Operation MIAS

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An arms-reduction mission run by the American Central Intelligence Agency, Operation MIAS (Missing in Action Stingers) was tasked with buying back Stinger missiles given to the Mujahideen to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. [1] Information about the program remains classified, although information has been gleaned from media accounts and government officials speaking off the record. [2]

Contents

Timeline

Launched in 1990 with a Congressional earmark of $10 million, the operation competed against Chechen, Azeri and Iranian arms dealers anxious to capitalise on the break-up of the Soviet Union and impending battles among satellite states, as well as drug dealers looking for weapons to fend off aircraft in their space. [3]

The price of a Stinger was estimated at $300,000. [3] Other sources suggested that the weapons, which cost $20,000 to produce, were only selling for $100,000 on the black market, still much higher than the $70,000 that the CIA initially offered Afghans to turn them over. [4]

In 1993, the CIA approached Congress noting that they required an additional $55 million to buy back the weapons, noting that a failure to secure the missiles could result in attacks against American civil aircraft. [5]

In 1998, Felix Sater provided the CIA with the location and serial numbers of approximately 10 Stingers held by the Northern Alliance. [6]

Results

The mission was dubbed a "failure" by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, due to its inability to track the widely-dispersed weapons through decentralised groups, leaving hundreds of the devices in the hands of warlords and militants. [2] The Institute unfavourably compared the results of the Afghanistan failure, with the success of the similar program which netted 41 out of the 43 missiles Eritrea had given Somali National Alliance leader Hussein Aideed in 1998. [2]

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During the Soviet–Afghan War, there was a large amount of foreign involvement. The Afghan mujahidin were backed primarily by Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom making it a Cold War proxy war. Pakistani forces trained the mujahidin rebels while the U.S. and Saudi Arabia offered the greatest financial support. However, private donors and religious charities throughout the Muslim world—particularly in the Persian Gulf—raised considerably more funds for the Afghan rebels than any foreign government; Jason Burke recounts that "as little as 25 per cent of the money for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states." Saudi Arabia was heavily involved in the war effort and matched the United States' contributions dollar-for-dollar in public funds. Saudi Arabia also gathered an enormous amount of money for the Afghan mujahidin in private donations that amounted to about $20 million per month at their peak. Other countries that supported the Mujahideen were Egypt, China, West Germany, France, Turkey, Japan and even Israel, Iran on the other hand only supported the Shia Mujahideen, namely the Persian speaking Shiite Hazaras in a limited way. One of these groups was the Tehran Eight, a political union of Afghan Shi'a. They were supplied predominately by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but Iran's support for the Hazaras nevertheless frustrated efforts for a united Mujahidin front.

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References

  1. Coll, S. "Ghost Wars", 2005. p. 11
  2. 1 2 3 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, "SIPRI Yearbook 2007", p. 636
  3. 1 2 Cooley, John K. "Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, American and International Terrorism", p. 145
  4. Chicago Tribune, "CIA Stung in Afghan Missile Deal", December 6, 1992
  5. Los Angeles Times, US bidding to regain missiles sent to Afghans, July 23, 1993
  6. Caldwell, Leslie. Defense Sentencing Memo. 19 October 2009. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6328605-Felix-Sater-Leslie-Caldewell-Defense-Sentencing.html. Accessed 27 August 2019.