Andrew Eiva

Andrew Eiva
Andrius Linas Kazimieras Eitavicius
Black and white photograph of a bearded man in a dark suit and white shirt Andrew Eiva, taken in 1987
Born	Andrius Linas Eitavicius (1948-10-26) October 26, 1948 Bonn, West Germany
Nationality	American of Lithuanian descent
Other names	Andrius Linas Kazimieras Eitavicius
Citizenship	United States
Education	West Point; Bachelor of Science earned at United States Military Academy
Occupation(s)	1972-1980 - US Army Infantry Captain - Ranger/Commando, Green Beret (Commander, Special Forces A Team), Mechanized Infantry Company Commander 1980 - present: Consultant, Lobbyist and Advocate for Resistance Movements struggling against genocide, occupation and oppression; Afghanistan (1980-1990), Angola - UNITA (1985-1986), Mozambique - RENAMO (1986), Lithuania (January 1991), Bosnia (1992-1998), Kosovo (1999-2000), Sudan (2006-present), Baluchistan (2009-present)
Known for	Led Lithuanian militia volunteers in confrontation with Soviet occupation forces on January 13, 1991. In recognition of his leadership, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė awarded Andrew Eiva the Order of the Cross of Vytis.
Awards	Order of the Cross of Vytis

Andrew Eiva is a human rights activist who helps oppressed people resist occupation and genocide. 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 had already wasted over 500,000 Afghan lives by 1984. The legislation changed US policy "to aid them effectively." *

• Footnote: Senate concurrent Resolution 74 passed Senate on October 3, 1984 and passed House October 4, both unanimously.

"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 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?"

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

Implementing the new US policy to provide effective aid, Eiva encountered opposition in the CIA, State Department and the Pentagon. Eiva's first success was to expose the CIA's delivery of non armor-piercing 12.7mm ammunition, which was ineffective against Soviet armored helicopter gunships, especially the Mi-24 and the Mi-8. Congressional pressure on the CIA in the House Intelligence Committee resulted in the substitution of armor-piercing ammunition, increasing losses of armored Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan.

Eiva encouraged grassroots and congressional pressure on President Reagan to approve Stinger missiles. The Stingers "alter[ed] the war in Afghanistan" as the Washington Post headline declared on July 19, 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.'"[3]

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 (October 24, 2016). "Several hundred thousand more Afghans 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."

Eiva is also known for two other achievements, both of which applied non-violence.

 1. 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."[3]

Career

After graduating from West Point in 1972, Eiva served in the US Army in Germany with Special Forces where he pioneered early UAV delivery systems. He specialized in guerrilla warfare support and, as a refugee from the Soviet occupation in Lithuania, dedicated himself to overthrowing the Soviet empire.

As a lobbyist, Eiva works to organize committees of ordinary Americans to influence the Congress.

Arming the Afghan Mujaheddin against the Soviets

Due to his testimony to the Republican Platform Committee's National Security Subcommittee on August 13, 1984 at the Republican Convention in Dallas, Texas Eiva was responsible for having language inserted into the party platform calling for support of the Afghan Mujaheddin in their fight against the Soviets.

From 1983 to 1988, Eiva published the Afghan Update, a newsletter which provided detailed insight into and criticism of CIA and State Department policy. He was executive director of two sister organizations, the Federation for American Afghan Action and the American Afghan Education Fund. Despite his tiny budget, which George Crile mentions in Charlie Wilson's War, Eiva was able to galvanize Congress to effectively support the Afghan resistance.

However, Eiva made powerful enemies among the American political leadership and elites. The CIA absolutely hated him. The Pentagon hated him. The military industrial complex could see no way to profit from his vision. Then there was Congressman Charlie Wilson who pushed his way into steering Afghan policy from his place on the Appropriations Committee. In Charlie Wilson's War, the late George Crile paints a picture that completely overlooks the real policy debate. It wasn't long before Wilson and the CIA snuffed out the crucial issue of supply with bluster, false bravado and carefully orchestrated news accounts. CIA officers now claim to have done things that, in fact, Eiva did before them.

In 1988, Robert Pear in the New York Times reported on Zalmay Khalilzad's assessment that the Afghan mujaheddin had "been taking over a lot more territory a lot quicker than anyone anticipated". Eiva did not want the cause of the freedom fighters to be forgotten. Pear continues, "Lobbyists for the Afghan guerrillas feared that the State Department's upbeat assessment would be used to justify further cutbacks in shipments of weapons. Andrew L. Eiva, chairman of the Federation for American Afghan Action, said the United States had already suspended deliveries of two effective weapons: Stinger antiaircraft missiles and Spanish-made 120-millimeter mortars."

According to Marguerite Johnson in Time Magazine in 2005, "large amounts of military materiel purchased by the CIA and funneled through Pakistan reportedly are failing to reach the mujahedin guerrillas. Washington Lobbyist Andrew Eiva, executive director of the Federation for American Afghan Action, says that his organization has found 'up to 70% slippage' in CIA supplies".

Support for freedom and resistance movements

Leslie Gelb of the New York Times says that Eiva, in 1983, counted the score of American support for liberation movements since World War II as "0 to 12, with Afghanistan as lucky 13". The other such ventures supported and then dropped by Washington he lists as Lithuania, Albania, the Ukraine, Poland, Tibet, China, Cuba, Kurdistan twice, Angola, the Hmong tribe in Laos and Sumatra. Eiva continues to support freedom and resistance movements around the world, including those in Sudan and Balochistan. He advocates that the people of Balochistan themselves author their own Freedom Charter, rather than accept one written by foreigners.

On 23 February 2010, founder of Christendom College Dr. Warren H. Carroll delivered a lecture entitled "Andrew Eiva and the End of the Communist Empire". Carroll told how Eiva "dedicated his life to the destruction of the Communist Empire, which ruled his first homeland, and for which he had an abiding hatred".

In February 2014, Eiva launched a new website, Liberation Pulse, supporting freedom and resistance movements.

Personal life

Eiva was born in a refugee camp in Bonn, West Germany on October 26, 1948, reared on stories about Lithuanian resistance, American support for a while and finally, abandonment. His parents escaped communism and fled from Lithuania to the U.S. in 1949. His maternal grandfather, General Kazimieras Ladyga, fought the Russian revolutionaries at the end of World War I, and was chief of staff of the armed forces of independent Lithuania from 1925 to 1927. General Ladyga was arrested, sent to Siberia, was tortured, and died.

Awards

Andrew Eiva was presented with the Order of the Cross of Vytis in Vilnius, Lithuania on 16 February 2012 for his services to the cause of restoration of the Independent State of Lithuania. Eiva was integrally involved in defending the Lithuanian Parliament during the January Events of 1991.

Eiva was also honored on 16 December 2011 at the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington, DC for his service, the cause of Lithuanian independence. Eiva described his participation on YouTube in the January Events on that evening.

References

1.

2. ABC News Nightline, "Afghanistan: The Fifth Year"; Air Date: December 27, 1984.

3. Washington Post, July 19, 1987; David Ottaway, "U.S. Missiles Alter War in Afghanistan"

4. New York Times, May 25, 1983; "From One Kind of Army to Another."

External links

About Andrew Eiva Liberation Pulse Andrew Eiva—Lithuanian Wikipedia Eiva Publications Requesting Afghan Aid Balochistan International Conference 30 April 2011—Andrew Eiva Speech on YouTube Andrew Eiva Describes Participation in January Events (Lithuania) on YouTube Warren Carroll Lecture #19 "Andrew Eiva and the End of the Communist Empire" Free Baluchistan Facebook page by Andrew Eiva Free Sudan Facebook page by Andrew Eiva