Friday, December 28, 2007

"You are what you pretend to be"

Most of the Afghan war against the Soviet Union was fought by Mujahideen and Pakistani soldiers using Israeli arms supplied after Pakistani General Zia ul Haq entered into secret deals with the Israelis. Congressman Charles Wilson from Texas, a great pro-Pakistan activist, was the central figure to get these CIA-funded weapons for Pakistan and is credited in the book (Charlie Wilson's War) as the man who broke up the Soviet Union with the help of a 48-year old Texan socialite with whom General Zia ul Haq is rumored to have had an affair.

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History is written by journalist George Crile a producer at 60 Minutes. The book reveals that Wilson made the proposal to General Zia to deal with the Israelis during Zia's first visit to the United States after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The proposal was made at a grand dinner hosted by the Houston lady, Joanne Herring, who was named later as Honorary Consul of Pakistan and became a critical player in the war.

It was thus Joanne's dinner in Houston which launched Zia in the United States and started the Pakistani-Israeli cooperation in arms. The book says of that event: "Zia had dangerous decisions to make in the coming months about the CIA's involvement in his inflamed North-West Frontier, and all of them centered on whether he could trust the United States. Joanne's startling toast was strangely therapeutic for the much-maligned leader, who remembered how quickly Jimmy Carter had turned on him. In Houston that night, Joanne Herring saw to it that a host of powerful Americans actually honored him. And that same night, Charlie Wilson provided yet another dimension to Zia's growing partnership with the United States when he took the general into a side room for a private talk. The congressman had a novel proposition for the Muslim dictator. Would Zia be willing to deal with the Israelis?". That is, so a cold war would not turn hot.

"This was not the sort of proposal just anyone could have made. But by now, the Pakistanis believed that Charlie Wilson had been decisive in getting them the disputed F-16 radar systems. As he saw it, Wilson had pulled off the impossible. Now the congressman, in his tuxedo, began to take Zia into the forbidden world where the Israelis were prepared to make deals no one need hear about." "He told Zia about his experience the previous year when the Israelis had shown him the vast stores of Soviet weapons they had captured from the PLO in Lebanon. The weapons were perfect for the mujahideen, he told Zia. If Wilson could convince the CIA to buy them, would Zia have any problems passing them on to the Afghans? Zia, ever the pragmatist, smiled on the proposal, adding, "Just don't put any Stars of David on the boxes."
"With that encouragement, Wilson pushed on. Just the previous month, he had learned that the Israelis were secretly upgrading the Chinese army's Russian-designed T-55 tanks. In Islamabad, he had been startled to see that the Chinese were supplying Pakistan with T-55s. The congressman now proposed that Zia enter into a similar secret arrangement with the Israelis. "The congressman was acutely aware of the minefield he was walking through. Publicly, Pakistan and Israel would have to remain foes, he conceded. But as Zia well understood, Pakistan and Israel shared the same deadly foe in the Soviet Union. And the fact was that each could profit mightily by secretly cooperating with the other. If Zia would follow the lead of the Chinese, Wilson said, he could increase the striking power of his tanks, and there might be other areas of military and technological cooperation where both countries could mutually profit."

"Wilson's scheming was conducted outside the sight of the U.S. embassy, which ordinarily monitors congressional activities abroad. "They turned next to the T-55 upgrade proposal and to what their congressional friend could offer President Zia, on behalf of Israel, when he met with him in Pakistan at the end of the week. The Israelis were hoping this deal would serve as the beginning of a range of under-the-table understandings with Pakistan that the congressman would continue to quietly negotiate for them."

"But such was the stature of this old congressional patron of Israel that the IMI chief immediately set his weapons experts to work. By the time Wilson was ready to leave, they had presented him with an impressive-looking design, complete with detailed specifications. It was a mule-portable, multi-rocketed device named, to the congressman's delight, the Charlie Horse." The congressman began showed Zia the design for the Charlie Horse and describing the Israelis' T-55 proposal at a dinner in Rawalpindi. After establishing what Zia wanted him to convey back to the Israelis, Wilson came right to point out that they both wanted the same thing--to expand the Afghan war-- and Charlie had a plan to make it possible.

Charlie Wilson himself ended up overseeing much of this eccentric weapons program for Pakistan out of his own congressional office, and it turned out to be a wild and remarkable success story. "There were all these little scientists in the Pentagon--bureaucratic misfits who just needed to be freed," Wilson recalled years later. "We gave them a little money and made them immune to procurement laws. They're mad-scientist types. They love to tinker with things that blow up but hate to fill out forms. Hate to follow the chain of command. Hate to wait."

"Within weeks, they began developing an astonishing collection of weapons. The Spanish mortar, for example, was designed to make it possible for the mujahideen to communicate directly with American navigation satellites to deliver repeated rounds within inches of their designated targets. Just the thought of Afghan tribesmen who had never seen a flush toilet signaling an American satellite to fire precision rounds at a Red Army stronghold was almost too much to believe.

"The weapon's name was purposefully misleading, chosen to conceal the fact that major portions of this "Spanish mortar" were being built by the Israelis. Milt Bearden, the station chief who would dominate the war's later years, actually came to rely on the steady stream of crazy new weapons that kept coming on-line from this offbeat program. His strategy called for introducing a new weapon into the battle every three months or so, in order to bluff the Red Army into thinking their enemy was better armed and supported than it was.

"The Spanish mortar, for example, with its satellite-guided charge, was rarely deployed and may only have succeeded because the Pakistani ISI advisers were along to direct the fire. But the Soviets didn't know that. When the weapon was first used it wiped out an entire Spetsnaz outpost with a volley of perfect strikes. And as soon as Bearden learned from the CIA's intercepts that the commander of the 40th Army had helicoptered to the scene, he knew that from that day on, the Soviets would have to factor in the possibility that the mujahideen had acquired some deadly targeting capability.

"For that reason alone, the weapon was a success even if never fired again. Bearden became so intoxicated with this kind of psychological warfare that he later developed plans to have a group of mujahideen shoot dead Russian soldiers with crossbows. To him, the vision of men who might kill you with a bow and arrow one day or with a satellite-guided mortar the next would be unnerving to any army."