AFGHANISTAN: Caravans on Moonless Nights

Caravans on Moonless Nights

How the CIA supports and supplies the anti-Soviet guerrillas

The Soviet army's seventh and most punishing assault on Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley this spring was in many respects an exercise in frustration. Moscow was determined to bring down Ahmad Shah Massoud, 30, a resourceful leader of the mujahedin, who have been defying the Soviets ever since they invaded the country in 1979. But only five days before the beginning of the Soviet operation, code-named Goodbye Massoud, the mujahedin commander suddenly slipped away from his headquarters and went into hiding. The following week the Soviets claimed Massoud was dead. Within hours, the rebel leader's voice crackled over the Soviet army's secret radio network, accurately describing the weather, the Soviet positions and their casualties that day. Meanwhile, in whatever direction Soviet tanks turned, they ran across rebel-laid land mines. According to Western diplomats in the Afghan capital of Kabul, casualties were so high that gravediggers at the local cemetery worked overtime to bury up to 40 soldiers a day.

The mujahedin had some special help that enabled them to resist the formidable assault so well. Three weeks before the Soviet tanks began to roll, American spy satellites detected movements that allowed agents to warn the rebels of the impending attack. Massoud's radio performance was made possible by the use of more than 40 CIA-supplied portable transmitters. In response to a specific request from Massoud, the CIA also arranged to send hundreds of land mines by plane, ship, truck, camel and pony across three continents and through several intermediaries, so that they got into rebel hands just before Goodbye Massoud began. Says a Western diplomat: "Nothing would make the Soviets happier than breaking the back of the CIA pipeline in Afghanistan."

The thwarting of Goodbye Massoud was the most recent, and perhaps the most daring, success of the CIA's operation to assist the embattled guerrillas. Like most of the world, the U.S. was outraged when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and proceeded to transform it into a puppet state. That shock, together with widespread sympathy for the mujahedin, has not abated as Moscow has tried to consolidate its tenuous control over the nation by resorting to carpet bombing, chemical warfare and outright massacre of civilians.

So the existence of a CIA pipeline to the mujahedin has long been an open secret. President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, publicly took credit for setting up the arms flow to the Afghan rebels in 1979. Shortly before his death in 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat acknowledged that the U.S. was using Egypt to ship weapons to Afghanistan. During a visit to Pakistan last year, Secretary of State George Shultz went so far as to tell several thousand Afghan refugees, "You fight valiantly, and your spirit inspires the world. I want you to know that you do not fight alone. I can assure you that the United States has, does and will continue to stand with you." Sources in Asia, the Middle East and the U.S. have given TIME some details of how the aid pipeline works. Used selectively, the information sheds light on this operation without exposing individuals and organizations.