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Most American high school history books describe how the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, "without provocation and with overwhelming force". America then "came to the rescue" of the Afghan "resistance". This happened under president Jimmy Carter.

Yet Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski confirms that it was the US and not the Soviet Union which started the war:

"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention…." (Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 November 1998)

In other words, the Soviet-Afghan war was triggered on the orders of President Carter, the latest recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

Jimmy Carter was not only instrumental in unleashing the war (which has been ongoing for the last 23 years), he was also the architect of the CIA’s covert support to Islamic terrorism. In fact, it turns out that prime 9/11 suspect, Saudi born Osama bin Laden, was recruited during that period "ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight the Soviet invaders". (See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalisation, The Truth behind September 11 , Global Outlook, Shanty Bay, 2002, Chapter 2)

Confirmed by the Afghan Project (http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/afintro.htm ), which has collected hundreds of CIA and State Department documents, cables and memoranda: the CIA "had developed contacts" in the course of 1979 with a number of Islamic terrorist organisations. The objective was to not only unseat the pro-Soviet People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government but also to unleash a war with the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, in April 1979, elected Pakistan prime minister Zulfilcar Ali Bhutto, had been overthrown in a military coup and sentenced to death on the orders of General Zia al-Haq. The Carter administration not only supported Pakistan’s new military rulers, they used them in waging the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan:

relations between the CIA and the ISI had grown increasingly warm following Zia's ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime,'... During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984.... `the CIA was more cautious than the Pakistanis.' Both Pakistan and the United States took the line of deception on Afghanistan with a public posture of negotiating a settlement while privately agreeing that military escalation was the best course. (Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995. See also the review of Cordovez and Harrison in International Press Services (IPS), 22 August 1995).

In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam. The madrasas were set up by Wahabi fundamentalists financed out of Saudi Arabia:

"t was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged." (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks In the US, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RAW109A.html , 16 September 2001)

US support to the Mujahideen initiated during the Carter administration led to the pumping of "billions of dollars into the Afghan cause and thousands of Islamic zealots were given specialist training in the US and Britain." (Review of John Cooley’s Unholy Wars - Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, http://www.neue-einheit.com/mixed/terror/bookreview.htm ):

"In the United States they experienced tough courses in endurance, weapons use, sabotage, and killing techniques, communications and other skills. They were required to impart these skills to the scores of thousands of fighters who formed the centre and the base of the pyramid of holy war." (John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars - Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, London Pluto Press, 1999, p. 81.)