Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 58 - Soviet Afghan War 4: Operation Cyclone

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

As the Soviets got bogged down in Afghanistan the United States and its allies are helping the Afghan rebels, but only with a little cash and small arms. This all changes when an alcoholic, drug addicted, womanizing Congressman from Texas gets involved. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys buy a shirt: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Check out Joe's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Earth-Galaxy-Joseph-Kassabian/dp/1949645347/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28K2JNPXTPX5Z&keywords=citizen+of+earth+joseph+kassabian&qid=1562585220&s=gateway&sprefix=citizen+of+earth%2Caps%2C231&sr=8-1

One weapon could do the job. A handheld heat-seeking missile called the Stinger. In the mid-1980s, the U.S. began covertly supplying Stingers to the Mujahideen. The balance of power began to shift. For a Stinger helicopter, it's just a sitting duck. If it is within the range of the Stinger, then the Stinger operator, I mean, will aim it. Aim at the Stinger, then go for a super elevation. Then he will make adjustment

according to the movement of the helicopter. Then you fire, and you will see a big explosion. Flames and smoke will go up. Hello! Welcome to another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, with me is Nick. Yo! So we're on part four of the Soviet-Afghan war.

Part number four. Nick, what do you know about Operation Cyclone? Nothing. Nothing. At all. I've actually heard of it, but I know nothing of it. A lot of people have heard of it, but a lot of people are not quite sure. I'm sure you've heard the story of how the Mujahideen ended up with Stinger anti-aircraft

missiles. I'm actually not. So I'd actually love to learn. You're killing me. I kind of figured you'd heard of that. Um, well, it,

it, it's become really, really popular. Uh, they made movies about it. Of course, on the side of the CIA. Um,

yeah, our, our third cohost, uh, our fourth is kind of a fat ass and a dick. Steven Seagal. Yeah, he's not,

he is. I would like to point out Steven Seagal is not a cohost. He's holding us hostage. He's sitting here watching us Rubbing his belly button So we are going to talk about Operation Cyclone on this episode And how it came to be And the truth behind

The aftermath Of Operation Cyclone So we are going to talk about the Afghan war For obvious reasons And we're also going So we are going to talk about the Afghan war for obvious reasons. It's a series, right? Yeah. And we're also going... That's what I showed up for.

We're also going to talk about the aftermath of CIA meddling in the region. Fun fact, not good, Nick. It's not good. Has the CIA done anything good? I don't know. Yeah. So for the last few episodes episodes we have talked about how

the soviets got bogged down in afghanistan um the soviets were not winning and they certainly they weren't losing they were just kind of stuck uh the mujahideen for the most part were uh armed with small arms and some landmines they were very uh they were largely pretty untrained pretty raw and they were learning how to fight through the act of fighting. It was like on-the-job training. That's a terrible OJT. Yeah. Just shooting their rifles and then...

Thrown straight into the fire. Hoping for the best. Yeah. It worked, I guess. So while it is true, the Soviets began to learn through trial and error how to become better fighters, which we have talked about.

They did not become well-armed, well-trained, empire-destroying rebels without a massive amount of outside help. How massive exactly? Well, the operation to arm and train them would become known as Operation Cyclone, the largest CIA operation of all time and costs so much money,

nobody's entirely sure how much, at least the tens of billions. Do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do CIA. Yeah. Uh, so the United States had actually been supporting the Mujahideen Afghanistan since before the Soviets had gotten directly involved, which we kind of talked about a little bit on episode one. Yeah.

Uh, that was pretty low level stuff. Uh, the real heavy lifting was being done by pakistan um one theory is that the u.s. wanted to topple the communist afghans because that's just what the u.s. did to small communist countries during the cold war gotta stomp them i mean look at latin america look at what we tried in Vietnam look at all that stuff but there is a theory that could be even darker than that there's actually a fair amount of evidence that the

U.S. supplied arms to the rebels in order to destabilize the already teetering Afghan government for the sole purpose of sucking the Soviet Union into a war now remember the Soviets and Chinese kind of openly supported North Vietnam, dragging on our war of attrition there. We wanted to return the favor and bleed the Soviets dry. In 1979, the CIA sent several covert action ideas to the Special Coronation Committee, to which Defense Representative Walter Slocum said, quote, there is value in keeping the Afghan resistance going to suck the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire. So I just want to bring up, I imagine they probably brought a chat over there or a chat, maybe.

I feel like the CIA is stocked full of chats. Oh, yeah. Just wearing sunglasses indoors. At the tip of their tongue is a state. Don't you know who my dad is? Yeah. That's the whole cia pretty much and they're just like all right takes out bros punches drywall comes back

here's what we're gonna do every time the ca wants a topple regime and the president says no they punch a hole in the drywall that's what we'll do so intelligence officer and this is his real name. Yes. Yes. I love names. Arnold Horlick. Yes. Said, quote, covert actions could raise costs to the Soviets and inflate Muslim opinion against them in many countries. A substantial covert aid program could raise the stakes and force the Soviets to intervene more directly. Now, there's a good reason for this. The CIA had a fair amount of intelligence the soviet army shocking right they've been doing this for decades yeah i would imagine they would

have something kind of figured that the soviet army could not conduct this kind of war but would be forced to do so anyway so they're they kind of just wanted to fuck the soviet union like they didn't think the soviets would be able to able to adapt to guerrilla war like the United States had. Now, the United States adapted, but we still lost. And lost tens of thousands of troops. And it was awful. And millions of Vietnamese died. But they assumed that the Soviet Union would just fall apart.

Like the Soviet Army would not be able to handle this. And because of the rigid command structure of the Soviet Union, they knew they wouldn't be able to handle this. And because of the rigid command structure of the Soviet Union, they knew they wouldn't be able to adapt. So they wanted to fuck some Soviet soldiers over. I feel like they almost wanted to embarrass the Soviets. Definitely. It was a...

I mean, the Soviets definitely embarrassed us. Yeah, the U.S. definitely was there. And we wanted to return the favor. If that wasn't a big enough clue, U.S. definitely was there. And we wanted to return the favor. If that wasn't a big enough clue, U.S. representatives began to fly to Pakistan to meet directly with the leader of the Afghan Sunni resistance, including our boy Hek Matar, who, to this day,

funds Taliban units. So that's fun. They're not directly involved in the Taliban, but they are directly involved with killing American soldiers and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Afghan soldiers. Now,

the resistance against the Soviets encompassed every shade of Afghan society, from Sunni to Shia and every ethnicity and political group in between. The U.S., however, would only directly support the Sunnis, who at this time had been receiving aid from Pakistan for years. The Afghan Shia had been receiving a ton of aid from Iran, a country the United States in the late 1970s wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

If you're not sure why, go back and listen to our Anorak series. Not going to go over that again. They weren't friends. Yeah. Once the Soviets got involved in 1980, the U.S. immediately spoke out against going to go over that again. They weren't friends. Once the Soviets got involved in 1980, the US immediately spoke out against them to the surprise of nobody. They also began to

slap sanctions against the USSR and begin to pour more money in the form of aid into Pakistan, which everybody pretty much accepted was actually aid from the Mujahideen. And it was just going to be siphoned over to them. The US boycotted the 1980s Olympics because there's one thing that

stops war, it's dumbass sports games. Definitely. That did a whole fucking lot. US President Jimmy Carter also managed to get an agreement with Saudi Arabia which promised that for every dollar the US spent on the Mujahideen, the Saudi government would match.

Which is a pretty big deal. The plan is pretty simple for the most part. It's a lot of green moving. The U.S. would pour money, guns, and specialists into Pakistan marked as aid. The aid would then be funneled to the Afghan training camps within Pakistan by the Pakistani ISI, their version of the CIA,

who Travis and I talked a little bit about during our Cargill War episode. If you're not super familiar with ISI, go back and listen to that. At first, this amount of money was a paltry half million dollars. Doesn't get you a whole lot, but it gets you something. This would change in 1980 when a Texas congressman named Charlie Goodtime Wilson got involved. There's no way you're from Texas and you didn't have a good time. Oh man, Charlie Wilson had a fucking party.

He got the nickname for being a notorious drunk who loved to party dating all the way back to when he was in the Navy. He also tried to fuck anything with a pulse despite the fact he was married and he was rumored to not only have a rotating bed but a hot tub in his bedroom. He was the Austin Powers. Yeah, he was the Austin Powers of

shitty Texas congressmen. Good time. What a fucking asshole. It gets worse. Oh, cool. Wilson read some news dispatches about the huge amount of people who had been displaced by war in Afghanistan and ran for shelter on the Pakistan border.

That was pretty much all he needed to know when he decided the U.S. should totally be helping those Mujahideen fellows a little bit more than they already are. He's going to party with them. Well, good news for Wilson and the Afghans. He had just been appointed to the U.S. Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which is responsible for funding CIA operations. Why? It's the congressman who gets appointed to those things from time to time. So after a night of heavy drinking, Wilson called up his staff of the committee of appropriations

One of those drunk calls you make And requested aid going to the Mujahideen to be doubled And it was Without any other questions being asked Just no questions asked Sir your words are slurring Congressman Wilson is naked We should probably listen to him

More than that Wilson wanted to go to Pakistan to visit the goddamn brave fighters himself He did that too What? The night before however Um, more than that, Wilson wanted to go to Pakistan to visit the goddamn brave fighters himself. He did that too. What? The night before, however, uh, he was due to be getting on a plane going to Pakistan and Wilson got drunker than shit as he tended to do and did a whole bunch of coke before running over some guy with his car on the key bridge in Washington, D.C. How'd that go?

Uh, he faced no legal repercussions whatsoever. Just jumped on a plane and flew to fucking Pakistan. Sounds about right, D.C. How'd that go? He faced no legal repercussions whatsoever, just jumped on a plane and flew to fucking Pakistan. I feel like he just backed up to him, threw some money on him, like, sorry about that. Clean yourself up, kid. He threw a towel on him. I want the towel back.

Fucking drove off. Once there, Wilson became fast friends with the military dictator of Pakistan, Zia al-Haq. They bonded over whiskey and prostitutes. You like getting fucked up and not remembering your day as well? Fuck yeah. You like doing lines off hookers' butts? Did we just become best friends?

Wanna do a line off my butt? Hell yeah, dude. Al-k told wilson they definitely needed more money for the glorious freedom fighters afghanistan sugar hole snorting wilson agreed without hesitation al hawk's motivation for this is twofold one he was legitimately scared that if the soviet succeeded in afghanistan come for pakistan next to all hawk the isi and everyone in between and in the middle of the pakistan government kind of sounds like a tech group uh it would be actually i would say google but more nefarious but that it was not true at all

anymore they sound like a shitty tech group at a mall they're like if google also had people who just shot people instead of selling your information to the CIA. Oh. But only shot good people. ISI sucks. I hate them. They sound terrible. They're somehow worse than the CIA on a regional basis.

They just don't have the power to be as terrible as the CIA. Shame. So every level of the Pakistani government was pilfering funds from the Americans that they were sending over for the Mujahideen. A good percentage of weapons being sent over were stolen and sold for profit on the black market, the proceeds going directly into the ISI's pocket. Good time Wilson's still sending letters to his boy.

CIA war funding is like a pyramid scheme that your shitty friend from high school tries to sell you every time you go home, but instead of badly made knives, it's regime change and it's the bucket of of ak-47s which arguably is better i guess i honestly like watching bad knives like bad knives advertising commercials the cia is the global version of vacuum salesman look at this nighthawk 5000 sliced through this pumpkin. I'm selling you this detox, and by detox, I mean we're going to pump your country full of rifles.

No, yours is kind of worse. Yeah. So if AllHawk lobbying him for more money didn't do the trick, the CIA itself did. Wilson was directly approached by CIA agent Gust Avocados telling him that the- I like avocados. Avocados. He was Greek. Not a Mexican fruit?

Vegetable? What is an avocado? Avocado is a fruit, right? Yeah. No. I don't know. Fuck. It's a fruit.

I don't know. I'm saying it's a fruit. It has a C in the middle of it. It's a giant one. Yeah. So he told Wilson that the Afghans needed 40 million more dollars. Oh, we're going to get so much shit for that. This directly violated a CIA policy about directly lobbying Congress for money.

I'm not sure what part of that is funnier. The fact that the CIA has policies or the fact that anybody thought CIA agents would follow policies. I think they're both the same. Like, we have policies stopping us from doing evil shit what are we the fbi yeah all right so these policies so this is like this is a coaster right no no sir that is your hr book about cia policies yes the dartboard it also worked the dartboard before the end of the year, Wilson would make a further $300 million into the hands of the Afghan Mujahideen.

This guy's fucking insane. $17 million of that money was funded directly into a push to get the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles into the hand of the Mujahideen. Eventually, it was set and zoned by Pentagon official Michael Pillsbury, And the pipeline was opened up And he was grandfather to the doughboy Yes yes

Let's stop communism kids He gave out a stinger Sir please stop poking me in the stomach Just do the laugh Can we please get to the business at hand But it turns out arming a religious Rebellion half a world away with cutting edge missile technology was kind of a controversial idea.

Really? First was the people who objected to the idea. Pretty much everybody involved thought it was a bad idea. This included Al-Haq, the Reagan administration, and the CIA itself. What? The CIA thought it was a bad idea? Some people

thought as soon as stingers were on the ground it would result in some kind of direct confrontation the Soviets definitely knew that the US was supporting the Afghans but this would stop any idea of it being covert they had this weird idea that the Soviets

knew that the US was like directly I'm like the Soviets would the Soviet side, which is to attack the U.S., which is kind of absurd. They've been doing this kind of shit for years, and it's never happened. Another problem was putting a new weapon into the hands of people directly fighting the

Soviets would mean eventually the Soviets would capture one of them. This was a concern. It was top-secret information. Milton Bearden, a CIA operator... Why are these names so bad? Because it's the 70s and 80s top secret information. Milton Bearden, a CIA operator. Why are these names so bad? Because it's the 70s and 80s. Jesus Christ. A CIA officer in Pakistan overseeing the operation

was asked to tell the senators on the board that the Soviet Union had actually managed to get their hand on a stinger a few years earlier through a source they had in NATO. It's pretty much accepted that that is a lie. So the CIA lied to Congress to get money for an operation for not the first or the last time. It's not surprising.

The CIA was adamant about getting these weapons into the hands of rebels. The main reason for this is because Soviet air attacks on the Pakistani border were making smuggling weapons and trained rebels back into the war zone a pain in the ass. For every three shipments they would send, two would be destroyed before they could get

into the fight. So they were losing a lot of shit when they were sitting over. Not to mention, their weapons were important, but they wanted trained rebels back onto the battlefield.

They lost more than what they can get. Right. So they just cranked open the pipeline and assumed Send it all. some would eventually

filter through. It's like when you throw a giant pile of popcorn in your face. Something's going to get in your mouth. Other than that, you've got a giant mess to try to clean up. On several occasions, the Soviet Air Force just said

fuck it and bombed the camps directly inside Pakistan, resulting in several clashes between the two sides of the Air Force. I don't think they're allowed to do that. They didn't give a fuck. Jack Devine, which sounds like a porn star, was the man put in charge of actually finding

these weapons. He was given a presidential memo and sent off to the military to procure them. The military told him Jack Devine could not have these weapons. Oh no, it's Devine. Because the US military did not even have them itself yet divine had to call the white house and have the president intervene personally to get the

military to actually give them the missiles eventually 2500 missile systems in a totally unknown number of missiles found themselves into afghanistan in order for this to work afghans have to be trained how to use the weapons correctly. So Pakistani ISI teams joined forces with the CIA, which is like... That's a bad collab. Yeah, it's literally a supervillain group to teach them. According to Devine, quote, In September 1986, behind a white sheet hung up in a classroom in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, non-commissioned officers slowly moved a penlight whose light source the

students would track and eventually kill with their stinger training units. Permanent, but it did the job for about $100 a piece. They literally trained these dudes a laser pointer like they're cats. Yeah. That's a good one.

Yeah. Oh, man. More than just flood the country with weapons they would have to train the afghans become formal life infantry force for that avocados tapped cia agent michael vickers vickers began a slow trickle of cia paramilitary agents into the country to begin to help the pakistani isi turn nearly a half a million million Afghan fighters into a highly mobile Soviet killing machine. Avrikatos also managed to persuade officials from Egypt, China, and Israel

to get on in the game. He is also one of the people who convinced Zia al-Haq to frame the conflict as more than just a regional one. This is not an Afghan war of independence. This is a religious war of Islam versus godless communism. If you could see this ends badly yeah i see your face you're starting to see the seeds i'm planting here yeah they're

not they're kind of big seeds like avocado seeds yeah i could see him all hawk himself pivoted to be more of an islamic conservative using the american president Ronald Reagan as an example how to interject religion into politics CIA money also float into madrasas you're familiar with what madrasas are it's a religious school in these schools

Afghan refugee children along with Pakistani kids were indoctrinated with militant Islamic teachings with school books paid for by the US government, developed by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and printed in Houston, Texas. I fucking hate

our country. It would be from Texas too. Good time Wilson over there fucking writing books. Hey, he got jobs for the printing press or whatever. Fuck you. If you can imagine what's inside these books, like Republic of Texas. I don't know.

Well, I mean, that would work if you're trying to secede Texas from the union. But these are handmade for Afghan refugee kids. It's overpriced. It's overpriced Texas shit. So they taught math by showing kids pictures of bullets, landmines, and dead Soviet soldiers. They also

filled it to the brim with messages about jihad. To teach kids how to read, it says things like, quote, T is for tow pack or gun. How do you use this word? Quote, my uncle has a gun, the entry reads. He does jihad with the gun. Millions of these books were produced and disseminated for free

and it was from these schools good time Wilson knows how to party that the Taliban would be formed after a few years when the war ended yeah dude I fucking hate our country these books are still in Afghanistan really yes I hope they're used for like

I don't know to sit, I don't know, to sit on. To like level out a flimsy table. Nope. They're still taught in madrasas. Being used. Yes. Oh my god. Meanwhile, the Saudis' main push to turn this into a religious battlefield began to work as well. The Saudis would

end up spending around $4 billion building a network of training camps along the Pakistani border. Also, the Saudis built pretty much all of the madrasas um that would train and and deploy muslims from around the world into the afghan war zone spurred on by the grand mufti of saudi arabia tens of thousands of foreign muslims would pour into these camps during the war if you said you want to volunteer the sa Saudi government would pay for your air travel, lodging, and deal with immigration paperwork to Pakistan. Ooh.

And they would even include a return flight if you managed to survive. What a deal. The Saudi kingdom literally built an all-inclusive vacation package to a goddamn war zone. That's nice. So if you were to pick one of the people who happened to take one of these flights and make it the worst person ever from Saudi Arabia, who would it be? That's actually kind of hard for me.

A young Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden. Oh, okay. Oh, fuck. Jesus Christ. Yes. So Osama bin Laden was a family member. I forgot he was from Saudi. Holy shit.

He is the son of an incredibly rich construction magnate. Who has ties with the Bush family? He would not exactly be a rebel leader as a lot of people like to put him. He was a money guy.

Did that get him his power though? He definitely laid the groundwork for Al Qaeda. Around this, something of a tourist industry was formed. Saudi Arabia, like now, had a huge class

of rich oil princes who wanted to show everyone that they were warriors of God, just like everybody else. So, they would pay their way into Afghanistan, get a picture of them firing a gun

at some faraway target, and get the fuck out of the country before anything could happen to them. Like, Could you imagine do it for the gram and fire an RPG at a Soviet convoy? They literally went to war for the clout.

That's a great way to put it. These foreign Muslims would eventually become known as Afghan Arabs. They were pretty unpopular amongst their Afghanos. They were driven mostly by the religion unlike the afghans who are driven by nationalism also driven by the followers they would gain yeah on the 1980s social media um the cork board now it should be known that the vast majority of afghan rebels were very religious afghan society in whole was very conservative but

they were nationalists they were fighting to free afghanistan and then they you know fight over what was left of afghanistan was all over who'd control it but they they were nationalists these afghan arabs injected a completely different scene into the already confusing kaleidoscope of rebel groups they were incredibly hardline Muslims and judged the Afghan versions of Islam to be less pure than their own brand. Wherever the Afghan Arabs went, they weren't huge fans

of all the people they worked with. There's a reason why all the Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan later on were all foreigners. Very few Afghans wanted to work with Osama bin laden and like the taliban after the 9-11 attacks the taliban offered to give osama bin laden up to the united states because they didn't fucking like him like well he's not one of us he's not a member of the taliban yeah uh and in in exchange for recognizing them as the government afghanistan

that was it we said no that's that's not surprising to be honest because i imagine they probably played the they didn't want to give up bin laden that's exactly what they did exactly we started bombing them yeah still more countries uh accepted the taliban as the rightful government of afghanistan they never recognized the confederate states of america so they had that going for them yeah so back uh back in the 1980, the importance of these foreign fighters has been massively blown out of proportion over the years. The bulk of them did not arrive until 1986 or later

when the Soviets were already planning on pulling out, meaning they weren't really needed anymore. They'd have a much bigger impact, however, on the Afghan civil war that would erupt in the 90s when the PDPA finally collapsed. What did have an impact on the war, however, were the Stinger missiles, which were finally hitting the battlefield.

In 1986, for the first time in the war... I wonder if they had a hard time at first. Like, I don't know if I can do this. It's not a laser pointer. They had pretty roaring success, I'll say. Yeah. So the training worked. Oh, yeah.

So, kind of. We'll get to that point. Okay. So for the first worked. Oh, yeah. So kind of. We'll get to that point. Okay. So for the first time in 1986, Stinger missile began to shoot down Soviet helicopters. On September 26, 1986, after a week of traveling, several dozen Afghan rebels with the missiles hunkered down near an airfield

used by Soviet forces outside of Jalalabad in Northeast Afghanistan. That afternoon, a Soviet air patrol returned to base. The Afghans hoisted their stingers to their shoulders, switching on the guidance systems and locking onto the heat signatures of the helicopters overhead. The first missile,

fired by a guy named Ghaffar, the group's leader, shot out of the launch tube, quote, traveled the prescribed six meters of its launch charge, and then the rocket motor failed to ignite. The missile fell to the ground clattering among the rocks until the momentum was spent. The Afghans then panicked and kicked the missile

off the edge. The other two gunners each brought down a Soviet helicopter however. Ghaffar reloaded and fired again bringing down another. Three helicopters? Out of the four missiles? It's not bad. You're batting three for four.

There's an expected amount of failure for these things, and that is way better than I think, so the CIA going off of mostly first-hand accounts, which can be badly inflated to make themselves sound better, said that at best,

the Stinger missiles hit their target or at least worked 70% of the time. They expected less than 50%. So it worked. 70% of the time it worked every time. Yeah, that's right. The effect on the Soviet forces was immediate. Though it should be pointed out that the rebels had actually had their hands in a

few surface to air missiles before then in the form of the Soviet SA seven, but the SA seven was for a lack of a better term, a piece of shit. Even when it, when it was used 100% correctly by train experts, which the rebels absolutely were not. The success rate was only about 3%. That is terrible.

What was it used for? It's surface air missile. Not at 3%? No. Well, I mean, the Stinger is super hit and miss as well. The Pakistanis also got a huge amount of Stingers

because, of course, they did. And they once fired 24 missiles at one helicopter and it did not hit once. So, your results may vary. So, each system had flaws. Yeah. Okay.

So, the Stinger and its first deployment in combat anywhere in the world we should point out uh had been more successful than the previous uses of anti-aircraft missiles so the soviets reacted accordingly first they grounded all flights in afghanistan while they figured out what the hell had happened once soviet intelligence discovered that stinger had made their way to the battlefield the simple effects was forcing all of their air crews to stay above the Soviets operational ceiling of 20,000 feet. They also began to outfit

helicopters and jets with anti-aircraft countermeasures, something they had completely ignored doing before. I feel like they should have been had that. Also, this is a simple fix. It made Soviet air power significantly less effective, though. Stingers became less of a

weapon and more of a deterrent. The Stingers often portrayed in media as smacking down Soviet aircraft at such rate the Soviets had to leave Afghanistan. That's just not true. It is estimated out of the 451 aircraft losses that the Soviets suffered during the war, or at least reported losses, less than

half were due to Stingers. What is more important than those losses, though, was the effect, which was the intended consequences. Soon, weapons and people were flooding over the Pakistani border at levels greater than any time of the war. This included Saudi Arabia's

Afghan Arab zealots. Another huge part of this was morale. The Soviets. So before then, the Soviet soldiers on the ground were pretty severely lacking morale. We've, I think we've covered that pretty well,

but what was not missing was the Soviet air forces morale. They were pretty much untouchable. The Soviets suffered casualties through airframes, obviously through a lot of which is Chinese made anti-aircraft guns. But, suffered casualties through airframes, obviously, through a lot of which is Chinese-made anti-aircraft guns. But the fact remains pilots, and especially the jet pilots, felt really, really safe.

And soldiers felt really, really safe inside the helicopters. That all changed now. One pilot talked about, like, I had to strip everything out of my helicopter just so I could fly faster and hopefully outrun these fucking things wow yeah and like morale just fucking tanked which is saying something for the soviet military yeah everything that the soviet touched in afghanistan just turned into sadness yeah i mean that's the so

the soviet union's history in general it's not everything's just sad great i mean that's that's all i see it is yeah that's that eclipses soviet history and it goes into imperial russian history which we'll talk about on a future series and it goes into um modern day russia honestly uh so a new activity began to form in afghan mujahideen circles now they've been armed with this weapon that was hunting soviet helicopters oh it was a game i mean think of it this way what's a bigger like if you're going big game hunting this is the biggest fucking game you could get this goddamn helicopter now they could effectively target them they knew each one that they brought down would be a massive propaganda morale victory for the mujahideen not to mention that'd make your particular band of rebels look totally badass oh yeah ours took out three helicopters they actually

do a really good job in the movie the beast about talking about this like his cousin who's a mujahideen leader like is this taking pictures hanging out around a fucking please oh yeah uh he's like taking pictures hanging around uh down um i think it's a hip helicopter not a hind and like even though he didn't take it down he's taking credit for it oh down um i think it's a hip helicopter not a hind and like even though he didn't take it down he's taking credit for it oh yeah um yeah fair game and this activity hunting soviet helicopters with the rock launcher was exactly what charlie wilson wanted doing one of his trips back to afghanistan what did he do oh dude i hope he's wearing one of those like safari fucking hunting outfits now he was dressed was dressed up like a local.

Yes, a sitting U.S. congressman, almost a surely drunken high, teamed up with Heck Matar, jumped in a truck and drove off in the mountains looking to shoot down a Soviet helicopter. This is something that happened. Please tell me he gets it. They did this by dragging a bunch of change through the dirt behind

a pickup truck to kick up dust. This tactic had worked before in the past. Soviet helicopters orbiting high overhead would see clouds of dust and think a Mujahideen convoy was tearing through mountain passes. That's really smart. They would swoop down and strike the convoy and hopefully get out before they get ambushed with missiles.

Unfortunately for good time Charlie, no Soviet helicopter showed up that day. So instead he hung around in the mountains getting fucked up on opium watching poor Mujahideen drag chains around in circle for his amusement. This guy's, oh, I fucking hate him so much. Now,

one of the reasons people objected to this proliferation of surface-to-air missiles. Yeah, surface-to-air missiles. Fuck. That's what you got. Let me try this again. Now, one of the reasons people objected

to this proliferation of surface-to-air missiles was in case they got traded over to militant groups that the U.S. didn't want to support, or worse, enemy nations like Iran. So the CIA put a strict program in place where in order to get more missiles, they would have to turn in their spent missile tubes. How long do you think that system worked? I would imagine not long. Less than a year totally

you can see that afterwards the u.s is seeing that not only were the soviets beginning to plan to get the fuck out of afghanistan they were actually losing the war they tossed said any idea of keeping track of the stingers and cranked open the weapons pipeline one official said quote we were handing them out like lollipops. That's not surprising. Over the years, the U.S. spent nearly $100 million trying to get all the Stinger missiles back, but the program to track and recover them was

plagued by failures, miscalculations, and wasted money. It is estimated that the U.S. lost track of around 1,000 missiles. Holy shit, that's a lot. And double that, weapon systems. They would eventually end up in the hands of Iran, Qatar, North Korea and see action in the Tajik Civil War

after the fall of the Soviet Union. That's a lot of places they didn't give stingers to. I don't know how the fuck we got all the way to North Korea. Yeah, that's far as shit. Operation Cyclone does and rightfully should have a problematic

place in history. Almost everyone can get behind a popular resistance movement against an oppressive government, which the PDPA absolutely was. And the Soviet Union was no friend to the Afghan people. But people got behind it a little bit too much.

This included having a Rambo movie dedicated to the brave Mujahideen of Afghanistan. It's Rambo 3, by the way. Yep. And glowing articles written about them in publications like Reader's Digest. Those are both things that totally happened. Now,

the real problem laid in the motivation and means by which the powers that ran Operation Cyclone operated. The CIA in Pakistan framed the conflict as a religious one, and the Saudi-funded schools to spread the seeds of militant Islamic fundamentalism. Those two things do not work well together. This effectively weaponized an entire religion in ways that we have not seen since the Crusades. These seeds would eventually bloom into the taliban al-qaeda

isis and other terrorist groups around the world though it cannot be said that everyone in the region was blind to the dangers of whipping up religious zealots benazir butoh who'd become prime minister of pakistan in 1988 was slowly become terrified at the growing power and influence of these militant groups as the entire border region fell out of the state of Pakistan's control and more under the control of these groups. During a meeting with George H.W. Bush, who was vice president at the time, she said that they were creating quote, a Frankenstein.

In 2017, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by Islamic militants connected to the Pakistani Taliban while traveling to meet with who else but the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. And that's our episode this week. Yeah, that's a curveball. Fuck. So, can you at least...

Okay. Did Good Time Wilson ever get anything? Like, he's an asshole. He ended up getting in trouble for a few things. But, I mean, people generally remember him as

good time Charlie like he was portrayed pretty favorably by fucking Tom Hanks in a movie oh Tom no oh fuck yeah I think I know what movie you're talking about I can't think of it but I know I think Charlie Wilson's War there we go

where yeah where he was kind of light hearted for it was all like fun and games yeah what it actually was yeah i mean it's it's certainly problem it's a problematic history i mean you can be torn on the subject of fighting imperialism which this absolutely was and also not being in favor of the cia plunging an entire region into generations of civil strife, which they did. It's, I don't know, it's hard to place this in history,

because it's one of the few CIA programs that you could kind of see the point for, but also it's the CIA, so they have to do something awful. Nothing ever good comes from whenever we talk about CIA or the ISI for that matter but yeah yeah yeah honestly uh so Nick how do you feel about being sad honestly the last episode got me more than anything even though I did have my favorites in that episode this one I just wanted to see Good Time Wilson get it he never

got it he's just an asshole no he asshole. No, he definitely never faced repercussions. And, you know, Gus Avocados ended up getting in a little bit of trouble for something else, but, like, retired CIA agent, nothing bad really ever happened to him. Really, the only thing bad that happened to anybody were the people in the region. Yeah. I mean, to this day, it's called the Northwest Frontier

Providence in Pakistan. It's almost completely under government control and controlled by the Pakistani Taliban. Yeah. Who were directly related from the madrasas that Saudi Arabia built to help us. Yeah. Yeah. Embarrass the Soviets. Right. All this, you know,

the meme is, look, we own the libs. In the Cold War, it was like the meme is look we own the libs like in the Cold War is like the Spongebob and Patrick with the city burning down behind like look Patrick we own the communists like when you point at the kid that farted in class we're pointing at the Soviets that farted

it's horse shit it's like farting in an elevator and blaming it on somebody else so that is our episode this week. Now that we've brought the Afghan war into the present day. So how many more parts? A lot. I would assume at least three more.

There's only nothing worse. Wait. It gets worse. Yes. I knew it. I hope everybody kind of liked to see there's there's been multiple shows and news segments about how these wars are directly related um and how it carries over to the present day and it absolutely does so i wanted to chart that for an episode this one definitely does yeah and i wanted everybody to kind of see those things are connected a lot of people were i, most people were aware of the Stinger missiles.

Most people were not aware of us literally printing out school books for madrasas in Texas. That's crazy. And I actually have to thank our sometimes co-host and friend of the show, Travis, for turning me on to that uh research material i had never heard of that before it is not it was not any of the the primary sources that i used but i found a news week article from the early 90s really that charted it yeah uh nobody's entirely sure how many books they print off but they said it was like tens of thousands and they did find they're still being used is honestly reminds me of my school system. It was an NPR article from 2004

that said they were still finding those books. We're still using old books. Yeah. So that's our show for this week. Write and review us on iTunes. It's greatly appreciated. If you think what we do is worth a buck, throw us a dollar.

You'll get one bonus episode a month. Access to our other shows early. what we do is worth a buck throw us a dollar you'll get one bonus episode a month uh access to our other shows early if you uh donate five dollars and higher we will try to get you a bonus episode per week um it's honestly exciting yeah i can't wait for it it's gonna be great um you have to wear shirts buy one of our shirts uh some of them are pretty cool so we even still have some used ones ready to go we do not we are not selling new shirts last episode we started the ads for it so right now we're getting

our sweat on if you want to buy a book buy one of my books because you still can support the show also I need to keep my lights on citizen of earth is out I've heard it's okay so if you like military sci-fi go and pick it up

um as far as our show goes we will see you next week as our series continues and come and you start to learn how the soviets decide to look for an exit strategy endless episode as as we are in an endless war yeah so this the series will chart all the way up to the u.s invasion 2001 and that is not true. I would rather die than do that. That sounds awful. But tune in next week as the Soviets begin to look for a way out. Later.