The famous Tora Bora underground fortification, located 35 miles southwest of the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, had also been “a CIA-financed complex built for the mujahedeen”, as The New York Times wrote in 2005. Osama Bin Laden father’s construction company, the Saudi Binladin Group, took substantial part in the endeavour, according to the newspaper.
Where Bin Laden brought the US to its knees with VCRs and cell phones.
30 Years After Soviet Afghan Pull-Out: CIA-Funded Mujahideen War Backfired on US
CIA’s Operation Cyclone
However, the USSR was not the only party wading into the Afghan conflict as the US took an active part in the covert war on the side of the Mujahideen.
In his memoir titled From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War ex-director of the CIA, Robert Gates, revealed the details of the US intelligence agency’s covert effort, dubbed Operation Cyclone. The secret operation envisaged arming and funding Afghan guerrillas began under then US President Jimmy Carter six months before the Soviet intervention. This was confirmed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a prominent geopolitical analyst and then national security adviser to Carter in a 15 January 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur’s Vincent Jauvert.
Time Magazine recalled in 2003 that Operation Cyclone had become “one of its longest and most expensive” covert efforts: The US supplied billions of dollars in arms to the Mujahideen with Osama bin Laden, the would-be founder of al-Qaeda*, being one of the rebel recipients, according to the magazine.
How the Reagan Adm. Boosted the Mujahideen’s Military Capability Read the rest of this entry »
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