The Main Enemy by Milton Bearden (epub e reader txt) 📕

the white phosphorous rockets flew into a storage warehouse containing a supply of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) that had been delivered by the Soviets to the Afghan Army to protect them against air attacks from Pakistan. The rocket’s explosion ignited the fuel tanks of the SAMs, setting off a chain reaction of secondary explosions that radiated and spread from storage area to storage area within the giant Kharga facility, which at that moment was packed with about forty thousand tons of ammunition. Tens of thousands of mortar rounds, mountains of stacked rockets, and the SAMs themselves began to cook off one after the other as the chain reaction spun out of control. The firefighting teams never had a chance—the fire was out of control the minute the first white phosphorous rocket struck its target.

All through the night, the diplomatic corps in Kabul was treated to a fireworks display that grew in magnitude as the secondary explosions worked their way from bunker to bunker. A BBC camera team on the roof of the British embassy captured the devastation of the strike, and soon the footage was being relayed around the world. Watching the pyrotechnics on Pakistani television that night in Islamabad, I wondered how many mujahideen commanders would take credit for the attack, even before the fires had begun to burn out at Kharga. The answer was quick in coming.

Peshawar, Pakistan, 0930 Hours, August 27, 1986

Three press conferences were called almost simultaneously the next morning by the press offices of the Peshawar-based Afghan resistance parties. By ten o’clock, Commander Abdul Haq and General Rahim Wardak, two of the most press-conscious of the mujahideen commanders based in Peshawar, had claimed credit for the attack. A similar announcement followed from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s press office, and the other resistance parties would quickly follow suit. Rahim Wardak, derisively called the “Gucci commander” because of his camouflage fatigues, impeccably tailored to conceal an unmilitary girth, presented the most comprehensive operational plan, complete with maps and diagrams. But the flamboyant Abdul Haq, who had received the attention and much of the devotion of the mostly American press corps in Peshawar, ended up getting credit from the media for the operation. I never did find out who launched the attack—a dozen commanders insisted they were responsible—so I just decided to believe all or none of their claims. Kharga was smoking, and the mujahideen had a hundred new heroes. That was enough for me.

Langley, August 28, 1986

Jack Devine played the video of the Kharga blast a second time and knew it was just what he needed. A career officer in the Latin America Division of the Directorate of Operations, Devine had worked his way through some serious mine fields in South America, serving in Chile during Salvador Allende’s bloody overthrow and later as chief in Buenos Aires in the years of the disappearances during the military regime. He had earned a reputation for having sharp political instincts and a keen sense of how to navigate through treacherous times. At six feet five, Devine was hard to miss in his new fiefdom—he’d taken over the headquarters end of the Afghan project in June, just as it had been elevated from a country branch activity to a full-fledged task force, a change that cut the number of people looking over his shoulder to just two, the DDO and his deputy. Devine was exactly the right man to deal with the crosscurrents on Capitol Hill, within the Reagan administration, and on the CIA’s own seventh floor.

When Clair George had asked him to take over the task force that spring, there wasn’t much going right in the war. Reports from the field were an unbroken string of dismal accounts of the Afghan resistance’s inability to get their supplies from Pakistan through the hundreds of infiltration routes into eastern Afghanistan. It wasn’t clear to Devine whether that was because of the increasingly successful Soviet helicopter assaults along the supply routes or because of the growing fatalism of the Afghan fighters. That fatalism had been picked up by the media—those who were still interested in Afghanistan—and most pundits were about to call the match to the Soviets. Important pockets of Capitol Hill were still supportive, but countering the staunchest advocates of American support to the Afghan resistance was a growing cadre of members of Congress and their staffers who were beginning to question the morality of bleeding the Soviets down to the last Afghan. Even at Langley there was a sharp divide as to whether it made sense over the long haul to keep up the pressure on the Soviets in Afghanistan. Analysts of the USSR tended to dismiss as futile the efforts of primitive tribesmen taking on a superpower. The Near East analysts saw it differently, and there was a tension between the two schools that would remain throughout the war.

By August, Devine had figured that something had to give—and soon—or the fatalists would want to back off and try a new approach. The Soviets were beginning to talk about “an Afghan problem,” but they were still banking on a political agreement that would give them most of what they wanted—a friendly, neutral Afghanistan with their chosen people in charge. They wanted no erosion of the Brezhnev Doctrine—even though Brezhnev himself was long gone. As a result, there was no movement in any direction, and it appeared to Devine that the current stalemate would ultimately lead to a loss of commitment in Washington, unless something big happened and soon. Looking at the footage of the brilliant secondary explosions lighting up the night sky around Kabul, he had what he needed, at least for now.

Over the next week, Jack Devine would play the video a few dozen times for key members of Congress and the CIA, and Bill Casey would arrange a private showing for Reagan. If we get a few more lucky shots like this, Devine started thinking, we might just get the worm to turn.

Islamabad, September 3, 1986

The reverberations of the