The origins of the Taliban come out of the CIA project, initiated by Carter Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1979, of recruiting and arming radical Islamists from Pakistan, Afghanistan and even Saudi Arabia, to wage irregular warfare against the Soviet Red Army then in Afghanistan. The CIA code-named it Operation Cyclone and it lasted ten years until the Red Army withdrew in 1989. A Saudi-CIA asset, Osama bin Laden, had been brought into Pakistan to work with the Pakistani ISI intelligence to draw money and Jihadists from the Arab states into the war. A significant number of radicalized Afghan Pashtun students called Taliban or “seekers” were recruited from radical madrasses, some in Pakistan where the ISI protected them. That CIA war became the longest and most costly CIA operation in its history. By 1984 Khalilzad was in the middle of it all, as US State Department Afghan specialist.