COVERT ACTION

By Region

Afghanistan

D - Z

Farr, Grant M., and John G. Merriam. Afghan Resistance: The Politics of Survival. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987.

Wilcox: Eight articles on guerrilla warfare and insurgency.

Lohbeck, Kurt. Holy War, Unholy Victory: Eyewitness to the CIA's Secret War in Afghanistan. Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1993.

According to Surveillant 3.4/5, Lohbeck was the "only American journalist assigned to cover the war full-time." He was a "suitable witness to the vicious power struggles that are still plaguing Afghanistan and are now plaguing the West."

Proceedings, Nov. 1994, notes that this "account is bound to raise some eyebrows and fuel a few debates, but there is a great deal of insight grown from a unique perspective."

MI 20.3 says this is "not as informative a guide to CIA activities as the title implies." It is a "journalistic memoir" which "focuses on the rebels, with secondary consideration of CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Agency (ISI) activities.... Jonathan Pollard ... attempted to implicate Lohbeck in the spy ring. The effort failed." This is an "important book."

McGrory, Daniel. "CIA Stung by Its Stingers." Electronic Telegraph, 3 Nov. 1996. [http:// www.telegraph.co.uk]

"A race between terrorists and the Western powers for control of a huge cache" of shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles "is underway in the arms bazaars of Afghanistan.... The weapons were sent into Afghanistan by the CIA during the Soviet occupation and were a key factor in tipping the balance of firepower against the Red Army. Now the West fears that, if they fall into the wrong hands, the Stingers could turn the tables in future conflicts or prove devastating if used by terror groups against civilian aviation."

Ostermann, Christian Friedrich. "New Evidence on the War in Afghanistan," Cold War International History Project Bulletin 14/15 (Winter 2003-Spring 2004): 139-141.

The author reports on an "international conference, 'Towards an International History of the War in Afghanistan,' organized in April 2002 by the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) in cooperation with the Woodrow Wilson Center's Asia Program and Kennan Institute, George Washington University's Cold War Group, and the National Security Archive."

Available Russian documents reveal "how one-sided official reporting from Afghanistan severely limited Soviet policy options between March 1979 ... and the final decision-making process on intervention that fall."

Prados, John. "Notes on the CIA's Secret War in Afghanistan." Journal of American History 89, no. 2 (Sep. 2002): 466-471.

Weinbaum, Marvin G. "War and Peace in Afghanistan: The Pakistani Role." Middle East Journal 45, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 71-85.

The focus here is not intelligence, but CIA-ISI links are discussed.

Weiner, Tim. "Blowback from the Afghan Battlefield." New York Times, 13 Mar. 1994.

"In the five years since the Soviets withdrew, tens of thousands of Islamic radicals, outcasts, visionaries and gunmen from some 40 nations have come to Afghanistan to learn the lessons of the jihad, the holy war, to train for armed insurrection, to bring the struggle back home.... The sole field of victory for C.I.A.-backed 'freedom fighters' in the 1980's has become an international center for the training and indoctrination of terrorists.... In these training centers, the foreigners learn about guerrilla warfare, antiaircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Much in demand, but too precious to fire in training, is the Stinger antiaircraft missile, supplied by the hundreds to the Afghans by the C.I.A. in the 1980's."

Yousaf, Mohammed, and Mark Adkin.

1. The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story. London Leo Cooper, 1992.

Powers, NYRB (13 May 1993) and Intelligence Wars (2004), 295-320, finds that the tension of managing the war in Afghanistan "is well described" in this book.

2. Afghanistan -- The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower. Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2001.

According to Cohen, FA 81.2, this book "is the memoir of the Pakistani brigadier general who masterminded the equipping and training of the Afghan mujahideen in their struggle against the Soviets in the 1980s." He tells a "fascinating and believable tale."

Return to Covert Action Table of Contents

Return to CIA 1980s Table of Contents