By 9/11, the United States confronted not a puppet it had designed, but an adversary formed within an infrastructure its policy had helped make possible.

United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Minutes of a Special Coordination Committee Meeting,” October 23, 1979; Conor Tobin, “The Myth of the ‘Afghan Trap’: Zbigniew Brzezinski and Afghanistan, 1978–1979,” Diplomatic History 44, no.

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2004), 55–56; Stansfield Turner, “Additional Funding for Afghanistan Covert Action Program,” February 21, 1980.

In 1991, in Pakistan: From Hash to Heroin, we wrote: “Those who went on a holy war against communism, unfortunately brought home heroin.”1 The line was deliberately blunt. It identified blowback before the term became fashionable. Thirty-five years later, it also requires refinement.

Afghans did not need Washington, Riyadh or Islamabad to invent their opposition to occupation. The Soviet invasion produced a genuine national resistance. What outside states manufactured was its scale, ideological packaging, chain of supply and transnational afterlife.

Soviet culpability must come first. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan seized power in April 1978. Its coercive reforms and brutal repression ignited revolt. In December 1979, Soviet troops invaded, killed Hafizullah Amin and installed Babrak Karmal. Moscow turned an internal crisis into a devastating international war. Millions were uprooted. Afghanistan became a battlefield on which foreigners pursued objectives that Afghans had never chosen.2

Nor should a seductive counter-story be repeated as settled fact. President Jimmy Carter did authorise limited covert assistance before the invasion. A finding of July 3, 1979, allowed US$695,000 for cash, non-military supplies and propaganda. That record does not establish that Washington deliberately lured Moscow into Afghanistan. Serious archival scholarship disputes that claim.3

After the invasion, however, the intention to bleed the Soviet Union was explicit. Zbigniew Brzezinski told Carter that Afghanistan could become a “Soviet Vietnam”. He recommended more money, arms and technical advice for the resistance, with Islamic countries enlisted in propaganda and covert action.4 A national struggle was recast as an instrument of global Cold War strategy.

The arrangement divided labour. The United States supplied money, weapons and diplomatic cover. Saudi Arabia supplied funds and helped give the campaign religious reach. Pakistan supplied sanctuary, routes and the decisive gatekeeping institution: the Inter-Services........

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