Andrew Eiva

Andrew Eiva is a human rights activist who helps oppressed people resist occupation and genocide.[1]

He spent his life learning military, political and language skills and using them to help those fighting for freedom.

The US mainstream media has noted Andrew Eiva's following three accomplishments.

He is best known for mobilizing Congress and grassroots to expose and upgrade a US covert operation which provided Afghans "only enough to fight and die," which he believed had squandered over 500,000 Afghan lives by 1984. The proposed legislation asked that US policy be changed "to aid them effectively."

"The State Department has been lobbying against the legislation. One official, Howard B. Schaffer, urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors to water down or eliminate the bill."[2]

Lobbying to pass legislation for effective aid, Eiva encountered opposition from the CIA and the State Department. "The CIA came to loathe Andrew Eiva, and it appears that officers suggested more than once to congressmen and staffers that Eiva might be a Bulgarian or East German agent."[3]^:327

Despite administration hostility, the bill passed unanimously as Senate Concurrent Resolution 74 on 3 October 1984, and the House of Representatives on 4 October 1984.

Thanks to Congress, ABC News invited Andrew Eiva to present his skeptical view on the CIA's performance to millions of viewers on national television.

Eiva explained the CIA's shortcomings as follows:

"The implementation of the policy speaks for itself. When one sees the types of air defense weapons that the Afghans get, one sees a policy that appears to be condemning the Afghan lives to be spent very cheaply. Most of the ammunition being delivered for the heavy machine guns is type non-armor piercing, unfit for taking on helicopter gunships. The SAM-7 missiles that the CIA's director[ate] of operations is delivering to the Afghan resistance had a track record of 100% failure in the CIA's last secret war in Angola, and that's the missile they've been sending to the Afghans for four years, despite anguished reports of its ineffectiveness from the field. ... Why have we spent 500,000 Afghan lives so cheaply?"[4]

Despite the breakthroughs in Congress and the mediain 1984, few believed the Afghans could win. "Only a few zealots, like the former Green Beret who runs the effective lobbying operation, the Federation for American Afghan Action, believe that the war is militarily winnable."[5]

President Ronald Reagan responded to Congress and the media with a new policy, "Improve the military effectiveness of the Afghan resistance," signing it on 27 March 1985, known as National Security Decision Directive Number 166 declassified 22 April 2010.

With the new policy, the CIA replaced the non armor-piercing 12.7mm ammunition with the armor-piercing version. The losses of Soviet Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters in Afghanistan increased.

Two months after coming to power, Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev unleashed a knock-out attempt against the resistance. Yet administration kept opposing effective man-portable air-defense missiles, like the Stinger, for the resistance.

At this point, Eiva concluded that the CIA deputy director, John McMahon, was the key opponent in government to the provision of the Stinger air defense missile to the resistance.

He helped draft the following letter sent to one hundred thousand members of a conservative grassroots organization, Free the Eagle, which generated ten thousand letters to the White House: "Why does the CIA persist in failing to supply effective weapons to the Afghan Freedom Fighters?" the letters asked. "Why does the CIA choose to send weapons that are old, defective, and in some cases useless? Who's behind this massive -- and deadly -- blunder? To be perfectly honest, my friend ... it's because a certain public official -- namely John McMahon -- is failing to carry out American policy.... That's why I am asking you to sign the enclosed letter addressed to White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan and then mail it to him at the White House.... John McMahon must change his ways or he must go!"[3]^:416–417 The Stingers "alter[ed] the war in Afghanistan" as the Washington Post headline declared on 19 July 1987.

"Encouraged by the missile's effectiveness, Andrew Eiva, whose Federation for American Afghan Action was a leading Stinger lobbyist last year, suggests that a British-made 81mm mortar, with a range of six kilometers, could make the eight main Soviet airfields in Afghanistan 'untenable.'"[6]

President Reagan later ordered long range mortars to also be put into the covert pipeline. But CIA official Milton Bearden cut the mortars off after their spectacular and successful initial use, as Bearden later openly bragged on a History Channel documentary about the Afghan covert operation.

"Bearden should not have bragged so much," Eiva said later (24 October 2016). "Several hundred thousand more Afghans may have died because he delayed the end of the war."

"I appreciated the Washington Post and the New York Times giving me credit for the Stinger missiles," said Eiva in an interview. "My role was the public one. But Deputy Secretary of Defense Michael Pillsbury had a greater role than I did, sacrificing his career to help push the Stinger through behind closed doors."

Both of Eiva's other major achievements involved non-violent resistance.

Encouraging Afghan resistance to avoid executions of Soviet prisoners, with the goal of increasing Soviet desertions or defections from 1981 to 1983. This resulted in a total of 313 prisoners eventually kept alive by the mujaheddin, one of whom became the first vice-president of independent Russia, Alexander Rutskoi.

"He (Eiva) says he has worked on a program to encourage Soviet soldiers to defect. 'The Russian soldiers have no Canada and Sweden to defect to, so the goal was to develop one, to train the Afghans to do this.'"

"Administration officials who know of Mr. Eiva's activities confirmed his accounts of his actions."[6]