The unsung hero of America’s victorious covert struggle – aka “Charlie Wilson’s Conflict” – in defeating the Soviet army throughout their occupation of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989 is a profession US Overseas Service officer, retired ambassador Jon D Glassman.
Glassman’s management as chief of mission on the US Embassy in Kabul from 1987 to 1989 performed a key half in orchestrating the humiliating defeat of the Soviet army, immortalized by the image of Russian troops crossing the Hairatan Bridge towards the Uzbek SSR on February 15, 1989, beneath Soviet chief Mikhail Gorbachev.
Whereas the heroes within the 2007 movie Charlie Wilson’s Conflict, akin to maverick US congressman Wilson himself and Greek-American CIA agent Gust Avrakotos, gained worldwide fame from their portrayals by Tom Hanks and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, it was Jon D Glassman who was on streets of Kabul and the provinces, pipelining actionable political, diplomatic and army insights to the US State Division and the White Home beneath Jimmy Carter after which Ronald Reagan.
Whereas the availability of arms and logistics of feeding them to the Afghan mujahideen have been managed by the Central Intelligence Company out of Islamabad, Glassman was a US State Division diplomat working within the stomach of the beast, Kabul.
“[CBS News anchor] Dan Quite and Charlie Wilson put one foot in Afghanistan; I used to be strolling the streets of Kabul speaking to Afghans,” Glassman mentioned in an interview with Capitol Intelligence Group – Turning Swords into Fairness in his house within the DC suburbs of Maryland. That is the primary print and televised interview ever granted by Glassman on his time in Afghanistan.
Through the day, Glassman would spend his time speaking to Afghans and managing his staff reporting on Russian troop maneuvers by driving between tanks whereas within the night imbibing limitless portions of vodka with Russian and Warsaw Pact diplomats.
However Glassman’s time in Kabul in the course of the profitable covert struggle initiated by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Polish-born nationwide safety adviser beneath Carter, is a particularly related instance for all these working to defeat the Russian army after Moscow’s bloody invasion of Ukraine on February 25, 2022.
The Soviets didn’t expel or assassinate Glassman, which speaks volumes on the deep-seated Russian concern of participating in any direct army battle with america, contemplating Glassman and his embassy workers have been offering vital help to the mujahideen and the good insurgent chief Ahmad Shah Massoud within the struggle towards the occupation.
The final time the US army straight engaged with the Russian army was in Syria, when US particular forces ended up killing between 300 to 600 members of Wagner, the non-public Russian mercenary group now actively combating in Ukraine.
Blinken’s failure
It’s too early to calculate what number of harmless lives might have been saved, or if the Russian invasion might have been averted altogether, if US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had studied and realized from Glassman’s time in Kabul by not closing the US Embassy in Kiev on the outset of the Russian invasion.
Washington Publish foreign-affairs columnist Josh Rogin has mentioned it’s broadly anticipated that Blinken might be fired by President Joe Biden after the midterm elections in November and changed by US Senator Chris Coons of Delaware.
Former US ambassador to Moscow and now CIA director Invoice Burns is main the brand new “Charlie Wilson’s Conflict,” serving to to inflict unprecedented casualties towards Russian army and common workers. The many years of struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq, together with modifications by then-director Basic David Petraeus, has militarized the CIA to some extent not seen because the peak of the Vietnam Conflict.
Diplomatic heroism
Glassman additionally famous that nobody ought to be stunned by the utterly irrational and mindless invasion of Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin, as it’s only a repeat of the irrational and pointless invasion of Afghanistan by Leonid Brezhnev in 1979, and the Cuban missile disaster beneath Nikita Khrushchev in 1962.
Glassman, for his half, is hopeful that Russians themselves will power out Putin and the half-dozen Rasputin-like mafia dons who’ve taken over the Kremlin.
“If we will take out the 5 crime households of New York, the Russians can do the identical,” Glassman mentioned.
Glassman serves for instance of diplomatic heroism by serving on publish throughout an energetic battle, probably the most vital responsibility of any emissary and the genesis of diplomacy itself.
The native New Yorker personally volunteered to guide the US Embassy in Kabul in 1987, which had been led at a decrease stage after US ambassador Adolph “Spike” Dubs was kidnapped after which killed in a gun battle after visiting the US Tradition Heart in Kabul in February 1979.
Arnold Lewis Raphel, the US ambassador to Pakistan, was killed on August 17, 1988, when the C-130 Hercules army plane carrying himself and Pakistan’s army chief, President Muhammand Zia-ul-Haq, and 34 different passengers allegedly crashed shortly after taking off from a Pakistani airport.
Nonetheless, Glassman mentioned within the interview that the Russian ambassador to Kabul on the time, Nikolai Yegorychev, had implied throughout an unprecedented go to to the US Embassy in Kabul that the aircraft could have been destroyed by “patriotic forces” of the puppet Afghan communist regime.
“He [Yegorychev] knew me as a result of I used to be the one Westerner [in Kabul] who knew Russian. I had a tons and plenty of conversations with this man Yegorychev. He was a lonely man, I used to be a lonely man, so we talked. So one time he says to me there’s a logistics factor, you might be giving the stingers stuff [to the mujahideen] and we will’t settle for this,” Glassman mentioned.
“‘I’m going to let you know one thing, some patriot … a loyalist out of Pakistan goes to shoot down one in every of your provide planes.’ So just a few weeks, a few months go on, after which the aircraft with Zia-ul-Haq and Arnie Raphel on board blows up.”
After the destruction of the C-130, Glassman mentioned, “Yegorychev involves see me and says it’s a very unhealthy second however I need to let you know, that we, the Russians, had nothing to with this…. So I say, what about your allies right here [in Afghanistan]? He mentioned I can not converse for them.
“That was an implicit admission that they [the Russians] have been conscious of it and so they have been attempting at hand off the blame. The Afghan [government] couldn’t have completed it alone with out the Soviets being concerned. The sport they have been taking part in is saying they did it, not I.”
With hypothesis that the C-130 was destroyed as revenge for Zia’s backing america towards Russia, a joint US-Pakistan investigation was made into the crash, with an official US-Pakistan discovering that it was an accident and never an act of hostile hearth or sabotage. Glassman’s recollection of the assembly with Russian ambassador Yegorychev utterly contradicts the official US and Pakistani authorities findings.
In contrast to what occurred after final yr’s fall of Kabul, Glassman took the US flag beneath his arm from the US Embassy in Kabul in 1989, and handed it to then-president Reagan in victory.
Glassman later turned the US ambassador Paraguay at age 47 after which deputy nationwide safety adviser to Dan Quayle, the vice-president beneath George H W Bush.
Peter Okay Semler is the chief govt editor and founding father of Capitol Intelligence. Beforehand, he was the Washington, DC, bureau chief for Mergermarket (Dealreporter/Debtwire) of the Monetary Instances and headed political and financial protection of the US Home of Representatives and Senate.
