Talk:Operation Cyclone

message: The first link cited in the "Background" section is to a Christopher Hitchens article titled: "The latest absurdities to emerge from Jimmy Carter's big, smug mouth." Hardly an NPOV, authoratative source. --82.32.130.14 (talk) 07:29, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Violation of NPOV in background 

message: the link for the first footnote does not work
:Repaired.  --Fastboy (talk) 12:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: broken link

message: It looks like from this article that it was Carter and Brzezinski were responsible for the funding and getting the Israeli's involved. Whereas it was really Charlie Wilson who was mainly responsible for increasing the funding 100 fold by 1987 and for getting the Israelis, Egyptians, and Pakistanis to facilitate the arms sales/movement.  Yeah, Carter and Brzezinski got the ball rolling in '79, but after that, they had really nothing to do with the escalating conflict.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.83.247.217 (talk) 03:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. Some details with sources are given in the article Charles Wilson (Texas politician).--Fastboy (talk) 05:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

text: Do not know if you can use 2007 Movie "Charlie Wilson's War" or not, that would give you some basic information.Nakamuradavid (talk) 09:53, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not enough about Charlie's contributions... 

message: There is absolutely no mention of Reagan in this article, which I find odd.  He was President during a majority of Operation: Cyclone's duration, so he would have had to sign off on most of this.  O:C is mentioned in the Reagan Doctrine wiki article; Reagan is mentioned in "blowback" and how his funding of Afghani fighters helped create the Taliban.
But no mention here.
Then again, there was no mention of Charlie Wilson in this article unil a week or so after the Tom Hanks movie came out.  Maybe we just need a movie about (not starring) Reagan before this article will get up to speed. Ynot4tony2 (talk) 17:29, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not enough (nothing) about Reagan's contributions... 

message: This section at the end, under "Criticism":
"(It is estimated that 35,000 foreign Muslims from 43 Islamic countries participated in the war). Additionally, the close relationships and cooperation established during the 1980s between the mujahideen and Pakistan's intelligence and military services, as well as the presence of mujahideen training bases on Pakistani soil, ultimately led to the infiltration of the Pakistani security services by militant Islamic elements as well as the de facto takeover of northwest Pakistan by pro-Taliban rebels."
Where is/are the reference(s) for this?  This very much needs to be accurately footnoted.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.219.187.126 (talk) 22:24, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need a Reference 

message: "Moreover, U.S. support for the mujahideen enabled and prolonged their resistance to the Soviet presence, ultimately resulting in thousands of battle-hardened, radicalized, non-Afghan veterans returning to their home countries and forming the core of what is now referred to as Al Qaeda..." Who let prisonplanet forum commenter edit this? Rhetorical, as it comes with being a wiki. I am not saying that style and writing is to be completely dry and monolithic, but stuff like this is what the title of this discussion section decribes perfectly. Fixing it.
68.193.125.131 (talk) 18:03, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agree. this article is a good example of when an attempt to "make a point" gets in the way of telling the story in a clear and concise manner. however it would take an enormous amount of work to de-tangle and fix it. Decora (talk) 19:44, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV, References and Writing Styled for an Encyclopedia

message: The link for citation 41 doesn't work anymore. I don't think the page exists anymore because I couldn't even get to usinfo.state.gov (the link goes to an archived article there).
--100.0.38.136 (talk) 03:31, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  link doesn't work 

message: TheTimesAreAChanging it was a False flag operations, why did you reverted the edit?--Setareh1990 (talk) 07:05, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Honestly, I guess it depends on how broad the definition of "false flag" is. That the Afghan rebels received external assistance was widely known at the time, not a closely-guarded secret.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 16:07, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: False flag operations

message: I check pages listed in :Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of :Operation Cyclone's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "nsarchive.gwu.edu":
From Bay of Pigs Invasion: 
From Soviet–Afghan War: Steve Galster "AFGHANISTAN: THE MAKING OF U.S. POLICY, 1973-1990" National Security Archive, October 9, 2001
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 02:23, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned references in [[:Operation Cyclone]] 

message: Some minor comments regarding the article:
* The article refers to the reasons for the Carter administration to start the operation in the first place only superficially. From my perspective the article should include some sentences regarding the detorating US-Soviet relationship in the 1970s, mainly about the interventions in Angola and on the Horn of Africa and the effect on the US perception on Soviet intensions. See for instance:
:
* It's highly contested if the delivery of the Stingers really was decisive for the Soviet withdrawal. Gorbachev mentioned in an interview, the Stinger did not influence the decision. For more details see section The Reagan administration's offensive in the German article: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone (translation is not perfect though) and https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2002-01-01/stinging-rebukes.
Jo1971 (talk) 21:23, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reasons for Carter's response & the Stinger effect 

message: I think the end year of the operation should be 1991 not 1989.
 The programme of aid to the Mujahedeen, code-named ‘Operation Cyclone’, continued until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.
 The CIA’s legal authority to conduct covert action in Afghanistan effectively ended on January 1, 1992.
 The failure of the August coup in Moscow, whose plotters sought to arrest the USSR’s disintegration by sidelining the reformers, had immediate repercussions for the Afghan problem. Only days before, Nikolai Kozyrev, who had been Moscow’s chief negotiator at the Geneva talks and was still active in Afghan matters as an ambassador-at-large, had restated the Soviet position for “negative symmetry plus”—a guarantee that not only the United States but other parties like Saudi Arabia would cease supplying arms to the resistance. Then on September 13, 1991, after a meeting between James Baker and the new Soviet foreign minister, Boris Pankin, the United States and the USSR signed an agreement to halt arms supplies to the belligerents and issued a statement confirming the right of the Afghan people to decide their own destiny without outside interference.
 Gorbachev and Yeltsin were as friendly to the American visitor as their subordinates and the leaders of the republics were. Baker was eager to return to the American precoup agenda and push for things that President Bush had not managed to obtain from Gorbachev at the Moscow summit. With the Baltics finally free, these included canceling Soviet aid to the Moscow-backed regimes in Afghanistan and Cuba. “Given the highly uncertain Soviet future,” recalled Baker, “we were in even more of a hurry to ‘lock in’ gains then and there.” He made it apparent to Gorbachev and Yeltsin that American economic aid depended on the withdrawal of Soviet support for Cuba and Afghanistan. “They jumped at my offer, and indeed were almost competitive in trying to be cooperative,” wrote Baker in his memoirs. Gorbachev, who no longer represented the Communist Party, told the American secretary of state, “Yes, we spent eighty-two billion dollars on ideology.” Baker was amazed when Gorbachev agreed not only to terminate Soviet aid to Cuba but also to announce his decision at the joint press conference they were about to hold in the Kremlin. This was done without consulting Fidel Castro. It was a major coup for American foreign policy: all Soviet army servicemen were to be withdrawn from Cuba, and aid would be cut off as of January 1, 1992. The same deadline was set for the ending of Soviet aid to Afghanistan. Upon hearing Baker’s request, Yeltsin responded, “I will tell Gorbachev to do it.” 
If nobody complains, I would change it. --Jo1971 (talk) 15:10, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  End Year 

message: According to historian Conor Tobin, Carter signed on July 3, 1979 two findings with an amount of up to $695,000. I guess Conor Tobin is here more up to date. His information is based on the 2018 release of Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XII, Afghanistan. So I would suggest to update the information in this article (probably removing the other references?).
 On July 3, Carter signed two findings. The first provided authorization to “support insurgent propaganda and other psychological operations in Afghanistan; establish radio access to the Afghan population through third country facilities”; and “provide unilaterally or through third countries as appropriate support to Afghan insurgents, either in the form of cash or nonmilitary supplies.” The second authorized the tasking or encouragement of “the network of agents or other contacts in foreign countries to provide nonattributable propaganda, or related actions” to “expose the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and its leadership as despotic and subservient to the Soviet Union,” and to “publicize efforts by the Afghan insurgents to regain their country’s sovereignty.” The CIA was authorized to expend up to $695,000, of which $575,000 was drawn by mid-August. Officers from the Near East South Asia Division imported cash, medical equipment, and radio transmitters to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), who then distributed them to the insurgents. Unilateral assets also separately transferred funds into Afghanistan and to exiles abroad.
 
And Carter signed another finding on November 7. pp 250–251:
 On October 4 Brzezinski and Turner “discussed the Afghan situation.” Noting that the funds authorized in July had been dispersed, Brzezinski “suggested we come in for more.” Turner countered that “all the signs were that only arms were really wanted at this point.” Nonetheless, Turner urged the Directorate of Operations to “get moving in providing more financial support, communications and other help to the insurgents,” and requested proposals for supplementary aid. They responded with “several enhancement options” that “followed . . . naturally on the actions that had already been undertaken as a result” of the July findings. These included an approach to Saudi intelligence to provide coordinated support and funding for the insurgency; tactical military communications equipment (transceivers and walkie-talkies) for the insurgents via Pakistan or Saudi Arabia; $772,000 in funds for the Pakistanis to purchase lethal military equipment for the insurgents; and a comparable amount of lethal equipment provided directly from CIA stocks for distribution to insurgents via Pakistan. These options were taken up by the SCC on October 23. [...] Carter’s “preference” was to “have the consultations with the Saudis (& perhaps Paks) first” before committing to a finding, and Brzezinski directed Turner to “take soundings with Pakistani and Saudi intelligence agencies on their intentions for covert action.” [...] As a result, Turner recommended Carter sign the amended finding and that the CIA be authorized to inform Riyadh that Washington expects “them to put up at least as much.” Carter did so on November 7.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XII, Afghanistan, eds. David Zierler (Washington: Government Publishing Office, 2018), Document 76.
 A 3 July 1979 Presidential Finding authorized CIA to expend up to $695,000 to support the Afghan insurgents, either unilaterally or through third countries, by providing cash or non-military supplies; and also authorized CIA propaganda operations in support of the insurgency. At the time the SCC discussed this proposal, it was agreed that consideration would be given in the future to increased support should circumstances indicate additional funds were warranted.
--Jo1971 (talk) 16:30, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Carter July 1979 Findings 

message: "In the mid-1970s, Pakistani intelligence officials began privately lobbying the U.S. and its allies to send material assistance to the Islamist insurgents. " The Saur Revolution didn't occur until 1978, so what insurgents were to be supplied in the "mid 1970s"?  Is this a typo, or is this a claim that the Islamist insurgency pre-dated the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and had originally been against the Republic of Afghanistan? Iapetus (talk) 14:41, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: As explained at Inter-Services Intelligence activities in Afghanistan#The beginnings : a response to Afghan interference: The ISI backed a failed revolt against Daoud in 1975, which was supported by Bhutto at the time and led by Massoud and Hekmatyar, in response to Daoud's support for Pashtun and Balochi separatists in Pakistan and his irredentist claims to territory defined as Pakistani under the Durand Line. However, I am not aware of any evidence that Pakistan solicited (much less received) U.S. support in this endeavor, nor that it continued to foment insurgency after Daoud backed down and recognized the Durand Line in 1976. While there is obvious continuity between the failed 1975 rebellion and later ISI operations in Afghanistan, for the purposes of this article I believe that the vague language intends to convey something closer to .TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:00, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrong date?