By 1985, the Afghan rebels were receiving $250 million a year in dirty money from the CIA to battle the 115,000 Soviet troops occupying the country. This figure was double the number of Soviet troops who had been deployed to Afghanistan in 1984. The annual payments to the Muslim guerrillas reached nearly $1 billion by 1988. By this time, the CIA was also shipping highly sophisticated weaponry, including Stinger missiles, to the jihadists, whom they mistakenly viewed as “freedom fighters.”2
