by Mark Curtis
There were various mentions in the media of CIA support for the mojahidin, but almost nothing on the covert British role.
Britain had also supported the mojahidin since the beginning of the Soviet occupation. MI6 had been authorised to conduct ‘disruptive action’ within the first year of the resistance campaign. A British private ‘security’ company, KMS, undertook training of small numbers of mojahidin commando units in Afghanistan and at an MI6 base in Oman, cleared by the Foreign Office. Ex-SAS men took over the KMS training programmes while a few other SAS veterans also trained Pakistani special forces. According to SAS veteran Ken Connor, in his book Ghost Force, selected Afghan fighters were smuggled into Britain disguised as tourists and trained in three-week cycles at secret camps in Scotland. Some SAS officers’ role went beyond that of trainers and they were involved in scouting and back-up roles with the mojahidin.30
Moreover, Britain supplied at least 600 ‘Blowpipe’ shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles to mojahidin groups, beginning in spring 1986. These missiles enabled the mojahidin to target Soviet military aircraft but they were also used to shoot down several passenger planes. Britain’s leading expert on MI6, Stephen Dorril, notes that the ability to shoot down passenger planes ‘became an acute embarrassment, as they presented a potential terrorist threat to the West’. By September 1986, when the first of the more modern US-made Stinger missiles appeared on the battlefield, Blowpipes were no longer needed. The US later spent tens of millions of dollars in a belated attempt to buy back the remaining Stinger missiles that proved lucrative on the black market.31
The British-supplied Blowpipe missiles were acquired by the Taliban on taking power. One news service reported two weeks into the war against Afghanistan in October 2001 that:
The Taliban forces that now control most of Afghanistan and have harboured terrorist Osama Bin Laden still have an unknown number of the Stingers and the similar British blowpipes and Russian SA-7s, defence experts warn.
According to a Reuters report, sixty-two Blowpipe missiles were handed over to the US, along with a further 160 surface-to-air missiles, in February 2002 following the defeat of the Taliban.32
In the 1980s, MI6 also provided other aid to various of the Afghan warlords and factions. It supplied missiles to Abdul Haq, of the fundamentalist Hezbe-i-Islami, and also promoted ex-King Zahir Shah, seeing him as a future leader. Britain also backed a group supporting a hardline Islamic ideology led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, sending him an annual mission to see what he wanted. These missions – consisting of two MI6 officers and military instructors – also provided training to Massoud’s junior commanders. Britain supplied tactical radios made by Racal, allowing Massoud to coordinate his forces.33
Following attacks on US embassies in Africa in August 1998, Bin Laden became a priority for MI6. Dorril calls Bin Laden ‘a creation of the CIA and MI6. They were perfectly happy to secure his support and train and arm his supporters during the covert war to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan’. On the problem of what to do with the thousands of highly trained guerilla fighters after the Soviet occupation ended, one British official admitted: ‘We did worry then about these wild bearded men. But there was a lot of naivety around.’34
The decade-long MI6 strategy to bolster the mojahidin was Britain’s largest covert operation since the Second World War. With the US as the key player, the strategy helped create a globalisation of terrorism and a new terrorist threat to the West. Cooley notes that ‘before the training of terrorists and guerillas became institutionalised on a large scale by the CIA and the Pakistani military during the 1979–89 Afghan war, terrorism was practised mainly by genuine liberation movements’.35 We are now meant to accept the ‘war against terrorism’ as showing our shining devotion to ridding the world of an evil scourge, when it is at least partly a creation of our (US, Saudi, Pakistan and Britain’s) making.
Another issue regularly passed over in the media was the mojahidin’s involvement in drug trafficking. During the bombing, British leaders made much of the threat of drugs from Afghanistan on our streets, pointing out that 90 per cent of the heroin came from the country. In the 1980s, our new-found allies were doing their utmost to get these drugs to the West. The mojahidin’s drug smuggling was at least condoned, and possibly actively supported, by the CIA, whose trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to heroin laboratories along the Afghan–Pakistan border.
A former SAS officer who covertly worked alongside mojahidin groups in Afghanistan, Tom Carew, witnessed Pakistani involvement in opium smuggling. He says in his book that he reported this back to the CIA, who told him ‘not to mention this again’ and ‘if you do see anything connected with opium again, just ignore it completely’. Carew notes that this ‘confirmed to me that the Mujahidin were moving the opium with, at the very least, the tacit cooperation of the CIA’. It is inconceivable that MI6 were not also aware of this drug trafficking.36
The mojahidin’s drugs output is estimated to have provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe.37 Cooley notes that:
The Afghan jihad helped to augment Afghanistan’s production of drugs and ultimately, by 1998, placed the power to stifle or to increase this production in the hands of the victorious Taliban. Never has so much South Asian marijuana, opium and semi-processed opium products and heroin, reached the drug pushers, the adult addicts, the children and the general populations of the West, as in the late 1990s. Much of this was another direct consequence of the CIA’s holy war of 1979–89.38
And, we might add, Britain’s.
The known facts about past British policy in Afghanistan were rarely mentioned, perhaps being viewed as inconvenient points that didn’t fit the official story. So too are more plausible explanations as to what the bombing campaign was actually about.
Plausible explanations
As I outline in chapter 6, in the Kosovo war most commentators accepted at face value Blair’s and Clinton’s claims to be acting for humanitarian reasons – disputing only their methods for achieving noble goals. It was almost universally accepted that there were no self-interest, strategic reasons involved in bombing Yugoslavia. I believe this was a myth and that there were major issues at stake, concerning EU enlargement and NATO expansion, as well as NATO’s ‘credibility’. The same has applied to Afghanistan, where the overwhelming majority of commentators bought the Bush and Blair line of defending civilisation against barbarity.
But, on more plausible reasons for the war in Afghanistan, we need only listen to President Bush. Four days after September 11th Bush spoke on US national television of a ‘comprehensive assault on terrorism’. He said: ‘They will be exposed, and they will discover what others in the past have learnt: those who make war against the United States have chosen their own destruction.’ It was the same message sent to Saddam Hussein in 1990 (and again in 2003) and to Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 (perhaps these were ‘the others in the past’) – anyone opposing the US will be destroyed. Britain’s Defence minister, Geoff Hoon, also later chipped in, saying that the bombing of Afghanistan was a ‘clear message’ to others.39
The US administration was saying, with Britain in tow as usual, that it will not tolerate major challenges to its interests and power. The war in Afghanistan was a giant act of retaliation to deliver this message, showing who’s boss, not only to Afghans but to anyone else. This is a much more plausible first explanation for the bombing campaign than the notion of defending civilised values (which is quite ridiculous looking at US and British policies elsewhere).
The White House National Security Adviser, Condoleeza Rice, told Nicholas Lemann of the New Yorker that she ‘had called together the senior staff people of the National Security Council and asked them to think seriously about “how do you capitalise on these opportunities” to fundamentally change American doctrine, and the shape of the world, in the wake of September 11th’. A
senior official also told Lemann that September 11th was ‘a transformative moment’ because it ‘drastically reduced the American public’s usual resistance to American military involvement overseas, at least for a while’.40
My view is that the demonstration of US power in Afghanistan was much more important to Washington than capturing Bin Laden. It is surely a myth to believe – as the media have played along – that this was ever the major intention of US policy. If it were, a better strategy would have been to pursue the diplomatic route. The press reported several offers by the Taliban to negotiate the handing over of Bin Laden. The Guardian reported on 20 September that Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, was offering to hold discussions with the US. ‘But the White House said it was not interested in negotiations … and ruled out presenting the UN with evidence of Bin Laden’s involvement in the attack.’ (This was reported under the misleading heading ‘US prepares for long war as Taliban close path to peace’.)41
The Guardian also reported on 17 October that a senior minister in the Taliban regime had offered to hand over Bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, in return for a halt in the bombing. This was the first time the Taliban had offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first of his involvement in the September 11th attacks.42
Now, it is very likely that the Taliban never intended to hand over Bin Laden, even if he were under their jurisdiction. But the point is that neither did the US ever show much interest in pursuing this option.
There was also a chance of removing the Taliban, after September 11th, without bombing. It was at this point that Pakistan removed its support for the Taliban, instantly cutting off its main backer. It was also reported that Pakistan was planning a coup to remove the Taliban leader. This was intended to allow moderates to take over the movement who would then join talks with the Northern Alliance on forming a coalition government. But in this solution there would probably have been a big role for Iran and Russia, who would have been involved in the negotiations to form a post-Taliban government.43 This would clearly have been opposed in Washington as giving too much say to the US’s rivals in the region – and threatening US primacy in determining the post-Taliban future.
The bombing strategy was an altogether more useful one for the US leadership. Two further factors help to explain the US resort to force. Many mainstream commentators have promoted the view that Al Qaida was attacking freedom, civilisation and our way of life on September 11th. This was a convenient way of presenting the good versus evil argument. The horrific acts of September 11th certainly pose a challenge to these values, but they cannot be explained by them. Rather, the terrorists were attacking US policy, consistent with their bomb attacks on other US targets, such as the embassies in East Africa and the warship, USS Cole.
Al Qaida’s major target is Saudi Arabia, especially in intending to remove the US from the country and topple the ruling Saud family. Al Qaida’s founding statement in February 1998 states:
For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorising its neighbours and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.44
The war against Al Qaida and the bombing of Afghanistan is in major respects a war for control of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden’s view of the future of Saudi Arabia is even less pleasant than that of the US or Britain. But the fact is that Al Qaida represents a threat to the continued rule of the Saud family, and to Saudi Arabia’s pro-Western stance. This challenge from Bin Laden – himself a Saudi, along with most of the hijackers of September 11th – is occurring when many reports suggest that the Saudi regime is on the brink of collapse, with unprecedented anti-government demonstrations and bombing attacks, coupled with long-term decline in oil revenues and falling living standards for many.
According to one report, British officials fear a coup against the current de facto ruler, Prince Abdullah, by elements in the Saud family sympathetic to Al Qaida. The Pentagon recently sponsored a secret conference to look at options if the royal family fell. The Saud family is fully aware of the challenge from Bin Laden to their rule. ‘The Saudi royals have been paying off the terrorists with Danegeld for a long while’ one well-placed source was reported as saying.45
There is no doubt how vital the US and Britain view continued ‘stability’ in Saudi Arabia (that is, regimes favoured by us). As noted in the previous chapter, Saudi oil was described by British planners in 1947 as ‘a vital prize for any power interested in world influence or domination’. Since 1945, US and British policy in the Middle East has been largely about securing control over Saudi oil, which has meant keeping the Saud family in power (see chapter 11 and my previous book, The Great Deception). So keen are Britain and the US to prop up despotic rule that they currently provide ‘internal security training’ to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, a 75,000-strong force that protects the ruling family against any threat. Arms sales entrench the relationship further. This British support for Saudi repression involves almost complete silence on the country’s horrific human rights record.
A second plausible US objective in bombing Afghanistan was therefore to remove the threat to the Saudi regime posed by Al Qaida. A diplomatic, legal route to capture Bin Laden would not have achieved this objective – the network itself needs to be destroyed. In this sense, the bombing was a continuation of the 1991 war to remove Iraq from Kuwait – to remove threats to Western control of the Middle East and to ensure that oil remains in the correct hands.
But there is a third factor which also helps to explain the US and British onslaught in Afghanistan.
In June 2000, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College published a document entitled ‘US military engagement with Transcaucasia and Central Asia’. It said that the region, which includes the Caspian Sea and surrounding areas, possesses reserves of 160 billion barrels of oil and:
will play an increasingly important role in satisfying the world’s future energy demands … US officials publicly maintain that this region’s energy sources could be a back-up to the unstable Persian Gulf and allow us and our allies to reduce our dependence on its energy supplies.
However, a recognised threat was that ‘Russia could sabotage many if not all of the forthcoming energy projects by relatively simple and tested means and there is not much we could do absent a strong and lasting regional commitment [sic].’ A solution proposed was that:
Therefore, for a win-win situation to come about, some external factor must be permanently engaged and willing to commit even military forces, if need be, to ensure stability and peace. This does not necessarily mean a unilateral commitment, but more likely a multilateral one, e.g. under the UN’s auspices but actually under US leadership. Without such a permanent presence, and it is highly unlikely that the United States can afford or will choose to make such a presence felt, other than through economic investment, Russia will be able to exclude all other rivals and regain hegemony over the area.46
The importance of Central Asia to US planners, and the rivalry with Russia and Iran for control of the region’s oil, are clear. In 1998, Richard Cheney, now the US Vice President, said ‘I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.’ It is certainly plausible that control of Central Asian oil was a factor in deciding US strategy towards Afghanistan – to replace an unfriendly regime in Kabul and by the fact of US intervention become the major sub-regional power. As noted in the following
chapter, the US has, since September 11th, established a series of new military bases in this important region under the rubric of the ‘war against terrorism’.
A key aspect of the rivalry for control of Central Asian oil is the negotiations on pipeline routes to export the oil and gas to global markets. Again, Afghanistan seems to be a factor here.
Evidence indicates that the US and Pakistan started in 1994 to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban to aid their struggle against the Northern Alliance. A key reason was the Taliban’s willingness to cut a deal on a pipeline route. In 1995, the US oil giant Unocal began negotiations to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian sea. Soon after the Taliban took power in September 1996, the Daily Telegraph reported oil industry insiders saying that ‘the dream of securing a pipeline across Afghanistan is the main reason why Pakistan, a close political ally of America’s, has been so supportive of the Taliban, and why America has quietly acquiesced in its conquest of Afghanistan’. Unocal offered to pay the Taliban regime 15 per cent for every thousand cubic feet of oil it pumped through Afghanistan.
For the first year of Taliban rule, US policy towards the regime seems to have been determined principally by Unocal’s interests. Only in December 1998, four months after the US embassy bombings in East Africa, did Unocal drop its pipeline plan. But a few days before September 11th the US Energy Information Administration reported that:
Afghanistan’s significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from central Asia to the Arabian sea. This potential includes the possible construction of oil and natural gas pipelines through Afghanistan.47