Afghanistan Relief Commitee

The Afghan Relief Committee was established in 1980 by Wall Street investment banker and spook John Train, who handles the family fortunes of some of the oldest and most powerful U.S. establishment families, such as the Mellons. The organization was housed in Train's investment consultant office. Train was the president of the group, and, according to a 1980 Washington Post article, "its financial whiz." Simultaneous with his founding of ARC, Train was organizing a "media salon" of press prostitutes to launch a massive slander attack on EIR's founder, Lyndon LaRouche.

The stated purpose of the ARC was to raise "seed money" for medical organizations treating casualties among the mujahideen. After receiving the Relief Committee's seed money, the medical organizations were expected to go elsewhere for financing. The ARC was especially fond of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami group (see article, p. 26).

Also operative were Leo Cherne's International Rescue Committee (IRC), whose Peshawar-based office was staffed mostly with Hekmatyar's gang; the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); and the State Department's Agency for International Development. CIA director William Casey was on the IRC's board of directors, and served as its president at one time. Cherne was then vice-director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), with offices at the White House.

From its inception, the ARC worked closely with Freedom House, which had been chaired by Cherne since the 1940s, and whose treasurer, Walter Schloss, was a longtime business associate of Train. Rosanne Klass, vice president of the ARC, was also the director of Freedom House's Afghanistan Information Center, and had formerly been the founding director of the Afghanistan Council of the Asia Society.

Founders of the ARC, in addition to Train, included four former U.S. ambassadors to Afghanistan: Francis L. Kellogg, a decades-long associate of Train from the prominent grain-interest family; Train's cousin Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.); and the ubiquitous professors Louis Dupree and Thomas Gouttierre, both longstanding Afghan hands for U.S. intelligence. Jeane Kirkpatrick, later the Reagan administration ambassador to the U.N., was co-chairman of the group.

The main known financial beneficiaries of the group were:

Doctors Without Borders, run by Ronny Brauman in Paris. This organization, whose most prominent representative was Danielle Mitterrand, wife of President François Mitterrand of France, also received money from the National Endowment for Democracy.

Freedom Medical of Washington, D.C.

Aide Medicale International

Sainte Sud of Marseilles

Most money to such groups, although not these specifically, originated with the International Rescue Committee or Relief International. The first two listed received almost all of ARC's funds.

ARC on-the-ground operations (like those of many other western organizations) were based in Peshawar, Pakistan, the main Pakistani base of the mujahideen. ARC-funded physicians were smuggled into Afghanistan from this base. Foreign national physicians were preferred for this function.

ARC also worked with the National Endowment for Democracy, the congressionally created funding conduit for Project Democracy, on two NED Afghan projects: the Writers Union of Free Afghanis and Freedom House's Afghan Information Center. The two groups were dedicated to training Afghan mujahideen spokesmen in "communication skills." Additionally, the group received NED grants to operate schools inside Afghanistan.

Honorary co-chairmen of the group drawn from the Congress included: Senators Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana, Alfonse D'Amato (R) and Daniel Moynihan (D) of New York, Claiborne Pell, Gordon Humphrey (R) of New Hampshire, Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah, and Representatives Charles Rangel (D) of New York and Bill McCollum (R) of Florida.
Committee for a Free Afghanistan

CFA was founded in 1981 in the aftermath of a trip by Prime Minister Thatcher and Radio Free Kabul founder Lord Bethell to the United States, dedicated to building U.S. support for the mujahideen. The founding executive director of CFA, Karen McKay, was reputed to be the mistress of Lord Bethell. From its inception, the CFA acted as the U.S. arm of Bethell's London-based Radio Free Kabul.

McKay, a major in the Rapid Deployment Force reserves, had spent four years in the U.S. Army's Delta Force, studying unconventional warfare in the 1960s. Following active duty, McKay spent nine years in Greece and Israel as a freelance journalist, during which time she also studied for a doctorate in history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She returned from Israel shortly before taking over CFA.

CFA's publicly known funding came largely from the Heritage Foundation, an offshoot of the British Fabian Society, the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation headed by Paul Weyrich, and Accuracy in Media, of which CFA was a formal arm.

CFA also held numerous conferences and other events throughout the early and mid-1980s, which attempted to organize Americans to support the Afghan mujahideen cause, while simultaneously raising funds. It also put out a publication called the Free Afghanistan Report.

The committee actively lobbied Congress. In addition, it managed to gain the sympathy of some high-ranking military officials.

Although the CFA provided funds for almost all of the "Peshawar Seven" groups of mujahideen, the Jamiat-e-Islami, of Burhanudeen Rabbani and his military commander Ahmad Shah Masood, was CFA's favored group. It brought various mujahideen leaders to Washington in order to influence the decision-making regarding aid for the Afghan War.

In late 1981, McKay took part in a conference in Paris organized by Lord Bethell aimed at patching together an alliance of the more traditionalist groups of the mujahideen, under the banner of the Islamic Federation of Mujahideen. The groups included the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan of Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani—the group most patronized by Lord Bethell; the Afghan National Liberation Front of Sebghatullah Mojaddidi; and the Islamic Revolutionary Movement of Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi.

CFA was also engaged in raising funds for Radio Free Kabul, International Medical Aid, and Doctors Without Borders.
Continued