1989: The Year That Made Us ( 1989: The Year That Made The Modern World )

Miller: In 1989, the world was in a great shifting of powers.

Tomsen: In afghanistan, the afghan mujahideen,

Supported by the united states,

Defeated the soviet army.

Baker: The wall came down and we did not anticipate

The total implosion of the soviet union.

Narrator: In 1989, the collapse of the iron curtain

Coupled with the soviet withdrawal from afghanistan

Signaled the decline of communism and the

Waning days of the cold war.

Soufan: Those mujahideen who went to afghanistan realized

'wow! We did not only defeat the soviets who invaded afghanistan,

We destroyed the soviet empire.'

Narrator: But the devastation left behind stoked a new global conflict.

A conflict the us was not prepared for.

Soufan: We said, okay mission accomplished, see you later, you sort it out.

Petraeus: Gradually extremism grows and grows.

Narrator: Today the west is constantly engaged with

Violent factions around the world.

Aggression that events 30 years ago helped fuel.

Soufan: What we did back in 1989 in afghanistan,

Resulted in what we saw in downtown manhattan on 9/11.

Narrator: And no one knows when this war will end.

Petraeus: This is not a fight that we're going to win in a decade

Much less in a few years.

The threat of islamic extremists is generational.

.

Soldier: White truck, 3:00 johnson.

We're gonna push it, we're gonna push it out of the way.

.

Get out! Get out! Get out!

Narrator: For many years now the war on terror has raged.

Soldier: But he's ok.

Soldier: Fine.

Not a scratch on him, lucky son-of-a-gun.

Narrator: But the enemy isn't an evil empire or a rogue state.

This is a fight against islamic extremists,

A complex group of combatants

With a collective goal of changing the world order.

Jennings: The u.S. Military suffered one of the worst

Battlefield tragedies in several years.

Reporter (over tv): Three u.S. Helicopters were shot down

By rocket-propelled grenades.

Clinton: Early this morning, bombs exploded outside

Two of our american embassies in africa.

Curry: The navy is losing hope of finding anymore survivors

From Thursday's attack on the u.S.S. Cole.

Couric: We have a breaking news story to tell you about.

Apparently a plane has just crashed into the world trade center.

Narrator: Less than a month after 9/11, the united states

And its allies responded with force.

The military action would begin in afghanistan,

Soldier: Re-load it!

Narrator: The place where many of the seeds of the 9/11 attack had been planted.

Not in 2001, but in 1989.

Tomsen: My official title was 'special envoy to the afghan resistance.'

That gave me responsibility for working with the

Afghan mujahideen, and also with pakistan.

1989 was a key turning point in the war against terror.

Narrator: A decade before 1989, the soviets were looking to preserve

A communist government in afghanistan, and protect

Their interests in the country from western nations.

Tomsen: On christmas eve, 1979,

That's when the soviets invaded afghanistan.

Narrator: The invasion set the stage for one of the final showdowns of the cold war,

When the pentagon threw its support behind the opposition,

A coalition of muslim fighters known as the mujahideen.

Tomsen: The cia and the pakistani intelligence organization,

Known by the acronym isi, had an enormous covert weapons program.

It amounted to about $200 million to help the afghan mujahideen defeat

The communist regime.

Baker: The world as I had known it changed beginning in 1989.

We had been supporting the mujahideen along with our allies saudi arabia,

To the point of supplying them with surface to air missiles,

Some of which came back to bite us later on

When they fell into the hands of the taliban.

Tomsen: The cia didn't they look at the big picture.

They did not have a geo-strategic long-term vision.

In northern pakistan the isi established an infrastructure of thousands of mosques, and

Training camps for recruits to cross the border and take on the soviet army.

Man: They wanted to make us communist, thank god we are muslims.

We are following god's path, we do not want communism in afghanistan.

Narrator: The mujahideen would outlast the red army.

In 1989, the soviets withdrew.

It was a win for the afghans and seemingly the us.

Tomsen: Milt bearden was the cia station chief in pakistan.

He sent back a cable to washington declaring in big letters 'we won.'

And it was a big victory,

Distributing the weapons to the mujahideen groups and defeating the soviets.

Narrator: But with the russians out of the picture,

Afghanistan became fertile ground for chaos.

Soufan: In 1989, after the soviet withdrawal from afghanistan,

We had a significant moment that shaped

The modern islamic extremist movement today.

You start having rebellions all over the eastern bloc.

Even the berlin wall fell.

Death of communism.

That was an indication that there is a new geopolitical reality.

Those mujahideen who went to afghanistan realized

'wow! We did not only defeat the soviets who invaded afghanistan,

We destroyed the soviet empire.'

Baker: It was a positive thing for the united states when the soviets had to

Give up their adventure in afghanistan,

But it maybe should have also been a lesson to us

About going in there when we did and the aftermath of 9/11.

Soufan: I think after the soviet withdrawal from afghanistan,

We made a strategic mistake as the united states.

We said 'ok, mission accomplished, see you later, you sort it out.'

We did not get involved to assist and help

The afghani people figure out their future.

We turned our back on them.

So you have so many different factions among the mujahideen,

And now they don't have a common cause,

And they don't have a sense of direction where they are going,

So they start fighting with each other.

Narrator: That lawlessness that followed russia's departure would have

Profound consequences.

Some of the well-armed mujahideen, including

Those who traveled to afghanistan to enlist in the fight

Decided to join a new radical group called al-qaeda.

But back then the us didn't think of terrorist groups as existential threats,

True enemies were thought to be nation-states.

Soufan: A lot of people didn't pay attention to them.

The intelligence community ignored them, because they thought,

'those are our allies!

Those mujahideen worked with us to defeat the soviets!'

Unfortunately, in their mind, they had something else totally going.

So they start planning, they start conspiring,

They start forming a covert network,

Not only in the united states but also in other places around the world.

Osama bin laden by now is in sudan.

He's funding all these networks.

Tomsen: Know thy enemy.

In 1989 we did not know our enemy.

I knew nothing about osama bin laden, I knew nothing about al-qaeda.

I thought that history was going in the right direction.

So I had no idea about what would eventually unravel.

Soufan: We start looking into their network, after the first world trade center bombing.

Reporter (over tv): In new york city beneath the twin towers of the world trade

Center, a massive explosion in an underground parking garage.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that it was a bomb.

Narrator: The world trade center bombing in 1993 put the us on notice.

Extremists in the middle east were angry about the foreign presence in their region and

They were taking the fight to american soil.

The 1993 bombers, who had ties to the mujahideen were convicted.

But another mujahideen leader was on the rise and under the radar.

Reporter: He lives in a cave atop a range of mountains in afghanistan.

From there he controls a web of financial, logistical and strategic assistance

To sunni islamic groups, engaged in what they consider a jihad, or a holy war.

His name is osama bin laden, the most dangerous man you've never heard of.

Miller: Bin laden had fallen in love with his own image.

He was in business to be at war.

At abc news at the time we had developed some information that bin laden was likely to

Be charged, federal charges, arranging, sponsoring, supporting the bombing

Of the world trade center, that killed 6 and injured hundreds.

Ironic now.

That was a very interesting story.

It sounded like the kind of thing that we needed to sound a warning about.

Because in 1998 you could have stopped 100 people on the street and said,

"hey! What do you think of osama bin laden?"

And 100 of them would have said, "I don't know who that is."