U.S. Hopes Moscow Will Also Cut Back Afghan Aid

The Bush Administration’s proposal to end CIA aid to the Afghan guerrillas is intended partly to encourage the Soviet Union to reduce its support for the Marxist government in Kabul and could be reversed if the Soviets do not respond, U.S. officials said Sunday.

In its secret budget for covert operations submitted to Congress earlier this year, the CIA requested no further funding for the guerrillas, a proposal that would end 11 years of officially covert support.

The proposal was the subject of debate within the Administration, officials said, and could touch off a public controversy in Congress over whether the time has come to cut U.S. funding for the rebels, or moujahedeen.

In addition to pressuring the Soviets, the move reflects growing U.S. disenchantment with the rebels, who have rebuffed several American proposals for a negotiated solution to the war.

The CIA has provided more than $2 billion worth of weapons, training and money to the rebels since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979 to prop up a pro-Moscow regime.

The Kremlin eventually sent more than 110,000 troops, plus armored vehicles and aircraft, to fight alongside the Kabul government forces, while the United States and other countries supported the guerrillas based in Pakistan.

But since Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev withdrew his troops in 1989, both Washington and Moscow have attempted to push their allies toward a compromise, without success.

“They can’t deliver their Afghans, and we can’t deliver ours,” one official said recently.

The Administration appears to hope that both sides can be pushed toward a compromise if their funding dries up.

“We would like to see the Soviet support cut off,” a senior official said. “If that doesn’t happen, the CIA is prepared to reprogram”--Washington terminology for shifting money from one program to another.

Officials have charged that the Soviet Union continues to supply the Afghan regime with more than $3 billion in economic and military aid each year.

President Bush, asked about the cutoff proposal Sunday, said only that U.S. aid to the rebels continues. “We are still doing what we are doing, but I’d like to see the situation evolve so we didn’t have to do that,” he told reporters.

The proposed aid cutoff was first reported in Sunday’s New York Times.

The proposal to end Afghan aid “was driven more by CIA budget requirements” than by diplomatic strategy, one official said--indicating that the agency has begun to view the rebels as drawing money that might be better spent on other covert programs.

But U.S. officials nevertheless hope to use the move to induce Soviet leaders to follow suit, officials said.

Last year, the Administration also left the Afghan guerrillas out of its covert-action budget proposal and pursued formal talks with the Soviets on a joint cutoff in aid. Those negotiations deadlocked because the Soviets insisted that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan also stop their aid to the rebels.

U.S. officials have expressed growing impatience with the rebels for several years. Among other problems, three of the seven rebel factions are led by Muslim fundamentalists who publicly supported Iraq during the Persian Gulf War. The CIA and Saudi Arabia have withdrawn their support from two of the three commanders.

U.S. officials have also charged that some rebel groups have engaged in drug trafficking.

Most important in the long run, however, officials have said the Afghan war has changed from a U.S.-Soviet struggle to a civil war among several factions--and the U.S. interest in aiding some of those factions is no longer clear.

Officials noted that Congress could still recommend that the aid be continued. Last week, the House Intelligence Committee, which includes several fervent supporters of the Afghan rebels, voted to put the guerrillas back in the budget, which covers the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

BACKGROUND

The United States began aiding Afghanistan’s rebels under President Jimmy Carter in 1980. The program to support the Pakistan-based guerrillas fighting the Soviet-backed government in Kabul became one of the largest officially secret military operations ever run by the CIA, totaling more than $2 billion in U.S. aid and an equal or perhaps larger amount of Saudi aid.