charlie Wilson

Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-TX) was liberal on social issues but a hardcore anti-Communist. He maneuvered onto the defense appropriations committee in an attempt to give Soviets their own Vietnam.

‘Good Time Charlie’ was an alcoholic and a womanizer who fancied himself Lawrence of Arabia or Flashman, the dissolute Scottish hero of colonialist novels set in Afghanistan. He insisted on ferrying belly dancers and floozies around conservative Islamic countries. He indulged in petty retaliation against an American pilot who refused to ferry his girlfriend on the taxpayer dime by stripping him of his plane and transferring it to the Texas Air National Guard, Dubya’s outfit.

Then-federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani nearly nailed Wilson on charges of snorting coke, but was thwarted when Wilson’s friends stonewalled.

Wilson’s visit to Nicaragua to help the dictator Antonio Somoza fell apart when Somoza pawed someone’s girlfriend. Later the Iran-contra scandal provided critical cover for the Afghanistan war, as the media couldn’t handle more than one big scandal at a time.

Pakistan and Zia ul-Haq

Wilson was so enamored of the dictator Zia ul-Haq that Zia made him an honorary member of the Pakistani army. He was crushed when Zia died in a plane crash. Wilson’s key staff member Charlie Schnabel was so inspired by the jihadis, he converted to Islam.

Pakistan is intimate with Capitol Hill. Zia used to call Wilson during Congressional votes on Pakistan aid and ask him to hold the line despite Pakistanis having been caught buying parts for their nuclear program. He thought Wilson so critical to Pakistan’s military funding that he resorted to all kinds of fake-outs to thwart the mad Congressman’s wish to visit the hot war zone. He was worried Wilson would get himself killed, Pakistan would lose its funding and the country would be vulnerable to Indian nukes.

Wilson’s glam love interest Joanne Herring, a wealthy Texan Christian fundie, threw a party in Zia’s honor and with a straight face went around telling people he hadn’t hanged his predecessor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, that it was a fair trial and the people had convicted him.

Wilson got Israel to develop weapons for the Muslim fundies in Afghanistan (!), funneled through Pakistan. They were just one of many unlikely partners, including China.

Toward the end of the war, an arms depot with $100M in CIA arms blew up in Pakistan, killing scores of Pakistanis. Zia got on the horn to Washington and demanded the arms’ immediate replacement.

India

Wilson disliked Indians because of their Soviet alignment and ‘the way they held their heads.’ Perhaps he was more culturally comfortable with the Pakistani military with their U.S. training.

The book is written from a pro-Pakistan military perspective and paints Congressman Steven Solarz, whose non-proliferation amendment held up sales of F-16s to Pakistan, as an annoying gadfly.

The CIA

CIA South Asia head Gust Avrakotos had a spy network among black secretaries at the CIA, even though he called them n– to their face. People dismissed it as old-school as he came from a racist, blue-collar Pennsylvania town, and he backed up the secretaries when it counted.

Avrakotos’ key logistics guy Mike Vickers was one of those young badasses who not only was an architecture astronaut, he actually knew what he was doing. He reminds me of guys I’ve hired in my own field, minus the Green Beret training and, uh, the weapons and killing.

The two things that turned the war were Vickers’ introduction of an ever-changing weapons mix, so Hind pilots never knew what they were facing on any given day, and the eventual willingness of the CIA to abandon deniability and arm the mujahedeen with Stingers which easily brought down the helicopters. The CIA also had large sideline in exporting Tennessee mules to carry ammo into Afghanistan. Breeders were distraught to hear that some of them had been eaten by the mujahedeen.

You can pretty much do what you want in Washington by circumventing the rules — run massive covert wars in Afghanistan and Nicaragua without Congressional approval — as long as you don’t get caught.

The conspirators spent as least as much effort on bureaucratic infighting as on actually fighting the Soviets. In that sense, big organizations are all alike.

Epilogue

You get a sense of complete moral relativism. The book is in the tank for Wilson since he was blindly anticommunist, completely pro-Pakistan military, and downplays Zia’s crimes. It’s forced to mention 9/11 blowback, but the blowback is downplayed.

Among all the unlikely partners and allies are loads of funny culture clash stories, cringeworthy humor from The Office, with RPGs and guns. If you really want to see what brings ideological enemies together, try arms sales.

The CIA’s message to the Soviets was a Kipling poem, ‘The Young British Soldier,’ inscribed on a plaque in a CIA office:

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier…
So-oldier of the Queen! [Link]

Previously: Emboldening the errorists, The Dukes of Herat, Om Puri’s trailer