Operation Cyclone: A Militant Production Factory

Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen prior to and during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups that were favored by neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime since before the Soviet intervention. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken;[1] funding began with $20–$30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987.[2] Funding continued after 1989 as the Mujahideen battled the forces of Mohammad Najibullah's PDPA during the Civil war in Afghanistan (1989–1992).[3]

In April 1978, the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in the Saur Revolution. Within months, opponents of the communist government launched an uprising in eastern Afghanistan that quickly expanded into a civil war waged by guerrilla mujahideen against government forces countrywide. The Pakistani government provided these rebels with covert training centers, while the Soviet Union sent thousands of military advisers to support the PDPA government.[4] Meanwhile, increasing friction between the competing factions of the PDPA – the dominant Khalq and the more moderate Parcham – resulted in the dismissal of Parchami cabinet members and the arrest of Parchami military officers under the pretext of a Parchami coup.

By mid-1979, the United States had started a covert program to finance the mujahideen.[5] President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was later quoted as saying that the goal of the program was to "induce a Soviet military intervention",[6][7] but later clarified that this was "a very sensationalized and abbreviated" misquotation and that the Soviet invasion occurred largely because of previous U.S. failures to restrain Soviet expansionism.[8][9] According to Eric Alterman, writing in The Nation, Cyrus Vance's close aide Marshall Shulman "insists that the State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it, though he says he was unaware of the covert program at the time. Indeed, Vance hardly seems to be represented at all in Gates's recounting".[10]

Kinnera wrote:Boo hoo hoo! 'They are the ones who made us like this. not our fault!!'
All it takes for the ppl of 'The Book' to turn into deadly terrorists is some generous funding from the conservative ppl of the other 'Book'.

Kinnera wrote:Boo hoo hoo! 'They are the ones who made us like this. not our fault!!'
All it takes for the ppl of 'The Book' to turn into deadly terrorists is some generous funding from the conservative ppl of the other 'Book'.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:thanks for posting this. memories are short.

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:thanks for posting this. memories are short.

Check my post last week.  This terrorism game started with US exploting the iSlam card against Russians starting with Najibullah (he hid in Indian Embassy for a while to escape death).

But, the US was only using the iSlam card to coordinate all militants, they did not create the jihadi "mindset". After all, 5 million people were killed in 1947 bcz of iSlam and Pakistan split up bcz of iSlam.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:thanks for posting this. memories are short.

Check my post last week.  This terrorism game started with US exploting the iSlam card against Russians starting with Najibullah (he hid in Indian Embassy for a while to escape death).

But, the US was only using the iSlam card to coordinate all militants, they did not create the jihadi "mindset". After all, 5 million people were killed in 1947 bcz of iSlam and Pakistan split up bcz of iSlam.

but don't you think it's cynical to use a venomous snake to suit one's own purposes and then cry foul when the snake later bites you?

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:thanks for posting this. memories are short.

Check my post last week.  This terrorism game started with US exploting the iSlam card against Russians starting with Najibullah (he hid in Indian Embassy for a while to escape death).

But, the US was only using the iSlam card to coordinate all militants, they did not create the jihadi "mindset". After all, 5 million people were killed in 1947 bcz of iSlam and Pakistan split up bcz of iSlam.

By the end of the war billions of dollars had made its way to the various freedom fighters in one form or another, including direct suitcased cash payments from CIA agents, arms laundered through Germany and other parts of Europe, military training programs and pamphlets, and even school text book propaganda that taught children math through anti-soviet and military illustrations to spur on the next generation of terrorists.

One of the more controversial programs involved supplying Stinger antiaircraft missiles to the Mujahideen, many of which are unaccounted for or in the hands of America’s enemies today. It is believed one such request for missiles came from Osama Bin Laden, although it is not clear if he specifically received any.

confuzzled dude wrote:

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:thanks for posting this. memories are short.

Check my post last week.  This terrorism game started with US exploting the iSlam card against Russians starting with Najibullah (he hid in Indian Embassy for a while to escape death).

But, the US was only using the iSlam card to coordinate all militants, they did not create the jihadi "mindset". After all, 5 million people were killed in 1947 bcz of iSlam and Pakistan split up bcz of iSlam.

Put your biases aside for a minute and pray tell me if Afghan govt funded kkk type extremist camps in the US,  100s of millions of for 10-12 consecutive years and armed them, trained them, do you think outcome would've been different?

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

confuzzled dude wrote:

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:thanks for posting this. memories are short.

Check my post last week.  This terrorism game started with US exploting the iSlam card against Russians starting with Najibullah (he hid in Indian Embassy for a while to escape death).

But, the US was only using the iSlam card to coordinate all militants, they did not create the jihadi "mindset". After all, 5 million people were killed in 1947 bcz of iSlam and Pakistan split up bcz of iSlam.

Put your biases aside for a minute and pray tell me if Afghan govt funded kkk type extremist camps in the US,  100s of millions of for 10-12 consecutive years and armed them, trained them, do you think outcome would've been different?

you are not biased at all. you are 100 % islami at heart. You make Maulana Gaywala and Al-Akbari look like chaddis.

It is beyond dispute that the Islamic State militia — formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — emerged from the Syrian civil war, which began indigenously as a localised revolt against state brutality under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before being fuelled with externally supplied funds and weapons. From Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-training centres in Turkey and Jordan, the rebels set up a Free Syrian Army (FSA), launching attacks on government forces, as a U.S.-backed information war demonised Mr. Assad and encouraged military officers and soldiers to switch sides.

The U.S. and its allies made a more fundamental mistake by infusing the spirit of jihad in their campaign against Mr. Assad so as to help trigger a popular uprising in Syria. The decision to instil the spirit of jihad through television and radio broadcasts beamed to Syrians was deliberate — to provoke Syria’s majority Sunni population to rise against their secular government.

This ignored the lesson from Afghanistan (where the CIA in the 1980s ran, via Pakistan, the largest covert operation in its history) — that inciting jihad and arming “holy warriors” creates a deadly cocktail, with far-reaching and long-lasting impacts on international security. The Reagan administration openly used Islam as an ideological tool to spur armed resistance to Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

In 1985, at a White House ceremony in honour of several Afghan mujahideen — the jihadists out of which al-Qaeda evolved — President Ronald Reagan declared, “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.” Earlier in 1982, Reagan dedicated the space shuttle ‘Columbia’ to the Afghan resistance. He declared, “Just as the Columbia, we think, represents man’s finest aspirations in the field of science and technology, so too does the struggle of the Afghan people represent man’s highest aspirations for freedom. I am dedicating, on behalf of the American people, the March 22 launch of the Columbia to the people of Afghanistan.”