Operation Cyclone was an instrument of US Foreign policy used to push soviet expansionism out of Afghanistan and to protect Western interests in the gulf. The funding and provision of arms allocated under the Carter and Raegan administrations was typical ‘shotgun destabilisation’ whereby the United States funded anyone who had a group- in this case the Mujahideen . The Mujahideen lacked any formal political direction or structure and was mainly comprised of tribal warlords and foreign fighters united under the Jihadist cause. It is this lack of political structure and unified goal that would prove a huge issue in the aftermath of the conflict and ultimately create the breeding grounds for the Taliban regime and allow a jihadist movement to thrive. Support for the Saudi endorsed Jihad fitted perfectly with the US agenda, allowing them to place pressure on the Soviet Union while avoiding a direct confrontation which were dangerous waters to tread in a nuclear armed world.
Throughout the course of the Soviet-Afghan conflict some 20 billion USD was invested into the training and armament of Afghan resistance groups . The support provided under Operation Cyclone encompassed military technology, ideological and financial aid. The provision of aid began like any typical intervention with the provision of communications equipment and humanitarian aid but in the National Security Decision Directive 116 issued by the Raegan administration in 1982 we see for the call to push the Soviets out “by all means available”, as is evident in the supply of FIM-92 Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen by 1986. Furthermore, along with their client state Saudi Arabia, the US actively recruited foreign jihad to fight in the Afghan resistance. We see the reinforcement of Jihad ideology in major Western media such as the Rambo III dedication to the “brave Mujahideen fighters”. The American’s were too preoccupied with their plans to drive out the Soviet Empire that they failed to consider the potential implications of funding and arming a group of dangerous, radicalised individuals. The American’s attitude towards the conflict is particularly evident in a 1998 interview where former national security advisor, Brzezinski states “what is more important to the history of the world…some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe?”. create sentence concerning American ignorance on strength of jihadist movement they supported. Once Gorbachev withdrew Soviet troops in February 1989 the American’s quickly lost interest in Afghanistan, with no thought given to reconstruction of the war-torn country. In hindsight, this is perhaps what is most haunting about the US intervention as it would pave the way for rise of a dangerous jihadist movement which would shape the 21st century.
It would be ignorant to neglect how the Soviet invasion created the socio-political conditions for a Jihadist movement to thrive and its consideration is critical in the analysis of Operation Cyclone. The establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, a secular, Soviet client state in 1973 enraged the largely Sunni-Muslim population. The Communist and Islamic ideologies of atheism and monotheism were inherently conflictive because true Islam operates on the notion that all sovereignty belongs to Allah, a notion that was directly threated by Communism. The huge resentment that developed towards the government in Afghanistan is ultimately what led to the Soviet Invasion in 1979 to prop up the DRA. While modern Jihadism holds negative connotations in the West today, the movement arose out of a legitimate struggle against a system which threatened the very foundations of Afghan society rooted in their strong Islamic beliefs. However, in a wider context while the invasion of Afghanistan created a climate for this movement to thrive it is arguable that without the funding a provision of arms to the Mujahideen under Operation Cyclone, the Jihadist movement would have been overpowered by Soviet occupation. The American intervention mobilised a disorganised Mujahideen and encouraged a fundamentalist ideology to push their agenda in the gulf. It is this intervention that undoubtedly highlights the extent to which Operation Cyclone was responsible for laying the foundations for Modern Jihadism because if the Mujahideen were able to force the Soviet superpower out of Afghanistan, it is unfathomable that the US did not pause and reflect on what else this dangerous movement could do.
The Iraq invasion of 2003 was pivotal the rise of the modern jihadist movement, a problem that did not exist in Iraq beforehand. President Bush declared Iraq a “central front” in the counter-terrorism battle, however, ironically it is this intervention that created the breeding grounds for a jihadist movement that underpins most of the counter-terrorism problems we face today such as those posed by Islam State Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The National Intelligence Estimate 2006 (NIE) concluded that the “Iraq conflict became the cause calibre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadists movement”. ¬¬¬¬During the conflict most of the suicide bombings were carried out by the some 2000 foreign nationals who flocked to Iraq. It becomes clear that foreign jihad such as those associated with Abu Musab al- Zarqawi’s group, Tawhid al-Jihad, later Al Qaeda in Iraq, were foreign Jihad capitalising on the Iraqi Conflict. In fact, most of the insurgencies carried out by Iraqi’s were by Saddam loyalists in support of the Ba’ath party and not in the name of Jihadism. While the events in Iraq certainly contributed to rise of organisations such as ISIS which shape the present-day Jihadist movement, the foundations for Jihadism were already laid in the Afghan conflict fifteen years prior.