MullahMuhammad Omar was an Afghan Islamic revolutionary who founded the Taliban and served as the supreme leader of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Following the ouster of his government by the United States in 2001, he went into hiding and avoided capture until his reported 2013 death from tuberculosis.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan politician, former mujahideen leader and drug trafficker. He is the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin political party, so called after Mohammad Yunus Khalis split from Hezbi Islami in 1979 to found Hezb-i Islami Khalis. He has twice served as Prime Minister during the 1990s.
State-sponsored terrorism is terrorist violence carried out with the active support of national governments provided to violent non-state actors. States can sponsor terrorist groups in several ways, including but not limited to funding terrorist organizations, providing training, supplying weapons, providing other logistical and intelligence assistance, and hosting groups within their borders. Because of the pejorative nature of the word, the identification of particular examples are often subject to political dispute and different definitions of terrorism.
The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015. Within SAC there are two separate groups: SAC/SOG for tactical paramilitary operations and SAC/PAG for covert political action.
The Inter-Services Intelligence is the largest and best-known component of the Pakistani intelligence community. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant to Pakistan's national security. The ISI reports to its director-general and is primarily focused on providing intelligence to the Pakistani government.
Jamie Doran is an Irish-Scottish independent documentary filmmaker and former BBC producer. He founded the multi award-winning company Clover Films, based in Windsor, in 2008. He is also the Club President of Datchet Village FC, which he founded in 1986.
Nek Muhammad Wazir was a prominent Pakistani mujahideen or jihadi leader. He was killed in a US drone strike in South Waziristan, FATA, Pakistan in 2004. This was the first CIA drone strike inside Pakistan.
The Central Intelligence Agency, known informally as theAgency and historically as thecompany, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. Following the dissolution of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947.
The National Directorate of Security was the national intelligence and security service of Afghanistan. The headquarters of the NDS was in Kabul, and it had field offices and training facilities in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. The NDS was part of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
CIA activities in Syria since the agency's inception in 1947 have included coup attempts and assassination plots, and in more recent years, extraordinary renditions, a paramilitary strike, and funding and military training of forces opposed to the current government.
The Afghanistan conflict began in 1978 and has coincided with several notable operations by the United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The first operation, code-named Operation Cyclone, began in mid-1979, during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. It financed and eventually supplied weapons to the anti-communist mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan following an April 1978 coup by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and throughout the nearly ten-year military occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, supported an expansion of the Reagan Doctrine, which aided the mujahideen along with several other anti-Soviet resistance movements around the world.
The Afghanistan War was an armed conflict from 2001 to 2021. It began when an international military coalition led by the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate and establishing the internationally recognized Islamic Republic three years later. The conflict ultimately ended with the 2021 Taliban offensive, which overthrew the Islamic Republic, and re-established the Islamic Emirate. It was the longest war in the military history of the United States, surpassing the length of the Vietnam War (1955–1975) by approximately 6 months.
The Camp Chapman attack was a suicide attack by Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi against the Central Intelligence Agency facility inside Forward Operating Base Chapman on December 30, 2009. One of the main tasks of the CIA personnel stationed at the base was to provide intelligence supporting drone attacks in Pakistan. Seven American CIA officers and contractors, an officer of Jordan's intelligence service, and an Afghan working for the CIA were killed when al-Balawi detonated a bomb sewn into a vest he was wearing. Six other American CIA officers were wounded. The bombing was the most lethal attack against the CIA in more than 25 years.
Amrullah Saleh is an Afghan politician who served as the first vice president of Afghanistan from February 2020 to August 2021, and acting interior minister from 2018 to 2019. He was the head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) from 2004 to 2010.
Abdul Ghani Baradar is an Afghan political and religious leader who is the acting first deputy prime minister alongside Abdul Salam Hanafi and Abdul Kabir, of Afghanistan. The co-founder of the Taliban along with Mullah Omar, he was Omar's top deputy from 2002 to 2010, and since 2019 he has been the Taliban's fourth-in-command, as the third of Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada's three deputies.
Since the 19th century, the United States government has participated and interfered, both overtly and covertly, in the replacement of many foreign governments. In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. government initiated actions for regime change mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, including the Spanish–American and Philippine–American wars. At the onset of the 20th century, the United States shaped or installed governments in many countries around the world, including neighbors Hawai`i, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
Timber Sycamore was a classified weapons supply and training program run by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and supported by some Arab intelligence services, including Saudi intelligence. Launched in 2012 or 2013, it supplied money, weaponry and training to Syrian opposition militias of the Free Syrian Army fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. According to US officials, the program was run by the CIA's Special Activities Division and has trained thousands of rebels. President Barack Obama secretly authorized the CIA to begin arming Syria's embattled rebels in 2013. The program became public knowledge in mid-2016.
Douglas Laux is a former case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, having served undercover in the Middle East and Afghanistan for eight years. Upon leaving the CIA, Laux wrote a New York Times Bestselling memoir, Left of Boom, which details his experiences serving amidst the Global War on Terror.
Spy Games is a 2020 American reality competition television series that premiered on January 20, 2020, on Bravo. Hosted by Mia Kang, ten contestants compete for $100,000. The competition took inspiration from the World War II government program, Station S—in which civilians were assessed and trained to be spies.
List of works by or about Steve Coll, American journalist.
