U.S. Missed Cues on New Crop of Radicals

In what American officials now admit was a foreign policy failure, the United States “missed” the formation of a generation of Islamic extremists--many of whom have since gone on to foment death and violent dissent from Morocco to the Philippines--during the decade-long U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.

Both the intelligence and diplomatic communities knew that thousands of Arabs and other non-Afghans were slipping into and out of the Afghans’ war against Soviet occupation with the help of Saudi money and Pakistani connivance.

But in a classic case of singular, shortsighted focus, Washington virtually ignored the trend, said a range of current and retired U.S. officials.

“We missed it. And there are probably a lot of us who are sorry now that we didn’t pay more attention. We might have been able to prevent a lot of grief,” a former central figure in U.S. policymaking said.

The non-Afghans--whose acts later turned out to be among the most lethal, lasting byproducts of the Afghan War--were never the subject of a single U.S. intelligence report, task force study, white paper, diplomatic warning or State Department analysis in the Carter, Reagan or Bush administrations for several reasons:

* The presence of non-Afghans initially was noncontroversial. “We never looked at the Arab elements as bad. Our philosophy was ‘the more the merrier.’ After all, they were the ones willing to do the dying,” said a former ranking specialist who spent several years involved in U.S.-Afghan operations. Indeed, at the time, the role of the non-Afghans was compared to that of American and European volunteers who joined the socialists to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Anyone willing to join the cause--the U.S. viewed it as beating back aggression by the Soviet Union, which President Reagan dubbed the “Evil Empire”--was welcome.

* U.S. intelligence was narrowly focused on America’s Afghan mandate: to act, chiefly, as quartermaster and gunrunner. “Operation Cyclone” was defined in a secret, single-sentence presidential “finding” by the Carter administration calling for the CIA to provide lethal and nonlethal aid to the Afghans to resist Soviet occupation. It remained the basis of U.S. intervention through three presidencies. “The United States had the strategic aim of inflicting defeat,” a former high-level official said. “We took the means of waging war and put them in the hands of those capable of doing it. That meant the American role was largely procurement and liaison almost totally focused on providing arms.”

* The non-Afghans ultimately were peripheral to the war’s outcome. “By and large, the Arabs did not distinguish themselves as fighters during the Afghan War. In most cases, they were no more than a footnote,” said the ranking specialist. Many were merely “armchair moujahedeen,” said a former U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan. Up to half of the roughly 12,500 who trained probably never saw a battle, much less fought, analysts said. Thousands ended up in Pakistan with various private aid groups or disappeared into the murky world of guns and wartime chaos.

Non-Afghans who did fight were often criticized by moujahedeen commanders as hotheads. They were tolerated mainly as a means to gain access to more patronage and foreign money. “A lot of Afghan commanders did not like to have Arabs around. They thought [they] were nuts and did not want to have anything to do with them,” said a former U.S. diplomat who served in Peshawar, Pakistan.

* Despite conventional wisdom, U.S. contact with the non-Afghans was negligible, in part because of their hostility toward the United States. “To most of the non-Afghans, we were anathema,” the diplomat said. As a result, not one of more than two dozen U.S. officials--experts on the Afghan situation who were interviewed--recalled hearing of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a mentor to the Arab fighters in Afghanistan who was convicted last year of plotting to bomb several New York landmarks; nor could the officials recall any of the other names that were to emerge after the war.

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The U.S. presence in Afghanistan was small. There were no more than 100 full-time U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives there, in Pakistan and in Washington involved in the war at any one time, said the high-level official who worked in Washington. “The CIA prided itself on conducting a major operation with little American involvement,” said a former U.S. diplomat who worked in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and in Washington.

That meant the U.S. had limits to its Afghan intelligence. The CIA often did not know the extent of activity there by the Pakistanis--who did the vast majority of training and logistic support work. And all the officials interviewed agreed that America bears partial responsibility for the emergence of non-Afghan extremists, because it happened in a U.S.-orchestrated intervention. “It is impossible, inconceivable that an effort of this magnitude would have had no negative unintended consequences,” the ranking specialist said.

Even this guilt, however, is by association, not because of any U.S. direction. Despite popular wisdom, American forces never knowingly trained non-Afghans, insist U.S. officials, past and present.

Moujahedeen commanders and elite fighters were taught to use Stinger antiaircraft missiles, heavy mortars and rockets, medical equipment and communications gear. But they were not trained, for example, to handle sophisticated explosives now seen in terrorist attacks, the specialist said, adding, “We deliberately wanted to prevent the kind of bombs-in-the-bazaar that would kill civilians.”

Pakistani troops, however, did train people to handle such explosives. And when U.S. strategists vetoed car-bombing Soviet forces, one enterprising Afghan assembled a camel bomb; it went off at a Soviet garrison in Jalalabad. “It is very possible that some Afghan would turn around after being trained by the U.S. and Pakistanis and then train an Arab”--a danger wherever Americans provide training or arms, the specialist noted.

As for the Arabs in Afghanistan, they were tolerated because the opposition to the Soviets needed Saudi financial aid, which had been tapped on the grounds that the moujahedeen were fighting a jihad, or holy war, experts said. “We needed the Arab involvement. Where else do you get a half a billion bucks?” asked the specialist.

Between 1986 and 1989, Saudi Arabia and the United States both spent about $500 million yearly on the war. Private groups and individuals from the Persian Gulf, primarily Saudi Arabia, funneled up to $20 million more every month to unregulated channels, several sources said.

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Why? At a time when Iran’s Islamic revolutionary zeal was grabbing world headlines and luring thousands of recruits, Afghanistan provided a rival stage where Saudi Arabia, which claims to be the “guardian of Islam,” could buy a major role. Allowing Arabs and other non-Afghans to play soldier was part of the price, the sources added.

Finally, neither the Reagan nor Bush administration thought much about the end or aftermath of the Afghan conflict. For most of the war, intelligence officials thought it open-ended.

“The CIA saw the war as an effort to bleed the Soviets and never considered it possible that Moscow would completely withdraw,” a State Department official said.

When the Soviets pulled out in 1989, the Bush administration ended Operation Cyclone and shut the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The latter step was taken because of predictions that the Soviet puppet regime of President Najibullah would fall quickly, opening the way for a blood bath, former U.S. diplomats said.

But Najibullah held on for three years--a critical period in which a new crop of non-Afghans, including alleged World Trade Center mastermind Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, underwent training. But with no diplomatic presence in Afghanistan and vastly reduced intelligence in Pakistan, the United States had even fewer means of tracking Islamic extremists.

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So even in the early 1990s, as Abdel Rahman and Yousef allegedly were plotting anti-American acts, U.S. officials did not focus on non-Afghans. “They were there before we got to Afghanistan and they were there when we left. But beyond a vague awareness of them, I don’t recall anyone really caring,” said a former senior policymaker.

“They didn’t get much attention until shortly before the World Trade Center bombing.”

That does not mean, however, that no alarm bells went off. Toward the war’s end, deep disagreements erupted among U.S. officials, particularly about which of the seven major Afghan factions were America’s allies, the ranking specialist said.

“There were a lot of people who said it’s crazy to be giving money to people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was the most radical and anti-Western moujahedeen leader. That question came up time and time again,” said a still-active U.S. policymaker.

Hekmatyar and [Abdul Rasul] Sayyaf drew the largest numbers of Arabs and other non-Afghans.

But even then, the debate never extended to concern about the postwar potential of the non-Afghans in the camps.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Jargon

Definitions of terms used in this series:

* Blowback: Intelligence community slang, variously defined. Commonly describes a phenomenon in which CIA operatives, weapons or operations turn against the interests of the United States.

* Emir: In Arabic, “commander.” Formerly a military title in Islam, it now refers to princes or other rulers and chiefs.

* Jihad: From the Arabic jahd, or “effort.” Commonly defined as a war against nonbelievers or enemies of Islam. But many Islamic experts say the concept has been widely misunderstood in the West. They say jihad refers to striving or excellence on three levels. The first involves individual efforts, spiritual and intellectual, to become a better Muslim. The second addresses efforts to improve society. The final level, or “holy war,” involves self-defense or fighting against oppression.

* Imam: Arabic for “model.” It can have several meanings in Islam. One is simply a leader of prayer. Another is the head of a community or group. Among some Shiite Muslim groups, an imam is the intermediary between humankind and God, credited with supernatural knowledge and authority, whom believers must follow in order to be saved.

* Martyrs: In Islam, these are believers who die for the faith--whether defending it or being persecuted for it. Buried as they died--unwashed and in their bloodstained clothes--they are assured of entering heaven.

* Moujahedeen: Islamic resistance fighters.

* Mullah: Arabic for “master.” In Iran and Central Asia, a title given to a religious scholar or dignitary.

* Partition: The division of British-ruled India into two nations, India and Pakistan, in 1947. Boundaries of Kashmir are still disputed.

* Sheik: Arabic for “old man.” Chief of an Arab family, tribe or village. Also, an official in Islamic religious organizations.

Sources: Concise Encyclopedia of Islam; Encyclopedia Britannica; Webster’s New World Dictionary; World Book Encyclopedia; wire reports. Compiled by JANE ENGLE.