“Charlie Wilson’s Blowback” — Afghanistan and the Creation of al-Qaeda
- Jeff Kellick
- Mar 22
- 24 min read
“What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”—Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor, 1998¹
Introduction: The War That Came Home
In the 1980s, Congressman Charlie Wilson from Texas became obsessed with helping Afghan “freedom fighters” defeat the Soviet Union. With CIA officer Gust Avrakotos, he built an operation that funneled billions of dollars in weapons to the mujahideen. It was celebrated as a triumph—the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War treats it as a feel-good story of American pluck defeating an evil empire.
But the movie ends before the consequences begin.
The weapons America sent included Stinger missiles that would later threaten American aircraft. The fighters America funded included a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden. The ideology America promoted—jihadism as anti-Soviet tool—did not stop being jihadism when the Soviets left. The “freedom fighters” became the Taliban. Their guests became al-Qaeda. And on September 11, 2001, the blowback arrived.²
The Afghan operation was the largest CIA covert action since Vietnam. It succeeded brilliantly in its immediate objective: the Soviets withdrew, humiliated, their empire weakened. But covert operations have consequences beyond their immediate objectives. The enemy of our enemy is not our friend—he is merely our enemy’s enemy. Arming religious extremists to fight secular communists does not produce moderates; it produces empowered extremists.
The 9/11 attacks were not random or inexplicable. They were the predictable consequence of policies pursued without regard for long-term effects. The networks that planned the attacks were built during the anti-Soviet jihad. The ideology that motivated the attackers was the ideology America had promoted. The sanctuary they used was in a country America had armed, abandoned, and ignored.
This is the case study that proves the blowback thesis. Understanding the Afghan operation is essential to understanding the “War on Terror” that followed—and why, after twenty years and trillions of dollars, the Taliban rules Afghanistan again.
The Soviet Invasion and American Response
The Soviet Decision
Afghanistan had been a constitutional monarchy until 1973, when a coup established a republic. In 1978, a communist faction seized power. The new government pursued radical reforms—land redistribution, secular education, women’s rights—that provoked fierce resistance from traditional and religious elements.
By 1979, the communist government was losing control. Insurgency spread across the countryside. The regime’s survival was in doubt.
On December 24, 1979, Soviet forces crossed into Afghanistan. Within days, they had seized Kabul and installed a new leader more compliant with Moscow’s wishes. The Soviets claimed they were responding to Afghan government requests for assistance. In reality, they were preventing the collapse of a client state on their border.³
Over 100,000 Soviet troops would eventually deploy to Afghanistan. They expected a brief intervention to stabilize the government. They would remain for nearly a decade.
The Carter Response
President Jimmy Carter responded with a combination of symbolic measures and covert action. He announced a grain embargo against the Soviet Union. The United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. These gestures expressed displeasure but inflicted limited damage.
The Carter Doctrine declared that the Persian Gulf was a vital American interest and that the United States would use military force to defend it. Afghanistan itself was not the concern—Soviet proximity to oil-rich regions was.
More consequentially, Carter authorized the CIA to supply the Afghan resistance. The operation began small—a few million dollars in non-lethal aid. It would grow into something far larger.⁴
Brzezinski’s Strategy
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski saw Afghanistan as an opportunity rather than a crisis. He wanted to give the Soviets “their Vietnam”—to draw them into a quagmire that would bleed their military, drain their economy, and hasten their decline.
Brzezinski later claimed that American covert support for the Afghan resistance had actually begun before the Soviet invasion—that the goal was to provoke Soviet intervention, not merely respond to it. In a 1998 interview, he confirmed this strategy and dismissed concerns about its consequences.⁵
When asked whether he regretted having supported Islamic fundamentalism and given arms and training to future terrorists, Brzezinski responded: “What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”
The question reveals the mindset. Afghan suffering was an acceptable cost. The Afghan people were instruments for American strategic objectives. What happened to them afterward was not America’s concern.
Brzezinski’s question answers itself differently depending on who is asked. For the policymakers in Washington, the calculation seemed obvious. For the Afghans who would endure decades of war, the answer was their lives. For the families of 9/11 victims, the answer was their loved ones.
Charlie Wilson’s War
The Congressman
Charlie Wilson was a Democratic congressman from the Second District of Texas. He served from 1973 to 1997, a colorful figure known for hard drinking, attractive female staff members he called “Charlie’s Angels,” and a flair for self-promotion. He was an unlikely candidate to direct the largest covert operation since Vietnam.
Wilson visited Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan in 1982 and was moved by what he saw. He returned convinced that the mujahideen deserved American support—not merely the token assistance they were receiving, but serious military aid that could change the war’s trajectory.⁶
His position on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee gave him unusual leverage over intelligence budgets. He began using that leverage to funnel money to the Afghan operation, often adding funds beyond what the CIA requested.
The CIA Partnership
At the CIA, the Afghan operation was run by Gust Avrakotos, a working-class Greek-American officer who had clashed with the agency’s establishment. Avrakotos and Wilson formed an unlikely alliance—the flamboyant Texas congressman and the street-smart case officer—that would transform the scope of American involvement.
The operation’s budget grew exponentially. From $5 million in 1980, it expanded to $20 million in 1983, $250 million in 1985, and over $500 million by 1987. Saudi Arabia matched American contributions dollar for dollar, effectively doubling the resources available.⁷
By the mid-1980s, the Afghan operation was the largest covert action program in CIA history. It dwarfed every other agency activity combined. And it operated with minimal congressional oversight—Wilson himself served as the primary congressional check on an operation he was determined to expand.
The Pakistani Connection
Pakistan was the essential partner. Afghanistan was landlocked; weapons and supplies had to flow through Pakistani territory. The Inter-Services Intelligence directorate—the ISI—controlled distribution of American weapons to mujahideen factions.
This gave Pakistan enormous influence over the operation’s direction. The ISI had its own agenda, which did not always align with American interests. Pakistani intelligence favored the most extreme Islamist factions among the mujahideen—groups that would be reliable Pakistani clients after the war ended.⁸
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar exemplified the problem. A virulent Islamist with a reputation for brutality, Hekmatyar was also viscerally anti-American. He had thrown acid in the faces of unveiled women at Kabul University in the 1970s. His forces killed more rival mujahideen than Soviets. He would later ally with the Taliban and support attacks on American forces.
Hekmatyar received more American aid than any other mujahideen commander—not because the CIA chose him, but because the ISI did. America provided the weapons; Pakistan decided who got them.
American officials knew that aid was flowing to extremists. They did not effectively object. Defeating the Soviets was the priority. Who received the weapons—and what they believed—was secondary.
The Weapons and the Ideology
What We Supplied
The operation began with small arms, ammunition, and medical supplies—materiel that could plausibly have come from sources other than the United States. The goal was “plausible deniability”: the Soviets would know America was involved, but Washington could avoid direct confrontation.
As the operation expanded, the weapons became more sophisticated. Mortars. Heavy machine guns. Anti-aircraft guns. Communications equipment. The mujahideen transformed from scattered guerrilla bands into a formidable fighting force.
The game-changer arrived in 1986: the Stinger missile.⁹
The Stinger was a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile capable of destroying helicopters and low-flying aircraft. Soviet air superiority had been a decisive advantage—helicopter gunships could devastate mujahideen positions with impunity. The Stinger negated that advantage.
Soviet helicopter losses mounted. Pilots flew higher, reducing their effectiveness. The tactical balance shifted. The weapon that had seemed too sophisticated for guerrilla fighters proved devastatingly effective in their hands.
The Stinger decision was controversial within the administration. Some officials worried about sophisticated weapons falling into hostile hands. They were overruled. Short-term military effectiveness trumped long-term proliferation concerns.
When the war ended, the CIA attempted to buy back the Stingers it had distributed. The buyback program recovered only a fraction. Hundreds of missiles remained unaccounted for—available to whoever possessed them.
The Ideology
The mujahideen were fighting jihad—holy war against infidel invaders. This was not merely incidental to the conflict; it was its defining feature. The fighters were motivated by religious conviction, not secular nationalism or Cold War ideology.
American policymakers understood this and chose to promote it. Jihadist ideology was useful—it motivated fighters, attracted recruits, and justified sacrifice. That the ideology was fundamentally hostile to Western values was a concern for another day.
The promotion was not merely passive acceptance. The United States actively disseminated jihadist educational materials. The University of Nebraska, under a USAID contract, produced textbooks for Afghan children that taught counting with illustrations of guns and tanks, and reading with passages celebrating jihad against infidels.¹⁰
The textbooks remained in use for years after the Soviet withdrawal. A generation of Afghan children learned that violence against unbelievers was righteous.
The ideology spread beyond Afghanistan. Young men from across the Muslim world heard the call to join the jihad. They came to fight the Soviets, but they absorbed a worldview that identified enemies beyond the USSR. The jihad against Soviet communism could become jihad against American capitalism, Israeli Zionism, or secular Arab governments. The ideology was portable.
The Arab Afghans and the Birth of al-Qaeda
The Volunteers
Between 20,000 and 35,000 Arab volunteers traveled to Afghanistan during the 1980s to join the jihad. They came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, and beyond. Some fought on the front lines; many more provided support services—logistics, medical care, religious instruction, administration. All were transformed by the experience.¹¹
These “Afghan Arabs” were recruited through religious networks that spanned the Muslim world. Saudi-funded mosques and charities promoted the jihad. Charismatic preachers described the Afghan struggle as a religious obligation—Fard ‘Ayn, an individual duty incumbent on every Muslim. Young men who might otherwise have lived ordinary lives were inspired to travel thousands of miles to fight infidels in mountains they had never seen.
The funding came primarily from the Gulf states. The Saudi government contributed officially. Private Saudi donors—including members of the royal family—contributed even more. Charitable organizations that ostensibly supported humanitarian causes funneled money to jihadi groups. The same financial networks that built mosques and schools also built training camps.
Pakistan served as the gateway. The volunteers arrived in Peshawar, the Pakistani city near the Afghan border that became the hub of the jihad. There they were processed, trained, and dispatched to various mujahideen factions. The camps that trained them operated openly, with Pakistani and Saudi blessing.
The volunteers came to fight Soviets. They learned something larger. They learned that jihad worked—that a superpower could be defeated by believers willing to sacrifice. They built networks that crossed national boundaries. They absorbed an ideology that identified enemies beyond the Soviet Union. They became a transnational movement.
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden was the son of Mohammed bin Laden, a Saudi construction billionaire who had built his fortune constructing palaces and infrastructure for the Saudi royal family. The bin Laden family was connected to the highest levels of Saudi power. Osama grew up wealthy, privileged, and religiously devout.
He arrived in Afghanistan in 1984, initially focused on logistics and fundraising rather than combat. His family wealth and Saudi connections made him valuable. He could move money, purchase supplies, and recruit volunteers in ways that other fighters could not.¹²
Bin Laden established the Maktab al-Khidamat—the Services Bureau—which became the organizational infrastructure for the Arab Afghan movement. The Bureau recruited volunteers in the Arab world, arranged their travel to Pakistan, and supported them during their time in the jihad. It maintained records, provided stipends, and coordinated with the various mujahideen factions.
The Services Bureau was co-founded with Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian scholar who provided ideological direction. Azzam articulated the theology of global jihad—the argument that fighting to defend Muslim lands was obligatory for all Muslims, regardless of nationality. His writings and lectures spread through the same networks that recruited fighters.
The question of bin Laden’s relationship with American intelligence has generated controversy. The CIA has denied any direct relationship. But the connection need not have been direct to be real. American money flowed through Pakistani ISI and Saudi intelligence to the mujahideen. The Services Bureau operated within networks funded by these sources. Bin Laden’s operations benefited from the infrastructure that American money helped build.¹³
More importantly, American policy empowered bin Laden in ways that transcended financial support. American promotion of jihadist ideology legitimized his worldview. American weapons gave the jihad military success. American victory over the Soviets validated the belief that holy warriors could defeat superpowers.
By the late 1980s, bin Laden had concluded that the jihad could not end with Afghanistan. The struggle was global. The enemies of Islam included not only the Soviet Union but the United States and its allies—the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere that bin Laden viewed as corrupt, illegitimate, and dependent on American support.
The Formation of al-Qaeda
As Soviet withdrawal approached, bin Laden and his associates planned the next phase. The networks built during the Afghan war were too valuable to disband. The fighters trained in Afghan camps were too committed to return to ordinary life. The jihad would continue—but against new enemies.
In August 1988, a small group met in Peshawar to establish al-Qaeda—”The Base.” The founding members included bin Laden, the Egyptian jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri, and several other veterans of the Afghan war.¹⁴
The founding documents, discovered years later in raids on al-Qaeda facilities, reveal the organization’s ambitions. Al-Qaeda would maintain a database of jihadist fighters (hence the name—”the base” of records). It would provide organizational structure for global operations. It would identify targets and plan attacks. It would transform the Afghan jihad from a local conflict into a worldwide movement.
The mujahideen did not demobilize when the Soviets left. They globalized.
Al-Qaeda veterans would appear in conflicts across the Muslim world—Bosnia, Chechnya, Algeria, the Philippines. They would train fighters, provide expertise, and spread the ideology of global jihad. They would conduct increasingly ambitious attacks against American targets.
The network that America had helped build would become America’s most dangerous enemy.
The Soviet Withdrawal and American Abandonment
The Soviet Defeat
The Soviet Union paid heavily for its Afghan adventure. Official figures acknowledged 15,000 dead and 35,000 wounded—numbers that may understate the actual toll. The economic costs were substantial. The political costs were greater still.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, concluded that the war was unwinnable. He described Afghanistan as a “bleeding wound” that had to be closed. The Soviet withdrawal began in 1988 and concluded in February 1989.¹⁵
American policymakers celebrated. The Soviets had been humiliated. The Cold War was ending in American victory. The Afghan operation had contributed—how much remained debated, but the contribution was real.
The Abandonment
Once the Soviets departed, American interest in Afghanistan evaporated.
Aid dropped precipitously. The billions that had flowed during the war became a trickle. There was no plan for post-war reconstruction, no effort to build institutions that might provide stability, no program to reintegrate the fighters who had been armed and trained.¹⁶
The Stinger missiles that had transformed the war were left in the field. The CIA’s buyback program was underfunded and ineffective. Weapons capable of destroying aircraft remained available to whoever held them.
Charlie Wilson, who had built the operation, reportedly tried to secure funding for Afghan schools and reconstruction. He was refused. The war was over. Afghanistan was no longer a priority.
Wilson’s lament, as rendered in the film: “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the endgame.”
The endgame was not merely fucked up. It was abandoned entirely.
Civil War
With the common enemy gone, the mujahideen factions turned on each other. The civil war that followed killed hundreds of thousands more Afghans.
Kabul, which had survived the Soviet war relatively intact, was devastated by factional fighting. Different mujahideen groups—many armed with American weapons—battled for control. The city was reduced to rubble.
Afghanistan became a failed state in the most literal sense. There was no functioning government, no rule of law, no security. The country that America had used as a Cold War battlefield was left in ruins.
The vacuum would be filled—but not by forces friendly to the United States.
The Rise of the Taliban
Origins
The Taliban emerged from Pakistani madrassas—religious schools that had educated Afghan refugees during the Soviet war. The madrassas were funded largely by Saudi money, and they taught a conservative interpretation of Sunni Islam influenced by Saudi Wahhabism and the South Asian Deobandi tradition.
Millions of Afghan refugees had fled to Pakistan during the war. Many of their children grew up in refugee camps, with little education except what the madrassas provided. They learned to read the Quran, to follow strict interpretations of Islamic law, and to view jihad as a religious obligation.¹⁷
Many Taliban founders were mujahideen veterans. Mullah Mohammed Omar, who became the movement’s supreme leader, had fought against the Soviets and lost an eye in combat. The Taliban combined religious education with combat experience—students who could fight.
The movement promised to restore order after the chaos of civil war. Mujahideen factions had devastated Afghanistan, fighting each other with the same weapons they had once used against Soviets. Warlords controlled different regions. Banditry was endemic. Women were raped at checkpoints. Commerce was paralyzed by extortion.
For Afghans exhausted by years of violence, the Taliban’s promise of strict order had appeal—even if that order came with severe restrictions. Better harsh rule than no rule at all.
Pakistan’s ISI supported the Taliban as a client force. Pakistan sought “strategic depth” against India—a friendly Afghanistan that would align with Pakistani interests. The same intelligence service that had distributed American weapons during the anti-Soviet war now backed the movement that would host America’s enemies.
The Conquest
The Taliban swept through Afghanistan between 1994 and 1996 with stunning speed. They captured Kandahar first, then expanded north. City after city fell as mujahideen commanders surrendered, switched sides, or fled.
In September 1996, the Taliban took Kabul. Their first act was to seize former president Najibullah from the United Nations compound where he had sheltered since 1992. They tortured him, castrated him, and hanged his body from a traffic post.¹⁸
They imposed an extreme interpretation of Islamic law that went beyond what most Muslims—including most Afghans—recognized as authentic. Girls were prohibited from attending school after age eight. Women were confined to their homes, forbidden to work or appear in public without male relatives and full-body covering. Television, music, and most forms of entertainment were banned. Men were required to grow beards of specified length. Kite-flying—a beloved Afghan tradition—was prohibited.
Public executions and amputations enforced compliance. The religious police patrolled streets, beating violators with cables. The soccer stadium in Kabul, built with Soviet aid, became a venue for executions—criminals shot in the head, adulterers stoned, thieves’ hands amputated before crowds of thousands.
The great Buddha statues at Bamiyan—carved into cliffs fifteen centuries earlier, among the most remarkable cultural monuments in Central Asia—were destroyed as idolatrous. The world protested. The Taliban proceeded.
The United States watched from a distance. There was no policy, no meaningful engagement, no apparent concern about what Afghanistan had become. American officials met occasionally with Taliban representatives, hoping they might moderate or assist in capturing bin Laden. The meetings produced nothing.
The country that had been so important during the Cold War was now irrelevant—a failed state on the other side of the world, too remote to matter.
The Sanctuary
The Taliban provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden had spent years in Sudan after leaving Afghanistan. Expelled under American pressure in 1996, he returned to Afghanistan, where the Taliban welcomed him. Training camps operated openly. Al-Qaeda’s leadership planned operations from Afghan territory.¹⁹
The base for global jihad was established—in a country America had armed, abandoned, and ignored. The weapons America had provided were in Taliban hands. The fighters America had trained were now training a new generation. The ideology America had promoted was being turned against America.
The blowback was building. The warnings were present. The response was inadequate.
The Road to September 11
The Warning Signs
The threat from al-Qaeda was not secret. The attacks that preceded September 11 made the danger explicit. The warnings were abundant. The response was inadequate.
In 1993, a truck bomb exploded beneath the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring over a thousand. The attack was organized by Ramzi Yousef, who had trained in Afghan camps, and was supported by networks connected to the Afghan Arab movement. The bombers intended to topple one tower into the other, killing tens of thousands. They failed only because they miscalculated the amount of explosive needed and its optimal placement.²⁰
The 1993 attack demonstrated that Afghan-trained jihadists could operate in the United States, that they targeted iconic American landmarks, and that they sought mass casualties. The lesson was not adequately absorbed.
In 1995, Philippine police, investigating a different matter, stumbled upon a plot called “Bojinka”—a plan to bomb a dozen American airliners simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean. The plot was connected to Ramzi Yousef and other Afghan Arab veterans. One variant of the plan involved flying aircraft into buildings, including CIA headquarters.
In 1998, al-Qaeda bombed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania simultaneously. The attacks demonstrated sophisticated planning and coordination. Over 200 people died, most of them African civilians going about their daily business near the embassies. Thousands more were injured.
Osama bin Laden explicitly claimed responsibility. He had already declared war on the United States in a 1996 fatwa and would issue a more comprehensive declaration in 1998, calling for Muslims to kill Americans anywhere in the world.
President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan believed to be linked to chemical weapons production. The strikes killed few al-Qaeda operatives—bin Laden may have received warning—and the Sudan target was later revealed to be an ordinary factory. The attacks accomplished little except to increase bin Laden’s prestige. He had survived American assault. He had faced down the superpower.²¹
In 2000, al-Qaeda operatives attacked the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen. A small boat laden with explosives pulled alongside the destroyer and detonated. Seventeen American sailors died. The attack demonstrated al-Qaeda’s continuing capability and its willingness to strike American military targets directly.
The pattern was unmistakable: al-Qaeda was attacking American targets with increasing ambition and sophistication. The group operated from Afghan sanctuary with Taliban protection. Its leader had declared his intentions openly and repeatedly. The threat was known.
The response remained inadequate. Intelligence agencies tracked the threat but operated in silos that prevented information sharing. The CIA and FBI feuded over jurisdiction and failed to coordinate. Bureaucratic cultures prioritized protecting sources over preventing attacks. Political leadership treated terrorism as a law enforcement matter rather than a strategic threat.
The Direct Line
The September 11 attacks did not emerge from nothing. They were the culmination of a process that began in the anti-Soviet jihad.
The nineteen hijackers were recruited through networks that traced back to the Afghan war. The plot’s mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was an Afghan Arab veteran who had conceived the operation years earlier. The money that funded the attacks flowed through channels built to support the mujahideen.
The hijackers trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan—camps that operated because the Taliban provided sanctuary, that were staffed by veterans of the anti-Soviet war, that used techniques developed during the jihad America had supported.²²
The ideology that motivated the attackers was the jihadist worldview that had crystallized during the Afghan war. They believed they were fighting a holy war against infidels. They believed that martyrdom in such a war guaranteed paradise. They believed that the United States was the enemy of Islam—not despite American support for the Afghan jihad, but in part because of what followed. American bases in Saudi Arabia, American support for Israel, American sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children—these grievances were real, whatever one thought of the response.
The sanctuary in Afghanistan existed because America had abandoned the country after using it. The vacuum created by that abandonment allowed the Taliban to take power. The Taliban’s alliance with bin Laden gave al-Qaeda the base it needed.
This is not speculation. It is documented in the 9/11 Commission Report, in the work of journalists like Steve Coll and Lawrence Wright, in court testimony and captured documents, in the statements of the perpetrators themselves.
The chain of causation runs directly from the anti-Soviet jihad to the burning towers.
The Definition of Blowback
“Blowback” is a term the CIA invented to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations—consequences that blow back on the country that conducted them.²³
Chalmers Johnson, the scholar who popularized the term, wrote a book titled Blowback in 2000—before the September 11 attacks. He warned that American interventions around the world were generating hostility that would eventually manifest in attacks on American targets. He identified the Afghan operation as a paradigm case.
Afghanistan proves the blowback thesis with tragic clarity.
America armed fighters who became its enemies. America promoted an ideology that was turned against it. America created the conditions for the attack that transformed American society.
The chain of causation is direct: American weapons to mujahideen to Taliban. American support for jihadist networks to al-Qaeda. American abandonment of Afghanistan to the sanctuary from which September 11 was planned.
Scott Horton, whose work documents these connections exhaustively, summarizes: “The United States government’s intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s helped to create the very forces that attacked America on September 11, 2001.”²⁴
The Interventionist Defense
The Case for the Afghan Operation
The interventionist position deserves fair statement.
The Soviet Union was an existential threat—a totalitarian empire with nuclear weapons that sought global domination. Defeating it was the paramount objective of American foreign policy for four decades. Any contribution to that defeat was valuable.
The Afghan operation contributed to Soviet collapse. The war drained Soviet resources, demoralized the Soviet military, and demonstrated the limits of Soviet power. When combined with other pressures—the arms race, economic stagnation, internal dissent—Afghanistan helped bring down the empire.
The end of the Cold War liberated hundreds of millions from communist rule. The Berlin Wall fell. Eastern Europe was freed. The Soviet Union dissolved. These were historic achievements in which the Afghan operation played a role.
Blowback, on this view, was unforeseeable. Policymakers in the 1980s could not have known that the Cold War would end, that Afghanistan would collapse into chaos, that the networks they built would turn against America. They made reasonable decisions based on available information.²⁵
The operation succeeded in its objectives. The Soviets withdrew. The Cold War ended. That consequences followed does not invalidate the original decision.
The Response
These arguments require examination.
The Soviet Union’s collapse had many causes. Economic stagnation, imperial overreach, Gorbachev’s reforms, the arms race, internal nationalist movements—all contributed. Afghanistan was one factor among many, not the decisive blow its advocates claim.
The Cold War was ending regardless. Gorbachev’s reforms were transforming Soviet society. The economic contradictions of communist central planning were becoming unsustainable. Whether the Afghan war hastened collapse by months or years is debatable; that it was determinative is doubtful.
The costs of blowback arguably exceed any benefit. The September 11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 Americans. The subsequent “War on Terror” has killed thousands more American service members and hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians. Trillions of dollars have been spent. Constitutional freedoms have been curtailed. And the Taliban rules Afghanistan again.
Most importantly, blowback was not unforeseeable. It was foreseen and ignored.
Warning voices existed throughout the 1980s. Critics pointed out that arming religious extremists was dangerous, that jihadist ideology would not remain contained, that abandoning Afghanistan would create a vacuum. They were dismissed as naive or soft on communism.²⁶
Brzezinski’s 1998 comments reveal the mindset. Even after the embassy bombings, even as al-Qaeda openly threatened America, he dismissed “some agitated Muslims” as insignificant compared to Cold War victory. The warnings were not unforeseeable; they were foreseen and discounted.
The Honest Question
Would the Cold War have ended differently without the Afghan operation? Probably not fundamentally—the Soviet system’s internal contradictions were fatal regardless.
Would September 11 have happened without American cultivation of jihadist networks? The honest answer is: we cannot know with certainty. But the networks that planned the attack were built during the Afghan war. The sanctuary they used resulted from American abandonment. The ideology they embraced was the ideology America had promoted.
At minimum, American policymakers should have understood what they were doing and who they were arming. They should have recognized that empowering religious extremists carries long-term risks. They should have planned for consequences beyond the immediate objective.
They did none of these things. And America paid the price.
The Lessons Learned and Unlearned
What Afghanistan Should Have Taught
The Afghan operation offered clear lessons:
Covert operations have long-term consequences beyond their immediate objectives. The mujahideen did not disappear when the Soviets left. The weapons did not evaporate. The ideology did not moderate. Planning that focuses only on immediate goals invites disaster.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar hated the Soviets. He also hated America. Shared enemies do not create shared values. Temporary alliances with extremists empower extremism.
Arming extremists does not produce moderates. The jihadist ideology America promoted did not become more moderate with American support; it became more powerful. Extremism funded is extremism strengthened.
Abandoning countries after using them creates vacuums that enemies fill. The chaos following American abandonment allowed the Taliban to take power and al-Qaeda to establish sanctuary. Strategic neglect has strategic consequences.
Ideology matters. You cannot promote jihadism as a tool and expect it to remain a tool. Ideas have their own logic. People who believe in holy war do not stop believing when one war ends.²⁷
What Was Not Learned
After September 11, the United States invaded Afghanistan. Twenty years and over $2 trillion later, it withdrew—and the Taliban returned to power.
The pattern repeated. America armed new proxies. America promoted allies of convenience. America failed to plan for long-term consequences.
In Syria, the United States supported “moderate rebels” against the Assad government—rebels who included jihadist elements, rebels whose weapons found their way to extremist factions, rebels who resembled the mujahideen in uncomfortable ways.²⁸
In Libya, American intervention helped overthrow Gaddafi and produced chaos that persists to this day. Weapons from Libyan arsenals spread across North Africa and the Middle East.
The institutional capacity for covert operations remains. The assumptions that guided the Afghan operation—that short-term gains justify long-term risks, that extremist allies can be controlled, that consequences beyond immediate objectives need not be weighed—persist.
Without accountability, the pattern will repeat.
Conclusion: The War That Never Ended
The Arc of Consequences
The arc is clear:
1979: Soviet invasion. American covert response begins.
1989: Soviet withdrawal. America abandons Afghanistan.
1996: Taliban takeover. Al-Qaeda sanctuary established.
2001: September 11 attacks. America invades Afghanistan.
2021: American withdrawal. Taliban returns to power.
The wheel has turned full circle. The war that began in 1979 has never truly ended. The country that America used as a Cold War battlefield, abandoned, invaded, occupied for twenty years, and abandoned again remains in the hands of the forces America once armed.²⁹
The Price
The cost defies calculation:
Afghan dead since 1979: over one million, perhaps two million.
American dead on September 11: 2,977.
American dead in the Afghan war: 2,461.
American dead in the broader War on Terror: thousands more.
Trillions of dollars spent on wars that achieved no lasting objective.
Constitutional freedoms curtailed in the name of security—surveillance expanded, due process weakened, executive power enlarged. These costs were documented in our previous series, The New Leviathan.
And the Taliban rules Afghanistan again.
The Question
Was any of this necessary?
Could the Cold War have been won without arming jihadists? Almost certainly yes. The Soviet system was collapsing under its own weight.
Could September 11 have been prevented with different policies? We cannot know with certainty—but we know that the policies pursued contributed to the attack.
Can we break the cycle of intervention and blowback? Only if we learn from what has happened. Only if we recognize that covert operations have consequences. Only if we understand that the enemy of our enemy is not our friend.
The question is not academic. The pattern continues. The institutional capacity remains. The assumptions persist.
The founders warned against foreign entanglements because they understood that such entanglements corrupt republics and generate endless conflict. Afghanistan proves them right.
Charlie Wilson’s war was celebrated as victory. The blowback from that war transformed American society, cost thousands of American lives, and produced a surveillance state that the founders would not recognize.
The movie ended before the consequences began. But the consequences have not ended. They continue still.
Self-Reflection Prompts
Brzezinski asked whether the Taliban or Soviet collapse was more important. How would you answer? Does your answer change depending on whether you are Afghan, American, or a family member of a September 11 victim? What does the question reveal about how policymakers weigh costs and benefits?
The United States knew Pakistan was directing weapons to extremists but did not effectively object. Why do you think this happened? What does it suggest about American control over covert operations? About the reliability of intelligence partnerships?
Charlie Wilson lamented that America “fucked up the endgame.” Would post-war reconstruction have prevented the Taliban and al-Qaeda? Or was the problem the operation itself—the decision to arm jihadists regardless of consequences?
The Afghan operation’s supporters argue that any operation can have unintended consequences—this does not mean we should never act. How should policymakers weigh foreseeable blowback against immediate objectives? Is there a framework that could have prevented the Afghan disaster while still contesting Soviet expansion?
The same institutional structures that conducted the Afghan operation—CIA covert action, ISI partnership, Gulf funding—persist today. Without accountability for past failures, what prevents the pattern from repeating? What would accountability look like?
Endnotes
Zbigniew Brzezinski, interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, January 15-21, 1998. The interview was conducted in French and translated.
The film Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), directed by Mike Nichols, ends with Wilson’s lament about the endgame but does not depict the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or September 11.
Odd Arne Westad, “Concerning the Situation in ‘A’: New Russian Evidence on the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 8-9 (Winter 1996-1997).
Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 46-58.
Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur interview.
George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History (New York: Grove Press, 2003).
Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 89-102, 151-167.
Ibid., pp. 119-135; see also Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 128-140.
Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War, pp. 413-445; Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 149-167.
Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, “From U.S., the ABC’s of Jihad,” Washington Post, March 23, 2002.
Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 153-157; Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), pp. 95-120.
Wright, The Looming Tower, pp. 99-108.
On the question of CIA-bin Laden connections, see Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 87-88, 153-157; the relationship was structural rather than operational.
Wright, The Looming Tower, pp. 131-137; Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 203-206.
Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 175-192.
Ibid., pp. 193-210.
Rashid, Taliban, pp. 17-30.
Ibid., pp. 105-116; on the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, see pp. 75-79.
Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 325-342; Wright, The Looming Tower, pp. 248-265.
Wright, The Looming Tower, pp. 176-195; on the 1993 bombing and Bojinka plot.
On the Clinton administration’s response to the embassy bombings, see The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 115-143.
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: Norton, 2004), pp. 145-173.
Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), pp. 8-12.
Scott Horton, Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism (Libertarian Institute, 2021), pp. 45-67.
The interventionist case is presented in Peter Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: Free Press, 2001), pp. 55-70.
Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 167-175; contemporary critics included some State Department officials and congressional skeptics.
These lessons are synthesized from Johnson, Blowback; Horton, Enough Already; and the extensive literature on the Afghan operation’s consequences.
On Syria parallels, see Scott Horton, Enough Already, pp. 189-225.
For the 2021 withdrawal and its context, see contemporary reporting; the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.
Sources and Further Reading
Primary Sources
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) — The official investigation of the attacks and their origins
Declassified CIA and State Department documents — Available through the National Security Archive
Secondary Sources
Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (2004) — The definitive history of the CIA in Afghanistan
George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War (2003) — The operation from Wilson’s perspective
Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower (2006) — Al-Qaeda’s origins and the road to September 11
Ahmed Rashid, Taliban (2000) — Essential on the Taliban’s rise
From the Non-Interventionist Tradition
Chalmers Johnson, Blowback (2000) — Predicted consequences before September 11
Scott Horton, Enough Already (2021) — Comprehensive on Afghanistan and the War on Terror
Scott Horton, Fool’s Errand (2017) — On the post-2001 Afghan war
Ron Paul, numerous speeches — Consistent warnings about intervention and blowback
Patrick Buchanan, columns and books — Conservative critique of the War on Terror
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