Robert Parry: The Lie Behind the Afghan War

In Official Washington, there is one fact about the Afghan War that nearly everyone "knows": In February 1989, after the Soviet Army left Afghanistan, the United States walked away from the war-torn country, creating a vacuum that led to the rise of the Taliban and its readiness to host al-Qaeda's anti-American terrorists. It is a point made by senior administration officials, including incoming Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and departing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who once summed up the conventional wisdom by saying: "We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the country only to see it descend into civil war and into Taliban hands." Robert Gates was there at the time, as President George H.W. Bush's deputy national security adviser, so he should know. If there is any remaining doubt about this key historical "lesson" regarding Afghanistan, you simply need to watch the Tom Hanks's movie, "Charlie Wilson's War," in which you see Hanks as Rep. Wilson pleading for additional aid for Afghanistan and being rebuffed by feckless members of a congressional committee. The only problem with this "history" is that it isn't true: There was NO immediate cutoff of funds for the Afghan mujahedeen in 1989. Indeed, hundreds of millions of dollars in covert CIA funding continued to flow to the rebels for several years, as the US "government" sought a clear-cut victory over communist leader Najibullah, who was holed up in Kabul. If you don't believe me, read George Criles's 2003 book, Charlie Wilson's War, upon which the Hanks movie was based. In it, Crile describes how Wilson kept the funding spigot open for the Afghan rebels after the Soviet departure, despite a growing US awareness that the mujahedeen were brutal, reactionary and corrupt, a reality that Washington chose to ignore when theses Islamic warlords were being hailed as anti-Soviet "freedom fighters" in the 1980's.