15. RAND-MIPT Terrorism Incident Database. Following are the yearly figures on insurgent-initiated attacks in Afghanistan: 2002 (65 attacks); 2003 (148 attacks); 2004 (146 attacks); 2005 (207 attacks); 2006 (353 attacks). Following are the fatalities during the same period: 2002 (79 deaths); 2003 (133 deaths); 2004 (230 deaths); 2005 (288 deaths); 2006 (755 deaths). A comparison of the RAND-MIPT data with U.S. and European government data shows that the RAND-MIPT data significantly understate the number of attacks and deaths, since most improvised-explosive-device and armed attacks were never reported in the press. Nevertheless, the trend in the RAND-MIPT data is consistent with U.S. and European government data.
16. Pamela Constable, “Gates Visits Kabul, Cites Rise in Cross-Border Attacks,” Washington Post, January 17, 2007, p. A10.
17. The data come from Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. See, for example, Ed Johnson, “Gates Wants NATO to Reorganize Afghanistan Mission,” Bloomberg News, December 12, 2007.
18. Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 105–6.
19. Amrullah Saleh, Strategy of Insurgents and Terrorists in Afghanistan (Kabul, Afghanistan: National Directorate of Security, 2006), p. 4.
20. Rudyard Kipling, Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Inclusive Edition, 1885–1926 (New York: Doubleday, 1931), p. 479.
21. Winston S. Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1901), p. 274.
22. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 13; Barnett R. Rubin, The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 7; Lester Grau, ed., The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996), p. xix.
23. Ann Scott Tyson, “British Troops, Taliban in a Tug of War over Afghan Province,” Washington Post, March 30, 2008, p. A1.
24. General Tommy Franks, American Soldier (New York: Regan Books, 2004), p. 324.
25. Author interview with senior U.S. cabinet official, January 15, 2008.
26. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007: Executive Summary (Kabul: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2007), p. iv.
27. For other variants of the weak-state argument, see Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (London: Hurst & Company, 2007), pp. 7, 15–21.
28. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), p. 11.
29. James Michener, Caravans (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1963), p. 7.
30. See, for example, Saleh, Strategy of Insurgents and Terrorists in Afghanistan; Afghanistan National Security Council, National Threat Assessment (Kabul: Afghanistan National Security Council, 2005); Afghanistan Ministry of Defense, The National Military Strategy (Kabul: Afghanistan Ministry of Defense, October 2005).
31. George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003), p. 4.
32. Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin, Afghanistan—The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower (Havertown, PA: Casemate, 1992), p. 1.
Chapter One
1. Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002), pp. 17–18.
2. Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander, book 2, vol. 6, translated by John C. Rolfe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946), pp. 25–29.
3. Rufus, History of Alexander, book 2, vol. 6, p. 29.
4. Rufus, History of Alexander, book 2, vol. 7, p. 147. Also see, for example, Lewis V. Cummings, Alexander the Great (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940), pp. 280–81.
5. Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (London: Martin Secker, 1958), p. 243.
6. See, for example, Frank L. Holt, Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005).
7. Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, translated by Ronald Latham (New York: Penguin Books, 1958), p. 77.
8. Sir George Lawrence, Reminiscences of Forty-Three Years in India (Lahore, Pakistan: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1981), pp. 308–9. The appendix includes a copy of William Brydon’s account, provided on arrival in Jalalabad in 1842.
9. Holt, Into the Land of Bones, p. 4.
10. Holt, Into the Land of Bones, pp. 4–5.
11. Author interview with Ambassador Ronald Neumann, April 16, 2008.
12. Rory Stewart, The Places in Between (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006).
13. Marco Polo, Travels of Marco Polo, p. 80.
14. Author interview with Ambassador Ronald Neumann, March 25, 2008.
15. Henry Kissinger, Memorandum for the President, “Private Conversations with the King and Prime Minister of Afghanistan,” January 26, 1970. Released by the National Security Archive.
16. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Research Study, “Afghanistan: Both Government and Political System Face Trial,” March 30, 1973. Also see U.S. Embassy Kabul to Department of State, Airgram A-90, “King Zahir’s Experiment: Some End-of-Tour Observaions,” August 1, 1970. Released by the National Security Archive.
17. U.S. Embassy Kabul to Department of State, Cable 4745, August 2, 1971, “Audience with King Zahir.” Released by the National Security Archive.
18. U.S. Embassy Kabul to Department of State, Airgram A-77, “Afghanistan’s Clerical Unrest: A Tentative Assessment,” June 24, 1970. Released by the National Security Archive.
19. Ambassador Ronald Neumann, Airgram A-90, “King Zahir’s Experiment: Some End-of-Tour Observations,” August 1, 1970. Released by the National Security Archive.
20. U.S. Embassy Kabul to Department of State, Cable 1806, March 21, 1972, “Afghanistan—Political Uncertainties.” Released by the National Security Archive.
21. Department of State to U.S. Embassy Kabul, Cable 74767, April 29, 1972, Political Situation.” Also see, for example, Memorandum from Robert A. Flaten, NEA/PAB (Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Office for Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh), to Bruce Laingen, Office Director, NEA/ PAB, “Afghan Politics—the Creeping Crisis,” May 21, 1972. Released by the National Security Archive.
22. The KGB in Afghanistan—Geographical Volume 1, Vasili Mitrokhin Archive. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
23. U.S. Embassy Kabul to Department of State, Cable 4728, “King Zaher Travel to London for Medical Therapy,” June 26, 1973. Released by the National Security Archive.
24. Memorandum, Harold H. Saunders and Henry A. Appelbaum, National Security Council Staff, to Dr. Kissinger, “Coup in Afghanistan,” July 17, 1973. Released by the National Security Archive.
25. Author interview with Graham Fuller, August 19, 2008.
26. Decree of the Secretariat of the CC CPSU—An Appeal to the Leaders of the PDPA Groups “Parcham” and “Khalq,” January 8, 1974; CC CPSU Information for the Leaders of the Progressive Afghan Political Organizations “Parcham” and “Khalq” Concerning the Results of the Visit of Mohammed Daud to the USSR, June 21, 1974. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
27. Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 115.
28. The Delivery of Special Equipment to the DRA, CC CPSU Politburo meeting, April 21, 1978. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
29. Author interview with Graham Fuller, August 19, 2008.
30. Quoted in David B. Edwards, Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), p. 36.
31. Alexander Lyakhovskiy, Plamya Afgana (Moscow: Iskon, 1999). Released by the Cold War
International History Project.
32. Eric Pace, “Babrak Karmal, Afghanistan’s Ex-President, Dies at 67,” New York Times, December 6, 1996.
33. Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986) (New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 435.
34. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), p. 413.
35. CC CPSU Politburo Session March 17–18, 1979, Deterioration of Conditions in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and Possible Responses from Our Side. Released by the National Security Archive.
36. Transcript of Telephone Conversation between Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and Afghan Prime Minister Nur Mohammad Taraki, March 18, 1979; Conversation of the chief of the Soviet military advisory group in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Gorelov, with H. Amin, August 11, 1979. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
37. Transcript of A. N. Kosygin-A. A. Gromyko-D. F. Ustinov-B. N. Ponomarev-N. M. Taraki Conversation on March 20, 1979. Released by the National Security Archive.
38. CPSU CC Politburo Decision and Instruction to Soviet Ambassador in Afghanistan, May 24, 1979. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
39. Excerpt from Politburo meeting, March 18, 1979. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
40. Tanner, Afghanistan, pp. 231–32.
41. Andropov-Gromyko-Ustinov-Ponomarev Report to CC CPSU on the Situation in Afghanistan, June 28, 1979. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
42. On the Soviet Union’s dossier on Amin, see Alexander Lyakhovskiy, Plamya Afgana.
43. Andropov-Gromyko-Ustinov-Ponomarev Report to the CC CPSU on the Situation in Afghanistan, October 29, 1979. Released by the National Security Archive.
44. Dobrynin, In Confidence, p. 436. Personal Memorandum from Andropov to Brezhnev, December 1, 1979. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
45. Author interview with Graham Fuller, August 19, 2008.
46. Alexander Lyakhovskiy’s account of the meeting from Alexander Lyakhovskiy, The Tragedy and Valor of the Afghani (Moscow: GPI Iskon, 1995), pp. 109–12. Released by the Cold War International History Project. Lyakhovskiy was a major general in the Russian Army. During the war in Afghanistan, he served as assistant to the commander of the Operative Group of the USSR Defense Ministry.
47. Georgy Kornienko’s Account of the Politburo Decision to Send Soviet Troops into Afghanistan, from Georgy M. Kornienko, The Cold War: Testimony of a Participant (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1994). Released by the National Security Archive.
48. Lyakhovskiy, The Tragedy and Valor of the Afghani, pp. 109–12.
49. Georgy Kornienko’s Account of the Politburo Decision to Send Soviet Troops into Afghanistan.
50. On growing concerns of Islam in Afghanistan, see Soviet Communication to the Hungarian Leadership on the Situation in Afghanistan, March 28, 1979. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
51. Directive No. 312/12/001 of December 24, 1979, signed by Ustinov and Ogarkov, December 24, 1979. U.S. President Jimmy Carter sent a letter to Brezhnev arguing that the Afghan government—especially Amin—had not requested Soviet assistance. On Brezhnev’s response, see Reply to an appeal of President Carter about the issue of Afghanistan through the direct communications channel (Excerpt from the Minutes of the CC CPSU Politburo Meeting, December 29, 1979). Released by the Cold War International History Project.
52. Dobrynin, In Confidence, p. 440.
53. Ibid., p. 439.
54. Author interview with Ambassador Ronald Neumann, April 16, 2008.
55. Tanner, Afghanistan, pp. 235–36.
56. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 11. Also see, for example, USSR Ministry of Defense and General Staff Operations Groups in the DRA. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
57. Tanner, Afghanistan, p. 237.
58. Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 427.
59. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 143–45.
60. Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 145–46.
61. Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 427.
62. Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 147–48.
63. Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan, pp. 104–5.
64. Ibid., p. 121.
Chapter Two
1. Jon Lee Anderson, “American Viceroy: Zalmay Khalilzad’s Mission,” The New Yorker, December 19, 2005, p. 60.
2. See, for example, Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 37, no. 2, January 1959. A slightly different version of the article was published by RAND as P-1472 in December 1958.
3. University of Chicago, “Ambassador Zalmay M. Khalilzad, PhD ’79: President Bush’s choice to become the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations,” Alumni in the News, 2007.
4. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 246–48; National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 63–67; 371–74; Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 48, 54; SIPRI Yearbook 1991: World Armaments and Disarmament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 199.
5. Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, “The Costs of Soviet Involvement in Afghanistan,” February 1987, p. 5. Released by the National Security Archive.
6. Rashid, Taliban, p. 13; Barnett R. Rubin, The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 7; Lester Grau, ed., The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996), p. xix; Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin, Afghanistan—The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower (Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2001), pp. 215–16.
7. Joseph Brodsky, Sochineniia Iosifa Brodskogo (Sankt-Peterburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1997), pp. 118–19.
8. Cynthia L. Haven, ed., Joseph Brodsky: Conversations (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi), p. 97.
9. Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 122–23.
10. Central Intelligence Agency, National Foreign Assessment Center, “Afghanistan: Ethnic Diversity and Dissidence,” March 1, 1980. Released by the National Security Archive.
11. Defense Intelligence Agency, Directorate for Research, “The Economic Impact of Soviet Involvement in Afghanistan,” May 1983. Released by the National Security Archive.
12. Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 130.
13. Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, “The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Five Years After,” May 1985, p. 9. Released by the National Security Archive.
14. Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan—The Bear Trap, p. 58. On the desertion estimates, see page 57.
15. Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002), p. 244.
16. Defense Intelligence Agency, Directorate for Research, “Afghan Resistance,” November 5, 1982. Released by the National Security Archive. Also see Session of CC CPSU Politburo, November 13, 1986. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
17. Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan—The Bear Trap, p. 48.
18. Tanner, Afghanistan, p. 239.
19. Pravda Correspondent Schedrov’s Letter to the CC CPSU on the Situation in Afghanistan, November 12, 1981. Released by the National Security Archive.
20
. Report of Military Leaders to D. F. Ustinov, May 10, 1981. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
21. Tanner, Afghanistan, p. 248.
22. On a Soviet analysis of Massoud, see, for example, Dossiers of Rebel Field Commanders. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
23. Sebastian Junger, Fire (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), p. 199.
24. On the lethality of the Mi-24s during the Soviet War, see Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, “The Costs of Soviet Involvement in Afghanistan,” February 1987, p. 4. Released by the National Security Archive. Also see Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan—The Bear Trap, pp. 177–78.
25. Tanner, Afghanistan, p. 255; Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 348.
26. Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, “The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Five Years After,” May 1985, p. 2. Released by the National Security Archive.
27. Sir Morrice James, Pakistan Chronicle (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 25.
28. Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan—The Bear Trap, p. 113.
29. Sean P. Witchell, “Pakistan’s ISI: The Invisible Government,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, vol. 16, no. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 374–88.
30. Alexander Lyakhovskiy, Plamya Afgana (Moscow: Iskon, 1999). Released by the Cold War International History Project.
31. Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan—The Bear Trap, p. 40.
32. On the importance of Islamic fundamentalism, see, for example: “Some Ideas About Foreign Policy Results of the 1970s (Points)” of Academician O. Bogomolov of the Institute of the Economy of the World Socialist System, sent to the CC CPSU and the KGB, January 20, 1980. Released by the Cold War International History Project.
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