What were policymakers’ and intelligence services’ respective roles in
the decision to deploy Stinger Missiles to the anticommunist Afghan mujahedin
during the rebels’ struggle with the Soviet Union?
by
Tim Sullivan, Matt Singer and Jessica Rawson
Staff Assistance: Dr.
Michael Goodman
The authors would like to thank Col.
Nick Pratt, USMC (Ret.), for his insight and multimedia contributions.
Table of Contents
Introduction……………………...……………………………………………………………… 4
The CIA and the Stinger Decision………...…………………………………………………… 5
Pre-Stinger Policy: CIA activity in Afghanistan prior to 1986………...………………... 5
Bureaucratic Battling: The decision-making process behind the Stinger
transfer………. 6
The Executive and the Stinger Decision…...………………………………………………….. 9
Covert Action: The Philosophical and Legal Foundation...……………………………... 9
Competing Interests: The Bureaucratic Battle…………..……………..……………….
11
The Ally: Pakistani Pressure……………………………....……………………………
12
The Other Branch: Congressional Influence………..……..……………………………
13
Congress and the Stinger Missile Decision…….…………………………………………..… 14
Soviet Occupation: The Congressional response in 1979……………………………… 14
Preliminary Trips to Pakistan: Congressional correspondence with
President Zia….…15
Congressional & Presidential Affirmation: The Tsongas-Ritter
Resolution and the Reagan Doctrine…………………………………………………………………………16
Senator Hatch in Pakistan: Stinger negotiations with President Zia............................... 17
September 1986: The final steps of the Stinger missile transfer………………………... 18
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………...… 18
Appendix A: Photograph …………………………………………………………...…….. 20 Video: The first Stinger missile launch………………………………….….…See
attached CD
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………… 21
In his analysis of governmental policymaking
and implementation methods, Graham Allison describes the bureaucratic political
process as one in which ‘….large acts result from innumerable and often
conflicting smaller actions by individuals at various levels of bureaucratic
organizations in the service of a variety of only partially compatible
conceptions of national goals, organizational goals, and political objectives’.
Allison’s assessment is effective in describing the 1986 decision to deploy
Stinger antiaircraft missiles to anticommunist mujahedin rebels in Afghanistan. Since 1979, the CIA had led a
covert operation to provide financial and military aid for the Afghan rebels.
The purpose of the operation was to make the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan a costly endeavour for the USSR. After President Ronald Reagan’s
election in 1980 and the adoption of the ‘Reagan Doctrine’, support for
international anticommunist insurgencies became a centerpiece of American
foreign policy. Throughout the 1980’s support for the mujahedin increased
throughout the US government, culminating in the creation of National Security
Directive Decision (NSDD) 166, a document produced by the administration which
advocated furthering the Afghan rebels’ cause ‘….by all means available’.
The ‘means’ which became most controversial were the Stingers—American-made,
shoulder-launched, ‘fire and forget’, surface-to-air-missiles. The Stinger
missiles, it was believed, would provide the mujahedin the strategic edge
necessary to make the Soviet occupation not only costly, but unsustainable. In
the spirit of the Reagan Doctrine, Congress was adamant in its support of the
mujahedin, and integral in the effort to deploy the Stingers. This essay will
explicate the respective roles of the CIA, Congress, and the Reagan
Administration in the decision to transfer Stinger missiles to Afghan rebels in
1986; in doing so, the essay will consider the deterioration of the
producer-consumer relationship of the intelligence process as a result of
bureaucratic-political competition. Finally, the essay will use the lesson of
the Stinger decision to examine the role of covert intelligence operations in
the foreign policy of democratic states.
The CIA and the Stinger Decision
Pre-Stinger Policy: CIA activity in Afghanistan prior to 1986
Six months before the December 1979 Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter, after consulting intelligence
reports from officials in the country, initiated a CIA-run covert operation
within Afghanistan—‘….a modest program of propaganda and medical aid….’ in
support of the anti-communist mujahedin rebels.
Immediately following the invasion, however, President Carter escalated U.S. support for the Afghan mujahedin,
indicating that the CIA should take action to begin transferring weapons to the
rebel groups. Working closely with Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency
(ISI), the CIA oversaw the coordination of an operation designed to allow the
mujahedin to ‘harass’ the Soviet troops occupying Afghan territory.
In meetings with the CIA and other U.S. officials, Pakistani President
Zia-ul-Haq frequently used the metaphor of a pot of water to illustrate what he
perceived to be the role of the Afghan rebels: the mujahedin must ‘keep the pot
boiling’ by abusing the Soviets and making their stay in Afghanistan costly,
argued Zia. Aware of his own geopolitical vulnerabilities, however, the
Pakistani leader argued the pot must not boil over—the conflict must be limited
and contained in Afghanistan.
President Carter subscribed largely to Zia’s prescription for the conduct of
the Afghan conflict and the CIA had discretion to coordinate the intricacies of
the operation as it saw fit.
The election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980
resulted in a re-evaluation of the CIA’s involvement in Afghanistan and Cold War proxy conflicts in the
Third World in general. Around that time,
leaders in Congress also began to advocate substantially increased aid for the
mujahedin, allocating vast sums to the Afghan anti-communist cause. As a
result, the CIA officials controlling the operation in Afghanistan watched their budget grow ‘….from
about $30 million in fiscal 1981 to about $200 million in fiscal 1984’.
The CIA staff in Islamabad, Pakistan, led at the time by station chief Howard
Hart, coordinated with the ISI in order to determine the rebels’ needs in terms
of new weapons systems, as well as the means of arms acquisition and
distribution. Often the CIA’s logistical plans were overwhelmed, however, by
large Congressional allocations which surged at the end of each budgetary
cycle. Prior to 1985, therefore, at the station in Islamabad, ‘….much of [the staff’s] work
involved the mundane details of shipping and finance’.
At the same time select agents operated among the mujahedin, distributing and
installing weapons systems, and training the rebels in their use.
William Casey, Director of the CIA under Ronald
Reagan, felt that the singular mission of his agency was to combat Soviet
influence worldwide. In the case of Afghanistan, Casey advocated an ambitious
approach to the operation in support of the mujahedin, at times considering
action which would have exceeded the legal authority of the CIA.
By 1984, various Afghan rebel leaders had lobbied Casey, complaining of the
corruption and inefficiency of the ISI in controlling weapons distribution. The
mujahedin leaders were calling ‘…for more sophisticated arms and more direct
American involvement….’ in their war against the Soviets.
With growing support on various fronts within the U.S. government, calls from
the mujahedin for increased action on the part of the CIA, and increased
financial aid from international partners such as Saudi Arabia, Casey felt
confident in seeking to update the policy set forth by the Carter Administration,
which had laid out only a limited scope of operations in Afghanistan. Casey was
no longer satisfied with ‘harassing’ the Soviets. He now wanted to expel them.
After a series of interagency meetings, National Security Decision Directive
166, titled ‘Expanded U.S. Aid to Afghan Guerillas’, was signed by President
Reagan in March, 1985. NSDD-166 redefined the United States’ goals in Afghanistan according to the ambitions of Casey
and other government officials.
Within the document was the provision which allowed for the CIA to provide
American-made Stinger missiles to the mujahedin.
Bureaucratic Battling: The
decision-making process behind the Stinger transfer
In the creation of NSDD-166 and the decision to
deploy Stinger missiles to the Afghan rebels, the CIA became mired in the
complex bureaucratic processes that characterized the Reagan Administration’s
approach to foreign policy creation. The CIA was forced to contend with
representatives from within the Department of Defense, the White House, and the
State Department who aggressively sought to supply the advanced weapons to the
mujahedin. The most ardent supporters of the proposed Stinger transfer emerged
from the Defense Department in the form of Fred Iklé, undersecretary of defense
for policy, and Michael Pillsbury, a former Senate Republican staffer who
transferred to the Pentagon and worked on covert operations under Iklé. In
early 1985, Iklé and Pillsbury were successful in bringing the Stinger issue,
in the context of NSDD-166, before the Planning and Coordination Group, an
interagency body responsible for the supervision of covert activities. Their
proposal suggested that the U.S. ought to indeed seek to expel the
Soviets from Afghanistan by providing the mujahedin with
advanced military technology made in the United States. It was positively received by the
other agencies.
Within the CIA, there was little consensus over
the Stinger proposal. High-ranking CIA officials took a hard line in
maintaining the agency’s policy against providing American-made weapons systems
to the mujahedin—a course of action which they believed would bolster the CIA’s
claims of ‘plausible deniability’ regarding its role in the conflict. CIA
Deputy Director John McMahon made clear that after the controversies raised by
the Pike and Church commissions with respect to the CIA’s legally and ethically
questionable handling of covert operations in the 1970’s, the agency could not
risk a similar scandal by distributing American weapons to the rebels in
Afghanistan. Perhaps a more significant threat was that suggested one year
earlier by Deputy Director for Intelligence Robert Gates, who argued that the
Stinger-transfer might result in ‘Soviet counter-escalation’ in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
Also, the CIA staff in the Near East Division ‘…saw Pillsbury as a reckless
amateur….’, and felt that he and Iklé were ‘….dragging the CIA out of
respectable core business of espionage and into the murky, treacherous realm of
an escalating dirty war’.
CIA Director William Casey, while assertive in
his determination for Soviet expulsion from Afghanistan, never indicated that the
deployment of Stinger missiles was a necessary measure for achieving such a
goal.
Bill Casey, however, was a risk-taker. His views might well have reflected
those of the CIA operators who, since 1984, had been ‘….responsible for the
identification, testing and evaluation, instruction, and deployment in combat
of significant weapons systems….’ in Afghanistan.
One such operator was Nick Pratt. In 1985, Colonel Nick Pratt, USMC (Ret.) was
a young Marine Corps officer working in the Special Operations Group of the
Directorate of Operations at the CIA. Pratt recalls composing ‘….several
memoranda with attached staff studies of all available MANPADS [man-portable
air defense] systems that argued for the Stinger’.
Having tested and evaluated numerous other systems, Pratt and others operating
in Afghanistan were convinced that the Stinger ‘….was far and
away the best’, and would offer the mujahedin the decisive advantage necessary
to implement the goals of the administration as allowed by NSDD-166. McMahon
maintained his hesitancy to provide the Afghan rebels with American-made
weapons, however, and opted instead to deploy the less-effective, British-made
Blowpipe missiles.
While stalwartly maintaining its
directorially-mandated anti-Stinger position, officials at the CIA headquarters
became disconnected from the calls of Pakistani President Zia and mujahedin
leaders themselves for the missiles. As Alan Kuperman points out, ‘….the CIA
continued as late as 1986 to report that Pakistani President Zia opposed
introduction of the Stinger, even though he had been telling visiting U.S. officials
otherwise since 1984’.
What has been unclear is ‘….whether this lapse arose in the field or at agency
headquarters’.
Accounts from individuals involved in the covert operation indicate that the
‘lapse’ originated from one man in the field. William Piekney replaced Howard
Hart as station chief of the CIA’s office in Islamabad in 1984. In recent years, Piekney’s
handling of the covert operations in Afghanistan has resulted in his being accused
variously of having a ‘weak personality’, and being ‘a charlatan and a liar’.
Regardless, during his tenure as station chief in Islamabad, Piekney made it clear to his
fellow agents and eventually CIA leadership that he was unwilling to take risks
that might jeopardize his career. The deployment of the Stingers was one such
risk. Therefore, according to one source, ‘Piekney did his best to delay,
deflect and finally deceive [CIA headquarters] and others….’ as to Zia’s
requests and the necessity of the missiles.
The dissenting position originally enunciated
by McMahon and Gates thus remained the CIA’s policy on the Stingers throughout
a series of bureaucratic-political bouts with governmental agencies. Still
smarting from the findings of the Church and Pike commissions, the
decision-makers at CIA headquarters insisted on eschewing any course of action
which threatened to produce further scandals for the CIA. For political
purposes and what it viewed as the pursuit of its own organizational safety and
well-being, the CIA accepted the dubious views of Piekney over those of Pratt
and other individuals with greater tactical insight into the struggle of the
mujahedin. The irony, however, is that bureaucratic politics—and the Reagan
Administration’s desire to use covert action as a tool of foreign
policy—eventually overwhelmed the decision-makers at the CIA, and once again
engaged the agency in operations similar to those for which it had been burned
in the past.
The Executive and the Stinger Decision
The Stinger missile episode was the strategic
solution to the Reagan Administration’s goal of expanding its political
objectives in Afghanistan. Where President Carter sought to
harass Soviet forces, President Reagan aimed to force a Soviet withdrawal from
the theatre of operations. Washington’s decision to expand its support to
the Afghan resistance rested on two decisive documents that increased the White
House’s power over the intelligence community and covert operations: Executive
Order (EO) 12333 and NSDD-166. These two documents provided a greater role for
covert action in Afghanistan and a framework for the
introduction of the Stinger missile. However, the Executive’s role in approving
the missiles was a more nuanced process, fraught with bureaucratic interests
and considerations, an ally in Pakistan that wanted the missiles and a U.S.
Congress that exuded a tremendous pressure for action. Ultimately, the decision
to deploy the Stinger missile resulted from political, not intelligence,
considerations.
Covert Action: The Philosophical and
Legal Foundation
Executive Order 12333 effectively stripped
control of covert operations from the CIA and placed it in the National
Security Planning Group (NSPG), a subcommittee of the president’s National
Security Council. According to the document, signed into authority by President
Reagan, covert operation is ‘….not fundamentally an intelligence activity;
rather, it is a foreign policy operation’ that the CIA executes only after the
White House initiates it’.
By having an active and controlling hand, the president removed a significant
barrier of plausible deniability that had been afforded to him when covert
operations were directly under the purview of the CIA. Concerning covert action
and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, ‘….many of the decisions [were]
made right at the NSPG table….’ of which Reagan was a member. Covert operations
were an inherently political activity.
Reagan’s ascension to
the presidency signalled a marked change in U.S. foreign policy. His election
brought with him to Washington a coterie of individuals ‘….Casey (Director of
the CIA) among them, who were determined to challenge Soviet power worldwide’.
The philosophies of the neo-conservative administration were encapsulated in
Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union address: ‘We must stand by all our democratic
allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on
every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported
aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth’.
Known as the Reagan Doctrine, this speech to the United States Congress set the
agenda for U.S. foreign policy: indirect
confrontation with the Soviet Union. NSDD-75 contained the spirit of the doctrine and the original
objectives of the Administration in relation to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: The U.S. objective is to keep maximum
pressure on Moscow for withdrawal and to ensure that the Soviets’ political, military, and
other costs remain high while the occupation continues.
Similar to Carter’s objective of harassment, the 1983 presidential
directive did not provide the political impetus for the escalation of support in
Afghanistan. Written into effect two years later, NSDD-166
was the fire-starter that mobilized the Executive to ambitiously expand the
support efforts on the coattails of Congressional and Pakistani pressure.
NSDD-166’s political objective was markedly broader: ‘Assistance to the rebels
“by all means available….”’ in order to force Soviet withdrawal.
Nick Pratt, the abovementioned Marine
Corp officer, has since commented: ‘NSDD-166 forced Washington to act. Everyone was “afraid” to take the gloves off
and go after the Soviet Union. . . . Once the President provided the “top cover” the turtles started
sticking out their necks’.
With the philosophical and legal foundation for expansion of support firmly
established, the debate concerning the deployment of the Stinger missiles
commenced.
Competing Interests: The
Bureaucratic Battle
The Executive branch did not immediately
embrace the idea of providing Stinger missiles to the mujahedin. While Congress
vociferously demanded that the Executive sign off on their release, it took
considerable time for the NSPG to reach consensus on the issue. Bureaucratic
infighting between various executive agencies underscored the debate concerning
the political and military effectiveness of the weapon. Prior to NSDD-166 both
the Department of Defense (DoD) and the State Department cautioned against
Stinger missile use in Afghanistan. The DoD ‘….warned that [Stingers]
could undermine vital Pakistani support for the Mujahedin’.
Furthermore, ‘….simulated war games . . . indicated that the Soviets might
retaliate symmetrically by supplying antiaircraft missiles to Central American
rebels then confronting the U.S.-supported government in El Salvador’.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), a strong voice within the DoD, objected to
their use because a lack of accountability and control over the missiles could
inevitably place them into the hands of terrorists. General John Moellering
stated that the JCS ‘….was initially opposed to the possible release of the
[Stinger] weapons to the Third World countries for reasons of technology loss,
accountability problems and depletion of a finite and small, strategic
stockpile’. The
costs simply outweighed the benefits. The State Department agreed that the
Stinger threatened more important U.S. interests and that Soviet discovery
of ‘Made in the USA’ missiles in Afghanistan would sour diplomatic efforts between
the two superpowers in ‘higher-priority areas, such as arms control’.
A cadre of several
mid-level bureaucrats helped push the Stinger missile issue up the chain of
command until it reached the hands of decision-makers in the NSPG.
Neo-conservative officials in the Reagan Administration used NSDD-166 as their
chief weapon in convincing their opposition in the DoD and State Department that
Stinger missiles were the solution. With the Soviet Spetsnaz helicopters
wreaking havoc on the mujahedin, they could point to NSDD-166 as ‘….the legal
basis for a massive escalation of the CIA’s role in Afghanistan in 1985’.
With ammunition in hand, individuals like Michael Pillsbury, Fred Iklé and
Morton Abramowitz went to work to persuade their colleagues that the Stinger
missiles were essential to the survival of the Afghan resistance.
These mid-level
bureaucrats represented the interests of their agencies and negotiated and
compromised on their behalves in order to advance their own respective
interests. Pillsbury, a Pentagon official, went from department to department
assuaging doubts about the missiles and romantically perceived himself ‘….as a
principled conservative who refused to be cowed by cautious agency
bureaucrats’. In the
DoD, Fred Iklé ‘….became perhaps the single most intellectual force or advocate
behind the decision’.
Down in Foggy Bottom, Morton Abramowitz succeeded in pushing the issue to
Secretary of State George Shultz, a former marine. These individuals alone did
not convince the president and his cabinet that the Stinger missile was
necessary for the mujahedin’s survival. External factors, namely Pakistani
dictator Zia-ul-Haq and Congress, were exerting pressure on the White House to
escalate support. Secretary Shultz recalls in his memoirs that his decision to
endorse Stinger missiles was a function of the political-military environment:
‘There would be a narrow window in the next year or two in which pressure on the
Soviets might be effective’.
While bureaucrats pushed the issue into the hands of the decision-makers, the
domestic and foreign political landscape forced a decision.
The Ally: Pakistani Pressure
Pakistan was the crucial ally necessary for United States success in forcing a Soviet
withdrawal from Afghanistan. To gain access to the Afghan
border, the U.S. needed to cultivate friendly relations with General Zia because,
as Secretary of State George Shultz remarked, ‘We must remember that without
Zia’s support, the Afghanistan resistance, key to making the Soviet’s pay a
heavy price for their Afghan adventure, is effectively dead’.
The U.S. assured protection against Soviet invasion, Pakistan’s greatest threat, and for the sake
of the alliance ‘U.S. officials became extremely
deferential to [Zia’s] preferences’.
While the controversy of intelligence reporting regarding Zia’s posture on the
Stinger missiles will be discussed below, the critical moment for the Executive
branch came when Zia unquestionably voiced his support for the delivery of
Stinger missiles to the region. Prior to approval, the deployment of Stinger
missiles was a dead issue in fear of straining the alliance. ‘After DOD
realized that Zia wanted the weapon . . . they rolled’, and opposition amongst
the Executive dwindled in the face of Pakistani political demands.
The Other Branch: Congressional
Influence
Congress took up the cause of the mujahedin in
their struggle to expel the Soviet’s from their homeland and was the principal
driver in the demand for deploying Stinger missiles. While Congress’ role in
advocating for the Stinger’s release will be discussed in more detail below, it
is significant at this point to recognize the pressure it exerted on the
president to act. Congress made Afghanistan a publicly debated issue and used
the public as a platform to spur the Executive to action. The Afghanistan
Effective Support Resolution, passed in October 1984, ‘….put the legislature on
record as opposing any program that gives the mujahedeen only enough to keep fighting, preventing them from
advancing their cause’.
In effect, this resolution called for an increase in funding for weapons so
that the mujahedin could turn the tide against the Soviet Union. ‘It put the Reagan Administration
under political pressure to act more forcefully’.
Reagan, throughout his presidency, promised to defend all peoples from
Communist and Soviet aggression. This was the centerpiece of the Reagan
Doctrine. Congress was challenging the president to live up to his word. While
NSDD-166 was the letter, Congress was the spirit that thrust the Executive to
action.
Congress and the Stinger Missile Decision
Soviet Occupation: The Congressional response
in 1979
Congressional involvement in the covert
financing of mujahedin rebels peaked following the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in December 1979. Congress had
remained divided throughout Carter’s presidency over whether or not Communist
expansionism in the Third World was a legitimate threat to American national interest, but the dispute
was settled when news of the Soviet deployment reached Washington.
Conservatives and liberals alike garnered their resources together and began
the push for monetary support of the Afghan rebels, abandoning all intentions
of diplomatic negotiations with the Soviet Union from the start. The extent to which
the legislative branch influenced the deployment of Stinger missiles to Pakistan in late 1986 is remarkable,
particularly in light of the strong opposition Congress faced from the Joint
Chiefs of Staff , the Central Intelligence Agency and the Executive. Congress
played arguably the most prominent role in the decision to finance the Afghan
rebels through the push for increased funding in the early 1980s by Congressman
Charlie Wilson (D-Texas) and Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-New Hampshire). By the
end of the mujahedin resistance movement Congress had provided almost $300 million
in covert aid, ‘more than all other CIA covert operations in the 1980s
combined’. Senator
Paul Tsongas (D-Massachusetts) introduced a resolution calling for effective U.S. material aid to the mujahedin
rebels as early as 1982, but its progress was thwarted by the bureaucratic
struggle that beleaguered the Reagan Administration.
The resolution was eventually passed in October of 1984, and it was the first
step in restructuring United States policy toward the support of
anti-communist insurgents in the Third World. Congressional involvement in the
Stinger Missile decision not only dominated the political arena, but it also
challenged both the efficacy and the very nature of covert operations.
Preliminary Trips to Pakistan: Congressional correspondence with President Zia
The preliminary issue hindering the deployment
of American-made Stinger missiles in support of the mujahedin emerged during a
1983 visit to Pakistan by Congressman Clarence Long (D-Maryland) and
Congressman Wilson. In a meeting with President Zia, the issue of plausible
deniability surfaced and proved of mutually paramount concern. ‘If it was
American-made the Soviets would trace it to Pakistan and he [Zia] didn’t want that’,
recalled Long. The
Reagan Administration agreed unanimously in fear of both public exposure and
the risk of Soviet counter-escalation.
A second visit in early 1984 raised doubts as
to whether or not Zia’s position had been correctly communicated to Congress
when General Mohammad Yousaf, director of Afghan operation for Pakistan’s ISI, hosted a number of advocacy
groups. ‘When the visiting Americans asked Yousaf which weapon he would
recommend to counter Soviet air superiority, he replied frankly, “The
Stinger”’. The
advocacy groups reacted immediately by reporting the Pakistani support to the
U.S. Embassy and accusing the CIA station chief of ‘blocking the Pakistani
request’. Much to
the dismay of the conservative interest groups, however, and to the
embarrassment of the ISI Chief Akhtar Abdul Rahman, Yousaf had misspoken, and
Zia maintained his opposition. The following visit to Pakistan in November 1984, however, produced
a number of incongruities in the American record of President Zia’s stance on
the Stinger decision. Zia allegedly made a request for a supply of the
U.S.-made missiles from a congressional delegation led by Senator Sam Nunn
(D-Georgia), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
This request, strangely, was not confirmed or acted upon until January of 1986.
In the years immediately following the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan, Congress and its allies served as
a conveyer belt of correspondence between President Zia and the Reagan
Administration. There was a clear presence of scepticism within Congress and
amongst the private advocacy groups, however, that the bureaucratic
administration was upholding its parochial opposition by falsely reporting
Pakistani requests. Although both the administrative and intelligence
communities later supported the Stinger missile deployment, the aforementioned
issue was never resolved.
Congressional & Presidential
Affirmation: The Tsongas-Ritter Resolution and the Reagan Doctrine
Senator Paul Tsongas (D-Massachusetts) first
introduced his resolution to Congress in late 1982 with the assistance of
Congressman Don Ritter (R-Pennsylvania). The resolution called on the Executive
Branch to ‘provide the people of Afghanistan, if they so request, with material
assistance, as the U.S. considers appropriate, to help them
fight effectively for their freedom’. It further called on the Executive ‘to
pursue a negotiated settlement of the war in Afghanistan, based on the total withdrawal of
Soviet troops’. Tsongas
introduced his resolution during a Lame Duck session in 1982, but when the
final draft was passed in October 1984 it faced strong opposition from both the
State Department and the CIA. When Pillsbury transferred to the Pentagon in
September 1984 Congress got the administrative ‘in’ it needed. Congress, with
Pillsbury’s help, initiated a series of persuasive devices within the
administrative body that suddenly sparked a re-evaluation of American policy
towards the freedom fighters in Afghanistan. Additionally, the final draft of
the Tsongas resolution stated that ‘it would be indefensible to provide the
freedom fighters with only enough aid to fight and die, but not enough to advance
their cause of freedom’.
By January 1985 the ‘covert’ funding program for the mujahedin was being
showcased by a newly formed Congressional Task Force on Afghanistan.
When President Reagan delivered his State of
the Union Address in February of 1985, debatably the product of relentless
Congressional pressure, it was exactly what Congress wanted to hear. He called
on the American people to break away from the tradition of Soviet containment
and instead focus on John Foster Dulles’ ‘Roll-Back’ strategy ‘in which the
United States would actively push back the influence of the Soviet Union’.
The subsequent development of NSDD-166, along with an ever-growing public
eagerness to aid the Afghan rebels eventually led to a formal restructuring of
American policy whereby the overarching goal of aiding the Mujahedin would be
the ultimate withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Despite the public call to action
and the shift from defensive to offensive policy regarding Communist
expansionism, opposition persisted within the administration.
Senator Hatch in Pakistan: Stinger negotiations with President Zia
During the
congressional recess of June 1985 Pillsbury accompanied a bipartisan
congressional delegation to Pakistan in yet another attempt to open up
the windows of communication with President Zia. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah),
Chic Hecht (R-Nevada), David Boren (D-Oklahoma) and Bill Bradley (D-New Jersey)
took to Pakistan with a pro-active agenda in mind.
Senator Hatch once again confronted President Zia with the idea of supplying
U.S. Stingers to the Afghan rebels, but contrary to Senator Nunn’s September
1984 report, Zia did not favour the idea. He proposed instead that the United States send Stingers ‘for his own army to
defend the border area from Soviet aircraft incursions’.
In his request, however, Zia displayed a willingness to provide a roundabout
supply of Stingers to the rebels if the weapons were turned over as an official
military transaction. President Zia wrote a formal pledge to the President at
the recommendation of Senator Hatch, and one month later the White House
announced a shipment of 100 Stinger missiles to Pakistan.
Accompanied by the
State Department assistant secretary for intelligence and research, Morton
Abramowitz, Pillsbury made a final trip to Pakistan during the congressional recess of
January 1986. This visit, however, was highlighted by the first ever explicit
request from President Zia to supply the Afghan mujahedin with U.S.-made
Stingers. Zia intended to route the Stingers through the ISI in favour of the
Afghan rebels and declared that he had wished to do so since the previous year.
This was the first time Senator Nunn’s 1984 report had been confirmed. While
some argue that the CIA had inaccurately reported Zia’s needs, still others
believe that President Zia deliberately maintained an irresolute position on
the Stingers to “keep the pot boiling” as he had so aptly been prone to do in
the past. In any
case he was now saying loud and clear that the Afghan freedom fighters were in
need of American material aid.
September 1986: The final steps of
the Stinger missile transfer
Senator Hatch personally contacted Casey upon
the delegation’s return to the United States and informed him of the Pakistani
request. Congress at last gained the acquiescence of both the CIA and the State
Department, but only after years of persistent effort. Initially
Congress had little impact on the reformation of foreign policy in the early
1980s. The
administration inadvertently ‘fuelled the fire’ by dismissing Congressional
efforts, and Congress, in turn, looked to appropriations as a means of
assisting the mujahedin. Congressman Wilson managed to more than triple U.S. assistance in just two
years.
Congress’ emotional appeal to the public and tactical presentation of the fight
for freedom was the central catalyst in the decision to go forth with the
missile deployment. President
Reagan’s decision to provide Stingers to the Afghan rebels was announced in
March of 1986, though the removal of Pillsbury from the Pentagon the following
month halted the decision to go forth with the deployment. A number of attempts
in Congress by individuals such as Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-Arizona) to
counter the Stinger deployment proved ineffective, and on the
25th of September 1986, mujahedin fighters fired their first five
Stinger missiles.
Conclusion
In the Stinger missile drama, Congress was the pre-eminent
actor that provided the political impetus to deliver the weapons to the
mujahedin. With policy being dictated by the politicians, the intelligence
community’s arguments cautioning against the Stinger deployment fell on deaf
ears. The producer-consumer relationship evaporated in the midst of political
motivations. In theory, this relationship is supposed to provide
decision-makers with objective information to help improve their policy
proscriptions. However, in the case of the Stinger missiles, the relationship
was one-sided: the consumer gave orders to the producer who, due to the nature
of the relationship, was forced to act despite misgivings. This case study
raises the question of whether politicians can make sound decisions without
good intelligence. While the Stingers were, in the short-term, tactically
effective, the long-term implications have been negative, as hundreds of the
missiles are unaccounted for and could be in the hands of terrorists or enemy
states. Learning lessons from the Stinger missile episode, the
producer-consumer relationship must be recalibrated so as to include sound, objective
analysis to aid in bettering the policy-making process.
The Stinger missile affair was a covert
operation but the management of the operations raises questions about the role
of covert activity in the foreign policy of democratic states. In the past,
covert operations have been criticised as contrary to American democratic
principles due their secrecy and lack of accountability. Public knowledge of
failed operations reinforced arguments that covert action be made illegal. But
for a policy tool that is by definition secret, the covert operation in Afghanistan, carried out by the CIA, was
demonstratively open to public scrutiny and opinion. Citizens could read about
the bureaucratic debate in newspapers and magazines; Congress, as a legislative
body, passed resolutions acknowledging its existence. Covert operation,
although conducted exclusively by the intelligence community, is a tool of
foreign policy. Presidents use it to accomplish their ends. The Stinger missile
episode removed the shroud of secrecy that had previously governed the
management of covert operations and exposed it to the democratic nature of
politics – a process where competing interest groups have a vested stake in the
outcome of a policy decision. Scrutinized and debated within the Executive and
Congress, it could be argued that the covert action exercised in Afghanistan was wholly a public debate. Covert
action, as an anti-democratic activity may have no place in the foreign policy
tool box of presidents but when influenced
by democratic processes, its value can be appreciated and prove
successful, as demonstrated by the decision to deploy the Stinger missiles.
Appendix A
Afghans involved in
early Stinger ops. (Pratt)
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