Mujahideen Insurgency — Operation Cyclone and CIA/Pakistan Backing
Operation Cyclone, the CIA programme to fund and arm the Afghan mujahideen, became the largest covert operation in CIA history. Begun under Carter and dramatically expanded under Reagan, it channelled billions of dollars — initially around $30 million annually, rising to $630 million per year by the late 1980s — through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which distributed weapons and funding to various mujahideen factions. Saudi Arabia matched US contributions dollar-for-dollar. The programme supplied Stinger shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles beginning in 1986, which proved devastating against Soviet helicopter gunships and were a significant factor in raising the operational cost of the Soviet campaign. The mujahideen were a fractious coalition united only by opposition to the Soviet occupation and communist Afghan government. They ranged from moderate nationalists to radical Islamist factions, including those supported by figures like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whom the ISI favoured despite his fanaticism. Foreign volunteers — including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, who arrived in 1984 to help fund Arab fighters — joined the jihad. The CIA supplied weapons without significant vetting of the ideological character of the recipients. The blowback from these decisions would materialise in the 1990s and catastrophically on September 11, 2001.
- Year: 1980 CE
- Category: Covert
