Ghost Wars

Attached file

Source files are not served on the public archive. Metadata and citations remain available.

Cited by (35)

• Communist coup overthrows and kills Afghan President Daoud whole source

  In April 1978, Daoud fell off his beam. He arrested communist leaders in Kabul after they staged a noisy protest. Soviet-backed conspirators…

• Herat revolt crushed with mass killing by the Afghan communist government whole source

  By the time the raids were finished, on the eve of its first anniversary in power, the Afghan communist government had killed as many as twe…

• Carter signs the first covert-action finding to aid Afghan rebels whole source

  On July 3, 1979, Carter scrawled his name on a presidential “finding” required under a recent law intended to ensure White House control ove…

• Mob sacks and burns the U.S. embassy in Islamabad whole source

  All of the embassy compound’s six buildings, constructed at a cost of $20 million, had been torched beyond repair.

• Armed zealots seize Mecca's Grand Mosque whole source

  Saudi Arabian soldiers and French commandos routed the armed attackers at the Grand Mosque on Saturday in a bloody gun battle.

• Soviet invasion of Afghanistan whole source

  Antonov transport planes loaded with Soviet airborne troops landed at Kabul’s international airport as darkness fell on Christmas Eve.

• Saudi intelligence agrees to match CIA funding for the Afghan jihad whole source

  Turki reached a formal agreement with the CIA in July 1980 to match U.S. congressional funding for the Afghan rebels.

• Howard Hart takes over the CIA's Afghan arms program in Islamabad whole source

  Hart had arrived in Pakistan in May 1981 as the CIA’s chief of station. He ran the agency’s clandestine program to arm anti-Soviet guerrilla…

• Pakistan rejects Carter's aid, wins a $3.2 billion package from Reagan whole source

  He turned down Carter’s initial offer of $400 million in aid, dismissing it as “peanuts,” and was rewarded with a $3.2 billion proposal from…

• Casey tells Reagan the covert Afghan war is cost effective whole source

  Mujahedin warriors had killed or wounded about seventeen thousand Soviet soldiers to date, by the CIA’s classified estimate. They controlled…

• Congress triples the CIA's Afghan budget to $250 million whole source

  Congress that month shoveled another enormous injection of leftover Pentagon money to the CIA for use in support of the mujahedin, bringing…

• Reagan signs NSDD-166 to escalate the Afghan covert war whole source

  President Reagan signed the classified NSDD-166, titled “Expanded U.S. Aid to Afghan Guerrillas,” in March 1985, formally anointing its conf…

• CIA establishes its Counterterrorist Center whole source

  The CIA’s Counterterrorist Center was born on February 1, 1986. Clarridge was named its first director.

• Mujahedin fire the first Stinger missiles, downing Soviet helicopters whole source

  another flashed across the plain and smashed into a helicopter, destroying it in a fireball. More missiles flew in rapid succession, and two…

• Gorbachev calls Afghanistan a 'bleeding wound' whole source

  He publicly referred to the war as a “bleeding wound” early in 1986.

• Battle of Jaji makes bin Laden's name among Arab jihadists whole source

  On April 17, 1987, Soviet helicopters and bomber jets hit Osama bin Laden’s new fortified compound at Jaji, an assemblage of small crevices…

• Geneva Accords set the terms of the Soviet withdrawal whole source

  SIGNED BY RANKING DIPLOMATS on April 14, 1988, the Geneva Accords ratified by treaty the formal terms of the Soviet withdrawal.

• President Zia and the U.S. ambassador die in a plane crash whole source

  It was August 17, 1988. The embassy officer said they had a very garbled report that President Zia’s plane had gone down near Bhawalpur wher…

• Soviet Troops Withdraw from Afghanistan whole source

  On February 15, the day appointed by the Geneva Accords for the departure of the last Soviet troops, Gromov staged a ceremony for the intern…

• U.S. and Soviet Union agree to end arms supplies to Afghanistan whole source

  On September 13, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin pledged a mutual cutoff of arms to Najibullah…

• Najibullah falls and Massoud takes Kabul as civil war begins whole source

  Massoud entered Kabul triumphantly from the north on a tank strewn with flowers. That night hundreds of his mujahedin fired their assault ri…

• Mir Amal Kasi shoots CIA employees outside Langley whole source

  these were dedicated to tracking down Mir Amal Kasi, a young and angry Pakistani who on January 25, 1993, had opened fire on CIA employees a…

• Ramzi Yousef bombs the World Trade Center whole source

  On February 26, 1993, just a month after Kasi’s highly publicized attack at the CIA, Yousef led his confederates in a two-vehicle convoy fro…

• Taliban emerge in Kandahar under Mullah Omar whole source

  They first surfaced as a small militia force operating near Kandahar city during the spring and summer of 1994, carrying out vigilante attac…

• Taliban seize the city of Kandahar whole source

  Suddenly, in just twenty-four hours, the Taliban moved into central Kandahar and captured the entire city.

• Taliban capture Herat and turn toward Kabul whole source

  When Herat fell to the Taliban in September, the die was cast. Omar and his Durrani militia now controlled all of southern Afghanistan.

• Riyadh bombing by bin Laden-inspired Afghan veterans whole source

  the Riyadh bombing in November by bin Laden–inspired Afghan veterans came “out of nowhere.”

• Bin Laden returns to Afghanistan whole source

  FOUR MONTHS EARLIER, in May 1996, Osama bin Laden, the seventeenth son of a Saudi Arabian billionaire, had flown into Afghanistan on his own…

• Bin Laden issues his declaration of war on America whole source

  In August he issued an open call for war titled “The Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Sacred Places,”…

• Taliban Captures Kabul and Takes Control of Afghanistan whole source

  By nightfall the Taliban had conquered Kabul. A militia whose one-eyed emir believed that he had been selected by God to prepare pious Musli…

• Al Qaeda Bombs U.S. Embassies in East Africa whole source

  Shortly before 10:30 A.M. on Friday, August 7, 1998, two teams of suicide bombers rolled through two sprawling African capital cities.

• U.S. launches cruise missile strikes against bin Laden whole source

  Seventy-five Tomahawk cruise missiles, each costing about $750,000, slammed into Zawhar Kili’s rock gorges at about 10 P.M. local time. At l…

• USS Cole attacked by al Qaeda suicide bombers in Aden, Yemen whole source

  A month after Taloqan’s fall, on October 12, a small tender boat packed with explosives glided alongside a 505-foot, American Arleigh-Burke…

• Nineteen hijackers assemble in the United States for 9/11 whole source

  All nineteen of the attackers had safely entered the United States by mid-July. Fifteen were Saudi Arabians, including al-Mihdhar and al-Haz…

• Al-Qaeda suicide bombers assassinate Ahmed Shah Massoud whole source

  The explosion ripped the cameraman’s body apart. It smashed the room’s windows, seared the walls in flame, and tore Massoud’s chest with shr…