The Soviet invasion turned Afghanistan into a Cold War proxy chessboard

When Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to prop up a faltering communist government, the Carter and then Reagan administrations saw an opportunity to bleed Moscow without direct American casualties. Coll details how the CIA began covertly funneling weapons and funds to Afghan mujahideen resistance fighters, routing nearly all of it through Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, which controlled distribution to the various factions.

This arrangement let Washington avoid the political and human costs of direct involvement while still inflicting massive damage on Soviet forces, ultimately contributing to the USSR's costly withdrawal in 1989. But the outsourcing to Pakistan meant the United States had almost no direct control over which fighters received the most support, and ISI systematically favored the most Islamist and ideologically extreme commanders over more moderate nationalist factions.

The strategic logic made sense in isolation — hurt the Soviets cheaply — but Coll shows it created dependencies and armed networks nobody in Washington had a plan for once the shared enemy disappeared.

Takeaway: a war won by proxy still leaves someone else holding the weapons afterward.