Declassified docs expose Carter’s covert support for Afghan jihad

KARACHI: Newly declassified documents show how US president Jimmy Carter authorised ‘lethal military aid’ to Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets, including allowing for the ‘training’ of the mujahideen if need be via a third country.

The declassified documents released by the Washington DC based National Security Archive came to light via a tweet on Saturday by Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed: “Declassified & released yesterday, by Washington-based National Security Archive, after 42 years, this most significant decision by President Carter laid basis of CIA-funded ‘Afghan Jehad’ in 1979 via Pakistan: US pumped in $2.1 billion + Saudi matching funds of $ 2.1 billion!”

Explaining that the figure given in his tweet referred to the ten-year long operation by the CIA, Syed tells The News that “this was the largest CIA covert operation after World War II...ten years, trading hundreds of Afghan mujahideen, spending $2.1 billion plus the matching amount by Saudi Arabia and I’m sure there will be other money as well. Imagine: forty years ago, this kind of money was unofficially doled out. And it created this whole monster in the region.

A summary of the documents by the National Security Archive says that the released record “sheds light on the ongoing historical question about the nature and extent of support the Carter administration provided to the Afghan rebels. Attached to Brzezinski’s summary of a December 28, 1979, meeting on Iran and Afghanistan is a copy of the original Presidential Finding, signed by Carter, authorizing covert action in the form of “lethal military” aid to “the Afghan opponents of the Soviet intervenion [sic].”

On December 14, the National Security Archive had published what it says is “a major primary document collection on the presidency of Jimmy Carter”. Titled ‘US Foreign Policy in the Carter Years, 1977-1981: Highest-Level Memos to the President’, the collection has more than 2,500 communication and policymaking records during the Carter regime. In some cases, the communication has been commented on directly by Carter.

Featured strongly in the documents are Carter, his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and secretaries of state Cyrus Vance and Edmund Muskie. From the Middle East to Afghanistan to China, the declassified documents are an insight into what was going on with American foreign policy during the Carter years. Says Malcolm Byrne, the archives’ director: “These personal memos from Jimmy Carter’s closest advisers show the policy process unfolding in real time.... Being able to read the president’s handwritten comments gives us an extraordinary window into his thinking on a slew of critical issues.”

More of the documents declassified include a memo where Brzezinski describes various ways Carter could use his foreign policy powers to “significantly influence the outcome of the [1980] elections”.

American official documents are released every few decades once their ‘classified’ nature ceases. American support for the Afghan Jihad has made headlines previously as well, every few decades adding more pieces to the puzzle. In 2019, declassified White House, CIA and State Department documents had shown that in 1980, the CIA under Carter had spent nearly $100 million shipping weapons to the Afghan mujahideen.