The US Should Not Give Ukraine Weapons Recklessly Like It Did in Afghanistan: The Dangers of Providing Advanced Weapons to the Enemy of your Enemy

The US in the Soviet-Afghan War

In 1979, the Soviet Union decided to invade Afghanistan. At the time, Soviet leaders expected a short war with little resistance. Afghanistan had just established a socialist government after a revolution the year before, but the central authority was falling apart (Westad 1989, 282). The USSR did not help or provoke this revolution, but it was strategically advantageous for them. The Soviet leadership had regional, ideological, and systemic reasons to keep Afghanistan within its sphere of influence. However, the critical difference between the Soviet-Afghan War and other Cold War conflicts was that the Soviet leadership decided to engage with the conflict directly and with their own army. In past conflicts, they had coerced satellite states and close allies such as Cuba and East Germany to fight, but they were careful not to risk a direct engagement between the Red Army and NATO forces. In this case, the military leaders promised a quick victory and did not expect the US to get involved.

The Soviets made a poor assessment, however. The United States, Saudi Arabia, and China quickly got involved and poured around $6-$12 billion USD into the Afghan rebel forces. While this pales in comparison to the $36-$48 billion the Soviet Union spent in the war, the American armament provision was more deadly (Coll 2004). Not only did the CIA decide to funnel weapons to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to distribute widely, but they gave them perilous land-to-air missile launchers. They insisted on giving the missiles to the deadliest rebels, who did not happen to be the most reliable. Many extremist groups were labeled as ‘freedom fighters’ and given exceptional support. Although these elements were highly effective at taking out Soviet troops, they also decided to start amassing weapons and pointing them at each other and Western targets. These ‘freedom fighters’ would later be labeled as ‘terrorists.’

A Lesson Taught

The most interesting item the US provided to the Mujahideen is probably the Stinger Missile. It was introduced in 1986 to allow the rebels to rake out Soviet helicopters. The CIA gave the Mujahideen somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 of such missiles. Unfortunately, they did so recklessly, and many ended up in the hands of “commanders associated with anti-American radical Islamist Leaders” and the government of Iran (Coll 2004). These missiles are the perfect tool to commit an act of terror in front of an airport runway. Despite congressional approval to spend millions on a buyback program in an attempt to recover the missiles, it is estimated that 600 of those missiles are still in radical control. Some estimates say that more personal weapons had been shipped into Afghanistan during the decade of the Soviet-Afghan War than any other country (Coll 2004). In an interview after the war, a US official said they had supplied Pakistan with enough weapons to “blow up half of New York.”

The War in Ukraine

Today’s situation in Ukraine has interesting parallels. The Kremlin presumably also expected a short war and no external western support. Instead, the invasion has run for longer, and the United States has already provided Ukraine with around 16.2 billion USD in weapons and other provisions (US Department of State 2022). US support has not been as disorganized as in Afghanistan. First and foremost, the US is providing support to an established army of a sovereign nation, not exactly different unaccountable groups. The US is also providing this support directly, and not through ISI, as it did back in the Soviet-Afghan war. It is also collaborating broadly with NATO partners who are also providing their weapons (NATO 2022). Another key difference is that Ukraine’s army is still broadly using weapons from the Soviet era that are not very advanced (Cooper and Schmitt 2022). The US has also claimed to keep a tighter inventory of what is being provided. The US has acquired much technical experience in the provision of weapons in its last incursions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and its own war in Afghanistan.

A Lesson not Learned

This latest point is the most important and the most faltering. There is an expectation that despite the situation's urgency, policymakers would have learned lessons from the past and established strong measures to keep track of the weaponry in Ukraine. However, NATO partners have recently recognized that they might be unable to avoid trafficking or smuggling (Foy, Fleming and Olearchyk 2022). While Ukraine and Afghanistan are far from the same, Ukraine has immense potential for the illicit arms trade. A 2017 report commissioned by the German Foreign Ministry found that “significant numbers of illicit weapons are in circulation in Ukraine” (Martyniuk 2017). Before the war, it did not have a central arms register, and it did not have laws regulating the manufacture, purchase, and possession of firearms. When the war started, Ukraine opened a registry of weapons it handed out to its citizens. That practice has now been abandoned. Still, the US has steadily increased the volume and level of weapons provided to Ukraine. Notably, the US decided to send over 1,400 Stinger missiles (US Department of State 2022).

The concern in this war is not that Ukrainians will take these stinger missiles and point them at each other or become terrorists after the war. The danger is that they might flow into the wrong hands through the illegal arms trade—complex networks of organized crime flow Latin American drugs from Africa and Europe. A market of illicit arms flows the other way. Many weapons are finding their way into northern Mozambique, Libya, Mali, Colombia, Venezuela, and the broader Sahel region (Walker and Restrepo 2022). It is even harder to monitor weapon movements there, and many of the actors that secure those weapons have interests that could destabilize fragile regions. 

The US has a long history of providing advanced weapons to the enemy of their enemy. Sometimes this collaboration evolves into a solid defensive partnership, and the enemy’s enemy becomes a proper friend. Sometimes, the enemy of the enemy may turn the weapons you gave them against you. Policymakers may want to consider the downsides of handing out weapons indiscriminately out of the urgency to turn the tide of a conflict. There should be an ongoing effort to develop mechanisms to support allies, whether temporary or permanent, without doing so recklessly.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons / US National Archive

Works Cited:

Coll, Steve. 2004. "We're Keeping These Stingers." In Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. pp. 285-300. New York: Penguin Books.

Cooper, Helene, and Eric Schmitt. 2022. “The ‘MacGyvered’ Weapons in Ukraine’s Arsenal.” August 28. Accessed September 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/28/us/politics/ukraine-weapons-russia.html.

Foy, Henry, Sam Fleming, and Roman Olearchyk. 2022. “NATO and EU sound alarm over risk of Ukraine weapons smuggling.” July 12. Accessed September 2022. https://www.ft.com/content/bce78c78-b899-4dd2-b3a0-69d789b8aee8.

Martyniuk, Anton. 2017. “Measuring Illicit Arms Flows. Briefing Paper, Berlin: Lowy Institute for International Policy.”

NATO. 2022. “NATO-Russia Setting the Record Straight.” September 21. Accessed September 2022. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/115204.htm.

US Department of State. 2022. “US Security Cooperation with Ukraine.” September 16. Accessed September 2022. https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine/.

Walker, Summer, and Mariana Botero Restrepo. March 22, 2022. "Illicit Economies and Armed Conflict." Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. Accessed September 2022. https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/illicit-economies-armed-conflict/.

Westad, Odd Arne. 1989. "Afghanistan: Perspectives on the Soviet War." Bulletin of Peace Proposals 281-293.