Assets Today, Enemies Tomorrow

In July 1979 — six months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — President Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski recommended authorizing covert support for Afghan insurgents fighting the Soviet-aligned government. The stated goal was to provoke a Soviet intervention that would give the USSR "its Vietnam." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski was asked if he regretted the policy given that it had empowered Islamic fundamentalism. His response:

"What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe?"

Operation Cyclone ran from 1979 to 1989 and became the largest covert operation in CIA history. The US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan's ISI channeled an estimated $20 billion (inflation-adjusted) in weapons and funding to the Mujahideen — including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, which the CIA had never previously transferred to a foreign force for fear of proliferation. Osama bin Laden was among the Mujahideen leaders who received support through the Pakistani ISI network.

After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the US lost interest in Afghanistan. Civil war followed. The Taliban emerged from the chaos and took power in 1996. Al-Qaeda — whose founders, training infrastructure, and weapons caches were products of Operation Cyclone — planned and executed the September 11, 2001 attacks from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The US then invaded Afghanistan and fought there for 20 years at a cost of $2.3 trillion. The Taliban retook Afghanistan in 2021.

During the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the United States government designated Iraq as a strategic ally against Iran — the country the CIA had helped radicalize by backing the Shah. The support included: dual-use chemical precursors supplied through the Commerce Department's Export Administration; CIA satellite imagery of Iranian troop positions shared with Iraqi military commanders; and removal of Iraq from the State Department's terrorist sponsor list to facilitate weapons sales.

On December 20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld — then serving as President Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East — met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and shook his hand on camera. The meeting was intended to signal US support. A declassified State Department cable from the same period noted that the US was "fully aware" that Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iranian forces. Support continued regardless. Saddam Hussein used the US-supplied infrastructure to gas Kurdish civilians at Halabja in 1988, killing between 3,200 and 5,000.

In 1991, the United States led a coalition that expelled Iraq from Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq based on claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — claims the Senate Intelligence Committee (Phase II report, 2008) and the UK Chilcot Inquiry (2016) both found were not supported by the underlying intelligence. Saddam Hussein was executed in 2006. The US military remained in Iraq for another eight years. The Islamic State emerged from the post-invasion power vacuum.

Between 1985 and 1986, the Reagan administration ran two simultaneous illegal operations through the same National Security Council pipeline. The first was Operation Arms-for-Iran: the US secretly sold anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran — the same country the Reagan administration was publicly condemning as a state sponsor of terrorism — in exchange for help freeing American hostages held in Lebanon by Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

The second was: CIA Director William Casey and NSC staffer Oliver North diverted the proceeds of the Iran arms sales to fund the Contras — Nicaraguan paramilitary forces fighting the leftist Sandinista government — in direct violation of the Boland Amendment, which Congress had passed to prohibit exactly this funding.

The human rights record of the US-backed Contras is documented in a 1985 report by Americas Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union: systematic assassination of civilians, torture, rape, and attacks on health workers. The Nicaraguan government won a ruling at the International Court of Justice in 1986 — Nicaragua v. United States — finding US support for the Contras violated international law. The Reagan administration responded by withdrawing US acceptance of ICJ jurisdiction in similar cases.

Fourteen people were charged in the Iran-Contra affair. Eleven were convicted. Six, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, were pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Christmas Eve 1992, before their trials concluded. Reagan's vice president during the operation was Bush himself.

Beginning in 2013, the Obama administration authorized the CIA to run Timber Sycamore — a covert program to arm and train "moderate" Syrian rebel groups fighting Bashar al-Assad. The program eventually cost over $1 billion annually, making it one of the most expensive covert operations in CIA history.

The distinction between "moderate rebels" and al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate) or ISIS proved difficult to maintain in practice. Reporting by the New York Times and others documented that weapons provided through the program repeatedly ended up with al-Qaeda-linked factions — through theft, defection, sale, and direct transfer. A 2016 RAND Corporation study of rebel groups found ideological boundaries were frequently porous. Former CIA officers described the program as poorly conceived and inadequately vetted.

President Trump ended Timber Sycamore in 2017. The Syrian civil war continued until 2024, killing an estimated 300,000–500,000 people (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights) and generating the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Assad was eventually overthrown by an alliance of rebel groups — some of which had ideological roots in the same jihadist networks the US had spent years trying to counterbalance.

In March 2015, a Saudi Arabia-led coalition began an air and ground campaign in Yemen against Houthi rebels. The United States has provided the coalition with weapons sales, mid-air refueling (until 2018), intelligence sharing, and targeting assistance. Congressional Research Service data shows the US approved over $54 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia from 2015 through 2023 — including precision-guided munitions, fighter jets, bombs, and helicopters.

The UN Panel of Experts on Yemen, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have documented hundreds of strikes on civilian infrastructure — hospitals, schools, markets, and wedding ceremonies — carried out with US-supplied munitions. The UN identifies these strikes as potential war crimes. The US government has not conditioned arms sales on compliance with international humanitarian law.

The UN Development Programme estimated in 2021 that the war — including both direct violence and famine and disease caused by the blockade — would kill 377,000 people by end of 2021. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) has documented the ongoing toll. The United States has continued arms sales under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Between 2012 and October 2023, Qatar delivered approximately $30 million per month in cash to Hamas-controlled Gaza — with the personal approval of Benjamin Mileikowsky (he renamed himself Netanyahu after emigrating from Poland). The transfers were facilitated through Israeli coordination: Qatari envoys carrying suitcases of cash crossed into Gaza through Israeli-controlled checkpoints. Mileikowsky signed off on each arrangement.

His strategic reasoning was stated explicitly. In a March 2019 meeting with Likud faction members, Mileikowsky said — in remarks reported by Times of Israel and confirmed by multiple participants — that anyone who wanted to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needed to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. His stated logic: Hamas's control of Gaza kept the Palestinians politically divided, making a unified Palestinian political negotiating partner impossible, which provided Israel with a rationale for refusing a two-state negotiation.

Mileikowsky reportedly demanded personal indemnification from Qatar — written protection from any future legal liability tied to the transfers. The Qatari transfers continued for over a decade. Israeli security officials and former heads of Shin Bet have publicly stated, post-October 7, that the policy of funding Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority was a strategic error with catastrophic consequences.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the attack that killed approximately 1,200 Israelis. The attack was planned in Qatar, where Hamas's political leadership lives. The cash transfers Mileikowsky approved helped sustain the organization. He is the Prime Minister of Israel conducting the military response.

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation — known through most of its history as the School of the Americas — has trained Latin American military officers at Fort Benning, Georgia since 1946. By its own count, approximately 75,000 officers from 22 countries have attended. The curriculum has included counterinsurgency techniques, psychological operations, military intelligence, and — as documented by declassified training manuals released in 1996 — techniques for coercive interrogation.

Among its documented alumni: Argentine junta members who orchestrated the "Dirty War" (1976–1983, an estimated 30,000 disappeared); Salvadoran military officers connected to the El Mozote massacre (1981, 978 civilians killed, documented by the UN Truth Commission for El Salvador); Guatemalan officers connected to the massacres documented by the UN Historical Clarification Commission; Honduran Battalion 316, which ran a CIA-trained death squad that tortured and killed dissidents in the 1980s; and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who was a CIA asset before he became inconvenient.

In 2001, the School of the Americas was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) following congressional pressure. The curriculum and institution continued with minimal structural change. The facility continues to operate at Fort Benning, Georgia.