Leaving Afghanistan -- Charlie Wilson's War Revisited

In 1985 I was leaving my job as Senior Economist at the Pentagon where I had been for seven years.  During this time I had rebuilt the economic analysis capabilities of the Department that had been missing.  It was a good time to come and I had free reign to do interesting and important things.  During the Carter administration I had proposed and was in the process of starting a program of multi-national cooperation to issue NATO Bonds to rebuild defense capabilities and to allow multi-national sharing of the costs and benefits of procurement.  When Reagan came in he did what I was going to do with jointly financed spending through NATO bonds by deficit spending.  The goal was the same -- to drive the Soviet Union into the tank after their losses in Afghanistan had seriously damaged the government there.  I was planning to demonstrate massive financial stength of the alliance to the Soviets through the Nato bonds program and Reagan did it with deficit finance.  

Anyway in 1985 I was leaving to go to work for DRI/McGraw-Hill then part of S&P (see previous blog post), but just before I left I saw the Department try to change the way they calculated inflation on DoD outlays for equipment.  My office was the budget affairs shop for the DoD budget.  We set the inflation rate to apply to the projected costs of new and existing weapons systems in the yearly budget.  Since an aircraft carrier spent over 7 years, setting the right figure for future inflation was critical.  All weapons when budgeted for are based on a kind of hypothetical cost based on the point in the buy where the fixed development and tooling costs are relative to the fixed price, i.e. if we expected to buy 500 aircraft then the price at this point is some price well above the cost of the 500th aircraft after all the fixed costs were finished.  But the DoD comptroller, either out of ignorance or on purpose, had decided that inflation rates for DoD equipment must be different than for the general economy.  They had sent over money to the BLS to develop defense specific inflation rates for the categories of equipment that we purchased -- missiles, ships, fighters, tanks.  The BLS had used a kind of heuristic method where they captured the higher prices of the new equipment coming into the inventory after the end of the Vietnam war, more expensive ships and aircraft, and call all that early equpment with higher fixed costs inflation and then projected it would grow over time.  The result was a set of inflation indices that were higher than they should be since the higher costs were double counted -- once in the fixed costs by the point in the buy cycle and once in the BLS inflation indices.  When my boss was informed to use these alternatives, I protested, but the DoD Comptroller won the war.  Higher amounts were built into the 1984-85 budget -- about $ 50 billion.  Eventually I was able to secretly get the Congress to remove much of this excess.  

When I lost the battle for the soul of truth, I knew I had to exit, but before I did, I wrote a novel about what that slush fund might just finance.  Years later, many years, I  revised that plantive story into what is now available on Amazon in print and electronic formats called The Rings of Armageddon.  I made the first revisions after I saw the Towers falls and after we had entered the war in Afghanistan.  

Last night I revisited Charlie Wilson's War, the story of how the US increased the spending on the secret war after the Soviets.  In my story, revised as it is, it begins with when the US decided to get real about the Soviet-Afghan war. 

The following is an excerpt from the Rings of Armageddon available on Amazon in print or electronic form. 

Pakistani Northwest Territories, March, 1982   
             
The Arab gritted his teeth in the bone numbing cold.  It had been a long, slow ride up from Peshawar.  He was exhausted from the jostling as the truck bounced over the rock strewn road not much wider than a goat trail.  It was far removed from his native Qatar with its flat, dusty, desert or the towers of Doha.   Opposite him sat the American officer who seemed impervious to the biting cold or the rough ride.  His coming a month ago had shaken his world more than had the Imam who dared him to come to this God forsaken land in a mission of holy Jihad.   Before the American had come with his attitude and his airs, he and Omar had led a comfortable life in a heavily guarded villa in Peshawar.  Ibrahim had been content setting up religious schools for displaced Afghan boys in the refugee camps that dotted the Pakistani border with Afghanistan, and doling out money to the many different groups fighting the Soviets to free Afghanistan.  Ibrahim was the Saudi representative to the Afghan rebels, a sinecure offered by the Royal family to his own, very influential family, in part to get him out of Saudi Arabia where he was known as a troublemaker.  In Peshawar he coordinated with the Pakistani’s to arrange travel and visas for Moslems willing to die for the cause of freeing Afghanistan from the godless Russians.  Hassan had come to help out six months before, but had rarely left the villa until now. He was from a rich banking family in Qatar, but had become enamored with the cause of the Afghani freedom fighters.  He was hardly the most observant Muslim and during his wild, American college years, had dated and partied frequently.
 
The American officer had just recently arrived to coordinate supplies. The comfortable life in Peshawar wasn’t for him, and he had challenged both Omar and him to do more to fight the Russians pulling them both into the eternal struggle between the money worshiping Americans and the godless Russian Communists.  And now, cold and hungry, and angry, he was in a truck on his way to seeing firsthand the unequal fight between the Mujahidin and the Russian imperialists.  The Americans wanted to develop new supply routes into these difficult to reach mountains for new weapons and equipment to make the battle less one sided.  The Americans would take care of gathering these weapons and training the foreign jihadists and local Afghans in training bases just inside the border in Pakistan, while the Saudi’s and other Gulf oil nations, including his native Qatar, raised the funds to pay for this new equipment.
 
The truck stopped suddenly sending him pitching forward.  He listened while the driver spoke to the American in Pashtun, a language he barely understood.  The American stood up and reaching down helped him to stand.     
 
“Come,” he said in Arabic, “we’re here.” 
 
The driver helped them down from the truck and pointed to the mud brick building with a dirt-encrusted sign in English with the word Café barely visible in the moonlight. The American now took the two packs and rifles from the truck.  Without waiting, he lifted one on each shoulder and walked towards the light, leaving the Arab standing in the cold.  Reluctantly, the Qatari followed.  He was enough of a mystic, despite his Western education, to realize that from this point on their lives would be intertwined, like vines on a tree, so that even if they went in different directions, at some point their lives would intertwine again.                 
   
The driver pointed towards the back of the smoky room.  The table was set back, away from the others, and there was one man seated, the face hidden by a hood so that only the eyes could be seen in the shadows.  The building was old, the thick adobe brick walls holding in the heat from the open fire at one end providing what little there was.   The air was thick with tobacco smoke and the smoke form the three oil lamps that hung from chains anchored to the ceiling.  On one wall was a torn poster for an Indian movie complete with a half clothed young woman.
           
The face was hidden under the patu, the warm blanket that Afghan men used to keep warm in the mountains.  The voice that greeted them, however, was that of a woman.   The Arab startled.  The American pushed the hood back to see the face more clearly in the dim light of the kerosene lamps. Her eyes were gray-green, deeply set, and penetrating.    
 
“A girl?” the Arab said surprised.
 
“I’m mujahedeen!”  She corrected. 
 
 Before any more could be said, three grizzled men walked to where they were seated.  The girl rose motioning them to sit, but the men continued to stand speaking quickly in Pashto.      They left and then she sat down again watching as they withdrew to a table closer to the door.  
 
“They’re to take us into the Khost region tomorrow, just over the mountain from here.”
 
“How long to the first village?” the American asked in English.  
 
“Depending on the Russians, a few hours, or days, or never,” she said in English, her accent lilting, but her words clear.  She was thinking about the road ahead.  She stared at the American.  He was ruggedly built; there was the look of a man who could not be stopped by high arid mountains and cold winds.   Then she stared at the other man, the Qatari.  He looked too frail to survive the mountains and the Russians.  
           
 
“Will he make it?” she asked in Pashtun, looking directly at the American officer.  
 
The American looked at the Arab.   There was something in his eyes that told him the truth.  He translated the girl’s words into Arabic and the answer was quick in coming.
 
“He says if a girl can make it, then he can too.” 
 
A thick stew of lamb, with warm Afghan bread, and richly brewed black tea laced with cardamom, was brought to the table.    The woman ate sparingly; with wary eyes she watched the two men wondering which would crack under the strain.     It would be a long journey through a dangerous land from the Panjahir valley, where the Tajik’s fought the Soviets in the north to the plains of Kandahar in the south.       
 
They finished their meal and were about to follow their Pashtun guides out to into the night when an old Sufi hobbled over to their table.  He spoke in a whisper in a dialect neither man could understand.  The girl listened carefully, and then she smiled.  She translated into English.
 
“He’s Iranian, a Sufi holy man.  He reads fortunes. He asks if you would like to have your fortune told?”  
 
“Why not?” the American answered intrigued.  So far his life had been more than interesting, but what might come now was more of a gamble than when he had flown deep into Vietcong territory as a forward air controller during the last years of the Vietnam War. 
 
 “Only Allah knows the future,” the Arab answered looking towards the door. 
 
 
The old man sat down at the table as the girl laid a few coins in his cup.              
 
 
With his gnarled, arthritic hand, he took her palm first.  He studied it for a long time and then closed his eyes; his face turned dark, as he let go of her hand.  As the old man spoke, the girl’s smile disappeared
 
“What did he say?” the Saudi asked anxiously.
 
“Some futures are best not told,” was all she could say through tears. 
 
Next, he reached for the American’s hand, studying it.     When he finished, he motioned to the Arab.    The Qatari pulled away, but the American reached for his wrist and pulled it forward placing it in the old man’s hand.  The old man gripped it tightly and for a long time he stood very still mumbling words that only he understood.   Finally, he spoke, his voice almost a whisper.  The girl listened carefully, and then translated from Farsi.
 
 “Brothers in blood, owing a life, separate paths to the same end at the place where it all began.  Death will find both in a blinding flash of fire as bright as the noon-day sun.”