OP 17 

Out of Bounds
 

Transnational Sanctuary 

in Irregular Warfare 

Thomas A. Bruscino, Jr.
 

Global War on Terrorism 

Occasional Paper 17 

Combat Studies Institute Press
 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
 
OP 17 

Out of Bounds
 

Transnational Sanctuary 

in Irregular Warfare 

by
 

Thomas A. Bruscino, Jr.
 

Combat Studies Institute Press 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Bruscino, Thomas A.

 Out of bounds : transnational sanctuary in irregular warfare / by Thomas A. 

Bruscino, Jr.

 p. cm. -- (Global War on Terrorism occasional paper 17) 1. Transnational 

sanctuaries (Military science)--Case studies. 2. Transnational sanctuaries (Military science)--History--20th century. 3. Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Campaigns. 

4. Afghanistan--History--Soviet occupation, 1979-1989--Campaigns. I. Title. 

II. Series.

 U240.B78 2006

 958.104’5--dc22

 2006027469 

CSI Press publications cover a variety of military history topics. The views expressed 

in this CSI Press publication are those of the author and not necessarily those of the 

Department of the Army or the Department of Defense. 

A full list of CSI Press publications, many of them available for downloading, can 

be found at http://www.cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp. 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
 

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800
 

Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402-0001
 

ISBN 0-16-076846-2 
Foreword 

In this timely Occasional Paper, Dr. Tom Bruscino analyzes a critical 

issue in the GWOT, and one which has bedeviled counterinsurgents past 

and present. He examines the role played by sanctuaries as they relate to 

irregular warfare in two conflicts. An active sanctuary refers to the practice of using territory outside the geographical limits of an irregular war 

to provide various forms of support to one side, usually the insurgent or 

guerrilla force. 

In the first case study, he looks at the United States’ efforts to defeat 

the advantages gained by the Viet Cong (and later the North Vietnamese 

Army) by the use of sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam 

War. In doing so, he points out the diplomatic, military, and economic 

challenges which develop when trying to prevent the use of transnational 

sanctuaries by irregular forces. In the second case study, he examines the 

Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in the 1980s, but this time he does so 

from the perspective of the insurgency, the Mujahideen. Bruscino illustrates the advantages accrued by the Afghan resistance in the use of Pakistan as a sanctuary; the Soviet efforts to neutralize those advantages; and 

the Mujahideen’s responses to overcome the Soviet actions. 

In both cases the author finds that the use of an active sanctuary by 

the insurgents was a major component of their eventual victory. Without 

a sanctuary it is hard to see how the Viet Cong/NVA or the Mujahideen 

could have succeeded. In regards to a sanctuary, it is hard to see how the 

U.S./South Vietnamese or the Soviet Union could have defeated the insurgencies. Active sanctuaries present the counterinsurgent with a host of 

military problems, but denying an insurgent the use of an active sanctuary 

is far more than a military task. All the elements of national power must be 

employed if one hopes to defeat the challenge posed by active sanctuaries. 

We at the Combat Studies Institute hope that the insights presented in 

this monograph will be of great value to military planners in the current 

war against terrorism. CSI – The Past is Prologue! 

Timothy R. Reese 

COL, AR 

Director, Combat Studies Institute 

iii 

Acknowledgements 

An author incurs many debts in the course of writing any project of 

this sort, and I am no different. The entire staff of the Combat Studies 

Institute and the Combined Arms Research Library at Fort Leavenworth 

have been nothing but supportive throughout the process, but a few individuals deserve special mention. I am indebted to Bob Ramsey for kindly 

passing on a wealth of material that got me started; John McGrath and 

Matt Matthews for their thoughtful commentary; and Dr. William G. Robertson for sharing an unpublished paper on the topic of sanctuaries that 

helped provide focus to this study. 

The supervisory team and editorial board of Colonel Timothy R. Reese, Director Combat Studies Institute; Dr. Robertson, Deputy Director, 

CSI and CAC Command Historian; Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Steven 

E. Clay, Chief, Research and Publications Team; and Major (Retired) Kendall D. Gott, Supervisory Historian, Research and Publications Team, all 

helped usher this paper along with sage advice and needed corrections. 

On the production side, it was my great good luck to have Robin Kern 

to make the maps; she did a wonderful job. Likewise, two Combat Studies 

Institute editors, Angela Bowman and Mike Brooks, did remarkable work 

in clarifying my muddled thoughts, tightening my writing, preparing the 

manuscript for publication, and generally saving me from countless mistakes. I cannot thank them, and everyone else who helped on this project, 

enough. Of course, any mistakes herein are mine and mine alone. 

Lastly, my wife Terrie and my sons Dominic and Anthony endured a 

cross-country move so that I could come to the Combat Studies Institute to 

work on this project. Their sacrifices made all of this possible, and I could 

not do it without them. 

v 

Contents 

Foreword ........................................................................................................iii
 

Acknowledgements.........................................................................................v
 

List of Maps ...................................................................................................ix
 

Introduction.....................................................................................................1
 

Borders in the War ........................................................................1
 

Sanctuaries and Modern History ..................................................6
 

American Traditions .....................................................................8
 

Two Case Studies ..........................................................................9
 

Chapter 1. Vietnam .......................................................................................15
 

Indications ..................................................................................15
 

The Dimensions of the Problem .................................................18
 

First Options ...............................................................................21
 

Airpower.....................................................................................25
 

Pacification and Ground Incursions............................................30
 

Ending the War ...........................................................................36
 

Chapter 2. Soviet–Afghan War .....................................................................49
 

Shock ..........................................................................................49
 

Background.................................................................................50
 

The Resistances and Their Friends .............................................52
 

The Borders ................................................................................55
 

Early Fighting, Early Adjustments .............................................58
 

Those Missiles ............................................................................64
 

Soviet Wtihdrawal, Afghanistan’s Half Victory .........................67
 

Conclusion ....................................................................................................79
 

Vietnam and Afghanistan Compared ..........................................79
 

Sanctuary Doctrine .....................................................................80
 

The Contemporary Picture..........................................................82
 

What Can Be Done? ...................................................................85
 

Bibliography .................................................................................................91
 

About the Author .........................................................................................109
 

vii 

List of Maps 

1. Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail Network ......................................... 17
 

2. The 1970 Cambodia Incursions ............................................................... 33
 

3. Santuaries on the Afghanistan / Pakistan Border ..................................... 51
 

4. Parrot’s Beak Region on Afghanistan / Pakistan Border ......................... 63
 

ix 

Introduction 

Borders in the War 

The very name the United States has given to its struggle against 

fundamentalist Muslim terrorists indicates that international borders do 

not confine the enemy. “The Global War on Terrorism” is just that, a war 

waged around the globe on a foe bound not by the strands of state or nation, but by a perverted and perverse ideology. Nevertheless, because the 

United States and its allies share a respect for the international system, 

they have chosen to fight this enemy primarily within the boundaries of 

two states: Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Despite their adherence to ideology, the terrorists understand and use 

the international system; despite their dismissal of nations and states for 

their version of one united pure religion, they gladly hide behind the veil 

of state boundaries. Some states oppose the terrorists but are incapable 

of completely stopping this use of their territories. Others—for reasons 

ranging from regional power politics, to sympathy for terrorist ideology, 

to hostility to the United States and its allies—either directly support the 

terrorists, or knowingly allow then to make use of their lands. Therefore, 

international borders, and the transnational sanctuaries and supply lines 

that they protect, have become a crucial issue in the global war on terrorism. Counterinsurgent forces ignore or downplay the problem at their own 

peril. 

Transnational sanctuaries have played a role in the war on terrorism 

from the onset of the first campaigns. Shortly after the Americans and their 

allies took Kabul in the fall of 2001, the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists 

retreated to the mountainous Afghan frontier with Pakistan. In the Tora 

Bora region south of Jalalabad, they made use of old supply stores to dig 

into the mountains and valleys and continue the fight. In December, allied 

forces launched a series of assaults on the enemy positions, eventually killing and capturing many of the terrorists. However, some escaped across 

the border into Pakistan, including perhaps, Osama bin Laden himself. In 

the March 2002 Operation ANACONDA near the Pakistan border south 

of Kabul, events followed a similar course. Coalition troops encircled alQaeda positions in a mountain valley roughly 25 miles from the border. 

The terrorists stood and fought before collapsing and breaking into smaller 

groups to flee to Pakistan.1 

1 
Since the spring of 2002, the terrorist forces in Afghanistan have yet to 

reconstitute into large enough forces to stand and fight. They have, however, attempted to launch an insurgency from the borderlands with Pakistan. The government of Pakistan is a Coalition ally in the war on terror, 

but has only partial control of the tribal areas along the country’s border 

with Afghanistan. Intelligence has indicated that many of the leaders of 

al-Qaeda have found refuge in these regions, and the terrorists have had 

some success in launching limited attacks in Afghanistan and returning to 

the border. In response, the border region has been one of the key areas of 

focus for Coalition forces over the last few years, but not without controversy. 

Pakistani officials have repeatedly asserted that their “forces are fully 

capable of securing and protecting Pakistan’s borders.”2

 Indeed Pakistani 

forces have worked, sometimes alongside American intelligence, to kill 

and arrest hundreds of al-Qaeda in Pakistan.3

 In the meantime Coalition 

forces have periodically launched raids or air strikes along, and sometimes over, the border in search of the terrorists and their leaders.4

 The 

most prominent of the recent efforts came in January 2006, when a US 

airstrike targeting al-Qaeda leaders in the border village of Damadola may 

have killed civilians in the village, resulting in civilian protests against 

Pakistan’s government for cooperating with the United States.5

 Afterward, 

Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf 

had a brief public dispute over Pakistani efforts to police the borders.6

 The 

tenuous situation along the frontier continues to this day. 

Iraq’s borders and neighbors are even more problematic. The planners 

of the war had the simultaneous (and somewhat contradictory) objectives 

of isolating Iraq from its neighbors while influencing change within those 

neighboring countries.7 The neighbor concerning planners the most was 

Syria, and part of the invasion plan sent American units to western Iraq 

to block the Syrian border. Turkey’s refusal to allow Coalition forces to 

use Turkish territory as a staging point for the attack hindered these plans 

and forced the Coalition to use an effective, but necessarily less thorough, 

combination of special forces, conventional forces, and Kurdish allies in 

western and northwestern Iraq during the March 2003 invasion.8 

Reports indicated that before the March attacks, Saddam Hussein began bringing in foreign nationals from Syria to fight the Coalition.9

 The 

border remained open in the early stages of the fighting and even Saddam’s sons briefly fled to Syria.10 During the open combat operations, US 

Central Command commander General Tommy Franks received reports 

2 
of “civilian bus convoys full of foreign fighters... coming in from Syria. 

Arabs from all over. Maybe even some Chechens. They are bad actors, but 

it’s gonna be tough to target them while their riding on civilian buses.”11 

Coalition forces found themselves engaged with foreign fighters early and 

often in the fighting.12 Franks became so frustrated with Syria’s apparent 

complicity with the growing insurgency that he ordered the shutdown of 

Iraqi oil pipelines to Syria.13 In April 2003 Deputy Defense Secretary Paul 

Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “In recent days the 

Syrians have been shipping killers into Iraq to try to kill Americans.... If 

they continue, then we need to think about what our policy is with respect 

to a country that harbors terrorists....” Wolfowitz did not call for direct 

action against Syria, maintaining instead that “by calling attention to it we 

hope that in fact that may be enough to get them to stop.”14 

The Syrian border continued to be a problem after the end of major 

conventional operations in May 2003. L. Paul Bremer, the Administrator 

of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, wrote in his memoirs of a 

July 2003 discussion of the major problems in Iraq: 

Since the collapse of Saddam in April, Iraq’s long, porous 

border with Syria had offered the primary escape route for 

fleeing Baathists and Islamic extremist fighters’ main infiltration vector into Iraq.... The United States had publicly leaned 

on Syria to suppress this activity. But Syria, ruled by its own 

Baathist Party, seemed immune to most diplomatic or economic leverage and might only be susceptible to direct military intervention. President Bashar Assad, son of Syria’s late 

dictator Hafiz Assad, knew this was unlikely with US forces 

engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.15

As a result, insurgents continued to enter Iraq from Syria. 

By the fall of 2003 the United States responded by stepping up its efforts against the Syrians. The American House of Representatives passed 

a resolution allowing sanctions against Syria, and the military took a more 

active role on the border.16 The 101st Airborne Division was responsible 

for operations in northwestern Iraq—operations that included border security on a roughly 170-mile section of the border with Syria. One of the 

brigade commanders of the 101st noted: 

...for the missions we had, I thought we had enough soldiers 

to do the job with the possible exception of controlling/patrolling the Syrian Border.... The border was difficult even for our 

small area, and it was especially difficult under conditions of 

limited visibility, given the rampant smuggling, and few bor3 
der posts. Once we established an Iraqi Border Security force, 

border security improved greatly due to revamping Iraqi 

border forts, and equipping Iraqis with vehicles, weapons, 

training, and the wherewithal to do this important mission.17

Unfortunately, when the 101st left in February 2004, the Iraqi security 

forces performed poorly and border security lagged once again.18 

The 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) ran similar operations in 

Al Anbar Province in western Iraq—which shared an approximate 185­

mile border with Syria. The regimental commander noted that one of their 

main problems was infiltration from the area around Al Qaim, where the 

Euphrates River enters Iraq from Syria: 

This was a troublesome area, particularly the area up by 

Rawa. This is a real rat line of people that would come in from 

Syria, up along Rawa, and down to Haditha. At Haditha they 

can either go down to Ramadi, in past Fallujah, and into Baghdad or they can move north to Baiji and then up to Mosul in 

the north. So this is a strategic rat line.19

The 3d ACR also increased the tempo of operations on the border in 

the fall of 2003. In Operation RIFLES BLITZ, the regiment worked with 

a battalion from the 101st to clear the border towns of Al Qaim and shut 

down all traffic to and from Syria for 10 days. They captured more than 

300 prisoners, and at one point stopped a car at a checkpoint that held two 

Saudis and a Yemeni. The regimental commander recalled, “They had a 

journal with them and they were Jihadist. The journal put out a lot of contacts throughout the country. Of course, we turned this over to some other 

agencies so they could exploit it. But it was really the first physical proof 

that there were foreign fighters and they were being networked through 

Iraq.”20 

In order to affect better security along the frontier, the regiment broke 

down the border into sectors and set up schedules to observe various areas of infiltration. Air Force and Navy pilots flew observation missions, 

as did unmanned aerial vehicles. They also buried seismic sensors called 

steel rattlers to detect moving vehicles at the border. But the regiment had 

to cover a huge section of territory and never completely shut down the 

border. Part of the problem was the ingenuity of the insurgents. One officer recalled: 

...foreign fighters come in a lot of different ways. We stopped 

water trucks that had false tanks with guys in them. So, that 

4 
is one of the things as far as a border crossing, there is a lot 

of commercial traffic. You might have a truck that is loaded 

with fruit, but they could have a false hiding place where 

there are rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and weapons and 

stuff stacked up, and you just don’t have the time to unload a 

complete truck and then load it back up.21

Over the past two years, infiltrations and operations have continued 

all along the Syrian frontier. All the while, the United States has pressured 

Syria to control its border, and Coalition and Iraqi forces have struggled to 

prevent the infiltration of foreign fighters and outside weaponry.22 

The long Iraqi border with Iran also remains a concern. Planners assumed that the threat of a sizable Coalition force in the region combined 

with Iran’s traditional animosity toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq would 

mean that the Iranians would stay out of the fight.23 In the early part of the 

campaign it appeared that this assumption was correct. However, as early 

as May 2003, reports filtered in that a group of Iranian radicals had made 

its way into Iraq with the intent of influencing the post-Saddam government.24 Coalition leaders noted that Iranian foreign fighters in Iraq seemed 

to increase over the next year.25 In the spring of 2004, the Coalition took 

active steps to police the border, including closing down 16 of 19 open 

border crossings, funding 8,000 more border guards, and setting up a computerized passport system. Despite these efforts, Bremer conceded that 

“We are never going to have 100% security on the borders of Iraq—we 

have to be realistic about that.”26 

Indeed by the fall of 2005, reports indicated that the increased deadliness of insurgent improvised explosive devices came in part from new 

supplies of Iranian TNT, which one guerrilla called “about seven times 

stronger than the TNT available in Iraq.”27 In March 2006, US General 

John Abazaid confirmed such reports, telling the Senate Armed Services 

Committee that the insurgents had started using Iranian IED components 

and that “terrorists in northeastern Iraq used the Iranian northwestern border to move back and forth across the border.”28 

The exact extent of the foreign fighter components of the insurgencies 

in Afghanistan and Iraq are unclear, as are the precise numbers of weapons, ammunition, and supplies coming across international borders to aid 

the insurgents in the two countries. However, what is clear is that foreign 

nationals have from the beginning fought against the Americans and their 

5 
allies in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And just as clear is the fact that both 

insurgencies have received outside aid from across international borders. 

The United States and its allies have a problem with transnational 

sanctuary and supply lines in the global war on terrorism. 

Sanctuaries and Modern History 

Insurgencies are not a contemporary phenomenon. Throughout human history, smaller, less well-equipped groups have engaged in guerrilla-style warfare against larger powers. Even parts of the American War 

of Independence, especially in the southern colonies, took on the form of 

insurgent warfare. But insurgencies certainly became more prevalent in 

the 20th century, often as part of attempts to expel western powers from 

their colonial empires. After 1945, local insurgencies frequently became 

battlegrounds in the Cold War international rivalry between the United 

States and the Soviet Union. 

Western powers were key players in the creation of the modern system 

of nation-states, and as a result tended to respect that system of international boundaries. Military violations of the wrong borders could mean 

all-out conventional war—with ghastly results—including the world wars 

of the 20th century. The proliferation of nuclear weapons after World War 

II meant that any all-out war among nuclear powers could be catastrophic. 

It was only a matter of time before insurgents would come to realize that 

they could take advantage of such a system. 

The Cold War provided opportunity. In the years after World War II, 

the great powers took advantage of every chance to aid the enemies of 

their enemies. For the United States and its allies that most often meant 

support for pro-Western and anticommunist governments as they fought 

off communist-supported insurgencies. Conversely, the Soviet Union, and 

later China, helped trigger many of these contests by giving incentive, aid, 

and advice to communist, procommunist, or just anti-Western insurgencies— wherever they might emerge. The aid had to get to rebels somehow, 

and in those countries that were not islands, that meant turning to contiguous territories. 

It is a short jump from using a contiguous country for supply lines 

to developing those lines into full-scale logistic, training, and launching 

bases. Insurgency expert Bernard Fall called such areas “active sanc6 
tuary,” which he defined as “a territory contiguous to a rebellious area 

which, though ostensibly not involved in the conflict, provides the rebel 

side with shelter, training facilities, equipment, and—if it can get away 

with it—troops.”29 The threat of larger war and the feigned neutrality of 

the countries housing the active sanctuaries for the most part kept the rebels safe across the border.30 A key aspect of a successful insurgency had 

been born. 

Rebels quickly put active sanctuary to use throughout the world. In 

the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), the communist rebels enjoyed the use 

of sanctuaries in Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. The communist insurgents fighting the British-supported government in Malaya from 1948 to 

1960 had some sanctuaries in neighboring Thailand. Anti-French rebels 

in Indochina (1946-1954) could look to China for supply and refuge, and 

anti-French fighters in the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) had 

sanctuaries in Morocco and Tunisia. In all of these cases, the insurgents 

were generally successful as long as they had access to, and made use of, 

their sanctuaries. 

Anti-rebel forces scrambled to find a response to this dilemma. In every case, circumstances mitigated against the natural inclination to invade 

in force and take out the sanctuaries, so other options had to be explored. 

The Greeks never did manage to close down their frontiers, but Yugoslavian leader Josef Tito sealed his own border due to divisions within 

the communist bloc. Under pressure within Greece and without outside 

support, the communist insurgency fell apart. In Malaya the rebels never 

took full advantage of the territory in Thailand and the Thai government 

grew generally hostile toward their efforts anyway. That insurgency became isolated in enclaves along the border and never gained any traction 

after 1960.31 

The French struggled enough with the communist Vietminh rebels 

within Indochina and never made any headway in sealing the border with 

China. They lost their former colony in 1954. Algerian rebels used the 

borders with impunity in the early years of their fight, but the French had 

learned their lesson from Indochina. They built an extensive barrier system 

called the Morice Line stretching some 200 miles from the Mediterranean 

Sea to the Sahara Desert. The line consisted of an eight-foot electric fence 

surrounded by minefields and barbed wire. Roughly 80,000 French soldiers patrolled the barrier, and sensors along the fence indicated when and 

where insurgents tried to breach the line so that the French troops could 

quickly respond. According to one estimate, the fence proved so effective 

7 
that it cut infiltration by 90 percent. Though the insurgency struggled militarily after that, other political issues forced the French to withdraw.32 

In these cases of insurgencies, and many more, the existence of active 

sanctuaries did not guarantee victory for insurgencies, and nor did the lack 

of them guarantee defeat. But those insurgencies having access to active 

sanctuaries and outside support generally fared better than those that did 

not. And, as the United States was about to learn, such even held true when 

superpowers became involved in counterinsurgencies. 

American Traditions 

Even in the busy years for revolutionaries immediately after World 

War II, the American military focused on a large war with the Soviet 

Union and did little to develop its counterinsurgency doctrine. The dearth 

of American doctrine on irregular warfare did not mean that the United 

States had not engaged in a wide variety of low intensity conflicts. On the 

contrary, by the 1960s Americans had fought dozens of small wars, ranging from the fights with American Indians to any number of expeditions 

to Latin America and various islands in the Pacific in the decades around 

the turn of the 20th century. As recently as the 1940s, the United States 

had played a major role in defeating the Hukbalahap Insurrection in the 

Philippines. 

Yet none of these campaigns led to a well-developed, written American doctrine for counterinsurgency—with the notable exception of the 

1935 Marine Corps Small Wars Manual that was overshadowed by World 

War II and the looming conflict with the Soviets. Nevertheless, these low 

intensity conflicts did create inherited institutional tendencies for dealing 

with irregular warfare. Generally, American military thinkers looked at 

guerrilla warfare with disdain, and at guerrillas as brigands who reduced 

the art of war to a base crime and should be punished accordingly. When 

it came to the issue of sanctuary, the most important American tendency 

was to pursue those brigands to their villages, hideouts, and other bases 

of supply, and destroy them there. Beyond that, the American military put 

little thought into the problem.33 

Then came the Vietnam War. 

8 
Two Case Studies 

Despite a mighty effort in that war, one of the world’s great superpowers proved unable to help a fledgling nation preserve its existence in the 

face of a relentless enemy. Vietnam became an ugly scar on the American 

psyche, a symbol of a military disaster never to be repeated. Not wanting 

to revisit the disaster, the military has for too long ignored many of the 

most important lessons of the war. Robert Cassidy explains this shortcoming: “The American military culture’s efforts to expunge the specter of 

Vietnam, embodied in the mantra ‘No More Vietnams,’ also prevented the 

US Army as an institution from really learning from those lessons.”34 

There are lessons to be learned from Vietnam, including many relating 

to transnational sanctuary. The full range of issues relating to the tricky 

diplomatic problems of international frontiers and irregular warfare were 

fully on display. So, too, were the responses. As a wealthy and technologically advanced modern state, the United States had within its power the 

ability to attempt a wide variety of schemes to deny the communist enemy 

their transnational sanctuaries. The failures and successes among those 

efforts, coupled with a solid understanding of the successes and failures 

in the overall American effort, provide a variety of insights on the issue of 

transnational sanctuary in irregular warfare. 

The same could be said of the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-1989). 

Although in hindsight it seems clear that the communist system of the 

Soviet Union was collapsing under its own weight by the 1980s, the Soviets had still amassed an enormous and technologically advanced military. 

Like the Americans before Vietnam, they had not invested much time or 

effort in developing counterinsurgency doctrine, so they had to play catchup when the rebellion broke out in Afghanistan. And like the Americans, 

they tried a wide variety of techniques to stop insurgents from making use 

of their transnational sanctuary. But unlike the Americans, the Soviets had 

no compunctions whatsoever about using the most brutal techniques to put 

down an insurgency. 

However, the Soviet war effort is not the focus of this case study. 

There is another perspective to the Soviet-Afghan War that is equally enlightening—the perspective of the insurgents. When it came to Afghanistan, the United States found itself in unfamiliar territory. For once, the 

Americans had a chance to provide the rebels with aid to fight their war 

against the communists. Those rebels and that American aid depended on 

access to transnational sanctuary. The development of that sanctuary, the 

9 
Soviet attempts to deny it, and the insurgent responses are all important 

topics in understanding how transnational sanctuaries can affect the outcome of insurgent wars. 

There are no simple answers to fighting a successful counterinsurgency, no easy steps to victory. But a more thorough understanding of the 

problem and all of its dimensions can help shape sound policies, strategies, and tactics. Transnational sanctuary is an aspect in the global war on 

terrorism. This study explores that problem. 

10 
Endnotes 

1. Richard W. Stewart, The United States Army in Afghanistan: Operation Enduring Freedom (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, n.d.), 

26-44. 

2. “Pakistan Rejects US ‘Right’ to Incursions,” Los Angeles Times, 5 January 

2003, A4. 

3. John Lancaster, “Pakistan Touts Control of Border,” Washington Post, 2 

September 2003, A10; David Rohde, “Pakistan: Border Toll Rises,” New York 

Times, 18 March 2004, A17; Dana Priest and Kamran Khan, “Al-Qaeda Leaders May Be Cornered,” Washington Post, 19 March 2004, A1; “Pakistan Says 

50 Killed in Airstrike on Terror Camp,” Los Angeles Times, 10 September 2004, 

A9. 

4. John Lancaster, “Pakistan Rebuts Bin Laden Report,” Washington Post, 8 

March 2003, A19; David Johnson, “Search for Al-Qaeda Leader Focuses on 

Pakistan Border Area,” New York Times, 8 March 2003; Gretchen Peters, “Bin 

Laden’s Hideout in Wilds of Pakistan,” Christian Science Monitor, 15 September 2003, 1; Mike Allen, “Afghan Worries Envoy; Incoming US Ambassador 

Seeks More Vigilance Along Pakistani Border,” Washington Post, 19 November 

2003, A22; Dana Priest, “US Aids Security of Musharraf,” Washington Post, 3 

January 2004, A1; and David Rohde, “G.I.’s in Afghanistan on Hunt,” New York 

Times, 30 March 2004, A1. 

5. Dafna Linzer and Griff White, “US Airstrike Targets Al-Qaeda’s Zawahiri,” 

Washington Post, 14 January 2006, A9; Zahid Hussain, “Political Fallout in 

Pakistan Strike Tests a US Ally,” Wall Street Journal, 16 January 2006, A13; and 

Carlotta Gall, “Pakistanis Say US Raid Left 4 or 5 Militants Dead,” New York 

Times, 18 January 2006, A6. 

6. Zulfiqar Ali, “Musharraf Lashes Out at Karzai Over Data on Rebels,” Los 

Angeles Times, 6 March 2006, A5; Calotta Gall, “2 Leaders Trade Barbs Over 

Fight Against Taliban,” New York Times, 7 March 2006. 

7. The Americans hoped that the invasion of Iraq would provide an implicit 

threat to the hostile regimes in Syria and Iran, especially. Bob Woodward, Plan 

of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 90, 155, 231; and Michael R. 

Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, COBRA II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and 

Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 40, 73, 497. 

8. Gregory Fontenot, et al., On Point: The United States Army in Operation 

Iraqi Freedom (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004), 

145, 402; Tommy Franks, American Soldier (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 

352, 407-408, 414-415, 428-429, 500-501; Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 338, 

450-454; Woodward, Plan of Attack, 147-148, 256-264, 324-325, 330, 368-370. 

11 
9. It is also possible, but unconfirmed, that the Iraqis moved weapons of mass 

destruction across the Syrian border before Coalition troops arrived. See Gordon 

and Trainor, COBRA II, 122, 132; and Georges Sada, Saddam’s Secrets: How an 

Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein (Nashville, TN: Integrity 

Publishers, 2006). 

10. Gordon and Trainor, COBRA II, 489. 

11. Franks, American Soldier, 511. 

12. Fontenot, et al., On Point, 213, 249, 257, 279, 364, 367; Gordon and 

Trainor, COBRA II, 372, 408-409; 501 Franks, American Soldier, 519. 

13. Gordon and Trainor, COBRA II, 436. 

14. Quoted in Walter Pincus, “Syria Warned Again Not to ‘Meddle’ in 

Iraq,” Washington Post, 11 April 2003, A37. 

15. L. Paul Bremer, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of 

Hope (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 104-105. 

16. Including launching Operation CHAMBERLAIN in October 2003. On 

these issues see Bay Fang, “Keeping an Eye on the Exit,” US News and World 

Report, 134 (12 May 2003), 19; Dexter Filkins, “Conflict on Iraq-Syria Border Feeds Rage Against the US,” New York Times, 15 July 2003, A1; and John 

Sattler, “Central Command Operations Briefing,” 16 April 2004, United States 

Department of Defense News Transcript, online at http://www.defenselink.mil. 

17. Michael Linnington interview, conducted by Catherine Small, 3 November 2005, Fort Leavenworth, KS, in author’s possession. 

18. Ibid. See also the letter from Colonel Linnington to Michael Rubin of 

National Review Online and Rubin’s response, “Letters: Border Security and 

More,” 13 May 2004, National Review Online, http://www.nationalreview.com, 

and Vernon Loeb, “Commanders Doubt Syria Is Entry Point,” Washington Post, 

29 October 2003, A19. 

19. David Teeples interview, conducted by Pete Connors, 4 November 

2005, Fort Leavenworth, KS, in author’s possession. 

20. Ibid. 

21. Ibid.; 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, “Rifles Update Brief,” n.d., in 

author’s possession; and Blood and Steel!: The History, Customs, and Traditions 

of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiments (Fort Carson, CO: Third Cavalry Museum, n.d.), 40-43. 

22. Tony Perry, “Marines Hunt Smugglers at Iraq-Syria Border,” Los Angeles Times, 30 March 2004, A6; Melissa August, “Cozying Up To Syria,” Time, 

164 (27 September 2004), 17; Nora Boustany, “Syrian Sees Calming of Tension,” Washington Post, 6 October 2004, A24; Johanna McGeary, “The Trouble 

With Syria,” Time, 165 (28 February 2005), 30-31; Ellen Knickmeyer and Omar 

Fekeiki, “US Warplanes Target Alleged Rebel Havens Along Iraq-Syria Border,” Washington Post, 31 August 2005, A18; Ashraf Khalil, “The Conflict in 

Iraq; Joint Force Targets Town Near Syria Border,” 11 September 2005, A9; “20 

12 
Suspected Rebels Killed in Raids Near Syria Border,” Los Angeles Times, 23 

October 2005, A4; Thanassis Cambanis, “Syria Defends Efforts to Patrol Iraqi 

Border,” Boston Globe, 29 October 2005; Howard LaFranchi, “Tougher International Line on Syria,” Christian Science Monitor, 31 October 2005, 1; Michael 

Bruno, “McCain Pushes for Even More UAV Emphasis,” Aerospace Daily and 

Defense Report, 217 (3 March 2006), 4. 

23. Then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told a meeting of 

congressional leaders on the eve of the invasion, “We don’t expect difficulties 

with Iran.” Woodward, Plan of Attack, 370. See also Gordon and Trainor, COBRA II, 85. 

24. E.A. Torriero, “US Forces Act to Plug Iraq-Iran Border,” Chicago Tribune, 13 May 2003. 

25. Bremer, My Year in Iraq, 71-73, 199, 274. 

26. Kim Murphy, “Securing Iraq’s Frontier, Step by Step,” Los Angeles 

Times, 30 March 2004, A6; and Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karl Vick, “Iraq-Iran 

Border to Be Tightened in Bid to Stem Attacks,” Washington Post, 14 March 

2004, A26. 

27. John Ward Anderson, et al., “Bigger, Stronger Homemade Bombs Now 

to Blame for Half of US Deaths,” Washington Post, 26 October 2005, A1. 

28. “IED Components Moving Across Iraq-Iran Border, General Says,” US 

Federal News Service, 17 March 2006. 

29. Bernard B. Fall, Street Without Joy (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 

1967), 375. 

30. Although the use of sanctuaries also raises the likelihood of an expanded conflict. Idean Salehyan, “No Shelter Here: Rebel Sanctuaries and International Conflict,” Paper for the American Political Science Association Meeting, 

Washington, DC, 2005. 

31. This discussion is heavily indebted to William Glenn Robertson, “The 

Active Sanctuary: Challenge to Counterinsurgency,” 19 May 1969, unpublished 

paper, in author’s possession. See also John D. Deiner, “Guerrilla Border Sanctuaries and Counterinsurgent Warfare,” Army Quarterly and Defense Journal, 

109 (April 1979), 162-179; G.R. Christmas, “Guerrilla Sanctuaries,” Infantry, 63 

(May-June 1973), 24-27. 

32. Paul Staniland, “Defeating Transnational Insurgencies: The Best Offense Is a Good Fence,” Washington Quarterly, 29 (Winter 2005-06), 32; John 

R. Hamilton, “Defeating Insurgency on the Border,” (Marine Corps Command 

and Staff College, 1985), Online: http://www.globalsecurity.org; and Joseph 

Jeremiah Zasloff, The Role of Sanctuary in Insurgency: Communist China’s Support to the Vietminh, 1946-1954 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1967). 

33. Andrew J. Birtle, US Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency 

Operations Doctrine (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 

2004); Keith B. Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corps Development of 

13 
Small Wars Doctrine, 1915-1940 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001); Max 

Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power 

(New York: Basic Books, 2002), xiii-285; Sam C. Sarkesian, America’s Forgotten Wars: The Counterrevolutionary Past and Lessons for the Future (Westport, 

CT: Greenwood Press, 1984); United States Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual 

– 1940 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1940); Lawrence M. Greenberg, The Hukbalahap Insurrection: A Case Study of a Successful Anti-Insurgency Operation in the 

Philippines – 1946-1955 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 

1986); Larry Cable, “Reinventing the Round Wheel: Insurgency, Counter-Insurgency, and Peacekeeping Post Cold War,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, 4 (Autumn 1993), 228-262; Brian McAllister Linn, “The Impact of the Imperial Wars 

(1898-1907) on the US Army,” Heritage Lectures, 908 (14 November 2005), 2. 

34. Robert M. Cassidy, “Back to the Street Without Joy: Counterinsurgency 

Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars,” Parameters, 34 (Summer 2004), 

74. 

14 
Chapter 1

Vietnam
 

Indications 

Shortly after midnight on 1 November 1964, a series of explosions 

shook the American air base at Bien Hoa. The attack dragged on for 20 

minutes, and in that time more than fifty 81mm mortar rounds rained down 

on the airfield, barracks, and the parking areas for the various aircraft. 

The assault took the South Vietnamese and Americans who manned the 

field completely by surprise. By 1964, communist insurgents, known as 

the Vietcong to the Americans and their allies, had been wreaking havoc 

in South Vietnam for years, but they had never before launched a direct attack on an American target. The Americans never expected such a conventional assault. Base commanders considered sabotage the greater threat, so 

as a precaution, the B-57 bombers that had recently been brought in from 

the Philippines lined the field in the open. They were perfect targets for a 

mortar attack. 

When the firing stopped, four Americans and two South Vietnamese 

were dead, and dozens of Americans and a handful of Vietnamese were 

wounded. Nearly 30 aircraft had been damaged to varying degrees, including 20 of the B-57 bombers. Five of the bombers had been completely 

destroyed, along with multiple helicopters. Ground troops and helicopters 

went out in a series of search parties to look for the Vietcong, but found 

only empty mortar canisters in a well-prepared position north of the base. 

The guerillas disappeared into the countryside.1

 Hanoi radio applauded the 

assault, calling it a major communist victory.2

 US Ambassador to South 

Vietnam Maxwell Taylor told policymakers in Washington that the attack 

was “a deliberate act of escalation.”3

 In the days, weeks, and months that 

followed, the Vietcong launched more attacks, including the 6 February 

1965 assaults on American installations at Pleiku. South Vietnam was on 

the verge of collapse. 

The United States responded by stepping up its military role in Vietnam. The Air Force began a series of limited reprisal bombing missions 

over North Vietnam. Ground troops from the Army and Marine Corps 

were provided to defend vulnerable American airbases. Not yet satisfied, 

American policymakers in the spring and summer of 1965 made the fateful decision to send tens of thousands of additional ground troops to Viet15 
nam. The major American entry into the war had begun—triggered by the 

actions of Vietcong guerillas in the winter of 1964-1965.4

 Yet the Vietcong 

had not done it alone. 

By coincidence, the day before the attack on Bien Hoa, the US Military Assistance Command–Vietnam (MACV) completed a new study of 

insurgent infiltration of the South. It noted that the North Vietnamese had 

since 1959 directed and supplied the infiltration of tens of thousands of 

men and untold quantities of supplies into South Vietnam. The majority 

of the men and much of the material that made up the Vietcong, the report concluded, had crossed the border of South Vietnam from communist 

sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia.5 

Almost exactly one year after the guerrilla attack on Bien Hoa, a new 

threat emerged in the central highlands of South Vietnam. Vietnamese 

communists, flushed with their recent successes in guerilla warfare, decided that the time had come for a more direct approach. They planned 

to use the dry season of 1965-1966 to conquer the central highlands, split 

South Vietnam, and then use the captured territory as a staging point for 

future offensives. The problem for the communists was that US Army 

Special Forces were operating training and base camps along the Laotian 

and Cambodian border, including several on the central plateau. These 

camps were an irritant to the communist war effort and an impediment to 

the plan to conquer the highlands. In the fall of 1965, the North Vietnamese decided to act. 

On 19 October 1965, the communists launched an assault on the Special Forces camp at Plei Me, 25 miles south of Pleiku. At first the Americans and South Vietnamese believed that the attack came from Vietcong 

insurgents, but within 48 hours it became clear that the communist forces 

were regiments of the North Vietnamese Army—conventional forces, not 

guerillas.6 The defenders of Plei Me held out, due in no small part to massive air and artillery support, and an Army of the Republic of Vietnam 

(ARVN) relief column that fought through an ambush to relieve the base 

on 25 October. Their offensive broken, the North Vietnamese regiments 

retreated toward the Cambodian border. 

Not content with the defensive victory, and anxious to try his preferred 

search and destroy tactics, General William Westmoreland, the commander 

of MACV, ordered a pursuit of the retreating forces by the recently arrived 

1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). After fighting a series of skirmishes, 

16 
Map 1. Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail Network. 

units from the 1st Cavalry Division made major contact with the NVA 

regiments just east of the Cambodian border in the Ia Drang Valley. 

The NVA had decided to reconstitute their units and launch a divisionsize attack on Plei Me. On 14 November, unaware of enemy intentions, 

troops from the US Army 7th Cavalry Regiment landed near the new NVA 

staging area. A series of pitched battles in and around the American helicopter landing zones followed. Once again, the communists relied on sur17 
prise and aggression and the Americans leaned heavily on overwhelming 

air and artillery support. Both sides took heavy casualties and for a time it 

looked as if the American positions might be overrun. At the end of several 

days of brutal combat, both sides withdrew from the battlefields. 

Afterward, fresh American and South Vietnamese troops moved into 

the area, but by then the North Vietnamese had retreated into Cambodia. 

Policy makers in Washington refused requests to pursue the enemy across 

the border. The campaign ended on 26 November. The devastated NVA 

division used the sanctuary to spend the next six months recovering from 

the battle.7 

From the beginning, Vietnamese communists conceived of their war 

effort in two parts. First, the insurgency in the South by the Vietcong would 

weaken the ruling South Vietnamese regime and demoralize the American 

military. Second, a conventional campaign by the North Vietnamese Army 

would sweep through the South and complete the unification of Vietnam.8 

As a result, the Americans and South Vietnamese had to wage an effective 

counterinsurgency and be prepared to fight off larger conventional forces. 

America’s first major battles in Vietnam, the attack on Bien Hoa and the 

fight in the Ia Drang Valley, indicated very early on the degree to which 

the communist war in Vietnam, unconventional and conventional, relied 

on sanctuary and supply across international borders. To defeat the communists, the Americans and their allies would have to deny that sanctuary. 

The Dimensions of the Problem 

The origins of the Vietnam War were in many ways complex, but they 

boiled down to a few simple issues. The United States was in the midst 

of the Cold War with Soviet- and Chinese-supported communism. Americans believed the lesson of World War II was aggression had to be stopped 

early, lest aggressors become strong and bold enough to force a world 

war. When Ho Chi Minh and his Vietnamese communist forces drove the 

French out of Indochina in 1954, Southeast Asia became one of the places 

where the United States had to stop aggression. 

At the 1954 Geneva Conference, the great powers split Vietnam in 

two at a demilitarized zone (DMZ), roughly along the 17th parallel, and 

South Vietnam became a makeshift bulwark against the political or military spread of communism. For their part, Vietnamese communists, in 

18 
both North and South, would not accept the existence of an independent, 

noncommunist South Vietnam. They started an insurgency in the South 

against the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Eventually, 

the North Vietnamese planned to support the insurgency with conventional 

forces from the North.9 

The United States made its primary strategic goal in Southeast Asia 

the preservation of a noncommunist South Vietnam. That goal meant providing for the security of South Vietnam.10 There was no small amount of 

confusion and dissent among American and South Vietnamese leadership 

about how exactly to provide that security. Some saw conventional operations as key. Others focused on the counterinsurgency. Advocates of strategic airpower believed that bombing the North could win the war. From 

these competing ideas emerged a mishmash of operations and tactics that 

ultimately hindered the efforts to win the war.11 

Operational and tactical clarity were further impeded by the fact that 

the North Vietnamese sent manpower, weapons, and supplies to the south 

by a variety of routes—by water, over the DMZ, and especially over the 

western borders of South Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia. It is hard 

to overstate the extent of the problem. While the impetus for the war itself 

came from North Vietnam, it was couched in the ideology of the communist world. That ideology had leadership in the competing powers of the 

Soviet Union and China. Both powers gave serious support to the Vietnamese communists during the war. 

To make the problem worse, the North Vietnamese managed to play 

the Soviets and Chinese off one another, increasing the amount of aid they 

received from each. The Soviets gave billions of rubles in military assistance to North Vietnam, much of it in modern weaponry like planes, 

rockets, field artillery, surface to air missiles, and tanks. By 1968 roughly 

half of all aid to North Vietnam came from the Soviet Union.12 

The Chinese accounted for much of the rest. Chinese sources indicate 

that between “1956 and 1963, China provided the DRV [the Democratic 

Republic of Vietnam, North Vietnam] with 270,000 guns, over 10,000 

pieces of artillery, nearly 200 million bullets, 2.02 million artillery shells, 

15,000 wire transmitters, over 1,000 trucks, 15 aircraft, 28 war ships, and 

1.18 million sets of uniforms.”13 As the American role in Vietnam escalated, Mao Zedong responded by drastically increasing Chinese assistance 

to the North Vietnamese. This “massive supply of weapons to the DRV 

19 
in 1962,” argues historian Qiang Zhai, “helped Ho Chi Minh to intensify 

guerilla warfare in the South, triggering greater U.S. intervention.”14 With 

North Vietnamese engineers working on roads through Laos, well over 

100,000 Chinese engineering troops flooded into North Vietnam to improve and expand the transportation network in the northern part of the 

country.15 In that same period, the Chinese provided North Vietnam with 

approximately 1.5 million guns, 52,000 artillery pieces, 12 million artillery shells, millions of bullets and uniforms, and thousands of telephones, 

radio transmitters, and automobiles.16 Throughout the conflict, Soviet and 

Chinese aid to North Vietnam went directly to the support of the insurgency in South Vietnam, freed up North Vietnamese resources to go south, 

or supplied the North Vietnamese Army directly. 

The Soviets and Chinese provided an even more important aspect to 

the Vietnamese communist effort—the threat of direct intervention. American policymakers did not want another Korean War, so they went out of 

their way to avoid provoking Soviet or Chinese entry into the war. That 

decision meant that the United States never really threatened taking the 

ground war to North Vietnam. At the same time, the Soviet and Chinese 

threat gave the Vietnamese communists the ability to make a farce out of 

the nominal neutrality of Laotian and Cambodian territory. 

In the American part of the war, the Vietnamese communists put all 

of these resources to good use. Vietnamese communists, having relied on 

Communist Chinese territory during the war with the French, had long 

experience with cross border sanctuaries.17 The major infiltration of South 

Vietnam began when North Vietnamese forces crossed the DMZ in June 

1959. The delivery routes, known to the communists as the “Truong Son 

Strategic Supply Route” and to the Americans as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, 

soon expanded to Laos. The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran through the Laotian 

panhandle and into Cambodia, along the western border of South Vietnam. 

It was later supplemented by the Sihanouk Trail, which ran northeast from 

the coast of southern Cambodia to various points along the western border of South Vietnam. The trails wound through the jungle, connected by 

various rest areas, aid stations, and supply dumps along the way. Porters 

carried supplies on their backs and walked heavily laden bicycles down 

the paths. As the trails developed, trucks carried heavier supplies, and armored units traveled south. 

Most important of all were the men. At first, the trail allowed southerners to return to the South and join the Vietcong, but as the war escalat20 
ed, more and more northerners went south to join the insurgency. During 

the course of the war, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese went south 

to fight, most of them through Laos and Cambodia. Over time, the trail 

also became the route by which conventional NVA forces moved south 

to launch conventional attacks on South Vietnam, like the attack on Plei 

Me. When such units needed to rest and refit, they crossed the border and 

returned to larger resupply areas along the route. Such rear bases were 

extensive, consisting of artillery and surface to air missile positions, large 

storage bunkers, mess halls, training areas, and even farms to maintain 

crops and livestock. Later in the war, the communists moved the headquarters for the entire war effort in the south, the Central Office of South 

Vietnam (COSVN), to Cambodia.18 

The South Vietnamese and their Americans allies recognized the problem from the beginning. As early as November 1960, American military 

advisers in Vietnam reported: 

The Viet Cong infiltrate into South Vietnam by use of overland trails through Laos and Cambodia.... To prevent this 

infiltration, the [Diem government] must have a fi rmer control 

of its frontiers. Frontiers which, because of the great length, 

ill-defined boundaries, and the nature of the terrain coupled 

with the political failure of the countries concerned to reach 

an agreement on policing of borders make the military task of 

preventing infiltration almost insurmountable....19 

The struggle over sanctuary had begun, and it would drag on through 

the entire war. Indeed, as the leading historian of the Ho Chi Minh Trail 

writes, “In a very real sense the course of the Vietnam War became a competition between Hanoi’s efforts to create and sustain an umbilical cord 

and American attempts to cut that cord or at least obstruct it.”20 

First Options 

Unfortunately, diplomacy offered little help for the Americans and 

their allies. Both Laos and Cambodia were nominally neutral, but the signatories of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) could not, 

or would not, come together to pressure the Vietnamese communists to 

respect that neutrality. Moreover, even the 1962 Geneva Accords that reaffirmed Laotian neutrality and removed foreign militaries did nothing to 

stop the communist efforts in the Laotian panhandle. The North Vietnamese never halted operation of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and thousands of 

NVA and Vietcong remained in Laos. As one American official later com21 
mented, “North Vietnam broke the 1962 agreements before the ink was 

dry.”21 

The Americans were well aware of communist actions, but were hamstrung by the specter of Soviet or Chinese intervention.22 Still, the communist sanctuary in Laos and Cambodia could not be ignored. The North 

Vietnamese remained the preeminent force in the Laotian panhandle and 

eastern Cambodia, and that power gave them the opportunity to keep open 

the trails into South Vietnam. Diplomacy failed. The Americans needed a 

military solution that would fit inside the diplomatic framework of nominal Laotian and Cambodian neutrality, however one-sided that neutrality 

might be. 

Given the tenuous diplomatic situation and the predilections of President John F. Kennedy and the major players in his administration, the first 

American military response made perfect sense. In military affairs, the 

Kennedy Administration relied on several rising stars to guide policy. Kennedy was particularly enamored of the ideas of General Maxwell Taylor. 

During the 1950s, Taylor had been a vocal opponent of President Dwight 

D. Eisenhower’s strategic reliance on nuclear weapons. Taylor argued for 

expanded conventional forces with the capability to respond to a variety 

of threats, including insurgencies. Kennedy saw much merit in this line 

of thinking, and when he became president he quickly sought to expand 

America’s Special Forces capabilities.23 

Not surprisingly, Special Forces and other covert operators seemed to 

offer a solution to the sanctuary problem. As an added benefit, such units 

had been in Southeast Asia for years, acting as advisers for various friendly governments and militaries in the region.24 Beginning in 1961, the CIA 

and Army Special Forces worked together to initiate the Civilian Irregular 

Defense Group (CIDG) program. The CIDG organized and trained local 

ethnic groups like the Montagnards of the central highlands into defense 

forces to defeat the Vietcong in the backwater villages of Vietnam. Part of 

their mission was to screen the borders to prevent communist infiltration 

from Laos and Cambodia. As a result of their efforts, many of the most 

prominent Special Forces camps in South Vietnam, including the one at 

Plei Me, were opened in the period from 1961-1964.25 

The early efforts of the CIA and Special Forces included limited attempts to interdict the supply lines within Laos. Starting in 1961, a few 

specially trained South Vietnamese teams launched infiltrations across the 

22 
border to gather intelligence. The next year, CIA officers began training 

Lao natives in basic reconnaissance of the communist road system. Both 

programs gathered general information, but neither provided specifics on 

the communist operation.26 A more direct approach came in 1964 when 

American advisers worked with South Vietnamese special forces on Operation LEAPING LENA. In LEAPING LENA, small teams of Montagnard 

tribesman led by South Vietnamese Special Forces were to cross into Laos 

to perform reconnaissance missions. In late June and early July 1964, five 

South Vietnamese teams parachuted into Laos. Their mission ended badly. 

The communists killed or captured all but a handful of the men, and those 

who survived had gathered little useable information.27 

Despite the possible diplomatic ramifications of violating Laotian 

neutrality, leaders in the United States concluded from the failure of 

LEAPING LENA that Americans would have to play a direct part in future infiltrations of Laos. A move toward an expanded role for American 

Special Forces had already begun. In January 1964, the Americans set 

up the Studies and Observations Group (SOG) within MACV, a special 

operations group that answered directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. SOG 

included men from all of America’s armed services, including Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and Air Force Air Commandos. SOG’s mandate 

included operations into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam.28 

Infiltrations into Laos began in 1965, initially under the codename 

SHINING BRASS (in 1967 the name was changed to PRAIRIE FIRE). Operations in Cambodia, codenamed DANIEL BOONE, began in 1967. The 

teams included South Vietnamese troops led by American Special Forces 

personnel. Still concerned with violations of neutral territory, the men who 

went on these missions wore nondescript uniforms and carried untraceable 

weapons. They either crossed the border on foot or in unmarked Air Force 

helicopters, and similar helicopters would extract them at the end of missions.29 In 1966 they sent more than 100 teams into Laos; two years later, 

some 800 teams went into Laos and Cambodia combined.30 

SOGs primary task was reconnaissance, and in that role the troops 

provided important intelligence on the expansion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail 

in Laos and Cambodia. Special Forces troops took pictures of communist 

roads, bases, and equipment—all of which provided clear information on 

the extent of the sanctuary across the borders. Yet, they did more than observe. The teams engaged in all manner of small-scale combat operations, 

including destruction of enemy supplies, ambushes, and rescue missions. 

23 
They even captured communists and brought them to South Vietnam for 

interrogation. But the major part of their effort was to provide targeting 

for air strikes. In many cases, the infiltration teams would be accompanied by slow-flying planes that acted as forward air controllers for bombers.31 Since the thick jungle concealed most targets, the men on the ground 

would radio the location of the enemy to the controllers, who would in 

turn call in the bombers. In January 1967, SOG troops even established 

a semi-permanent radio relay post on a mountaintop within Laos, called 

“Leghorn.”32 

Despite the skill, bravery, and individual effectiveness of these Special Forces infiltrations, in the end their effect on communist sanctuary 

was limited. One of the veterans of SOG recalled of the war on the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail, “You could pinprick it .... You could put a security requirement on the enemy by having him worry that there are people who are going to tear things up, take prisoners, direct air strikes, and so on but that’s 

the most you could do with what you had then.” He concluded, “I don’t 

think SOG ever had the ability of stopping the trail flow.”33 

There were multiple reasons for the failure of the overall SOG effort 

to deny the communists sanctuary. For one thing, the Americans invested 

only limited resources in the effort, especially in comparison to the rest of 

the war. One estimate had the total cost of the missions from 1967-1969 at 

only $15.6 million.34 Another problem was communist resistance. A participant in special operations activities later wrote that by 1970, the enemy 

knew exactly what the Special Forces were up to, and they began serious 

efforts to counter the Americans and South Vietnamese. As a result: 

The infiltration of recon teams from the Central Highlands 

launch sites into Cambodia and Laos was exceedingly dangerous. Infiltration from I Corps into Laos or into the DMZ 

region was near suicidal, but teams led by Special Forces 

volunteers continued the mission. HALO (high-altitude, lowopening) techniques, jumping into triple canopy jungle in 

smoke-jumper protective equipment, and blasting helicopter 

landing zones with huge bombs were among the methods 

used to get into denied areas. Stay-time in operational areas 

decreased as the enemy improved his detection, communication, tracking, and close combat skills. Despite brave men and 

stalwart staff efforts to stay ahead of the enemy, the tide had 

turned. By 1970 it is doubtful that the losses could be justified 

by the intelligence gained.35 

24 
Consequently, the number of SOG infiltrations into Laos and Cambodia began to decrease after 1969. Ultimately, Special Forces infiltrations 

into Laos and Cambodia had never been much more than a support mission for the largest American effort to destroy the cross border communist 

sanctuaries in the Vietnam War. 

Airpower 

From the moment humans took to the sky, military thinkers began 

theorizing about the impact of airpower on warfare. The most ardent proponents concluded that strategic bombing, if applied correctly, could win 

wars all on its own—without the horrible casualties of ground wars. At 

no time did this thinking hold more sway in the United States than in the 

years after World War II, when Americans looked to technology to solve 

the problems of the modern world. American policymakers in the Vietnam 

era were no exception to this rule. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara led the way, drawing on his experiences in business and industry to 

conclude that there was a technological solution to every military problem 

and an equation to win any war. Kennedy may have had a fascination with 

Special Forces and unconventional war, but the men who made up his 

administration—and the man who succeeded him—had a near obsession 

with airpower. Such men gave little thought to applying that airpower to 

counterinsurgency and, for the duration of the war, advocated the fullscale bombing of North Vietnam.36 

Not surprisingly, many of these same men, including President Lyndon Johnson, believed that airpower could interdict the communist line of 

supply in Laos and Cambodia—with the added benefit that airpower was 

more indirect than ground incursions, and therefore would not be as likely 

to draw the Chinese or Soviets into the war. Still, the Chinese and Soviet 

threat and nominal Laotian neutrality meant that initially Lao pilots bore 

the responsibility for bombing in Laos, which began in 1964 (working 

with American reconnaissance aircraft). Much like they had in LEAPING 

LENA, these proxy warriors failed to live up to American expectations, 

and by the end of the year, Johnson gave the go-ahead for the US Air Force 

to attack the communists trails and bases in Laos.37 

Beginning with Operation BARREL ROLL in December 1964, the US 

Air Force and US Navy launched a series of escalating bombing missions 

against the communist infrastructure north of the DMZ in Laos. BARREL 

ROLL was supplemented by Operation STEEL TIGER in April 1965, but 

25 
the latter began to spread the attacks to the eastern portion of the Laotian 

panhandle. Flying from bases in South Vietnam and Thailand, and off of 

carriers in the surrounding waters, American pilots flew nearly 800 missions against Laos in less than a month.38 The airpower interdiction program accelerated in the summer and fall of 1965, as the Air Force started 

working with the SOG incursions and the targeting area extended south to 

the Cambodian border. In December, the Air Force used B-52 bombers to 

hit targets in Laos, most notably the Mu Gia pass just north of the DMZ. 

Even the aerial defoliant program, Operation RANCH HAND, spread into 

the eastern portion of the Laotian panhandle. The Americans flew some 

3,000 attack sorties against Laos in December, a number that would rise to 

8,000 in January 1966. 

Most of these early attacks had been bombing missions by fast-moving jets, but in early 1966 the Air Force sent night raids by propeller driven AC-47 gunships to attack the communist roads and sanctuaries. The 

AC-47s enjoyed some success, but the enemy quickly adjusted tactics and 

the Americans had to replace the vulnerable gunships with the faster and 

more durable B-26K bomber (also known as the A-26A and A-26K). In 

the meantime, the operational area expanded to include targets throughout 

most of the Laotian panhandle.39 

In all cases, politicians, including President Johnson and Ambassador 

to Laos William Sullivan, imposed restrictions on targets in Laos. Sullivan’s actions in particular frustrated military commanders so much that 

General Westmoreland reported that they sometimes called the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail “Sullivan’s Freeway.”40 That said, the American air campaign 

was significant. American pilots flew over 100,000 bombing missions to 

Laos and dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of ordnance on the trail 

in the years 1965-1967. Yet the infiltration continued, even accelerated, in 

those years. At least 12,000 North Vietnamese entered the South in 1964; 

in 1967, the number was at least 52,000 and possibly as many as 83,000.41 

Army officers recognized the depth of the problem, as indicated by a 1967 

article in Army Quarterly and Defense Journal: 

Intense bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail has reduced the 

volume of traffic along it greatly, curtailed supplies, caused 

hunger and hardship, but has failed to close it completely. 

Continued bombing may further reduce movement, but absolute interdiction may not be achieved by this method as long 

as Viet Cong determination and morale can stand the strain. 

The lesson seems to be that air power can delay, harass and 

destroy, but alone it cannot accomplish the desired objective.42 

26 
The failure of the bombing to stop major infiltrations into South Vietnam or deny sanctuary in Laos and Cambodia became perfectly clear in 

early 1968. On 21 January, the Marine base at Khe Sanh in the northern 

province of Quang Tri, less than 10 miles from the border of Laos, came 

under heavy attack from NVA forces. The communists, attacking from 

Laos, used a full array of conventional weapons to assault the hilltop fort. 

In one of the most direct exploitations of sanctuary, the NVA even shelled 

Khe Sanh from artillery positions over the border. The marines held out, 

aided by airpower and their own artillery support, but the siege dragged on 

until April, indicating the strength of the NVA support system in Laos.43 

Even more shocking was the general Vietcong Tet Offensive, beginning 29-30 January 1968. During the New Year’s Tet holiday, the Vietcong 

launched a massive assault on towns and cities throughout South Vietnam. 

Despite some early communist successes, most famously at the American 

embassy in Saigon and in the northern city of Hue, the allied forces beat 

back the Vietcong at every turn. The communists took horrendous casualties, which dealt a serious blow to the insurgency in the South. Nevertheless, the scope of the conventional attack on Khe Sanh and the guerrilla 

assaults of Tet belied any claims that the allied effort to stop communist infiltration of the South through Laos and Cambodia had been successful.44 

Aware of the failure to deny sanctuary so far, but undeterred in their 

confidence that the proper application of airpower could do the job, American policy makers forged ahead with their plans to interdict the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail. They had already initiated a new plan for 1968, one that would 

rely even more heavily on technology to solve the problem. Inspired by 

the success of the French in building a denial barrier during the war in Algeria, Americans sought to borrow from the concept.45 In 1966 the idea of 

building some sort of barrier at the DMZ and in Laos came to the attention 

of Secretary of Defense McNamara. Later that year, a scientific advisory 

group concluded that the United States could deny the infiltration of South 

Vietnam by using electronic sensors to detect the enemy. The Secretary 

of Defense embraced the idea, and the concept of the electronic barrier 

became known as the McNamara Line. The Defense Department set up 

an independent and well-funded planning group to develop the systems, 

which were ready by the end of 1967. The military planned to deploy 

acoustic and seismic sensors—along with mines, bomblets, and bombs— 

all along key infiltration routes at the DMZ and into Laos. Fast-moving 

aerial and ground strike teams would respond to sensor hits to attack the 

infiltrators. Such systems performed well when diverted to the defense 

around Khe Sanh in early 1968, so there was reason to hope.46 

27 
In truth, the McNamara Line plan never had a chance. Well before the 

arrival of the sensor equipment, Westmoreland converted the line at the 

DMZ to more of a traditional series of defensive positions, to be manned 

by ARVN troops and US Marines in that sector. The line would run parallel to the DMZ, and consist of a cleared area roughly one half mile wide, 

“containing barbed wire, minefields, sensors, and watchtowers backed by 

a series of manned strongpoints. Behind the point would be a series of fire 

support bases to provide an interlocking pattern of artillery fire.”47 The 

Marines resented the mission because it limited their tactical flexibility, 

and they took serious casualties in the process of building the line.48 As 

1968 dragged on, and with attention and materials focused on Khe Sanh 

and Tet, the construction of the line fell far behind schedule. Where the 

sensors did get put into use, they did not stop infiltration, and the military 

halted construction of the barrier along the DMZ. 

A greater test of the use of the electronic battlefield to stop infiltration 

came with its extension into Laos. The operations, codenamed MUSCLE 

SHOALS and IGLOO WHITE, placed the full array of sensors, bomblets, and mines on the supposed locations of the communist trails in Laos. 

Planes dropped most of the sensors, but Special Forces units also delivered 

some of the sensitive devices. The electronic battlefield had two targets: 

men and vehicles, specifically trucks. The antipersonnel system involved 

the use of small bomblets that, when stepped on and detonated, would be 

detected by acoustic sensors. Gravel antipersonnel mines often went along 

with the bomblets, and could disable a man if he stepped on them. The 

seismic sensors could pick up trucks from the vibrations they made as they 

rumbled over jungle roads. In either case, a circling aircraft would pick up 

the sensor data and call in fighters, bombers, or gunships to destroy the 

enemy.49 

IGLOO WHITE coincided with an escalated air campaign against 

Laos and, eventually, Cambodia. The various COMMANDO HUNT operations of 1968-1972 attacked roads, terrain features, trucks, and antiaircraft positions and relied heavily on the electronic sensors to find targets. 

The bombing extended into Cambodia in March 1969, but used high altitude B-52 bombers to maintain the illusion of Cambodian neutrality. The 

operations in Laos paid special attention to interdicting trucks on the Ho 

Chi Minh Trail, and gunships, such as the new AC-130, and new night 

vision scopes did much of the damage. The operators of this ‘war against 

trucks’ claimed that they inflicted enormous destruction upon the communist logistic system, including destroying tens of thousands of trucks.50 

28 
There was some truth to their claim. Overall, airpower alone accounted for over half of all of the billions of dollars the United States spent on 

Vietnam, and a large portion of those resources went toward denying cross 

border sanctuaries. American pilots dropped more than three million tons 

of bombs on Laos during the war; three times as much as on North Vietnam.51 All of that firepower had to have some effect. There was no doubt 

that the bombing was doing some damage to the communist war effort, but 

not nearly enough to deny the communists their bases and trails in Laos 

and Cambodia. As many as 600,000 NVA went south from 1966-1971. 

By North Vietnamese estimates, “in 1969 Hanoi lost to air attacks 13.5 

percent of the tonnage it sent south; the figure was 3.4 percent in 1970 and 

2.07 percent in 1971.”52 

Airpower failed for a variety of reasons. First, the communists used 

nature well. One American who managed to visit the trail in Laos in 1965 

explained the problem: “The ‘trail,’ even in this rainy season was a thoroughly passable road. We drove two jeeps over it for more than a mile. It 

would have easily accommodated 4x4 trucks. Yet nowhere on this road, 

except for two very limited areas, was it open to the sky. Even flying over 

it slowly with a helicopter, the road was not discernable from above.”53 

The NVA camouflaged their vehicles and bases and recognized which 

targets the Americans were forbidden to attack and built their facilities 

around those targets. As the war went on, they built increasingly complex 

antiaircraft positions that made it harder for the Americans to linger over 

key communist positions. They waged a relentless war on American sensors and mines using explosives and simple tools like poles, shovels, and 

ropes.54 The communists put thousands of manual laborers to good use rebuilding or bypassing damaged portions of the trail at night. In this effort, 

they took advantage of American firepower by using the rubble, especially 

gravel, left over by bombs to build simple bridges and fords. As one former Vietcong recalled, “Over years this resulted in a web of bypasses and 

cutoffs, which made the system practically invulnerable to attack.”55 

Also important was the fact that the communists did not need a lot of 

resources to keep up the insurgency in the South. Individuals avoided detection much easier than equipment, and before 1968, the Vietcong could 

rely on sanctuaries and resources inside South Vietnam. The regular NVA 

forces in Laos and Cambodia required more support down the trail, but 

they never suffered any sustained shortages either. Part of the reason was 

that the sanctuary covered so much territory. But more important was the 

fact that for most of the war, the communists controlled the pace of ground 

29 
operations. When American air interdiction damaged the enemy logistic 

system, the NVA could hoard supplies until the American pressure lifted. 

Airpower could do little or nothing to change this equation.56 And still the 

problem of sanctuary remained and would continue even when the nature 

of the war changed after 1968. 

Pacification and Ground Incursions 

From the outset of the war, some Americans had suggested an approach that focused first on defeating the insurgency in South Vietnam. 

They saw the war as a struggle for the hearts and minds of the people in 

the South, a struggle that the communists were winning.57 By the time the 

Americans entered the war in large numbers, the Vietcong had gained de 

facto control of large areas within the South. They used these areas as resupply and staging points for operations throughout the country. Some of 

the larger base areas were in the north near Khe Sanh and west of Hue, in 

the central plateau southwest of Pleiku, dotted around Saigon in the south, 

and in the extreme southern tip of the country. 

The communists enjoyed this success in the South in large part because they employed terror techniques on the population. They eliminated 

resistance in villages through intimidation and brutal violence. In his study 

of the Ho Chi Minh trail, John Prados describes how the Vietcong dealt 

with the opposition from local landlords early on in the war: “The landlords were beheaded as an example to others. After that, the Viet Cong 

could come and go as they pleased....”58 At the same time, Vietcong units 

regularly threw grenades into crowds and vehicles, fired small arms into 

villages at night, assassinated and kidnapped village leaders and teachers, 

and burned down sections of villages. The Americans estimated that in 

1965 alone over 12,000 civilians were kidnapped or killed as part of some 

36,000 attacks on the Vietnamese people.59 It did not help that early on 

in the war, the Americans and the various inefficient South Vietnamese 

regimes did little to earn the trust of the village population in the South. Instead of protecting them from the Vietcong, they rounded up the villagers 

into concentration camps called strategic hamlets, or did great damage to 

villages with indiscriminate or unobserved bombing or bombardment.60 

The Tet Offensive and the follow up Vietcong assaults of the summer 

of 1968 gave the allies a new chance in the war against the insurgents. 

The bloody battles nearly destroyed the Vietcong in the South, and they 

provided the justification and motivation for the South Vietnamese to be30 
gin a general mobilization.61 That summer, General Creighton Abrams replaced Westmoreland as the commander of MACV. Abrams appreciated 

the chance he had to defeat the insurgency from within, and working with 

Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and the CIA’s William Colby, he developed the transition away from search and destroy missions toward clear 

and hold efforts. The idea was to pacify the countryside, weed out local 

insurgents, protect the villagers, and thereby deny the communists sanctuary within South Vietnam. The political situation at home demanded that 

the Americans begin to withdraw ground troops from Vietnam, so this 

pacification program became a part of the larger effort of turning the war 

over to the South Vietnamese called Vietnamization.62 

To a large degree, Abrams and the Americans were successful in the 

effort to clear South Vietnam of communist sanctuaries, but as they did 

so, it became all the more apparent how much the communists were relying on their rear area bases in Laos and Cambodia.63 In 1969 and 1970, 

Vietcong and NVA units in South Vietnam either operated at only a small 

fraction of their authorized strength, or they were forced to retreat back to 

Laotian and Cambodian sanctuaries. Yet Hanoi continued to supply these 

units and launch attacks from across the border as the American air attacks 

had little effect on these communist efforts.64 So even as the counterinsurgency showed signs of succeeding, the Americans felt compelled to make 

yet another attempt to destroy the sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos.65 

For years, American military commanders on the ground in Vietnam 

wanted to take the war to the communists. They would have preferred to 

send ground troops into North Vietnam and end the war by defeating the 

communists at home. At the very least, they wanted regular ground troops 

to have the ability to pursue the NVA and Vietcong into their sanctuaries 

in Laos and Cambodia.66 The possibility of Chinese or Soviet intervention 

made such moves impossible for most of the war. The situation changed 

in 1970. That year President Richard Nixon gave the okay for American 

troops to cross into Cambodia. 

As a candidate for the presidency in 1968, Nixon had promised peace 

with honor in Vietnam. True to his word as president, he facilitated the 

withdrawal of American forces. But keeping honor meant being willing to 

expand the war even as the troops withdrew. In the spring of 1970, the unstable political situation in Cambodia had led the NVA to try to take over 

the country. Cambodia was troublesome enough as a covert communist 

sanctuary; the United States could not tolerate the neighboring country 

31 
becoming an open proxy to the North Vietnamese. In April, the order came 

down to go after the communist sanctuaries along the border in Cambodia.67 

The attacks began in late April 1970 with ARVN units going in first. 

Although by orders the allies could only penetrate to a depth of roughly 20 

miles, the incursions resembled a general offensive in that they extended all 

along the Cambodian border. Beginning in early May, the US 4th Infantry 

Division and ARVN forces made smaller assaults across the border from 

the central highlands area, roughly in the vicinity of Pleiku. These units 

captured some NVA supply caches and fought a number of small clashes. 

In the south in the Mekong delta region, ARVN units supported by riverine 

vessels of the US and Vietnamese navies advanced as far as Phnom Penh 

and repatriated tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees’ Psychological 

operations also played a role. American planes dropped leaflets over Cambodia to inform communist troops “the hitherto so-called ‘sanctuaries’ of 

yours on Cambodian territories are being levelled [sic] by massive operations of the combined Vietnamese-American forces.” Another leaflet announced “save yourself from this onslaught—surrender!”69 

The primary allied assaults came in the center, and were aimed at the 

alleged locations of larger NVA caches—and the supposed location of 

COSVN—in the areas along the border known as Fishhook, Dog’s Head, 

and Parrot’s Beak west and northwest of Saigon. A mixed American and 

ARVN force moved into the area of Parrot’s Beak and found and destroyed 

a small communist base, but the area was not as essential to NVA activities 

as the Dog’s Head and southern portion of the Fishhook farther north. 

On the morning of 1 May 1970, bombing by B-52s and an extended 

artillery barrage prepared the way for the attack. ARVN airborne battalions landed in the Fishhook to try to cut off NVA retreats. In the meantime, 

a mixed collection of American cavalry, armored cavalry, and mechanized 

infantry called Task Force Shoemaker moved in from the south. The communists did retreat, taking significant casualties in the process, and the 

American advance sealed off the Fishhook.70 The allies began looking for 

supply caches and found a major base that had belonged to the North Vietnamese 7th Division: 

Covering more than 1.2 square miles, the base contained over 

five hundred structures, many of them storage houses filled 

with more than two hundred tons of rice. Bamboo walkways 

linked rows of barracks with a sprawling hospital, mess 

32 
Map 2. The 1970 Cambodia Incursions. 

compound, and a training area. There was even a sunken clay 

swimming pool surrounded by bamboo lounge chairs. Awed 

by the complex’s sheer size, troopers quickly dubbed it “The 

City.”71 

Over the next several days, the Americans transported over 200 tons 

of weapons, ammunition, mines, explosives, and rice back to Vietnam, and 

destroyed another 40 tons of materiel rather than leave it behind.72 

33 
On 6 May 2d Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division attacked north of the Fishhook. From the onset, their mission was to find more communist supply 

caches. They succeeded. On 8 May, American troops fought a sharp action with the NVA just a few miles from the border. The communists were 

defending another enormous supply depot—even bigger than The City. 

This one became known as Rock Island East, and it held over 300 tons of 

supplies and weapons, including Soviet-made artillery shells and a few 

trucks. On 23 May, the Americans found another large depot; only this one 

consisted of 59 buried bunkers filled with weapons and ammunition.73 

The 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division entered Cambodia south of 

the Fishhook on 6 May. They quickly found and destroyed an NVA base 

area and left by 14 May. On 9 May 2d Brigade, 25th Infantry Division attacked the southern portion of the Fishhook. Their assignment, in part, was 

to find and destroy COSVN headquarters, a high profile target that had 

been missed in the Task Force Shoemaker assault. Intelligence indicated 

that the headquarters was to the east of 2d Brigade’s initial assault route. 

Expecting a stiff fight, the Americans sent in B-52s to prepare the way. 

The Americans encircled the NVA positions and closed the trap. Everyone 

at MACV knew that COSVN was not based in some sort of permanent 

facility, and indeed a month earlier most of COSVN had retreated to positions farther inside Cambodia. The Americans overran the remnants of the 

headquarters, destroying staff sections such as the postal and finance units, 

but not all of COSVN.74 

Afterward, the NVA withdrew deeper into Cambodia, and the allies 

swept the border areas clean of supply caches. With monsoon season approaching and the 30 June presidential deadline for withdrawal looming, 

the Americans left Cambodia. Roughly, 34,000 South Vietnamese troops 

stayed on for a few weeks after the Americans departed. Altogether, the 

two months of incursions involved roughly 60,000 South Vietnamese and 

50,000 American troops. Estimates vary, but the allies probably killed at 

least 10,000 NVA and Vietcong. They captured or destroyed tens of thousands of weapons, 1,800 tons of ammunition, over 8,000 tons of rice, and 

over a million pages of documents. Roughly, 1,200 allied troops died in 

the effort, including over 400 Americans. The attacks hurt communist morale, cut off the Sinahouk Trail, and set back NVA efforts on the border for 

months, but did not deny the NVA sanctuary altogether in Cambodia, nor 

did the attacks deal with the Ho Chi Minh Trail and sanctuaries in Laos.75 

American forces continued to withdraw from South Vietnam after the 

incursion, but the South Vietnamese, bolstered by the success of the attacks 

34 
into Cambodia and warned of an impending NVA offensive, launched a 

more ambitious cross border attack early the next year. This time the target 

was Laos, and all of the ground forces would be South Vietnamese—supported by a massive American logistics effort.76 Codenamed LAM SON 

719, the plan was to attack west from the area of Khe Sanh toward the key 

Laotian road junction at Tchepone. From there they would temporarily 

cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, destroy communist supply depots in the area, 

and then return to South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese sent in their best 

and most seasoned units, including the 1st Infantry Division, the airborne 

division, the 1st Armored Brigade Task Force, the marine division, and 

ranger units. 

On 8 February 1971, the South Vietnamese began their attack with 

armored units leading the way. At first, the ARVN units made significant 

progress down Route 9, the rough road leading to Tchepone. However, 

the NVA knew they were coming and had prepared accordingly. By then 

the communist operation in Laos had been going on for more than a decade, and they had become very good at their job. The South Vietnamese 

faced a conventional army of at least 40,000 men, including multiple armored units with Soviet tanks and well-developed antiaircraft positions. 

Sustained NVA attacks, particularly along the northern portion of the incursion corridor, stalled the offensive about halfway to the objective by 18 

February. The South Vietnamese settled down into brutal fighting, with the 

Americans flying air support. 

In early March, ARVN renewed its efforts to reach Tchepone—this 

time by using American helicopters to airlift ARVN infantry to a series of 

linked landing zones all the way to the objective. Within a few days, they 

reached the outskirts of the city and inflicted heavy casualties on the NVA. 

Nevertheless, communist counterattacks picked up all along the ARVN 

salient and the South Vietnamese decided to withdraw from Laos earlier 

than planned. Even though most South Vietnamese units fought hard, the 

withdrawal was not sufficiently planned, and it turned into a near-rout. 

Americans continued to provide air support, and almost all of the ARVN 

forces were out of Laos by the end of March.77 

Even though ARVN took heavy casualties, its armor and artillery underperformed, it left behind too much equipment and materiel during the 

retreat, and some of the South Vietnamese leadership bickered and acted 

indecisively, LAM SON 719 was not a total failure. The South Vietnamese 

troops fought hard and, with the aid of American air power, inflicted serious damage on the NVA in Laos. Communist operations in South Vietnam 

35 
slowed significantly for the rest of 1971.78 But the operation, like the effort in Cambodia the year before, had neither permanently cut the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail nor denied the communists refuge across the border. In the end, 

the relatively limited Cambodian and Laotian incursions of 1970-1971 did 

less to solve the problem than to show the extent of NVA operations and 

sanctuaries across the borders.79 

Ending the War 

By the end of 1971, there were only 139,000 US troops left in South 

Vietnam; with another 70,000 slated to leave by 1 May. In the meantime, 

the communists stepped up their efforts in Laos and Cambodia.80 As the 

insurgency collapsed in South Vietnam and the Americans withdrew, the 

communists increasingly used their cross border sanctuaries to prepare 

for a conventional invasion. The changing nature of the war could be seen 

in the aid to the communists. Prior to 1970, China provided the North 

Vietnamese with only a handful of tanks and automobiles, but after 1970, 

Chinese supplies increasingly included weapons for conventional warfare. 

The years between 1970 and 1972 saw a drastic increase in the numbers of 

tanks, artillery pieces, and automobiles provided by the Chinese.81 In turn, 

the North Vietnamese managed to get many of these weapons down the 

Ho Chi Minh trail into Laos and Cambodia. 

In the spring of 1972, they put those resources to use. NVA general 

Vo Nguyen Giap believed that the NVA’s armor and artillery superiority would prove decisive in his planned conventional invasion to end the 

war. As he said in a speech in December 1971, “Victory is in sight.”82 The 

Easter Offensive began on 30 March 1972 with a massive attack across 

the DMZ. Two other assaults followed right behind, one in the central 

highlands initiated from southern Laos and northern Cambodia, and another out of the Fishhook region of the Cambodian border. By the end of 

the battle, Giap would commit almost all of his forces, including over 11 

divisions and nearly 30 independent infantry and artillery regiments. 

In the north, ARVN, American advisers, and heavy American aerial 

bombing and naval bombardment were successful in slowing the communist advance so that it did not take Quang Tri City until 1 May. In a bloody 

campaign, the South Vietnamese held the line before Hue, launched a 

counteroffensive, and recaptured most of Quang Tri province by the end of 

the summer. Similar campaigns were fought throughout the country. After 

initial setbacks, ARVN maintained control of the key cities of Kontum in 

the central highlands and Ap Bac northwest of Saigon. Counteroffensives 

36 
recaptured much, though not all, of the lost territory. In all cases, heavy 

American bombing—including the use of B-52s and newly designed laser-guided bombs—proved essential to the South Vietnamese effort. The 

Easter Offensive represented a massive loss for the NVA. They suffered 

at least 100,000 casualties, including at least 40,000 killed. In addition, 

they lost all manner of weapons and depleted their supply reserves. Even 

General Giap relinquished his command.83 

The aftermath of the offensive saw a renewed effort by the Americans 

to complete their withdrawal. By the end of the year, the major parties in 

the war negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, which were signed in January 

1973. The Americans all but completed their withdrawal from South Vietnam by March, leaving only a handful of advisors and diplomats. Congress 

cut off American aid to South Vietnam in August. The North Vietnamese immediately renewed their efforts. Once again, they used the Laotian 

and Cambodian sanctuaries to rest and refit. They funneled supplies and 

men south and prepared to begin yet another attack on the South. In 1974, 

they launched a series of strategic raids throughout the South. Buoyed by 

the success of these raids, they launched a massive final offensive on 10 

March 1975. The largest attacks came from Laos and Cambodia. Without 

American support, ARVN collapsed. South Vietnam fell by May.84 

The United States failed to preserve an independent noncommunist 

South Vietnam for several reasons. The Americans leaned too heavily on 

technology, hoping that airpower would coerce the communists to give 

up the fight. American military commanders on the ground early on did 

not appreciate the nature of the communist war, and tended to focus too 

heavily on the conventional aspects. They came around to the insurgency 

later, and then did not focus enough on the conventional threats. The communists won the war of public opinion, so that after Tet the war became a 

waiting game until the Americans left. For their part, the South Vietnamese improved but never developed a competent and corrupt-free government and military. 

But even if the Americans from the beginning had developed a sound 

strategy, understood the dimensions of the insurgent and conventional 

threats, fought an effective public opinion battle, and got the South Vietnamese to govern and fight with efficiency and alacrity, they still would 

have had to come to grips with the problem of transnational sanctuary in 

Laos and Cambodia. The communists took a long view of the war, both as 

an insurgency and a conventional affair. As long as they could rest, refit, 

and launch attacks from relatively secure sanctuaries, they could control 

37 
the pace of operations and maintain the ability to fight almost indefinitely. 

When asked in 1995 how the Americans could have won the war, former 

NVA colonel Bui Tin replied simply, “Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside 

Laos.”85 The communist war effort hinged on sanctuary—they could not 

have won without it. 

38 
Endnotes 

1. “USMACV Military Report, 31 Oct to 7 Nov 64,” Virtual Vietnam Archive, 

Texas Tech University, online at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu, accessed 2 March 

2006; Roger P. Fox, Air Base Defense in the Republic of Vietnam, 1961-1973 

(Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1979), 1, 9, 16-17; Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983), 401-403; and William C. 

Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 88-89. 

2. “Vietnam Checklist for the DCI,” 2 November 1962, Virtual Vietnam Archive, accessed 2 March 2006. 

3. Taylor to Department of State, 1 November 1964, Foreign Relations of the 

United States [FRUS]: Vietnam, 1964, vol. I (Washington DC: GPO, 1992), 873. 

4. Worries about repeated attacks on the order of Bien Hoa and the appropriate 

American response are spelled out in multiple areas. See FRUS, Vietnam 1964, 

vol. I, 873-888; The Pentagon Papers (Gravel Edition), vol. III (Boston: Beacon 

Press, 1971), 587-604; U.S. Grant Sharp, Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978), 48-49; Bruce Palmer, The 25-Year 

War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 35-38; Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 

1986), 97-99; Philip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History: 1946-1975 

(Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1988), 323-346; and George C. Herring, America’s 

Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, 3d ed. (New York: 

McGraw Hill, 1996), 137-150. 

5. “Infiltration Study, Viet Cong Forces, Republic of Vietnam,” 31 October 

1964, FRUS: Vietnam, 1964, vol. I, 864-872. 

6. “Operations Report–Lessons Learned, 3-66–The Pleiku Campaign,” 4 May 

1966, Virtual Vietnam Archive, accessed 8 March 2005. 

7. Ibid., “After Action Report, Ia Drang Valley Operation, 1st Battalion, 7th 

Cavalry,” 9 December 1965, in author’s possession; George C. Herring, “The 1st 

Cavalry and the Ia Drang Valley, 18 October-24 November 1965,” in America’s 

First Battles, 1776-1965, eds. Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 300-326; John A. Cash, “Fight at the 

Ia Drang,” in Seven Firefights in Vietnam, eds. John A. Cash, John Albright, and 

Allan W. Sandstrum, (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1985), 3-40; 

John M. Carland, Combat Operations: Stemming the Tide, May 1965 to October 1966 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2000), 113-150; Harold 

G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once...And Young (New 

York: Random House, 1992). 

8. Randall N. Briggs, “Compound Warfare in the Vietnam War,” in Compound 

Warfare: That Fatal Knot, edited by Thomas M. Huber, (Fort Leavenworth, KS: 

US Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2002), 221-265. 

39 
9. John M. Gates, “People’s War in Vietnam,” Journal of Military History, 54 

(July 1990), 326-330. 

10. This simple statement of American strategy in Vietnam was spelled out 

on 17 March 1968 in National Security Action Memorandum 288. Herring, 

America’s Longest War, 130-131. John Gates makes the salient point that South 

Vietnam, “was not a state to be defended but a state to be created.” Gates, 

“People’s War,” 331. See also William J. Duiker, Sacred War: Nationalism and 

Revolution in a Divided Vietnam (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995), 95-137. The 

literature on the origins of the war is extensive and beyond the scope of this 

study. One excellent recent study is Frederik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost 

Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of 

California Press, 1999). 

11. Alexander S. Cochran, “American Planning for Ground Combat in Vietnam, 1952-1965,” Parameters, 14 (Summer 1984), 63-69. 

12. Herring, America’s Longest War, 163-164; Ilya V. Gaiduk, “The Vietnam 

War and Soviet-American Relations, 1964-1973: New Russian Evidence,” Cold 

War International History Project Bulletin, 6-7 (Winter 1995-1996), 250-252. 

13. Qiang Zhai, “Beijing and the Vietnam Conflict, 1964-1965: New Chinese Evidence,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 6-7 (Winter 

1995-1996), 234. See also Chen Jian, “China’s Involvement in the Vietnam War, 

1964-1969,” China Quarterly, 142 (June 1995), 359. 

14. Qiang, “Beijing and the Vietnam Conflict,” 234; Chen, “China’s Involvement,” 358-364; and Xiaoming Zhang, “The Vietnam War, 1964-1969: A Chinese Perspective,” Journal of Military History, 60 (October 1996), 732-736. 

15. Over 150,000 Chinese antiaircraft artillery troops joined the effort. Chen, 

“China’s Involvement,” 364-377; Xiaoming, “Vietnam War,” 755-756. During 

the major American portion of the war, from 1965 to 1973, over 320,000 Chinese troops of one sort or another served in North Vietnam. Qiang, “Beijing and 

the Vietnam Conflict,” 236. 

16. Chen, “China’s Involvement,” 379. At points, Beijing actually took supplies 

away from their own army to give them to Hanoi. Xiaoming, “Vietnam War,” 

737. 

17. On the Vietminh use of Chinese sanctuaries in the French Indochina War 

see Fall, Street Without Joy, passim; Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: 

The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (New York: De Capo Press, 1966), passim; Ronald 

H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941-1960 (Washington, DC: 

Center of Military History, 1983), 123-126; and Charles P. Biggio, “Let’s Learn 

From the French,” Military Review, 46 (October 1966), 33-34. 

18. John Prados, The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War 

(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999), 9-86, 373-374; Norman B. Hannah, 

The Key to Failure: Laos and the Vietnam War (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 

40 
1987); John M. Shaw, The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and 

America’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 5-10; 

Gregory T. Banner, “The War for the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” Master’s Thesis, US 

Army Command and General Staff College, 1993, 9-25; John T. Correll, “The 

Ho Chi Minh Trail,” Air Force Magazine, 88 (November 2005), 62-68; Michael 

Lee Lanning and Dan Cragg, Inside the VC and the NVA (New York: Ivy Books, 

1992), 74-156; Douglas Pike, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam (Novato, CA: 

Presidio Press, 1986), 42-49; Richard L. Stevens, “A History of the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail and the Role of Nature in the War in Viet Nam,” Ph.D. dissertation, 

(University of Hawaii, 1990), 5-180; Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir 

(San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 127-129, 169; Christian 

G. Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (New York: 

Viking, 2003), 101-106. An early description of the trail can be found in Edgar 

O’Ballance, “The Ho Chi Minh Trail,” Army Quarterly and Defense Journal, 94 

(April 1967), 105-110. It should be noted that COSVN did not require a massive 

structural headquarters. See Appy, Patriots, 382-383. 

19. Quoted in Prados, Blood Road, 18-19. A particularly clear statement of 

the problem came from Colonel Edwin F. Black in 1965, “Advisory Warfare 

vs. Sanctuary Warfare,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 91 (February 1965), 

34-42. 

20. Prados, Blood Road, 19. 

21. Averell Harriman quoted in Michael E. Haas, Apollo’s Warriors: United 

States Air Force Special Operations during the Cold War (Maxwell Air Force 

Base, AL: Air University Press, 1997), 175. 

22. Shortly after the Geneva Accords, President John F. Kennedy met with 

several key advisers who informed him that the Vietnamese communists had no 

intention of withdrawing their troops. “Meeting on Laos,” 28 September 1962, 

in Timothy Naftali and Philip Zelikow, eds., The Presidential Recordings: John 

F. Kennedy, The Great Crises, Volume Two (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), 

178-181. Americans and their allies would continue to gather information on 

North Vietnamese violations of Laotian neutrality. See United States Intelligence 

Board, “North Vietnamese Violations of the Geneva Agreements on Laos,” 24 

June 1964, Virtual Vietnam Archive, accessed 9 March 2006, and the Laotian 

“White Book on the Violations of the Geneva Accords of 1962 by the Government of North Vietnam,” 1968, Virtual Vietnam Archive, accessed 9 March 

2005. 

23. Background on Army Special Forces can be found in Charles M. Simpson, 

Inside the Green Berets: The First Thirty Years (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 

1983), 11-75; Richard H. Shultz, The Secret War Against Hanoi: Kennedy’s and 

Johnson’s Use of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam (New 

York: HarperCollins, 1999), 1-8; and Francis J. Kelly, U.S. Army Special Forces, 

41 
Vietnam Studies, (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1973), 3-18. 

Useful information on Taylor and Kennedy is in Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and 

Plowshares (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972); John M. Taylor, General Maxwell 

Taylor: The Sword and the Pen (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 192-258; Douglas Kinnard, The Certain Trumpet: Maxwell Taylor and the American Experience in Vietnam (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1991). 

24. For details see Kenneth Conboy, Shadow War: The CIA’s Secret War in 

Laos (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1995), 1-114; Shelby L. Stanton, Green 

Berets at War: U.S. Army Special Forces in Southeast Asia, 1956-1975 (Novato, 

CA: Presidio Press, 1985), 16-43; Simpson, Inside the Green Berets, 87-94; and 

Shultz, Secret War, 13-15. 

25. “Outline History of the 5th SF Gp, Participation in the CIDG Program, 

1961-1970,” Virtual Vietnam Archive, accessed 6 March 2006; Jeffrey J. Clarke, 

Advice and Support: The Final Years, 1965-1973 (Washington, DC: Center of 

Military History, 1988), 69-74; Stanton, Green Berets, 35-86; and Kelly, U.S. 

Army Special Forces, 19-53, 182-193. 

26. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara called these operations “remarkably effective.” See Kenneth Conboy, Shadow War: The CIA’s Secret War in 

Laos (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1995), 115-119. The CIA gave up most of its 

role in the border security issue in November 1963. Stanton, Green Berets, 65. 

27. William Rosenau, Special Operations Forces and Elusive Enemy Ground 

Targets: Lessons from Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War (Santa Monica, CA: 

RAND, 2001), 8-10; and John L. Plaster, SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s 

Commandos in Vietnam (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 27-28. 

28. SOG also took over the CIA’s role in such operations. Plaster, SOG, 22-28; 

Shultz, Secret War, 31-49. 

29. Rosenau, Special Operations, 18-19. 

30. Shultz, Secret War, 65-68; Plaster, SOG, 34; Rosenau, Special Operations, 

17-19; Clarke, Final Years, 195-207; and Robert L. Turkoly-Joczik, “Secrecy 

and Stealth: Cross-Border Reconnaissance in Indochina,” Military Intelligence 

Professional Bulletin, 25 (July-September 1999), 47-52. 

31. For a journalistic account of the life of forward air controllers flying over 

Laos, see Christopher Robbins, The Ravens: The Men Who Flew in America’s 

Secret War in Laos (New York: Crown Publishers, 1987). 

32. Shultz, Secret War, 204-257; Conboy, Shadow War, 377-378; Prados, Blood 

Road, passim; Plaster, SOG, passim; and Rosenau, Special Operations, 17-24. 

33. John Crerar quoted in Rosenau, Special Operations, 25. 

34. Ibid., 22. 

35. Henry G. Gole, “Shadow Wars and Secret Wars: Phoenix and MACVSOG,” Parameters, 21 (Winter 1991-92), 104-105. 

42 
36. As one historian has argued, most American airpower advocates “assumed 

that in terms of airpower, protracted revolutionary warfare was just conventional 

warfare writ small.” Dennis M. Drew, “U.S. Airpower Theory and the Insurgent 

Challenge: A Short Journey to Confusion,” Journal of Military History, 62 (October 1998), 815. See also Earl H. Tilford, Crosswinds: The Air Force’s Setup 

in Vietnam (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1993), 3-64; 

William M. Momyer, Airpower in Three Wars (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: 

Air University Press, 2003); and Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Airpower: The 

American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989), 1-44. 

37. Jacob Van Staaveren, Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1960-1968 (Washington, DC: Center for Air Force History, 1993), 23-44. 

38. Ibid., 61. 

39. Ibid., 107-253. The B-26K was redesignated as the A-26 because US Air 

Force bombers could not fly out of Thailand. No changes were made to the 

plane. See also Momyer, Airpower, 193-235, and Jack S. Ballard, Development 

and Employment of Fixed Wing Gunships, 1962-1972 (Washington, DC: Office 

of Air Force History, 1982), 28-76. 

40. Westmoreland, Soldier Reports, 196. 

41. Statistics drawn from the appendices in Van Staaveren, Interdiction, 297­

301. 

42. O’Ballance, “Ho Chi Minh Trail,” 109. 

43. John Prados and Ray William Stubbe, Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe 

Sanh (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991); Bernard C. Nalty, Airpower and the 

Fight for Khe Sanh (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1986); Robert 

L. Pisor, The End of the Line: The Siege of Khe Sanh (New York: Norton, 1982). 

44. Ronald H. Spector, After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (New York: 

Free Press, 1993), 1-25; Herring, America’s Longest War, 203-228; Don Oberdorfer, Tet! (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971); Marc Jason Gilbert and William Head, eds., The Tet Offensive (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996). 

45. For example, the US Army issued a field manual (FM) on denial barriers in 

1968 and one on border security and anti-infiltration in 1972, and both had been 

influenced by the French experience and the difficulties of maintaining the DMZ 

in Korea. See Daniel P. Bolger, Scenes from an Unfinished War: Low-Intensity 

Conflict in Korea, 1966-1969, Leavenworth Paper No. 19, (Fort Leavenworth, 

KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 1991), 44-47; US Department of the Army, 

FM 31-10, Denial Operations and Barriers (Washington, DC: GPO, September 

1968); and US Department of the Army, FM 31-55, Border Security/Anti-Infiltration Operations (Washington, DC: GPO, March 1972). 

46. Paul Dickson, The Electronic Battlefield (Bloomington: Indiana University 

Press, 1976), 20-52; Peter W. Brush, “The Story Behind the McNamara Line,” 

Vietnam (February 1996), 18-24; George Weiss, “Battle for Control of the Ho 

43 
Chi Minh Trail,” Armed Forces Journal, 108 (15 February 1971), 18-22; Van 

Staaveren, Interdiction, 255-283; Richard S. Greeley, “Stringing the McNamara 

Line,” Naval History, 11 (July/August 1997), 60-61; and US Congress, Senate 

Armed Forces Committee, Report of the Electronic Battlefield Program. 92d 

Congress, 1st Session (Washington, DC: GPO, 1971), 1-8. 

47. Brush, “The Story,” 21. 

48. Spector, After Tet, 222-231; Gary L. Telfer, et al., U.S. Marines in Vietnam: 

Fighting the North Vietnamese, 1967 (Washington, DC: USMC History and 

Museums Division, 1984), 86-95, 227, 242. 

49. Report of the Electronic Battlefield, 3-5; Dickson, Electronic Battlefield, 

passim; Weiss, “Battle for Control,” 20-22; Van Staaveren, Interdiction, 267­

283. 

50. Bernard C. Nalty, The War Against the Trucks: Aerial Interdiction in 

Southern Laos (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 

2005), passim; Herman J. Gilster, The Air War in Southeast Asia: Case Studies of Selected Campaigns (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 

1993), 13-73; Momyer, Airpower, 237-276; Ballard, Development of Fixed Wing 

Gunships, 77-248; Tilford, Crosswinds, 108-118, 124-127; Shaw, Cambodia 

Campaign, 13-14. 

51. Tilford, Crosswinds, xv, 109. 

52. Shaw, Cambodian Campaign, 11-12. 

53. Quoted in Prados, Blood Road, 102. 

54. Spector, After Tet, 301. See also Dickson, Electronic Battlefield, 90-99. 

55. Tang, Vietcong Memoir, 242. 

56. Nalty, War Against the Trucks, 291-303; Tilford, Crosswinds, 114-116; 

Prados, Blood Road, passim; Banner, “War for the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” 59-61; 

Appy, Patriots, 102. 

57. Edward Lansdale, Harold K. Johnson, and John Paul Vann are just a few of 

the prominent individuals who wanted to focus on pacification first. See Office 

of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam, 2 vols., (Department of 

the Army, 1966); Lewis Sorley, “To Change a War: General Harold K. Johnson 

and the PROVN Study,” Parameters, 28 (Spring 1998), 93-109; Lewis Sorley, 

Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command 

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998); Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 

1988); and Cecil B. Currey, Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1988), 259-282. 

58. Prados, Blood Road, 21. 

59. United States Mission in Vietnam, “Viet Cong Use of Terror,” March 1967, 

Virtual Vietnam Archive, accessed 2 March 2006. See also Guenter Lewy, 

44 
America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 272-279. 

60. Karnow, Vietnam, 231-239, 255-258, 323-324; Lewy, America in Vietnam, 

passim; James M. Higgins, “The Misapplication of the Malayan Counterinsurgency Model to the Strategic Hamlet Program,” Master’s thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 2001. 

61. There is some debate as to the extent and permanence of the damage to the 

Vietcong, but most observers agree that the battles of 1968 negatively affected 

the insurgency, especially until the American withdrawal in 1973. NVA officer 

Bui Tin said in an interview in 1995 that “our forces in the South were nearly 

wiped out by all the fighting in 1968.” “How North Vietnam Won the War,” Wall 

Street Journal (3 August 1995), A8. See also Spector, After Tet, 310-316; Gates, 

“People’s War,” 336-344; Peter Brush, “The Significance of Local Communist 

Forces In Post-Tet Vietnam,” online at http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/central/brush/LocalForces.htm, accessed 27 February 2006; Lewis Sorley, A Better 

War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in 

Vietnam (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 12-15. 

62. Pacification included a variety of programs, including the Army’s Civil 

Operations, Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS), the Marine’s 

Combined Action Program (CAP), the Accelerated Pacification Program, and 

the PHOENIX program for eliminating Vietcong leadership. The literature on 

this aspect of the war is developing. See Sorley, Better War, passim; Lewis 

Sorley, ed., Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968-1972 (Lubbock, TX: 

Texas Tech University Press, 2004); James H. Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam: 

How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War (Lawrence: University Press 

of Kansas, 2004), 5-58, 87-93; Richard A. Hunt, Pacification: The American 

Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and Minds (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995); 

Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1982); Richard J. Macak, “The CORDS 

Pacification Program: An Operational Level Campaign Plan in Low Intensity 

Conflict,” SAMS Monograph, (Fort Leavenworth, KS, May 1989); Clarke, 

Final Years, passim; Thomas W. Scoville, Reorganizing for Pacification Support 

(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1982); Tran Dinh Tho, Pacification (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1980); Keith F. Kopets, “The 

Combined Action Program: Vietnam,” Military Review, 82 (July-August 2002), 

78-81; Robert W. Komer, Impact of Pacification on Insurgency in South Vietnam 

(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1970); Frank L. Jones, “Blowtorch: Robert Komer 

and the Making of Vietnam Pacification Policy,” Parameters, 35 (Autumn 

2005), 103-118; Erwin R. Brigham, “Pacification Measurement,” Military 

Review, 50 (May 1970), 47-55; Cassidy, “Back to the Street,” 73-83; Timothy J. 

Lomperis, “Giap’s Dream, Westmoreland’s Nightmare,” Parameters, 18 (June 

1988), 18-32; Edward P. Metzner, More Than a Soldier’s War: Pacification 

45 
in Vietnam (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1995); Dale 

Andrade, Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990); Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: 

The CIA’s Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong (Annapolis, MD: Naval 

Institute Press, 1997). 

63. There is some debate about the degree of success and the damage done to 

the Vietcong in these years. See, for example, Krepinevich, Army in Vietnam, 

254-257, and Lewy, America in Vietnam, passim. Most of the studies cited in 

the previous note argue that pacification was working to one degree or another. 

Even some skeptics have noted the decline in southern support for the Vietcong 

after 1968, including Stanley Karnow, Vietnam, 601-603, and Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam (New York: 

Random House, 1983), 527. See also Davidson Vietnam at War, 633-635. 

64. Shaw, Cambodian Campaign, 20-24. 

65. The continued attacks compelled one Army officer to revive the idea of a 

barrier, only this time the line would extend along the entire border. George M. 

Shuffer, “An Appropriate Response,” Military Review, 49 (December 1969), 

91-96. 

66. For example see Charles F. Brower, “Strategic Reassessment in Vietnam: 

The Westmoreland ‘Alternate Strategy’ of 1967-1968,” Naval War College 

Review, 44 (Spring 1991), 20-51. A contemporary statement of the problem was 

Stefan T. Possony, “Battle, No Longer the Payoff?” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 96 (September 1970), 33-37. 

67. For the background on the campaign and Nixon’s decision, including 

discussions of smaller ARVN cross border missions in April 1970, see Shaw, 

Cambodian Campaign, 23-62; Keith W. Nolan, Into Cambodia: Spring Campaign, Summer Offensive, 1970 (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1990), 3-82; J.D. 

Coleman, Incursion: From America’s Chokehold on the NVA Lifelines to the 

Sacking of the Cambodian Sanctuaries (New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 

1991), 1-220; Dale Andrade, “Crossing the Line: Assault Into Cambodia,” Military History Quarterly 13 (Winter 2001), 22-23; Tran Dinh Tho, The Cambodian 

Incursion (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1980), 1-50. 

68. The American vessels stopped at the 20-mile limit. Shaw, Cambodian Campaign, 145-148; Tho, Cambodian Incursion, 83-100. 

69. Leaflets: “Communist Cadre and Soldiers in Cambodia #1” and “Where 

Is Your Sanctuary Now?” May 1970, Virtual Vietnam Archive, accessed 12 

December 2005. 

70. Shaw, Cambodian Campaign, 63-79. 

71. Andrade, “Crossing the Line,” 26. 

72. Ibid., 26. A personal recollection of the incursion from a combat engineer is 

Michael V. Meadows, “Into the Lion’s Den,” Vietnam, (August 2005), 18-24. 

46 
73. Coleman, Incursion, 254-261; Nolan, Into Cambodia, 331-370; Plaster, 

SOG, 246-250. 

74. Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam, 67-86; Shaw, Cambodian Campaign, 105­

131; Nolan, Into Cambodia, 275-298. 

75. Sorley, Better War, 200-214; Shaw, Cambodian Campaign, 153-170; Tho, 

Cambodian Incursion, 171-175; Clarke, Final Years, 418-425. 

76. American pilots, helicopter and fixed wing, went along. American ground 

troops were to keep the supply line to the ARVN open in South Vietnam, in 

Operation DEWEY CANYON II. A solid summary of American efforts can be 

found in Richard K. Kolb, “Hitting the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” VFW, Veterans of 

Foreign Wars Magazine, 83 (February 1996), 33-38. More detailed accounts 

of the background and American role are Keith W. Nolan, Into Laos: the Story 

of Dewey Canyon II/Lam Son 719; Vietnam 1971 (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 

1986); Graham A. Cosmas and Terrence P. Murray, U.S. Marines in Vietnam: 

Vietnamization and Redeployment, 1970-1971 (Washington, DC: USMC History 

and Museums Division, 1986), 195-210; Jim E. Fulbrook, “Lam Son 719: Part 

I: Prelude to Air Assault,” U.S. Army Aviation Digest, 32 (June 1986), 2-15; 

Clarke, Final Years, 472-476. 

77. Nguyen Duy Hinh, Lam Son 719 (Washington, DC: Center of Military 

History, 1979); Jim E. Fulbrook, “Lam Son 719: Part II: The Battle,” U.S. Army 

Aviation Digest, 32 (July 1986), 34-45; Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam, 94­

121; Nolan, Into Laos, 103-155, 259-356; Sorley, Better War, 243-260; Nalty, 

War Against Trucks, 151-156. 

78. Cosmas and Murray, Vietnamization, 209-210; Nolan, Into Laos, 357­

363; Sorley, Better War, 261-271; Sorley, ed., Abrams Tapes, 542-608; Jim E. 

Fulbrook, “Lam Son 719: Part III: Reflections and Values,” U.S. Army Aviation 

Digest, 32 (August 1986), 3-13. 

79. Hannah, Key to Failure, 277-296. 

80. In April 1972, ARVN General Cao Van Vien acknowledged the progress 

being made in the counterinsurgency, and made yet another call for a barrier system along the Laotian and Cambodian borders. “Vietnam: What Next?” Military 

Review, 52 (April 1972), 22-30. 

81. Chen, “China’s Involvement,” 379; Xiaoming, “Vietnam War,” 738-739. 

82. Quoted in Lewis Sorley, “Courage and Blood: South Vietnam’s Repulse of 

the 1972 Easter Invasion,” Parameters, 29 (Summer 1999), 40. 

83. Dale Andrade, America’s Last Vietnam Battle: Halting Hanoi’s 1972 Easter 

Offensive (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001); Ngo Quang Truong, 

The Easter Offensive of 1972 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military 

History, 1980); Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam, 122-162; James H. Willbanks, 

The Battle of An Loc (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2005); James 

H. Willbanks, Thiet Giap! The Battle of An Loc (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat 

47 
Studies Institute Press, 1993) 1-71; A.J. C. Lavalle, ed., Airpower and the 1972 

Spring Invasion (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1985); Clarke, 

Final Years, 481-490; Sorley, “Courage and Blood,” 38-56; Sorley, Better War, 

318-342; Lam Quang Thi, The Twenty-Five Year Century: A South Vietnamese 

General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2001), 263-290. 

84. William E. Le Gro, Vietnam from Cease-Fire to Capitulation (Washington, 

DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1985); Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam, 163-276; Davidson, Vietnam at War, 705-794; Karnow, Vietnam, 650-670; 

Appy, Patriots, 461-469, 493-507; Thi, Twenty-Five Year Century, 291-398. 

85. “How North Vietnam Won,” A8. 

48 
Chapter2

Soviet–Afghan War
 

Shock 

The presidential family spent Christmas 1979 alone at Camp David, 

waking up early to exchange gifts. Even at the holidays, even at the site 

of his greatest diplomatic triumph the year before, events weighed heavy 

on Jimmy Carter’s mind. The Iranian hostage crisis—doomed to last 444 

days—had already gone on for an interminable six weeks. The White 

House Christmas tree, a staple of the joyous season, had been left unlit in 

solidarity with the sixty-six Americans detained by Iranian radicals. Budget disputes awaited the president’s return after the holidays. And to top 

it off, 1980 was an presidential election year, and Carter had to begin the 

arduous campaign to retain the White House.1 Those dark days were about 

to get darker. 

He was still at Camp David when the word came in two days later: the 

Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan. Alarmed, President Carter flew 

to the White House.2 That the Soviets had acted in Afghanistan was not a 

complete shock. The Soviets had been playing a significant role in Afghan 

affairs for years, and all during 1979 there were signs that they were about 

to step up their efforts. The shock came from the scale of the move.3

 As 

Carter later wrote, “In the past, Soviet leaders had not hesitated to use 

their own troops to maintain domination over the Warsaw Pact countries, 

or surrogate troops from Cuba and Vietnam to accomplish their ends elsewhere. However, this was the first time that they had used their troops to 

expand their sphere of influence since they had overthrown the government of Czechoslovakia in February 1948....”4 

In the midst of a presidency that was trying to forge peace and healing 

after the upheavals of Vietnam and Watergate, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was an unwelcome turn of events, to say the least. It would not 

go unanswered. In responding, the United States would get to see the other 

side of the transnational sanctuary issue. The whole world would find out 

just how effective untouchable refuges and supply lines could be. 

49 
Background 

There is nothing particularly inviting about Afghanistan. It is a moderate size country—slightly smaller than the state of Texas—covered with 

high mountains in the east and desert plains in the west. It has hot summers 

and cold winters, shortages of fresh water, and horrible earthquakes.5

 It 

is divided demographically. Ethnically, Afghanistan’s 16 million people 

are a mix of Pashtuns in the south, Tajiks and Uzbeks in the north, and 

Hazara in the central mountains, and various others scattered throughout 

the country. These people speak a variety of languages, including Pashtu, 

Persian, and various Turkic languages, among many others. The country is 

primarily Sunni Muslim, but with a solid Shia minority. 

Afghanistan may not seem inviting, but location is everything. Afghanistan sits at the crossroads of central Asia, a meeting point of Middle 

Eastern, South Asian, East Asian, and Eurasian cultures. And so it has 

been a key trade and invasion route for countless world empires, from the 

Persians and Alexander the Great in antiquity through the Mongols in the 

middle ages to the British in modern times.6 

In the 20th century the newest empire to look toward Afghanistan and 

see opportunity was the communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 

Afghanistan sat just to the south of the Soviet Union, along the borders of 

the Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, a buffer state between Russian territory and the British empire in India. In the 

1920s the Soviets chased Muslim resistance fighters across the Afghan 

frontier as part of an effort to stabilize the border. It worked—Afghanistan 

remained neutral, even during World War II. After the war the communist 

strategy became more aggressive in the underdeveloped world, and the instability left by the partition of India in 1947 quickly brought Afghanistan 

back to the attention of Moscow. By the 1970s the Soviets had given the 

government of Afghanistan over $2 billion in military and economic aid in 

an effort to influence Afghan affairs. 

The 1970s saw more upheaval than usual in Afghanistan, as a 1973 

coup removed the royal family and set up a nominal republic. In 1978 another rebellion installed a communist regime in the capital of Kabul. But 

the communists fought among themselves, a series of rebellions began, the 

national military started to disintegrate, and violence broke out all over the 

country. To try to bring some stability to this state of affairs, in September 

1979 the Soviets helped a man named Hafizullah Amin take power in Afghanistan. Yet the situation continued to deteriorate. 

50 
MAP 3. SANCTUARIES ON THE AFGHANISTAN / PAKISTAN BORDER. 

By this time Moscow developed greater interest in their southern 

neighbor. It helped that Afghanistan was the path south and west, the route 

toward both the oil rich Middle East and the long-coveted warm water port 

on the Indian Ocean. Also, the geopolitical situation invited action. The 

United States, the Soviet Union’s great power rival, had just concluded its 

costly war in Vietnam. American presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, 

and Jimmy Carter had for the better part of the decade pursued the conciliatory policy of détente toward the USSR. Recent Soviet actions elsewhere in the developing world, for example Angola, had been met with 

indifference by the free world. And in 1979, the Iranian revolution and 

hostage crisis consumed much of America’s attention. With Afghanistan 

in chaos, the time for Soviet intervention was at hand. 

The Soviets already had thousands of advisors in country, but for much 

of the fall of 1979 they prepared to increase drastically their presence in 

Afghanistan. The process accelerated in late November and early Decem51 
ber, as the Russians brought troops to the borders. On Christmas Eve and 

Christmas Day, the invasion began in earnest, as the Soviets crossed the 

border and airlifted a large force into Kabul International Airport. On 27 

December KGB commandos led an assault on the presidential palace. 

Amin, the man who had allegedly invited the Soviet intervention, died 

in the attack. Babrak Kamal, Amin’s communist rival, became the new 

president. In the next few months, roughly 85,000 Soviet troops entered 

Afghanistan; by 1982 the number was nearly 115,000, where it would stay 

for most of the rest of the war.7 

Before the Soviets ever intervened, Afghanistan had descended into 

near-anarchy, with competing factions of all different stripes fighting it 

out for power, independence, and political and religious rights. The Soviet 

Union’s intervention made the Soviets directly responsible for bringing 

order to this chaos—they no longer could rely on aid to puppet leaders 

to keep Afghanistan stable and friendly. The intervention had another effect, with results that would take years to see. The hopelessly fractured 

regional, ethnic, and religious strands within the political body known as 

Afghanistan now had a common enemy—for the first time in a long time, 

the people of Afghanistan potentially had a reason to work together on 

something. But they could not do it on their own. 

The Resistances and Their Friends 

The communists ran into trouble right away. The Soviets and the 

Kabul government enforced radical reforms that challenged local traditions.8 The people of Afghanistan resented such coercion and reacted immediately. The various factions that had already been fighting throughout 

the country kept right on fighting, only many of them turned their efforts 

against the Russian troops. The Afghan army fell apart and thousands deserted. Conditions became so bad under Soviet control during this multiparty civil war that millions of Afghans fled the country. Refugees flooded 

into neighboring Pakistan and Iran, creating a humanitarian crisis in the 

border areas. The international community had to find a way to work with 

the Pakistanis and Iranians to prevent the deaths of millions.9 

To make matters even more confusing, there was no unity among the 

various anti-Soviet parties. In fact, it would be more precise to refer to 

multiple resistances against the Soviet regime, each driven by their own 

motivations. The individual groups came to be known collectively as the 

Mujahideen, but they divided along regional, ethnic, and religious lines 

into small groups to fight the Russians.10 Numbering at least in the hun52 
dreds, but more likely in the thousands, these smaller groups came under 

the leadership of local warlords or semi-independent commanders. Most 

of these groups had some connection with one of at least seven resistance 

parties, each based outside of Afghanistan. However, the parties never 

worked together in any real way and never provided any sort of coherent 

and unified strategy for the resistance groups.11 

By and large, the Mujahideen fought in small units of anywhere between 80 and 150 men, and each group followed its own course of action. 

There were some more developed and sizable resistance organizations. In 

the west, Ismael Khan led a large force of as many as 5,000 in Herat.12 But 

most of the larger resistance groups operated in the southern and eastern 

portions of Afghanistan. The most popular single figure among the resistance within Afghanistan was Ahmad Shah Massoud, an ethnic Tajik from 

the Panjshir valley, northeast of Kabul. At times during the Soviet-Afghan 

War, the so-called “Lion of Panjshir” commanded thousands of troops. 

His efforts consumed a great deal of Soviet attention throughout the fighting.13 

In some regions the resistance groups came under the influence of radical Islam. Shia fundamentalists, inspired by the Iranian revolution, made 

up one such group, but they remained relatively small. The Sunnis broke 

into even more factions, including fundamentalists and radical Islamists, 

and some of whom worked with other resistance groups. Abdurrab Rasul 

Sayyaf led another radical Sunni wing of the resistance, including some 

Wahhabis. This religious aspect of the Mujahideen meant that during the 

war Afghanistan became a magnet for the most radical true believers of 

the Muslim world. Devout outsiders flooded into the country, inspired by 

the chance to engage in a holy struggle against the atheistic, communist 

Soviets.14 

These Mujahideen shared a common enemy but never worked together in any meaningful way. However, for all their differences, many 

of these groups did have two vital things in common: the support of the 

wider world, and access to safe sanctuary and relatively easy supply across 

an international border. The international community almost as a whole 

condemned the Soviet invasion, and a few countries were prepared to offer direct aid to the resistances.15 Saudi Arabia gave monetary and some 

material assistance to some of the fighters, especially the radical Muslim 

groups led by Sayyaf. Acting independent of other powers, Saudi intelligence funneled huge amounts of money in the form of gold, cash, and 

checks to these Mujahideen, which they used to fund their war.16 Egypt 

53 
also played a role, giving Soviet-made weapons to the resistance and even 

going so far as to train Afghan resistance fighters on Egyptian territory.17 

Saudi and Egyptian assistance played a key role in sustaining the Mujahideen. 

The most comprehensive outside contribution to the resistance came 

from the Soviet Union’s great power rival, the United States. Even before 

the Soviet invasion, the CIA had been active on a small scale in the internecine fighting in Afghanistan. The Iranian revolution had destabilized 

the region, and the Americans did not want to see the Soviets take advantage of that instability to gain direct access to the Middle East and Indian 

Ocean. Earlier in 1979, President Carter approved a half million dollars 

for the CIA to spend in Afghanistan on propaganda, radio equipment, and 

medical supplies for some of the rebel groups.18 This increased focus on 

the region only grew after the December coup. 

President Carter took the invasion personally and acted decisively, especially considering his more restrained responses to earlier crises. Soviet 

actions triggered the announcement of the so-called Carter Doctrine, in 

which the president declared that “An attempt by any outside force to gain 

control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the 

vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be 

repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”19 Within days 

of the Soviet invasion, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski 

laid out the basic American strategy for the war in Afghanistan: “It is essential that Afghanistan’s resistance continues. This means more money as 

well as arms shipments to the rebels, and some technical advice.”20 

When it came to aiding the resistances, the Carter administration was 

as good as its word. One week after the invasion, the Americans began 

purchasing Soviet-made weapons from the Egyptians to give to the Mujahideen. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat later said, “The United States sent 

me airplanes and told me, please open your stores for us so that we can 

give the Afghans the armaments they need to fight, and I gave the armaments.”21 Likewise, the CIA bought thousands of .303 Lee Enfield rifles 

and RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade launchers from around the world to 

send to the guerillas. A careful student of the CIA effort in those early 

years described the Agency’s conception of its strategy in blunt terms: “to 

supply hundreds of thousands of rifles and tens of millions of bullets en 

masse to the guerillas and then sit back ... and watch.”22 

54 
For all the American enthusiasm about the opportunity to make the Soviets pay for their aggression, Brzezinski worried about the inherent weaknesses of the Mujahideen. He did not think they had much of a chance to 

expel the Soviets, and he explicitly compared the situation in Afghanistan 

in those early days of the rebellion to America’s war in Vietnam: 

The guerillas are badly organized and poorly led. They have no 

sanctuary, no organized army, and no central government—all 

of which North Vietnam had. They have limited foreign support, in contrast to the enormous amount of arms that flowed 

to the Vietnamese from both the Soviet Union and China. 

The Soviets are likely to act decisively, unlike the U.S. ... in 

Vietnam....23

Brzezinski’s point was clear: the guerrillas needed assistance, and in 

order for all of this outside aid to make a difference, it needed some way 

to get into Afghanistan. 

The Borders 

Afghanistan’s centralized location meant that it had long borders with 

multiple countries, which offered several opportunities to find transnational sanctuaries and supply lines. The question was which country would 

be most important. For obvious reasons they could not use the three Soviet 

republics. That left Iran, China, and Pakistan. 

Iran’s 550-mile shared border with Afghanistan made it impossible 

for the Iranians to stay out of the war entirely. Hundreds of thousands of 

Afghan refugees fled west into Iran at the start of the conflict. At several 

times during the fight, the Soviets chased resistance fighters to the western 

border, where the Mujahideen crossed over for protection. The revolutionary Iranians also felt some camaraderie toward the resistance, especially 

the more radical Shia Islamic groups. As a result Iran offered open sympathy, limited aid, training, and occasionally refuge to the Mujahideen fighting in western Afghanistan. 

Still, the Iranian role in the war remained limited, in part because the 

rebels did not focus the majority of their efforts in western Afghanistan 

where the open terrain made it more difficult to find shelter, but also because in 1980 Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Iranian territory. 

The long eight-year bloodletting known as the Iran-Iraq War held most of 

Iran’s attention during the Soviet-Afghan War. At the same time, the Iranians had limited resources, and the ayatollahs’ hostility toward the United 

55 
States precluded even an alliance of convenience with the majority resistance groups.24 Additionally, Soviet forays into Iran and diplomatic pressure on the ayatollahs convinced the Iranians to severely curtail resistance 

activities on their border.25 

Another country that barely bordered Afghanistan played a larger role 

in opposing the Soviet occupation. A small spit of land juts out from northeastern corner of Afghanistan, a corridor appended to the country by the 

British in the 19th century to ensure that no portion of Russian territory 

came into contact with India. The so-called Wakhan corridor served its 

purpose well, but had the side effect of connecting Afghanistan to China. 

This shared border, though less than 50 miles in length and through some 

of the highest country on earth, gave China a physical and psychological bond with Afghanistan. The Chinese, who had already been feuding 

with the Soviets for nearly 15 years, feared that the takeover of Afghanistan would further weaken their strategic situation vis-à-vis their erstwhile 

communist allies. Put simply, the Chinese did not want to be surrounded 

by the Soviets and Soviet proxies. As a result, Chinese leadership made 

public pronouncements opposing the Soviet occupation and demanding 

withdrawal. More covertly, the Chinese gave the resistance aid in the form 

of small arms, rocket launchers, and heavy artillery.26 

But that aid did not come across the short Chinese-Afghanistan border. The mountainous terrain and narrowness of the Wakhan corridor in 

the northeast made it easier for the Soviets to isolate. In the summer of 

1980, “By establishing Soviet garrisons at the two main passes into China 

and Pakistan, occupying the entrance to the corridor from Afghanistan, 

improving the road to the Soviet frontier, and mining the passes from China and Pakistan to stop arms movements, the Soviet Union effectively cut 

the corridor off.”27 Chinese assistance to the Mujahideen, along with aid 

from everyone else, would have to come from elsewhere. 

Only one option was left, as the Americans understood all too well. In 

the 1979 memo that described the weaknesses of the resistance, Brzezinski 

also explained that the United States had to “reassure Pakistan and encourage it to help the rebels....”28 Pakistan, which shared a nearly 1,500-mile 

border with Afghanistan, needed reassurance and encouragement because 

it was in a precarious position. Much as they had with the Iranians, the 

Soviets explicitly threatened to invade Pakistan if it became involved in 

the war. And much like the Iranians, the Pakistanis had other concerns, 

most importantly, ongoing disputes with India. These concerns meant that 

Pakistan went to great lengths to avoid open aid to the resistances. But 

56 
that caution did not make Pakistan neutral in the Soviet-Afghan War, far 

from it. 

In addition to becoming the temporary home for the millions of Afghan refugees who fled the war, Pakistan played the most important role 

in facilitating the resistance. Refugees were not the only ones who fled 

over the border. Most of the exiled Afghan resistance parties went to Pakistan and directed their efforts within Afghanistan from across the border 

in Peshawar. The rugged terrain and harsh conditions along the winding 

and mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border was in many ways an ideal 

boundary over which to fight and aid an insurgency. Hundreds of mountain passes connected the two countries, the terrain made it impossible to 

close all these routes across the border, and the harsh conditions helped 

protect fleeing rebels. As a result, Pakistan became the primary sanctuary 

for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Not only that, it also became the essential supply route for the weapons and materiel that kept the Mujahideen 

going throughout the war. Pakistan became the funnel to the resistance for 

the outside world.29 

The Pakistanis put several important conditions on the use of their territory. Throughout the early years of the war, the Pakistanis insisted that 

the Americans have no direct contact with the rebels. Everything had to be 

run through Pakistani intelligence. One observer described this process of 

providing arms to the rebels: 

First, the CIA bought weapons, using Saudi as well as American funds. The CIA transported the weapons to Pakistan, 

mostly by sea to the port of Karachi, but occasionally by air to 

Islamabad. Second, [Pakistani intelligence] took custody once 

the weapons had arrived in Pakistan. It transported the containers in much smaller quantities to warehouses near Rawalpindi ... or Quetta. It then trucked the weapons to depots 

controlled by the mujahidin groups in the border region.... 

Third, the parties distributed the weapons to commanders and oversaw their transport into Afghanistan by private 

entrepreneurs.30

The Americans agreed to all of this, and as a result, countless amounts 

of money and supplies got lost or stolen by middlemen in the chaotic and 

corrupt borderlands. Such was the price the United States was willing to 

pay to make use of such a prime sanctuary as Pakistan.31 

One Pakistani official arriving on the frontier in 1983 remembered 

“The border areas of Pakistan had grown into a vast, sprawling administra57 
tive base for the [Jihad]. The Mujahideen came there for arms, they came 

to rest, they came to settle their families into camps, they came for training 

and they came for medical attention.”32 The relative ease and openness of 

early cross-border activities could be seen in journalist Edward Girardet’s 

description of the infiltration routes (which he called the “Jihad Trail”) and 

how those entrepreneurs made use of them: 

...a significant amount of guerilla supplies, ranging from guns 

and ammunition to medicines, are brought in by horse, camel 

and mule trains across the more than 300 traditional caravan 

routes and goat tracks that lace the mountainous frontier between the two countries. With the rise of modern road traffic 

during the 1950s and 1960s, many of these caravan routes had 

fallen into disuse except by tribal nomads and smugglers. In 

the wake of the communist revolution, they rapidly reverted 

to their former use, except this time mainly by refugees and 

mujahideen.33

Teahouses sprung up along these routes, where, “For a small sum... 

the traveling mujahed can drink tea from streaming samovars and eat a 

meal, usually ‘nan’ dipped in a greasy meat and vegetable broth, before 

rolling up in his paout to sleep.”34 

It would not always be so easy or open. 

Early Fighting, Early Adjustments 

The resistance groups operated mostly outside the major cities. At first 

they used weapons they captured from the Soviets or that had been taken 

from the Afghan army by deserters, but as outside aid flooded in, they used 

newer and more complex weapons.35 Their standard operations involved 

ambushing convoys between the population centers. They generally avoided attacks on established positions because of weakness in command and 

control and lack of skill in using indirect fire. An expert on the resistance 

described their common, low-tech tactics for attacking convoys: 

Ambushes involve one or two groups; most of the group 

members provide cover, while those who are carrying RPG7 anti-tank rocket-launchers (rarely more than two on each 

operation) move forward until they are within a range of less 

than 100 m, for they rarely use sighting gear. The road has 

been mined in advance, and the attack is directed at the head 

of the convoy or at the rear. When the first vehicle has been 

blown up, each man carrying a rocket-launcher fires off one or 

two rockets and then withdraws. As soon as the forward unit 

58 
has rejoined the unit providing cover everyone withdraws in 

no particular order and without taking many precautions.36

These attacks were often successful in inflicting heavy casualties on 

the Soviet and Afghan troops, especially early on in the war, and much of 

the conflict evolved into a struggle over the major roads crisscrossing the 

country. Indeed, the Soviets never gained proper control of the vast majority of the countryside, but that did not mean that they did not adjust to the 

guerrilla threat.37 

By the end of 1980, the Soviets had realized that tanks, armored vehicles, and large infantry units were cumbersome in fighting the resistance in the Afghan mountains, so they reorganized and switched tactics. 

“Consequently, the Soviets have increasingly deployed helicopter borne 

commandos, backed by columns of motorized infantry.”38 As the war went 

on, larger communist operations in Afghanistan often involved using helicopters to drop commandos behind enemy positions. Rapid motorized 

attacks would then drive the rebels into the commando positions.39 Rebel 

leader Massoud commented on the effectiveness of the change in tactics, 

“It has become a very hard war, far harder than before. Their commandos 

have learned a great deal about mountain guerrilla warfare and are fighting 

much better than before.”40 

In addition, the Soviets stepped up their efforts to pacify the civilian 

villages in the countryside. They chose to ignore some areas. For example, 

the Hazara of the central mountains resisted the Soviets, but not as actively as other groups. They preferred remaining isolated and autonomous, 

and for much of the war they fought among themselves for control of 

the region. In any case, they did not have the logistical ability to keep up 

sustained operations against the Soviets.41 The same held for the fighters 

in the northern provinces. As one wartime correspondent wrote, the Mujahideen in the north “suffered from their remoteness.” It was “difficult for 

them to get arms in and news out.”42 In both areas the Soviets made some 

moves but were by and large content to allow the locals to remain isolated 

and out of the war. 

In less isolated areas the Soviets tried other techniques. Rather than 

attempt to win over the locals by providing security and stability, the communists chose to try to eliminate potentially hostile civilians through force 

and fear. The Soviets began using all manner of weapons on the civilian 

population, including shelling and bombing unfriendly population centers. And in order to prevent supporters of the guerillas from returning 

59 
to their homes, the Russians “deliberately wrecked irrigation systems, 

burned crops, killed livestock, and contaminated water sources....”43 They 

dropped mines around villages and in livestock pastures and left explosive 

devices in food bins, fruit trees, disguised as toys, and even on dead bodies that would explode when families tried to recover them for burial. The 

villagers fled by the thousands from such destruction, joining the millions 

of other refugees from the war. Entire villages disappeared.44 

Such techniques did not win the war for the communists, but they 

made it very difficult for more isolated resistance groups to feed and equip 

their troops from local sources. For example, as one analyst noted, to reach 

the Panjshir valley from Pakistan, “arms convoys of pack horses and donkeys...had to cross at least four mountain passes at an average altitude 

of 15,000 feet. For more distant resistance localities the trip to or from 

Pakistan could take a month.”45 So, for example, while the repeated Soviet 

pacification operations in the Panjshir valley did not defeat Massoud’s 

force, they did force him to appeal for more outside aid and even to sign 

a short-lived cease-fire with the Soviets.46 The communist savagery indicated a serious weakness in Soviet counterinsurgency doctrine and the 

Soviet frustration at not being able to put down the insurgency quickly.47 

But to the degree that it was successful at denying the guerrillas sanctuary 

within Afghanistan, it also made outside aid even more important to the 

rebel efforts, and everyone on both sides knew it. 

Two experts on rebel tactics explained the changes brought about by 

the Soviet destruction of the agricultural system in Afghanistan: 

The Mujahideen factions responded to this crisis by establishing fixed supply bases within Afghanistan. The larger supply 

bases were located in the mountains near the Pakistan border. 

Small supply bases were caches hidden outside of towns and 

villages. The Soviets then concentrated on finding and destroying the large and small supply bases. The Mujahideen 

dependence on the large fixed supply bases meant that they 

had to defend them. This provided a viable target set for Soviet air and artillery.48

The proximity of the larger bases to the border and the difficulty of 

transport within Afghanistan served as further proof of the indispensable 

nature of the sanctuaries and supply lines in Pakistan to the Mujahideen. 

The Soviets understood that they had a serious problem with the porous 

Pakistani border and the rebel sanctuaries within Pakistan, and they set out 

to find solutions, with varying degrees of success.49 The communists tried 

60 
a handful of approaches to deal with Pakistani sanctuary. The first and 

most consistent was the diplomatic attempt to threaten the Pakistanis into 

closing their own border. Throughout the war the communists made nottoo-subtle hints that they would invade Pakistan if the Pakistanis continued to provide refuge for the guerillas. To support such threats, Soviet and 

Afghan airplanes and helicopters launched multiple air raids across the 

border to attack rebel bases and Afghan refugee camps. The Soviets and 

their Afghan allies also used artillery to shell across the border. 

Such attacks did minor damage and killed hundreds of Afghans and 

Pakistanis a few at a time. The Pakistanis protested loudly, and drew in 

more support from the outside world by recounting the dead and warning 

of the Soviet threat. The attacks worked to the extent that Pakistan consistently and publicly disavowed any support for the Mujahideen. All the 

while, however, the Pakistanis allowed Pakistan’s territory to be used as a 

refuge and Pakistani intelligence continued to work with foreign powers 

to fund and supply the Mujahideen.50 

The Soviets also tried to use their intelligence agencies to threaten 

Pakistan and cut off resistance activities along the frontier. They bought 

off local tribal leaders along the border. For a while they even succeeded 

in raising some local militia units called Revolution Defense Groups to 

protect the border regions.51 At times Soviet and Afghan intelligence succeeded in bribing poor villagers into launching sabotage missions in Afghan refugee camps and Pakistani towns. One Pakistani official explained, 

“Ever since the Russians came, they have paid huge sums to the tribals for 

sabotage, to make trouble.... The people are poor. If a poor man is offered 

10,000 or 20,000 rupees, even if it is just 1 or 2 percent of the people, they 

can create a lot of trouble.”52 The trouble became an irritant to Pakistan, 

but did not change Pakistani policy toward providing the rebels sanctuary. 

The most important and sustained effort from the Soviets to deny the 

Mujahideen their Pakistani sanctuary involved using military power to seal 

off the border. For example, for a while the Soviets contemplated building 

some sort of extended denial barrier along the frontier. In September 1982, 

an Afghan official announced that the communists had plans in place for a 

serious border security system, including guard towers, fences, and minefields. “If we do not reach an agreement with Pakistan soon,” the official 

stated, “we have no other recourse but to close off lengthy sections of the 

frontier, however expensive that might turn out to be.”53 Obviously the 

communists intended this public threat to force the Pakistanis to act, but 

61 
that did not mean that the Soviets lied about their plans to close the borders. An ex-KGB agent later reported that Soviet military command had 

a plan in place to seal the frontiers while airborne troops “would then simultaneously annihilate the partisan formations shut up in Afghanistan.”54 

Unfortunately for the communists, such designs required at least 300,000 

Russian troops along the border, far more than the Soviets were willing 

to commit.55 In lieu of a proper barrier, the Soviets dropped thousands 

of mines on the border, especially along the important supply routes and 

mountain passes.56 

As early as December 1981, they launched large scale military operations combining airpower and armored units to sweep through the frontier 

regions and cut off the supply routes. In 1984 and 1985, when the Soviets 

sent in more troops and stepped up their efforts along the border, the Mujahideen started to suffer.57 The communists increased the frequency and 

intensity of air strikes and artillery bombardments of targets over the border. One journalist reported in November 1984 that the Pakistani border 

had been violated “several hundred times in the past three months.”58 In 

August 1985 the Soviets and crack troops from the Afghan army launched 

a two-pronged offensive at the Parrot’s Beak, a section of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that juts into Afghanistan pointing directly at Kabul 

and only 50 miles from the capital. The offensive cleared the area of Mujahideen.59 One observer reported that in 1985 “Air attacks on resistance 

caravans became more frequent and precise.... Ambushes of mujahidin 

caravans by small units of [Soviet special forces] commandos positioned 

days in advance by helicopter also increased.”60 In the spring of 1986 another large communist operation consisting of Soviet and Afghan troops 

targeted Zhawar, the location of a rebel base on the border south of the 

communist base at Khost. The Mujahideen had held off a smaller attack 

the previous September, but this time the communists pounded the base 

into submission by the end of April.61 Soviet airpower, especially helicopters as gunships and troop carriers, played a key role in these operations. 

These efforts were taking a serious toll on guerilla forces. 

The situation clearly deteriorated for the Mujahideen as a result of the 

communist efforts along the border. The rebels who had once stopped at 

relatively comfortable teahouses on the paths into Afghanistan now found 

themselves forced to travel in darkness and silence. They no longer lit fires 

or ate hot food along the way.62 In 1987, one observer wrote: 

By the spring of 1986, the Soviet forces in Afghanistan had 

achieved considerable military success against the Afghan 

62 
MAP 4. PARROT’S BEAK REGION ON AFGHANISTAN / PAKISTAN BORDER. 

guerillas. Tactics included carpet bombing of agricultural 

regions and wholesale destruction of villages. The Soviets 

have created a 30-mile deep no-man’s-land on the border 

with Pakistan. This has led to widespread food shortages and 

destroyed the guerillas’ infrastructure in many regions. Soviet 

commando operations and air strikes against guerrilla caravans bringing in CIA-provided military supplies have forced 

63 
some guerrilla units to abandon their bases and return to the 

refugee camps in Pakistan, from where they can only mount 

short hit-and-run raids into Afghanistan.63

In June 1986 the CIA agents on the ground in Pakistan had the impression that “sharply focused helicopter-borne special operations against 

resistance infiltration routes and strongholds had paid off for the Soviets. 

The war was going badly for the resistance.”64 

These descriptions probably exaggerated the depth of the problem for 

the rebels and the effectiveness of the Soviet border operations, but they 

did indicate that using cross border sanctuaries was nowhere near as easy 

as it had been in the first few years of the war. The communists had figured 

out a way to put their air superiority to good use. If they could continue 

to restrict rebel activity on the borders, the resistance within Afghanistan 

would wither on the vine. As one rebel commander said at the time, “If we 

could deal with their helicopter gunships, the whole spectrum of the war 

would change.”65 

Those Missiles 

Experts on the region recognized the importance of keeping the sanctuary and supply lines open. In 1984 scholar Rosanne Klass wrote, “Without sanctuary and logistical support via Pakistan, the Afghan resistance 

could be swiftly decimated, as was the isolated Central Asian resistance 

50 years ago.”66 The communist successes of 1984 and early 1985 threatened to cut off the Pakistani sanctuaries and logistical support. The rebels 

and their supporters needed to change tactics, and the United States was 

in the mood to help. 

By the mid-1980s it had become obvious that the Soviets were hesitant to extend an already costly war into Pakistan, let alone challenge the 

United States and other western countries for their fairly open aid to the 

Mujahideen. Consequently, the Americans felt more comfortable with giving more open aid to the resistance. In addition, President Ronald Reagan’s 

administration took a more aggressive approach to fighting the Cold War.67 

Exact figures vary, but according to one source, “American aid started 

at about $30 million in 1980 [and] went up to about $50 million in 1981 

and 1982. Under the Reagan administration this amount increased to $80 

million in fiscal 1983 and $120 million in 1984.”68 The quality of the assistance increased along with the quantity. Beginning in January 1983, the 

CIA began delivering, for “the first time, some heavier weapons, including 

bazookas, mortars, grenade launchers, mines, and recoilless rifles....”69 

64 
Reagan had several strong allies in Congress in this effort, especially 

Texas Congressman Charles Wilson, who pushed for an even more aggressive US role in Afghanistan.70 As a result of their efforts, the amount of 

monetary aid to the Mujahideen skyrocketed in the Reagan years, as did 

the quantity and variety of weapons sent to the rebels.71 Congress doubled 

Reagan’s 1985 request and gave $250 million for the Mujahideen. In 1986 

the figure was $470 million; in 1987 it jumped to $630 million.72 In March 

1985, Reagan even signed a new National Security Decision Directive 

that gave American intelligence the more ambitious objective of not just 

harassing the Soviets, but giving the Mujahideen the means to drive the 

Soviets out of Afghanistan.73 

A significant portion of this assistance aimed at keeping open and 

enhancing the links between the sanctuaries in Pakistan and the rebels 

in Afghanistan. Such efforts led to one of the more amusing aspects of 

American aid. In 1987 there was a shortage of mules for the guerillas in 

Afghanistan due to a local epidemic and Soviet mines. To help solve this 

problem, some newspapers reported that the CIA sent in mules from Missouri and Texas.74 Apparently there were not enough American animals to 

meet the needs of the rebels, so according to one CIA official, the Agency 

began “importing thousands of Chinese mules into Afghanistan to transport weapons.”75 As absurd as it might sound to air transport pack animals 

across oceans or to import them from China, it was really an indication of 

the desperate need to keep open the mountain routes between Pakistan and 

Afghanistan.76 

The main focus of the increased American aid to the Mujahideen in the 

Reagan years made even more apparent how much the Americans valued 

the infiltration routes, and how much the Soviet airpower worried them. 

In the spring of 1985, the CIA predicted that “the Soviets will place more 

emphasis on efforts to halt insurgent infiltration, mainly through greater 

use of airpower along Afghan borders with Pakistan....”77 Fortunately for 

the rebels, the Americans had a countermeasure in mind. 

From the beginning of the war the Chinese especially had provided 

antiaircraft machine guns to the Mujahideen. At points in the war, in sieges 

in towns along the border, the rebels had put these guns to good effect. 

But effective antiaircraft guns required organizational coherence, technical skill, and logistical expertise that most of the resistance groups just did 

not have. Likewise, the introduction of Soviet-made SA-7 surface to air 

missiles did not fundamentally challenge Soviet air power because of the 

weapon’s inaccuracy and the development of effective communist coun65 
termeasures.78 The Mujahideen required a simpler option, and the United 

States had a solution: handheld, accurate, and tactically viable antiaircraft 

missiles. 

In 1985, the CIA and British intelligence began sending Blowpipe 

missiles to Afghanistan, and hundreds arrived in the first few months of 

1986.79 The Blowpipes were by then obsolete and had been replaced in the 

British military by updated systems, and they did not perform well for the 

Afghan rebels. A CIA official described the main problem with the Blowpipe: “the gunner had to acquire his target optically, fire the missile, and 

then stand his ground, usually upright and in the open, while he guided the 

missile with a toggle all the way to the target.”80 However, 1986 also saw 

the introduction of a far more effective antiaircraft weapon, the Americanmade FIM-92 Stinger missile.81 The Stinger, by contrast with the Blowpipe, was a very accurate “fire and forget” missile. That meant that the 

Mujahideen could seek refuge after firing and live to fight another day. In 

next few years, the United States distributed to the rebel groups between 

2,000 and 2,500 Stinger missiles.82 

At the time, some experts feared that the missile would prove too complex for use by the resistance fighters. But as one writer at the time noted, 

“In practice, it turned out, the 18 steps needed to fire the weapon, while 

they require considerable practice and fast thinking, were not much more 

complex than the procedures used by footsoldiers of the Revolutionary 

War to load and fire their muskets.”83 To help with the process, American 

instructors at the camps within Pakistan gave direct guidance to the guerillas on the use of the missiles.84 Besides, the guerillas may have had added 

incentive to learn quick; the Soviets learned that among some resistance 

groups, “failure to bring down at least one aircraft with three Stingers was 

punishable by death.”85 

The first documented use of the Stingers in Afghanistan happened on 

25 September 1986 northeast of Jalalabad. There a team of Mujahideen 

fired four missiles and destroyed three Soviet helicopter gunships. The 

rebels filmed the attack, and the tape, along with a used tube from one of 

the missiles, eventually made its way to President Reagan. CIA Director 

William Casey became so enthusiastic about the successful mission that 

he felt certain that the Soviet effort in Afghanistan was doomed.86 In the 

months and years that followed, communist aircraft losses shot up sharply, 

due in no small part to the Stinger. At the same time, Soviet and Afghan 

pilots became hesitant to fly at lower altitudes within range of the missiles. 

66 
The Mujahideen could once again operate more freely on the ground in 

Afghanistan and along the frontier.87 

One expert on the war opined that the Mujahideen could keep supply roads open in part because “they could establish heavily protected 

strongholds in the mountains, because the Soviets, through fear of the 

Stingers, were relying more on artillery than on air power....” In addition, 

“Stingers and better weaponry also made it more costly for the Soviets 

to carry out routine operations, such as patrolling along supply roads or 

providing air support to besieged government outposts.”88 A CIA agent on 

the scene agreed, reporting in January 1987 that the majority of convoys 

made it through the border. According to the agent, credit belonged to the 

Stingers, the “most significant battlefield development during the last six 

months....”89 Another report noted that missiles improved morale among 

the Mujahideen so much that they “were pouring into eastern Afghanistan, 

now that interdiction by Soviet and [Afghan] aircraft of their infiltration 

routes seemed reduced.”90 

The Stinger missile did not win the war on its own, but its introduction 

did factor into the success of the Mujahideen in the last years of the Soviet 

war and it did indicate just how important sanctuary was to the rebel war 

effort. For one thing, the guerrillas never could have obtained and used the 

missiles without the open sources of supply and training grounds in Pakistan. Much more importantly, the Stingers proved crucial in reopening the 

lines from those safe supply dumps and training camps to the fighters in 

Afghanistan. The missiles helped the Mujahideen in many ways, but they 

helped on the borders most of all. After 1986 the communists never again 

came close to cutting the pipelines between Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

Soviet Withdrawal, Afghanistan’s Half Victory 

By the fall of 1986 the Soviets had pretty much decided to give up 

on their direct role in Afghanistan. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had 

initially escalated the war in 1985, but the difficulty of the fighting and the 

internal structural weaknesses of the Soviet economy had turned the war 

into a disaster for the Russians. They decided that fall to begin preparations to withdraw troops in the next few years, and they began serious 

efforts to negotiate a settlement to end the war. 

As the Soviets offered peace, they picked up the bombing along the 

Pakistan border to try to get more favorable conditions. In 1987 such 

67 
bombings killed and wounded over 1,000 Afghan refugees and Pakistani 

tribesmen, and even led to some combat between Pakistani and communist aircraft.91 It was all part of the Soviets last hurrah. On 14 April 1988, 

the Soviets signed accords at Geneva to set the terms of their withdrawal. 

They began pulling out troops shortly thereafter, and the last Soviet troops 

left in February 1989. The Soviet Union continued aid to the communist 

Afghan government until 1991; the United States continued to aid various 

rebel groups. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the aid ceased, the 

communist regime fell. Afghanistan continued to fight its civil war, the 

United States lost interest, and the fundamentalist Taliban emerged from 

the fighting to take control of the country until the American invasion in 

2001.92 There were no real winners in the Soviet-Afghan War. 

But the Mujahideen did drive out the Soviets, or, perhaps more accurately, the Soviets failed to defeat the Mujahideen insurgency. Plenty of 

analysts have looked at the war to try to explain the Soviet failure and they 

have come up with several answers. The Soviets built their army to fight 

a conventional war in northern Europe and did not have the equipment, 

structure, or training to fight a counterinsurgency in central Asia. Soviet 

counterinsurgency doctrine was nonexistent at the beginning of the war, 

and the scorched earth policies they embraced to pacify the villages did 

not solve the problem. They did not have a workable plan to create and 

maintain an effective and independent communist Afghan government 

and military. And most important of all, the Soviets never invested the 

resources or manpower necessary to crush the insurgency in a country the 

size of Afghanistan. For their part, the Mujahideen were tough, dedicated, 

flexible, and led by many individuals who had a firm grasp of the essentials of guerrilla warfare.93 

These points all have merit, but together they can leave the misleading 

impression that the Soviets never really had a chance in the war. In truth, 

Soviet tactical adjustments to a more fluid style of warfare gave them 

greater security and made them very effective in direct engagements with 

the rebels. The destruction of Afghan villages, while morally reprehensible, did create problems for the guerrillas fighting deep in the country. 

The communist Afghan government and army, while far from efficient, 

did improve, and maintained general control of the country for years after 

the Soviets left. And it is unclear whether or not more troops would have 

made the difference for the Soviets, especially if those troops had been 

used primarily to defeat the insurgents within Afghanistan. But whatever 

successes the communists enjoyed in Afghanistan, they never adequately 

dealt with the problem of the open border with Pakistan. 

68 
Some Soviets recognized the importance of this failure. For example 

two former Soviet officials made perfectly clear how important the open 

border and sanctuary was to the Mujahideen war: 

Despite the overall heavy losses suffered by the Mujahidin 

from combat actions by Soviet troops, their organization and 

strength in Afghanistan did not change particularly, remaining quite stable. This was achieved by constant replenishment 

of the units due to the arrival of trained troops from Pakistan 

added to recruiting and conscription in Afghanistan. We estimate that every month, up to eighty groups numbering about 

2,000 men were sent into Afghanistan.... Air-defense systems 

were concentrated in regions along the Pakistan border, 

where large numbers of rebel troops, bases, camps, and other 

installations were located. In addition to the Stingers, the 

air-defense system used cannon of 14.5mm and heavy-caliber 

12.7mm machine guns.94

Even more striking was the Politburo meeting in November 1986, 

where Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev complained that “We have been 

fighting in Afghanistan for already six years. If the approach is not changed, 

we will continue to fight for another 20-30 years.” One of his comrades 

replied, “Too long ago we spoke on the fact that it is necessary to close off 

the border of Afghanistan with Pakistan and Iran. Experience has shown 

that we were unable to do this....”95 The Soviets had come to recognize 

that if they could not close the border—or would not expend the resources 

necessary even to try—the war boiled down to who was willing to fight it 

out the longest. With this recognition came the decision to withdraw. 

The toughness, dedication, flexibility, and effectiveness of the Mujahideen guerrilla war is not in doubt, but even the toughest and most 

dedicated warriors need food, weapons, ammunition, reinforcements, and 

rest. The Mujahideen always had a ready source of manpower and material, and they always had a safe place to rest and refit. They may have won 

the war without the sanctuaries and supply lines in Pakistan, but it would 

have been infinitely more difficult. As one expert on guerilla warfare has 

argued, “In analyzing this war, it would be impossible to overestimate 

the importance either of the willingness of foreign powers to supply the 

insurgents with modern weapons, or the failure of the Soviets to isolate 

the country from that assistance.”96 Another student of the war put it even 

more succinctly, “the availability of sanctuaries to the resistance was not 

merely helpful, it was indispensable.”97 

69 
Endnotes 

1. Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Toronto: Bantam 

Books, 1982), 470-471. See also Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: 

Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977-1981 (New York: Farrar Straus 

Giroux, 1983), 426. 

2. Daily Diary of President Jimmy Carter, 28 December 1979, Jimmy Carter 

Presidential Library, Online at http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov, accessed 30 

March 2006. 

3. Thomas T. Hammond, Red Flag Over Afghanistan: The Communist Coup, 

the Soviet Invasion, and the Consequences (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 

1984), 105-120. 

4. Carter, Keeping Faith, 471. On the controversy over the American intelligence community predicting the invasion, see Douglas J. MacEachin, Predicting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: The Intelligence Community’s Record 

(Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2002); Robert M. Gates, 

From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How 

They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 131-134. 

5. A solid geographical description of the country can be found in Scott R. McMichael, Stumbling Bear: Soviet Military Performance in Afghanistan (London: 

Brassey’s, 1991), 18-24. 

6. A popular summary of Afghanistan’s military history is Stephen Tanner, 

Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the 

Taliban (New York: Da Capo Press, 2002). 

7. More detailed descriptions of the lead-up, motivations, and actions of the 

Soviet invasion can be found in M. Hassan Kakar, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 (Berkeley: University of California 

Press, 1995), 1-50; Odd Arne Westad, “Concerning the Situation is ‘A’: New 

Russian Evidence on the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan,” and “The Soviet 

Union and Afghanistan, 1978-1989,” Cold War International History Project 

Bulletin, 8/9 (Winter 1996), 128-161; Amin Saikal, Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 1-197; Mark Galeotti, 

Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s Last War (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 1-20; 

Vasiliy Mitrokin, The KGB in Afghanistan, Working Paper No. 40, (Washington, 

DC: Cold War International History Project, 2002), 17-113; Anthony Arnold, 

The Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan’s Role in the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Novato, 

CA: Presidio Press, 1993), 1-104; Oleg Sarin and Lev Dvoretsky, The Afghan 

Syndrome: The Soviet Union’s Vietnam (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993), 

1-41; Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokin, The World Was Going Our Way: 

The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 

386-402; Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story 

70 
(New York: HarperCollins, 1990), 573-576; Edward Girardet, Afghanistan: 

The Soviet War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 12-29; J. Bruce Amstutz, 

Afghanistan: The First Five Years of Soviet Occupation (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986), 1-49; Mark Urban, War in Afghanistan 

(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 1-50; Hammond, Red Flag, 3-102; Raimo 

Vayrynen, “Afghanistan,” Journal of Peace Research, 17 (1980), 93-102; Jiri 

Valenta, “From Prague to Kabul: The Soviet Style of Invasion,” International 

Security, 5 (Autumn 1980), 114-141; David Gibbs, “Does the USSR Have a 

‘Grand Strategy’? Reinterpreting the Invasion of Afghanistan,” Journal of Peace 

Research, 24 (December 1987), 365-379; Alam Payind, “Soviet-Afghan Relations from Cooperation to Occupation,” International Journal of Middle East 

Studies, 21 (February 1989), 107-128; United States Central Command, A Brief 

History of Russian and Soviet Expansion Toward the South, June 1985, Microfiche 01632, National Security Archive, Afghanistan: The Making of U.S. Policy, 

1973-1990, (Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healey, 1990); MacEachin, Predicting, 

1-44; Keith D. Dickson, “The Basmachi and the Mujahidin: Soviet Responses to 

Insurgency Movements,” Military Review, 65 (February 1985), 29-44; Anthony 

James Joes, America and Guerilla Warfare (Lexington: University Press of 

Kentucky, 2000), 279-285. 

8. On the early stages of direct Soviet control and for biographical sketches of 

many of the major players, see Amstutz, Afghanistan, 51-86. 

9. On the deplorable conditions in Afghanistan and the resulting refugee crisis 

see Jeri Laber and Barnett R. Rubin, “A Nation is Dying”: Afghanistan Under 

the Soviets, 1979-87 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988); Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, 2d edition (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 165-171; Girardet, Afghanistan, 202-232; Nancy Hatch Dupree, 

“Demographic Reporting on Afghan Refugees in Pakistan,” Modern Asian Studies, 22 (1988), 845-865; Kurt Lohbeck, Holy War, Unholy Victory: Eyewitness to 

the CIA’s Secret War in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1993), passim; 

Grant M. Farr and John G. Merriam, eds., Afghan Resistance: The Politics of 

Survival (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 127-212; Amstutz, Afghanistan, 

223-321; Kakar, Afghanistan, passim; Urban, War in Afghanistan, 157-158; 

Joes, America and Guerilla Warfare, 305-306. 

10. The term Mujahideen is Arabic for “struggler.” Looser translations include 

“holy warrior” or “freedom fighter.” The word is transliterated many ways. 

11. “The Afghan Resistance: Struggling for Unity,” CIA Assessment, June 

1984, CIA FOIA, Online: http://www.foia.cia.gov, (accessed 29 March 2006); 

Shah M. Tarzi, “Politics of the Afghan Resistance Movement,” Asian Survey, 

31 (June 1991), 479-495; Tahir Amin, “Afghan Resistance: Past, Present, and 

Future,” Asian Survey, 24 (April 1984), 373-399; Amstutz, Afghanistan, 92-101. 

12. Urban, War in Afghanistan, 95-97. 

71 
13. Zalmay Khalilzad, “Soviet-Occupied Afghanistan,” Problems of Communism, 29 (Nov-Dec 1980), 35-39; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of 

the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 

2001 (New York: Penguin Books, 2004),107-124; Amstutz, Afghanistan, 112­

115; and Joes, America and Guerilla Warfare, 285-289. 

14. An early attempt to unify the resistance parties under the leadership of 

Sayyaf quickly fell apart. Urban, War in Afghanistan, 59, 77, 82-83. See also 

Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, passim; Olivier Roy, Afghanistan: 

From Holy War to Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995), 11-59; Coll, 

Ghost Wars, 71-88; and Alexandre Bennigsen, “Mullahs, Mujahidin and Soviet 

Muslims,” Problems of Communism, 33 (November-December 1984), 28-44. 

15. On international law aspects of the invasion see W. Michael Reisman and 

James Silk, “Which Law Applies to the Afghan Conflict?” American Journal 

of International Law, 82 (July 1988), 459-486. See also Amstutz, Afghanistan, 

199-222. 

16. The Saudis often worked independent of the United States and even Pakistan in order to aid the radical Muslim groups more directly. It was through this 

independent pipeline that Osama bin Laden became involved in the war. Coll, 

Ghost Wars, 71-88. 

17. John G. Merriam, “Arms Shipments to the Afghan Resistance,” in Farr 

and Merriam, eds., Afghan Resistance, 71-101; Hammond, Red Flag, 157-158; 

Amstutz, Afghanistan, 206-207. 

18. Coll, Ghost Wars, 42-50; Gates, From the Shadows, 143-147; Joe Stork, 

“U.S. Involvement in Afghanistan,” MERIP Reports, 89 (July-August 1980), 

25-26. 

19. The invasion also led to the United States canceling the SALT II talks, 

imposing economic sanctions on the Soviet Union, and boycotting the 1980 

Summer Olympics in Moscow. Jimmy Carter, “State of the Union Address,” 

23 January 1980, Public Papers of the Presidents, The American Presidency 

Project, Online: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu, (accessed 5 May 2006). For 

more on Carter, his administration, and their response to the invasion, including 

critiques, see Carter, Keeping Faith, 470-489; Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 

428-437; Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence 

and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 447-448; Burton I. Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, 

Jr. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 162-166; Gaddis Smith, 

Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (New 

York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 222-231; William Stueck, “Placing Jimmy Carter’s 

Foreign Policy,” in The Carter Presidency: Policy Choices in the Post-New Deal 

Era, edited by Gary M. Fink and Hugh Davis Graham, (Lawrence: University 

Press of Kansas, 1999), 256-259; David Skidmore, “Carter and the Failure of 

72 
Foreign Policy Reform,” Political Science Quarterly, 108 (Winter 1993-1994), 

722-729; Hammond, Red Flag, 120-122. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was the 

most important member of the administration who demurred from Carter’s response to the invasion. Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s 

Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 384-397. 

20. Quoted in Coll, Ghost Wars, 51. 

21. Quoted in Urban, War in Afghanistan, 57. 

22. Coll, Ghost Wars, 57-58. See also Gates, From the Shadows, 147-149; 

and Alexander Alexiev, The United States and the War in Afghanistan (Santa 

Monica, CA: RAND, 1988). 

23. Quoted in Coll, Ghost Wars, 51 (emphasis added). 

24. “Iranian Support to the Afghan Resistance,” Defense Intelligence Agency 

Paper, 11 July 1985, National Security Archive, George Washington University, 

Online: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv; “Iran-Afghanistan: Military Tensions,” 

CIA Report, 21 November 1983, CIA FOIA, Online: http://www.foia.cia.gov, 

(accessed 29 March 2006); Roy, Afghanistan, 100; Alvin Z. Rubinstein, “The 

Soviet Union and Iran Under Khomeini,” International Affairs, 57 (Autumn 

1981), 599-617; Rasul Bakhsh Rais, “Afghanistan and the Regional Powers,” 

Asian Survey, 33 (September 1993), 916-919. 

25. Urban, War in Afghanistan, 97. 

26. Christopher S. Wren, “Soviet is Assailed on Afghan Policy,” New York 

Times, 28 December 1982, A7; “Peking Hails Cause of Rebels in Cambodia and 

Afghanistan,” New York Times, 14 December 1982, A3; Urban, War in Afghanistan, 123; Yaacov Vertzberger, “Afghanistan in China’s Policy,” Problems of 

Communism, 31 (May-June 1982), 1-23; “The Wakhan Corridor: An Unlikely 

Afghan-China Link,” CIA Research Paper, May 1980, National Security Archive, Microfiche 0933; Leslie Holmes, “Afghanistan and Sino-Soviet Relations,” in The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan, edited by Amin Saikal and 

William Maley, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 122-141. 

27. Reisman and Silk, “Which Law,” 478. 

28. Quoted in Coll, Ghost Wars, 51. From the beginning of the war many in the 

American intelligence community was acutely concerned with keeping the border open, although some initial assessments thought the rebels controlled enough 

territory within Afghanistan to not need Pakistan. See “The Afghan Insurgents 

and Pakistan: Problems for Islamabad and Moscow,” CIA Intelligence Memorandum, 1 January 1980, CIA FOIA, Online: http://www.foia.cia.gov, (accessed 

17 May 2006); “Prospects for Closing the Afghan-Pakistan Border,” CIA Intelligence Assessment, July 1981, National Security Archive, Microfiche 01214. By 

April 1983, the CIA had produced an extensive guide to the passes all along the 

border, “Passes and Trails on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border,” CIA Reference 

Aid, April 1983, National Security Archive, Microfiche 01447. 

73 
29. On the difficult diplomatic situation for Pakistan and the other supporters 

of the Mujahideen, see W. Howard Wriggins, “Pakistan’s Search for a Foreign 

Policy After the Invasion of Afghanistan,” Pacific Affairs, 57 (Summer 1984), 

284-303; Ahmed Rashid, “Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Gulf,” MERIP Middle 

East Report, (September-October 1987), 35-39; Edgar O’Ballance, “Pakistan: 

On the Front Porch of Conflict,” Military Review, 66 (March 1986), 68-75; 

Marvin G. Weinbaum, “Pakistan and Afghanistan: The Strategic Relationship,” 

Asian Survey, 31 (June 1991), 496-511; Stephen P. Cohen, “South Asia After Afghanistan,” Problems of Communism, 34 (January-February 1985), 18-31; Rais, 

“Afghanistan and the Regional Powers,” 906-912. 

30. Barnett R. Rubin, The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State 

to Failed State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 38. 

31. To facilitate a better working relationship with Pakistan, the US also gave 

considerable military aid to the Pakistanis and basically ignored the developing 

Pakistani nuclear program. See Coll, Ghost Wars, 58-64; Mohammad Yousaf 

and Mark Adkin, Afghanistan—The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower 

(Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2001), passim; Theodore L. Eliot and Robert L. 

Pfaltzgraff, eds., The Red Army on Pakistan’s Border: Policy Implications for 

the United States (Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1986); Jeffrey Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, 2d edition, (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger 

Publishing, 1989), 342-343; Charles G. Cogan, “Partners in Time: The CIA and 

Afghanistan since 1979,” World Policy Journal, 10 (Summer 1993), 73-82; Jamal Rashid, “Pakistan and the Central Command,” MERIP Middle East Report, 

141 (July-August 1986), 28-34; T.V. Paul, “Influence Through Arms Transfers: 

Lessons from the U.S.-Pakistani Relationship,” Asian Survey, 32 (December 

1992), 1078-1092. 

32. Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan, 49. 

33. Girardet, Afghanistan, 63-64. 

34. Ibid., 64. 

35. McMichael, Stumbling Bear, 27-31. 

36. Roy, Islam and Resistance, 183. 

37. Ali Ahmad Jalali and Lester W. Grau, eds., Afghan Guerilla Warfare: In 

the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters (London: Compendium, 2001); passim; 

Girardet, Afghanistan, 48-68; McMichael, Stumbling Bear, 32-37; Amstutz, 

Afghanistan, 134-138. 

38. Khalilzad, “Soviet-Occupied Afghanistan,” 31. 

39. For more detailed and nuanced discussions of Soviet tactics see Lester W. 

Grau, ed., The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996); Robert F. 

Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, 

and Afghanistan, Leavenworth Paper Number 20, (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Com74 
bat Studies Institute, 1993), 138-143; Zalmay Khalilzad, “Moscow’s Afghan 

War,” Problems of Communism, 35 (January-February 1986), 1-10; Lester W. 

Grau and Mohammand Yahya Nawroz, “The Soviet Experience in Afghanistan,” 

Military Review, 75 (September-October 1995), 16-27; Edgar O’Ballance, “Soviet Tactics in Afghanistan,” Military Review, 60 (August 1980), 45-52; Sarin 

and Dvoretsky, Afghan Syndrome, 87-121; Kip McCormick, “The Evolution of 

Soviet Military Doctrine, Afghanistan,” Military Review, 67 (July 1987), 61-72; 

McMichael, Stumbling Bear, 38-79; Galeotti, Afghanistan, 190-206; Girardet, 

Afghanistan, 30-36; Urban, War in Afghanistan, 66-68, 119-120; Amstutz, Afghanistan, 148-152. 

40. Quoted in Coll, Ghost Wars, 122. 

41. Roy, Islam and Resistance, 139-148. 

42. Urban, War in Afghanistan, 100. 

43. Hammond, Red Flag, 161-162. 

44. On these atrocities, and much more, see Laber and Rubin, A Nation is 

Dying, passim, (the quotation is on page 42); Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 

576-578. 

45. Amstutz, Afghanistan, 192-193. 

46. Urban, War in Afghanistan, 101-109, 118-119, 143-148. 

47. For more detail on Soviet counterinsurgency doctrine, including attempts to 

infiltrate and subvert the rebel movements, see Amstutz, Afghanistan, 144-148. 

48. Jalali and Grau, eds., Afghan Guerrilla, 402-403. 

49. “Report by Soviet Minister Ustinov to CPSU CC on ‘Foreign Interference’ 

in Afghanistan,” 2 October 1980, and “A Report by Soviet Military Intelligence,” 1 September 1981, Cold War International History Project, Online: 

http:/www.wilsoncenter.org, (accessed 28 March 2006). 

50. “Pakistan Says Raid By Afghans Killed 40,” New York Times, 29 January 

1984, A5; “Pakistan Says Afghans Have Killed 104 in Raids,” New York Times, 

23 August 1984, A5; Girardet, Afghanistan, 36-37; Urban, War in Afghanistan, 

90-91. 

51. Urban, War in Afghanistan, 91. 

52. Richard M. Weintraub, “Pakistan’s Frontier Is Drawn Into War,” Washington Post, 25 March 1987, A15. See also Vladimir Kuzichkin, Inside the KGB: 

My Life in Soviet Espionage (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 349-350; 

Mitrokin, KGB in Afghanistan, 138-148; Andrew and Mitrokin, The World Was 

Going Our Way, 355-367; and McMichael, Stumbling Bear, 107-108. 

53. Quoted in Amstutz, Afghanistan, 144. 

54. Kuzichkin, Inside the KGB, 349. 

55. Ibid., 349. 

56. McMichael, Stumbling Bear, 103-107. 

57. Urban, War in Afghanistan, 91-93, 156-157, 186-188. 

75 
58. Frederick Kempe, “Soviet ‘Hot Pursuit’ of Guerrillas into Pakistan Could 

Draw Islamabad into Afghan Fighting,” Wall Street Journal, 12 November 1984, 

1. 

59. Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan, 162-164; Urban, War in Afghanistan, 176­

179. 

60. Lee O. Coldren, “Afghanistan in 1985: The Sixth Year of the Russo-Afghan 

War,” Asian Survey, 26 (February 1986), 242. 

61. Jalali and Grau, eds., Afghan Guerrilla, 317-326; Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan, 166-173; Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars, 145-147; 

Urban, War in Afghanistan, 190-194. 

62. Coll, Ghost Wars, 69. An excellent description of the growing difficulty of 

the trip into Afghanistan is Frederick Kempe, “Risky Mission: Supplying Guerrillas in Afghanistan is Grueling Undertaking,” Wall Street Journal, 14 November 1984, 1. 

63. Rashid, “Pakistan, Afghanistan,” 37. 

64. Milt Beardon and James Rosen, The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the 

CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (New York: Random House, 2003), 207; 

Coll, Ghost Wars, 133-134. 

65. Quoted in Girardet, Afghanistan, 65. 

66. Rosanne Klass, “Pushing and Pulling Apart Pakistan,” Wall Street Journal, 

2 October 1984, 1. 

67. Ronald Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on the Soviet Occupation of 

Afghanistan,” 28 December 1985, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Online: 

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu, (accessed 4 April 2006); W. Eliot Brownlee and 

Hugh Davis Graham, eds., The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism 

and Its Legacies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 85-152; Doyle 

McManus, “U.S. Shaping Assertive Policy for Third World,” Los Angeles Times, 

16 June 1985, 1; Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New 

York: Simon and Schuster, 1991); Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War: The Epic 

Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (New 

York: Doubleday, 2002); George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as 

Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993); and William J. 

Daugherty, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency (Lexington: 

University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 193-211. 

68. Rubin, Search for Peace, 30; Gates, From the Shadows, 251-252. 

69. Richelson, U.S. Intelligence Community, 341. 

70. George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War (New York: Grove Press, 2003), passim. 

71. Steve Coll, “Anatomy of a Victory: CIA’s Covert Afghan War,” Washington 

Post, 19 July 1992, A1; Gates, From the Shadows, 319-321. 

72. Rubin, Search for Peace, 30; Richelson, U.S. Intelligence, 340-343. 

76 
73. Coll, Ghost Wars, 125-132; Robert Pear, “Arming Afghan Guerrillas: A 

Huge Effort Led by U.S.,” New York Times, 18 April 1988, A1; Gates, From the 

Shadows, 348-349; Beardon and Rosen, Main Enemy, 210. 

74. Jalali and Grau, eds., Afghan Guerilla, 403-404; “CIA Reportedly Flies 

Texas Mules to Afghan Rebels,” Los Angeles Times, 19 October 1987, 8. 

75. Gates, From the Shadows, 349. 

76. More details on the importation and standards of mules in the war see Beardon and Rosen, Main Enemy, 310-314. 

77. “The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Five Years After,” CIA Assessment, 

1 May 1985, CIA FOIA, Online: http://www.foia.cia.gov, (accessed 29 March 

2006), 18. 

78. McMichael, Stumbling Bear, 89-90. 

79. Urban, War in Afghanistan, 162-163. 

80. Beardon and Rosen, Main Enemy, 245; McMichael, Stumbling Bear, 90. 

81. The debate over the whether or not to distribute the Stinger is ably covered 

in Alan J. Kuperman, “The Stinger Missile and U.S. Intervention in Afghanistan,” Political Science Quarterly, 114 (Summer 1999), 219-263; and John Walcott and Tim Carrington, “Role Reversal: CIA Resisted Proposal to Give Afghan 

Rebels U.S. Stinger Missiles,” Wall Street Journal, 16 February 1988, 1. 

82. Coll, Ghost Wars, 11; Gates, From the Shadows, 349-350. CIA agent Milt 

Beardon oversaw much of the distribution of the Stingers in the war. His story is 

recounted in Beardon and Rosen, Main Enemy, 212-367. 

83. John H. Cushman, “The Stinger Missile: Helping to Change the Course of a 

War,” New York Times, 17 January 1988, A2. 

84. Richelson, U.S. Intelligence, 341. 

85. Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional War, 155. 

86. Beardon and Rosen, Main Enemy, 246-254; Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 256­

257. 

87. Figures on the numbers of communist planes shot down vary and some 

observers have downplayed the effectiveness of the Stingers, noting that the 

Soviets created effective countermeasures and were already in the process of 

drawing down their forces when the Stingers came online. See Urban, War in Afghanistan, 296; Galeotti, Afghanistan, 195-196; and Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution Unending: Afghanistan: 1979 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 208. No doubt the Stinger did not win the war on its own, but 

the evidence is overwhelming that the Soviets had stepped up their efforts along 

the border in 1984-1986; that the Stinger did cause severe damage to communist 

airpower; and that it therefore did play an essential role in reopening infiltration 

routes. The best discussion of all issue relating to the Stinger in Afghanistan is 

Kuperman, “The Stinger Missile,” 244-263. See also U.S. Army Report, “Impact 

of the Stinger Missile on Soviet and Resistance Tactics in AF,” March 1987, 

77 
National Security Archive, Microfiche 01936; United States Central Command, 

“Stinger: One Year of Combat,” 26 October 1987, National Security Archive, 

Microfiche 02065; Aaron Karp, “Blowpipes and Stingers in Afghanistan: One 

Year Later,” Armed Forces Journal International, 125 (September 1987), 36-40; 

Michael Mecham, “U.S. Credits Afghan Resistance with Thwarting Soviet Airpower,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, 127 (13 July 1987), 26-27; William J. Eaton, “Stingers Take Heavy Toll in Afghanistan,” Los Angeles Times, 21 

January 1987, 5; David B. Ottaway, “U.S. Missiles Alter War in Afghanistan,” 

Washington Post, 19 July 1987, A1; Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan, 174-188; 

McMichael, Stumbling Bear, 90-91; Arnold, Fateful Pebble, 138-139. 

88. Roy, Islam and Resistance, 209. 

89. Gates, From the Shadows, 430. 

90. Beardon and Rosen, Main Enemy, 254. Charles Dunbar also noticed the 

morale boost that came from the introduction of Stingers, “Afghanistan in 1986: 

The Balance Endures,” Asian Survey, 27 (February 1987), 129. 

91. Rashid, “Pakistan, Afghanistan,” 35-36; Elaine Sciolino, “Afghan Air Raids 

Against Pakistan are Said to Kill 85,” New York Times, 25 March 1987, A8; 

Barbara Crossette, “Pakistan Downs an Afghan Intruder,” New York Times, 31 

March 1987, A3; Weintraub, “Pakistan’s Frontier,” Washington Post, A15. 

92. Coll, Ghost Wars, 158-584; Rubin, Search for Peace, passim; Saikal and 

Maley, eds., Soviet Withdrawal, passim; Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, 

Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), passim; Riaz M. Khan, Untying the Afghan Knot: 

Negotiating Soviet Withdrawal (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 

passim; Don Oberdorfer, The Turn: From the Cold War to a New Era (New 

York: Poseidon Press, 1991), 234-243, 269-282; Sarah E. Mendelson, “Internal 

Battles and External Wars: Politics, Learning, and the Soviet Withdrawal from 

Afghanistan,” World Politics, 45 (April 1993), 327-360; Ted Daley, “Afghanistan and Gorbachev’s Global Foreign Policy,” Asian Survey, 29 (May 1989), 

496-513; Richard K. Herrmann, “Soviet Behavior in Regional Conflicts: Old 

Questions, New Strategies, and Important Lessons,” World Politics, 44 (April 

1992), 432-465; Theodore L. Eliot, “Afghanistan in 1989: Stalemate,” Asian 

Survey, 30 (February 1990), 158-166; 

93. These general conclusions comprise a summary of the common arguments 

found in the sources cited throughout this chapter. 

94. Sarin and Dvoretsky, Afghan Syndrome, 101. 

95. “Communist Party Soviet Union Central Committee Politburo transcript,” 

13 November 1986, “The Soviet Union and Afghanistan, 1978-1989,” Cold War 

International History Project Bulletin, 8/9 (Winter 1996), 178-179. 

96. Joes, America and Guerrilla Warfare, 313. 

97. Robert F. Baumann, “Compound Warfare Case Study: The Soviets in Afghanistan,” in Huber, ed., Compound Warfare, 295. 

78 
Conclusion 

Vietnam and Afghanistan Compared 

Vietnam and Afghanistan were profoundly different, yet transnational 

sanctuaries were vital to the insurgencies in both wars. In Vietnam, the 

communists were a well-developed and multifaceted enemy. In the words 

of two prominent Vietnam historians, “The enemy was no rag-tag band 

lurking in the jungle, but rather a combination of guerrillas, political cadre, 

and modern main-force units....”1 The insurgency was a large part of the 

fight, especially early on, but it needed the efforts of the conventional 

forces in order to survive. The insurgency faltered after 1968, when the 

Americans and South Vietnamese took advantage of a weakened Vietcong 

to engage in serious efforts to pacify and provide security for the countryside. Then the communist conventional forces picked up their efforts. And, 

ultimately, it was a conventional invasion that overran the South and won 

the war for the communists. 

The same was most assuredly not the case in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Mujahideen fought a strictly insurgent war. There was no 

unified political cadre among the resistances, and they certainly never 

brought any kind of conventional force into the field. For their part, the 

communists never controlled the countryside and never engaged in any 

kind of real effort to win the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan. But they did seek to tilt the demographic situation in the country in 

their favor. The Soviets hunted down and killed thousands of guerillas 

and they pursued a scorched earth policy toward supposedly unfriendly 

villages within Afghanistan. Their policies drove millions of potentially 

hostile Afghans out of the country and made it much harder for the Mujahideen to thrive as a fighting force in the hinterlands. However, they did 

thrive in the borderlands, and they did thrive when they had some sort of 

connection with the outside world. 

In Vietnam and Afghanistan, the United States and the Soviet Union 

used drastically different tactics to fight their respective insurgencies. It 

must be stated that the United States enjoyed much more success on that 

score. Even though the Soviets succeeded in pacifying areas of the countryside, their methods ensured that the countryside remained unfriendly. 

The people in rural areas of Vietnam may not have grown to love the United States and the South Vietnamese government, but they became much 

79 
less unfriendly in the later years of the war as the allies began to provide 

for their safety from the Vietcong. In a comparison of counterinsurgency 

techniques, the American effort proved superior to Soviet methods. 

However, had those NVA conventional forces not made use of the 

sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia to invade the South, it is still unclear 

whether the American counterinsurgency would have succeeded in Vietnam. Those sanctuaries ensured that, at the very least, the communist 

guerrillas would have been able to wage low-level assaults within South 

Vietnam for as long as they wanted. As long as they had the sanctuaries 

and the ability to cross over the border, the war would have been an even 

more prolonged battle of wills. It did not happen that way because the 

communists had the resources and organization to use the sanctuaries to 

launch conventional attacks, but in either case, clear victory could only 

have been obtained by denying the communists those sanctuaries. 

The same went for the Soviets in Afghanistan. Even though their brutal treatment of the population was less effective than American pacification techniques in Vietnam, it did have some effect. To whatever the 

degree their scorched earth tactics denied the Mujahideen sanctuary within Afghanistan, those tactics did not address the problem of sanctuary in 

Pakistan. And so the Mujahideen could rest, refit, plan, and launch new 

attacks across the border indefinitely, especially once the Stinger missiles 

helped clear the skies above the frontier. The battle of wills for Afghanistan depended on sanctuary; the Mujahideen kept the sanctuary and won 

that battle.2 

None of this is to say that the techniques for fighting the counterinsurgency in-country do not matter. The Americans were much closer to 

success in Vietnam than the Soviets ever were in Afghanistan. Indeed, 

denying the insurgents sanctuary at home is a necessary first condition 

for a successful counterinsurgency. However, it is not the last condition. 

As long as the guerrillas have a safe place to which to retreat and rest, and 

from which to gather resources and launch new attacks, they can fight as 

long as they have the will to keep on fighting.3 

Sanctuary Doctrine 

Sanctuary did not become less of an issue in irregular warfare in the last 

decades of the 20th century. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, guerrillas 

in Israel hid behind the Lebanese border. At the same time, Marxist rebels 

in El Salvador relied on outside support from Cuba and the Soviet Union. 

80 
Nicaraguan Contras operated with American aid out of Honduras in the 

1980s. In Africa, rebels frequently found refuge and support in neighboring states in the upheavals throughout the continent in those years. Even 

the end of the Cold War did not bring an end to active sanctuary. Dozens 

of wars in the 1990s, large and small, saw outside powers give support to 

insurgent efforts, many of them through transnational sanctuaries.4 

All of these conflicts have meant that there is no shortage of literature 

on the topic. Historically the American military preferred to focus on large 

conventional operations, but in the years since the onset of the Vietnam 

War Americans have invested serious time and effort in learning the lessons of small wars and counterinsurgencies. Experts in and out of uniform 

have written on the issue of transnational sanctuary in insurgent warfare. 

As early as 1962, historians Peter Paret and John Shy wrote that guerrillas 

needed bases of operation, and that for insurgents, “there is little evidence 

that victory can be gained without [foreign assistance].”5

 Bernard Fall’s 

body of work on the French in Indochina stressed the importance of sanctuary, and in 1967, J. J. Zasloff looked at Chinese aid to the Vietminh and 

concluded that it might not have been the essential feature of the communist victory, but it certainly helped.6

 Marine MAJ G. R. Christmas wrote 

a 1973 article in Infantry magazine on the issue and concluded, “One fact 

remains incontrovertible. It is vital to any nation’s survival that the guerrilla be denied sanctuary and external support in the form of arms and 

equipment if he is to be destroyed.”7 

Many of these early works were vague or contained few suggestions 

of how to deal with the problem, but that began to change by the end 

of the 1970s. Professor John Deiner looked at the problem in 1979 and 

emphasized “border control and armed incursion.”8

 Marine officer John 

Hamilton wrote a paper for the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in 1985 that outlined the transnational sanctuary issue and strongly 

recommended that the US military develop high technology border barrier capabilities.9

 In 1995 insurgency expert Steven Metz wrote that a key 

principle of counterinsurgency was what he called “secondary support.” 

He recommended that the “United States might lead efforts to deter, isolate, and punish external sponsors of insurgency.”10 More specifically, a 

recent article by political scientist Paul Staniland also advocated “fences, 

surveillance, and aggressive pursuit along vulnerable sections” of the border, along with a sustained public diplomacy effort to delegitimize “the 

transnational pillar of the insurgency...”11 

81 
Yet for all the examples, official American military counterinsurgency doctrine has focused very little attention on solving the problem of 

transnational sanctuary.12 The original Army field manual on counterguerrilla operations suggested that indigenous forces should watch borders “to 

economize on the available (US) military combat power which can be better utilized against the guerrilla force.”13 Even the 1968 manual on denial 

barriers focused more on barriers as part of conventional operations.14 The 

1986 version of Counterguerrilla Operations spent more time on borders, 

but again emphasized the use of civilian security forces or populations to 

protect the frontiers. The section on sanctuaries reads, in full: 

Guerrillas may establish base camps and conduct cross-border 

operations from countries adjacent to the host country. They 

will take advantage of an international boundary to launch 

operations or evade pursuit with impunity. Commanders 

operating in border areas must respect the sanctity of international boundaries, but they can conduct combat operations 

against the guerrilla force once it crosses back over the border. 

Ambush patrols are an excellent means of dealing with guerrillas who attempt to use an international border as a sanctuary.15

The paragraph indicated the difficulty for military commanders on the 

ground, but offered little by way of advice. 

In the 1990s American strategists came to a greater acceptance of 

counterinsurgencies and stability operations as an essential part of the responsibilities of the US military. By the turn of the 21st century, writers of 

doctrine began to weave together conventional and unconventional operations. Even then, they spent little time on the vital importance of denying 

insurgents transnational sanctuary.16 As a result, American leaders and 

military commanders in the global war on terrorism have had little doctrinal guidance on the topic. 

The Contemporary Picture 

Stability operations continue apace in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite 

some setbacks in both theaters, the United States military has put its experience and study of counterinsurgency and contingency operations to good 

use. Moreover, it is clear that at the highest levels of American leadership 

there has been recognition that the terrorists have been using international 

borders to find refuge and resupply. As a result, there have been some 

efforts to close down the borders and deny sanctuary. However, without 

82 
clear doctrinal understanding of the importance of transnational sanctuaries, these efforts have been haphazard and incomplete. 

It is certainly worth noting that the current effort in Afghanistan, while 

not easy, has been smoother than the ongoing campaigns in Iraq. No doubt, 

operations in Afghanistan have been aided by the decisiveness of the original campaign to wrest the country from the Taliban, the significant international contribution to peacekeeping efforts, and the ability of homegrown 

leaders and warlords to control the countryside. However, given the effectiveness and relentlessness of the Mujahideen struggle against the Soviets, 

it would seem that dedicated guerrillas like the fundamentalist terrorists 

would have the ability to be more effective themselves. And indeed all 

reports indicate that they have returned to the old Mujahideen stomping 

grounds along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border for use as base areas in 

their war against Afghanistan and the United States. Yet by and large they 

have not been able to recreate the successes of the anti-Soviet guerrillas, 

and many of the casualties they have inflicted have been in defensive operations against coalition attacks on their mountain refuges. 

What changed? First, the dissipated strands of al-Qaeda and the Taliban do not enjoy the support of any great, or not so great, outside power. No wealthy states are overtly bankrolling their operations or directly 

providing them with weapons, ammunition, and other supplies. Second, 

to the extent that minor powers are sympathetic to the terrorist efforts in 

Afghanistan, those outside powers do not have ready routes by which to 

supply the insurgent forces. As in the Soviet war, the open terrain of western Afghanistan, and Iran’s unstable relationship with the terrorists in Afghanistan have resulted in relative quiet in the western part of the country 

since the fall of the Taliban.17 

Just as important, the United States has had the good fortune that the 

official state apparatus of Pakistan, led by President Pervez Musharraf, has 

been an ally in the global war on terrorism. While the Pakistanis have not 

completely closed down and cleared the border with Afghanistan, most 

of the fighting is in southern Afghanistan, and while there has been some 

friction over US and Afghan strikes at rebel bases along the frontier, such 

issues are a far cry from Pakistan’s all but open support of the Mujahideen 

during the Soviet war. The terrorists are dedicated; they have some money; 

and they have some stockpiles of weapons, but they do not have the full 

backing of international powers; and they do not have open and safe sanctuaries where they can rest and refit to continue their war.18 

83 
On the other hand, stability operations in Iraq have been fraught with 

difficulties. The insurgency there took on a ferocity that surprised many of 

the war planners, and as a result, the years after the end of the major conventional operations in May 2003 have seen ongoing and often brutal violence.19 Altogether, untold numbers of Iraqi civilians and security forces, 

and over 2,000 Americans have died in the fighting for Iraq. 

Yet after a fitful start, the American military has done a notable job 

of learning from the counterinsurgencies of the past and applying those 

lessons to the fight in Iraq.20 In a country marked by ethnic and sectarian 

strife, members of the coalition have made every effort not to alienate the 

Iraqi civilian population. The dismantling of Saddam Hussein’s security 

apparatus may have slowed the process of allowing the Iraqis to provide 

for their own security, but it may also have been a necessary step in earning the trust of the Iraqi people. After all, Saddam’s troops and police were 

the tools of Saddam’s tyranny. And despite the delays, the coalition effort 

has begun to show real results. Thousands of guerrillas have been killed 

or detained. The insurgents have grown frustrated with attempts to target 

Americans and turned much of their violence first toward Iraqi security 

forces and more recently toward the civilian population. The insurgency 

has failed to stop any of the elections in Iraq and it has not caused the 

country to decline into an all-out civil war. 

However, the insurgency does continue to wreak havoc on internal 

security, which threatens to upset the delicate balance in Iraq. Estimates 

of the size of the insurgency are at best educated guesses, but the best 

guesses indicate that despite taking heavy casualties, the overall number 

of insurgents in Iraq did not significantly decline from 2004 to the spring 

of 2006.21 No doubt the guerrillas have recruited from the Iraqi population, but it also very likely that they have been replenished from across 

the borders. At the same time, the weapons used by the insurgents have 

grown more complex, and some observers insist that the new weaponry 

and explosives come from Syria and Iran. Coalition efforts on the borders, including the use of diplomatic pressure, sensors, aerial observation, 

checkpoints, and a variety of other techniques, have not stemmed the tide. 

This external support for the terrorists does not approach anything like 

what the communists received in Vietnam, or what the Mujahideen got in 

the Soviet-Afghan War, but it is enough to keep them fighting, and that is 

enough to make it a serious problem. 

84 
What Can Be Done? 

There are a number of possible solutions to the problem of transnational sanctuaries. Counterinsurgent forces can launch all-out invasions of the 

neighboring countries to clear out sanctuaries. Smaller-scale ground raids 

or incursions or even air raids or extensive bombing campaigns provide alternative methods for destroying sanctuaries and interdicting supply lines. 

Counterinsurgent forces also have less direct techniques for dealing with 

the problem. They can apply diplomatic pressure to neighboring countries, 

with the hope that the neighbors will police their own borders. They can 

build barriers made of actual fences or technological sensors along the 

borders to prevent the entry of insurgents. Some counterinsurgent forces 

have even tried to resettle the local population away from the borders to 

help maintain security on the frontier. 

The most straightforward options—such as building well-manned barrier systems (as the French did in Algeria) or launching all-out invasions— 

can be effective. But even these possible solutions have problems. An effective barrier is expensive and requires significant manpower to make it 

work. And as the French learned, a barrier alone is not enough—counterinsurgent forces still have to win over the civilian population. Full-scale 

invasions are also problematic—they can lead to a new set of unforeseen 

problems in the neighboring country. 

The historical examples of transnational sanctuaries in irregular warfare indicate that most limited military operations are not effective in denying combatants sanctuary. Airpower, even extensive bombings and attacks 

such as those used by the Americans in Vietnam, can hinder enemy operations across borders. However, countermeasures, especially antiaircraft 

fire and ground concealment, have prevented airpower from effectively 

shutting down borders on its own. The same goes for barrier systems that 

rely on technology such as mines or sensors to take the place of human 

patrolling of borders. Sensors and mines may slow cross border activities 

for as long as it takes the enemy to figure out a way around them, but there 

has always been a way around the technology. Likewise, ground raids in 

force across borders can do serious damage to insurgent sanctuaries, but 

by definition raids are not sustained efforts, and the guerrillas can and do 

return when the raids end. 

So what else can military commanders on the ground do about transnational sanctuaries? The question is a tricky one, because military action 

85 
along international borders is inevitably constrained by strategies dictated 

at the highest levels of civilian government. Presidents, cabinet level officials, and even the highest echelons of military command must contend 

with diplomatic and political concerns that are far outside the purview of 

the fighting men on the battlefield.22 Yet barring the construction of an 

extensive and well-manned barrier systems or all-out invasions, military 

operations along or across borders must work hand-in-hand with diplomatic and political efforts. 

Airpower, technology-driven borders, and raids can be part of a successful effort, but for them to have a lasting effect they require a simultaneous diplomatic effort to convince the bordering nation to police its own 

side of the border. It is worth noting that there has been little indication 

that the insurgents have found sanctuary in most of the countries bordering 

Iraq. Turkey would like nothing more than to keep the border sealed from 

Kurd-dominated northern Iraq. And although hundreds of Saudi Arabians 

and dozens of Jordanian nationals have joined the insurgency, the borders 

with those two countries have remained for the most part secure. There has 

been little evidence that the guerrillas have active sanctuaries in Jordan or 

Saudi Arabia.23 One American military commander responsible for security along the Jordanian border noted, “the Jordanians have a pretty good 

border. They do a pretty good job controlling the border.”24 The fact that 

these large sections of Iraq’s border are mostly secure suggests that the 

problem is not intractable. But by far the most effective way to deny insurgents transnational sanctuary—again, short of extensive barriers or all-out 

invasion—is to convince to neighboring countries to do it themselves. 

None of this is to suggest that denying the enemy transnational sanctuaries is some sort of magic bullet for ultimate victory. All of the other 

hard-learned lessons of counterinsurgency still apply. Counterinsurgent 

forces must win the trust of the local civilians, they must provide security, 

and native populations must learn to take control of their own security and 

their own governance. But denying sanctuaries is an essential, and often 

overlooked, step to success. 

There is a lot of very good advice floating around about how to win 

in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, with some notable exceptions, most 

of the contemporary discussions on the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan 

miss the importance of transnational sanctuary.25 This is a mistake. In any 

list of objectives, steps to victory, fundamental principles, or other guides 

to running successful counterinsurgencies, denying insurgents refuge and 

86 
supply from outside sources must take a prominent place. Otherwise, the 

enemy can continue to launch attacks over the border as long as he has the 

will to do so. In a day and age of the mass media following the mantra of 

“if it bleeds, it leads,” those attacks, no matter how small or insignificant 

to the overall course of the conflict, dent the confidence and the will of the 

civilians who support the counterinsurgency forces. 

Fanatics, by definition, have the advantage in a battle of wills. Denying them sanctuary means denying them opportunities to wreak havoc. 

Without those opportunities, even fanatics have no chance. 

87 
Endnotes 

1. Dale Andrade and James H. Willbanks, “CORDS/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lesson from Vietnam for the Future,” Military Review, 86 (March-April 

2006), 9. 

2. Many of the studies of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan have focused 

on other Soviet failures, not denying sanctuary. See, for example, Grau and 

Nawroz, “Soviet Experience,” 26-27, and Stephen D. Pomper, “Don’t Follow 

the Bear: The Soviet Attempt to Build Afghanistan’s Military,” Military Review, 

85 (September-October 2005), 26-29. 

3. A more comprehensive comparison of the Americans in Vietnam and the 

Soviets in Afghanistan is Douglas Anthony Borer, “Superpowers Defeated: A 

Comparison of Vietnam and Afghanistan,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University, 1993). 

4. Staniland, “Defeating Transnational Insurgencies,” passim; Daniel Byman, et 

al, Trends in Outside Support in Insurgent Conflicts (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 

2001). 

5. Peter Paret and John W. Shy, “Guerrilla Warfare and U.S. Military Policy: A 

Study,” Marine Corps Gazette, 46 (January 1962), 5. 

6. Zasloff, Role of Sanctuary, passim. These and other early works on the 

topic are reviewed in Robertson, “Active Sanctuary,” 39-45. Much of this early 

work was heavily influenced by Mao Zedong’s writings on phased guerrilla 

warfare that envisioned an end game where guerrillas eventually fought larger 

conventional operations. For some sanctuary only became vitally important in 

the later phases. See for example, David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: 

Theory and Practice (St. Petersburg, FL: Hailer Publishing, 1964), 39-42; and 

Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (St. Petersburg, FL: Hailer 

Publishing, 1966), and Robert Thompson, “Squaring the Error,” Foreign Affairs, 

46 (April 1968), 442-453. 

7. Christmas, “Guerrilla Sanctuaries,” 27. 

8. Deiner, “Guerrilla Border Sanctuaries,” 176-178. 

9. Hamilton, “Defeating Insurgency,” passim. 

10. Steven Metz, Counterinsurgency: Strategy and the Phoenix of American 

Capability (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 

February 1995), 30. 

11. Staniland, “Defeating Transnational Insurgencies,” 35-37. 

12. A general critique of American counterinsurgency doctrine that does not 

spend much time on sanctuary is Cable, “Reinventing the Round Wheel,” passim. 

13. Daniel P. Bolger, Scenes from an Unfinished War: Low-Intensity Conflict 

in Korea, 1966-1969, Leavenworth Paper No. 19, (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1991), 44-45. 

88 
14. FM 31-10, Denial Operations, passim. 

15. United States Department of the Army, FM 90-8, Counterguerrilla Operations (Washington, DC: GPO, August 1986), 3-44-3-47. 

16. The manual on support operations notes in an appendix that external support is often a key aspect of insurgencies, but does not offer suggestions on how 

to cut off that support. FM 3-07, Stability Operations and Support Operations 

(Washington, DC: GPO, February 2003), D-6. The manual on counterinsurgency 

operations also cites external support for insurgents but provides no guidance on 

how to cut off such support. FM 3-07.22, Counterinsurgency Operations (Washington, DC: GPO, October 2004), 1-8. 

17. Nadav Hillebrand, “Afghan Hound,” Jerusalem Report, (2 June 2003), 32. 

18. Fighting continues in Afghanistan, but other concerns are starting to take 

precedence, for example the renewed opiate growing market. Although there is 

growing concern about terrorist efforts in the southwest, across from Baluchistan 

in Pakistan. See, for example, Shawn Brimley, “Tentacles of Jihad: Targeting 

Transnational Support Networks,” Parameters, 36 (Summer 2006), 30-46; Ann 

Scott Tyson, “Afghan Threat Played Down; NATO Chief Says Revived Insurgency Isn’t Likely,” Washington Post, 7 March 2006, A13; Richard Holbrooke, 

“Afghanistan: The Long Road Ahead,” Washington Post, 2 April 2006, B7; 

“U.S. Sponsors Seminar for Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Security,” 3 April 

2006; and Mirwais Afghan, “US-led attack kills 76 in Afghanistan,” Washington 

Post, 22 May 2006. 

19. Some observers question whether what is going on in Iraq can even properly be called an “insurgency.” For example, Ian Beckett writes, “there is not yet 

the cohesive leadership, political vision, strategic direction, or unifying ideology 

to suggest the emergence of a real insurgency.... The situation in Iraq has been 

characterized as perhaps an example of a ‘net war’, in which loose groups often 

diametrically opposed to one another gravitate towards one another to carry out 

attacks, trade weapons or intelligence, and disperse, never to cooperate again.” 

Ian F.W. Beckett, Insurgency in Iraq: An Historical Perspective (Carlisle, PA: 

Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, January 2005), 5-6. 

20. Of course, all is not perfect: one area in particular where the lessons took 

longer to recall was convoy security. Improvised explosive devices have provided the greatest new challenge. 

21. Joshua Green, “The Numbers War,” Atlantic Monthly, 297 (May 2006), 36­

37; Michael E. O’Hanlon and Nina Kamp, “Iraq Index,” 18 May 2006, Brookings Institution, Online: http://www.brookings.edu/iraqindex, 4-19. 

22. The problem is exacerbated by the American military’s traditional tendency 

to look at civilian leadership as amateurish and dangerously restrictive when it 

comes to military affairs. For a primer on military distrust of civilian leadership, 

see Russell F. Weigley, “The Soldier, the Statesman, and the Military Historian,” 

Journal of Military History, 63 (October 1999), 807-822. 

89 
23. O’Hanlon and Kamp, “Iraq Index,” 19. Jordan was an ally in the initial 

invasion of Iraq, allowing Special Forces to operate from Jordanian territory. 

Saudi Arabia has been neutral, but Special Forces also used Saudi territory. 

Recently the Saudis even began toying with the idea of sealing their own border 

with Iraq to keep out the violence. See Woodward, Plan of Attack, 257-264, 353­

354; Franks, American Soldier, 404-406; “Marines Keep Watchful Eye on Iraq’s 

Rural Western Region,” US Federal News Service, 29 March 2006; Rasheed 

Abou-Alsamh, “Saudis Mull Electric Fence on Iraqi Border,” Christian Science 

Monitor, 20 April 2006, 7. 

24. Teeples interview. 

25. For example see Robert M. Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global 

War on Terror (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006); Andrew F. Krepinevich, “How to 

Win in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, 84 (September-October 2005), 87-99; Bruce Hoffman, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 

June 2004); David Voorhies, “Stability Operations: The Legacy of Search and 

Attack,” Infantry, 94 (May-June 2005), 27-34; Frederick W. Kagan, “A Plan 

for Victory in Iraq,” Weekly Standard, 11 (29 May 2006); “How to Do Better,” 

Economist, 14 December 2005, Online: http://www.economist.com, (accessed 

1 February 2006); Thomas E. Ricks, “The Lessons of Counterinsurgency,” 

Washington Post, 16 February 2006, A14; Robert D. Kaplan, “The Coming 

Normalcy?” Atlantic Monthly, 297 (April 2006), 72-81; Andrade and Willbanks, 

“CORDS/Phoenix,” 22; and Beckett, Insurgency in Iraq, passim. Studies that 

have focused on the sanctuary question the in war on terror but disagree on how 

to deal with it include Staniland, “Defeating Transnational Insurgencies,” passim; Brimley, “Tentacles of Jihad,” 40-43; Colin S. Gray, Irregular Enemies and 

the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt? (Carlisle, PA: 

Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, March 2006), 26; and John 

A. Lynn, “Patterns of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, 85 

(July-August 2005), 22-27. 

90 
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107 

About the Author 

Prior to joining the Combat Studies Institute in December 2005, Thomas 

A. Bruscino, Jr. worked at the US Army Center of Military History in 

Washington, DC. Dr. Bruscino earned his B.A. in history from Adams 

State College in Alamosa, Colorado in 1999, his M.A. in American history from Ohio University in 2002, and his Ph.D. in American military 

history from Ohio University in 2005. His articles and review essays have 

appeared in the Claremont Review of Books, Journal of America’s Military 

Past, San Luis Valley Historian, and Reviews in American History. Dr. 

Bruscino lives in Lansing, Kansas with his wife and two sons. 

109 
9 780160 768460 

90000 

ISBN 0-16-076846-2