Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Casey's Qur'ans

"William Casey, President Reagan’s first CIA director, embraced the covert action program and took it further. He authorized printing Korans in the Uzbek language, so they could be smuggled by rebels across the Afghan border and distributed to Soviet citizens. Casey also authorized or at least turned a blind eye to guerrilla raids on Soviet territory carried out by rebels loyal to the Afghan Islamist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. (Hekmatyar, who received arms from the CIA, is still fighting in Afghanistan against the Afghan government and the United States.)
The anti-Soviet rebellion offers one of the few cases in history where the external rousing of Muslim fighters against a non-Muslim occupying power succeeded, at least militarily. Of course, that was primarily because the Afghan resistance was indigenous and well underway before the United States and Saudi Arabia arrived to stoke it with dollars and sophisticated arms. The outcomes of American intervention in Afghanistan against the Soviets included a devastating civil war and the birth of al-Qaeda. The policy therefore can hardly be judged a strategic triumph". (thanks Kamal)