Nevertheless, Shebarshin would have to follow Brasstacks closely. That old South Asian bugaboo—miscalculation and overreaction—could always pop up. And that could heat things up, probably more than anyone would like.
Islamabad, January 29, 1987
I sat alone in the ISI reception room, waiting for Akhtar to join me for the “urgent” meeting he had called to discuss “events on the border.” He was referring to Brasstacks and to Pakistan’s response. General Sundarji and Zia had made a series of troop moves and countermoves that by mid-January had escalated tensions to the point at which the slightest movement could have sparked a war.
On January 19, the New Delhi press screamed, PAK MASSING TROOPS ALL ALONG BORDER, and Indian Prime Minister Gandhi expressed “tremendous concern” about the Pakistani buildup at a press conference the next day. Over the next week, both Indian and Pakistani intelligence fed their respective press corps a steady stream of inflammatory rumors of the other side’s preparations for war. The Indians became convinced that Zia had stealthily maneuvered an armored corps into position for a lightning strike into India’s Punjab, with the goal of separating Kashmir from the rest of India. As tensions grew, there were press reports of Pakistani Army engineers mining the bridges around Lahore as a means of stopping the Indian advance that was now so sure to come. On January 23, India mobilized its forces, and Pakistan followed suit. The stage for another war between the two South Asian neighbors was set. That same evening, Zia directed his prime minister, Mohammed Khan Junejo, to call his counterpart in New Delhi to open a dialogue to deescalate. Then, against the counsel of his advisers, Zia announced he planned to attend a cricket match in New Delhi. And almost as quickly as it had arisen, the tension dissipated.
Akhtar strode into the reception room with his note taker, Colonel Riaz, trailing two steps behind him. He was talking as he entered.
“The president pulled it off,” Akhtar said, beaming.
“Pulled it off?” I was a little taken aback by Akhtar’s smug sense of triumph.
Akhtar frowned. “Yes. It was close, but Zia’s nerves were steel. He held back his troops from their forward deployed positions right up until the last minute. And he made sure the Indians knew what he was doing by letting them intercept his communications! It was masterful.”
“Sure it was masterful,” I said, “but I still haven’t found the logic in why it almost came to war. What was that all about?”
Akhtar motioned to Riaz to stop taking notes and leave the room. When we were alone, he lowered his voice and leaned toward me as he spoke
“Rajiv Gandhi,” Akhtar said after Riaz had left, “is a playboy, a joker who lost control of his Army chief of staff. The president signaled to New Delhi as far back as October that the Brasstacks exercise was provocative, and would be responded to in kind if they didn’t back things down. But Sundarji must have thought he could ignore our concerns, and Gandhi wasn’t paying attention until two weeks ago when his own press started talking of war. Then he tried to catch up.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and almost too late. Was it just provocation gone wild, or was there something else going on?”
“It was Sundarji,” Akhtar said as if sharing a profound confidence. “He wanted a war. He thought he could provoke President Zia into taking the first step, making the first mistake. He thought he could roll into Pakistan and have it all cleaned up in a week. Then Zia moved his forces around a bit in Bahawalpur, particularly his armor, and Sundarji got a different picture. It was Pakistan who might have things tidied up in a week!”
“This heated up so fast and cooled down so fast that we still haven’t figured out how close you came to war. How close was it?”
Akhtar held up his hand, forming a trigger finger. “It was that close,” he said, pulling the imaginary trigger. “All it would have taken was some junior commissioned officer along the border—their JCO or ours—getting nervous, pulling his trigger, and setting it all off. Zia knew that, and he knows the Indian mind. He backed them down.”
“It’s a hell of a way for a couple of potential nuclear powers to deal with each other,” I said.
Akhtar bristled at the word nuclear. “But Pakistan isn’t a nuclear power, and you, more than most, know that.”
The subject, and the atmosphere, had changed. The most serious point of friction between the United States and Pakistan centered on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, a secret arms race with its neighbor that had been under way since India detonated its first test device in 1974. There were a handful of congressional mandates sanctioning Pakistan for developing nuclear weapons, but most were subject to a presidential waiver. And up until now, Reagan had been able to certify that Pakistan had not crossed the proliferation threshold. So any mention of Pakistan and nuclear development to Zia’s intelligence chief was likely to set him on edge. I’d asked the question to see if Akhtar thought Sundarji might actually have been staging the whole Brasstacks exercise to provide cover for a preemptive strike at Pakistan’s nuclear centers near Islamabad. He didn’t bite.
“That’s encouraging, General,” I said, sensing that Akhtar had decided to end the meeting, which he did, as usual, with an abrupt change of subject.
“How is Mr. Casey doing?” he asked. “The president is concerned about him.”
Word of Casey’s worsening condition was out, and few in the international intelligence club expected the DCI ever to return to Langley. Who might succeed him was the subject of whispered speculation both in Washington and abroad. “He’s not doing too well, I’m afraid. But he’s alert and knows what’s happening in all his favorite places, including Islamabad.”
Akhtar softened. “Well, please see that he knows we appreciate all he has done for us over the years. And please pass along our appreciation to Mr. Gates for whatever role he played behind the scenes in defusing the little problem we had here.”
“I will, and please pass Mr. Gates’s regards to the president for his cool handling of the crisis over the last month. It didn’t have to work out as well as it did.”
Akhtar rose and escorted me to Riaz, who was standing right outside his door.
The Kremlin, February 27, 1987
It seemed that Gorbachev had his consensus, Anatoly Chernyaev said to himself as he reviewed the minutes of a series of Politburo meetings over the last five weeks on the question of Afghanistan. Muhammad Najibullah had made his visit to Moscow in December, and he had made a good impression. The word in Moscow was that he was a serious-minded man who could take the difficult first steps of preparing for the day when he would not be supported by the Soviet army.
There was no turning back from the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, though the Kremlin was still reluctant to declare to the world that its policy of intervention had been flawed from the start. Such sentiments had not, however, prevented frank comment among Politburo members on past errors. At sessions held on January 21 and 22, Eduard Shevardnadze had made it clear that the decision to exit was the right one and pulled few punches when it came to where he thought the blame for the Afghan debacle should lie.
“I won’t discuss right now whether we did the right thing by going in there,” the Foreign Minister declared, easing into exactly the criticism he said he would avoid. “But we did go in there absolutely without knowing the psychology of the people and the real state of affairs in the country. That’s a fact! And everything we’ve done and are doing in Afghanistan is incompatible with the moral character of our country.”
“It was incompatible that we went in?” Gromyko asked pointedly.
“Yes, this, too,” he said. “The attitude toward us is more negative than it seems. And we’re spending a billion rubles a year for this. An enormous sum, and responsibility needs to be taken for it. Let us add up again in every detail how much Afghanistan needs to get by at the present time! Nikolay Ivanovich,” he said, referring to Nikolay Ryzhkov, the architect of Gorbachev’s economic restructuring program, appointed to the Politb
uro in 1985 and soon after promoted to head of the Council of Ministers, “doesn’t have this data right now, but in the United States they think we’ll need two billion a year. And the Japanese think it’s three billion. I’m not even talking about the costs in lives.”
“We won’t talk right now about how this revolution came into being,” Gorbachev interjected, “how we reacted and how we vacillated about whether or not to deploy troops.”
“Yes, yes,” Gromyko assented, nodding in agreement.
“Right now we must address the present and determine what steps need to be taken.”
“The report of Eduard Amvrosieyevich [Shevardnadze] provides a realistic picture,” said Ryzhkov. “The previous information was not objective. The situation forces us again to approach the problem in a serious way.” He spoke of the difficulty of making progress in an illiterate society and of the misery of people’s material prospects. “It’s better to pay with money and kerosene than with men,” he said. “Our people don’t understand what we’re doing there, or why we’ve been there for seven years. It’s easy to leave, but we can’t just throw everything to the whims of fate. Many countries would forsake us. We need to leave a neutral, friendly Afghanistan behind. What steps should be taken? Why not a mercenary army? What will prevent it from deserting? Good money. It’s better to hand out arms and ammunition, and to have them fight themselves if they want. Meanwhile we can turn to a parallel political settlement. We need to use all contacts with Pakistan and the U.S.”
“We cannot bring them freedom by military means,” said Igor Ligachev, Gorbachev’s right-hand man. “We have suffered defeat in this area. And what Eduard Amvrosieyevich has said is the first objective analysis we have had. We didn’t consider the consequences when we set our hopes on the military route. I think the policy of national reconciliation is the correct one. If the question is put before the people, is it better to let our soldiers die or restrict themselves to every kind of aid, I think that every person to the last will favor the second path. And we have to work on the Pakistani avenue, with India, with China, and with America. But to leave as the Americans did from Vietnam—no, we still have not come to this, as they say.”
Marshal Sokolov added his own somber assessment. “The military situation has recently become worse,” he said. “The shelling of our garrisons has doubled. They are mainly fighting in the villages, counting on our retaliating against the population centers. It is impossible to win such a war by military means.”
“Thus we confirm our firm policy,” said Gorbachev in closing. “We will not retreat once we have started. Act in all directions. Analyze where and how our aid is best to be used, start up foreign policy mechanisms through Cordovez and Pakistan, try to do business with the Chinese and, of course, the Americans. When we went into Afghanistan we were wrapped up in ideology and calculated that we could leap ahead three stages right away—from feudalism to socialism. Now we can look at the situation openly and follow a realistic policy. We accepted everything in Poland—the church, the individual peasant farms, the ideology, and the political pluralism. Reality is reality. Comrades, let us speak correctly. It is better to pay with money than with the lives of our people.”
With his consensus almost solid in the Politburo, Gorbachev continued to press home the case for an exit from Afghanistan over the following days and weeks. A month later, on February 23, Gorbachev reinforced his case in another Politburo meeting, at which he declared, “Now we’re in, how to get out racks one’s brains. We could leave quickly, not thinking about anything and blaming everything on the previous leadership. But we can’t do that. India would be concerned, and they would be worried in Africa. They would see this as a blow to the authority of the Soviet Union and to national liberation movements. They would tell us that imperialism would go on the offensive if we leave Afghanistan. But domestic considerations are important, too. A million of our soldiers have been to Afghanistan. And all in vain, it turns out. They will say you’ve forgotten about the casualties and the authority of the nation. It creates a bitter taste—why did people die? Don’t exclude America from an agreement, even as far as making a deal with them. And we need to rub Pakistan’s nose in it—let them know the Soviet Union isn’t going anywhere. Could Zia ul-Haq possibly be invited to Tashkent to meet with me, even ‘pay’ him in some way? We need flexibility and resourcefulness, for otherwise there will be a slaughter and Najib will fall. Continue the talks, don’t let them be broken off. And possibly we’ll have to make concessions about the withdrawal periods. Are there any doubts about what I have said right now?”
The men who ran the Soviet Union answered in one voice: “No, no!”
“Then let us act accordingly.”
7
Islamabad, March 1987
Bill Casey died a month before the snows began to melt in the high passes, but not until after he’d been able to see the first signs of the turnaround in Afghanistan he was so certain would come. Negotiations with the Soviets in Geneva were becoming increasingly intense, and there was a growing sense they’d finally concluded they couldn’t win. But there were still few in Washington who believed they would just pack up and leave Afghanistan anytime soon. So the war went on.
I never saw the DCI again after my meeting with him in July 1986, but even with all of his luck running out at the same moment, he hadn’t forgotten that I was out there trying to carry out what he’d ordered. Just before he collapsed in December, he honored me with distinguished officer rank, a tribute that went to one or two senior officers in each directorate at the end of each year. I never had a chance to thank him.
Bob Gates had been selected by Casey himself to succeed him as DCI, but after a congressional confirmation process marked by bitter accusations against Gates for every misdeed from cooking the books on assessments of the USSR to intentionally keeping himself out of the loop on the Iran-contra affair, Gates withdrew. It would take until May before FBI Director Judge William Webster would be nominated for the Langley job. He would be easily confirmed by a Congress still smarting over missing the chance to bring Bill Casey to heel.
Heading into my second fighting season, I was mercifully far from the politics of Washington and able to concentrate on the war. I was convinced that the now mystical triumph of the Stinger had to be followed by other powerful successes if we were to keep up the fragile momentum we’d established. To achieve this, we needed a succession of “silver bullets” to both sustain the high energy of the Afghan resistance and keep Moscow on the run. If the rebels were seen as growing in strength and determination, the Soviet leader’s hand could only be strengthened as he guided the USSR out of Afghanistan. There was no urging from Washington to ease up, as if that might encourage the Soviets to leave the field earlier. Thus, 1987 would be marked by all-out pressure.
Jack Devine had left to take over in Rome and was replaced by Frank Anderson, an officer with broad experience in the Near East. At forty-five, the tall, athletic Anderson had done service in rough-and-tumble Lebanon, where he had also studied Arabic early in his career. Serving in the wilds of Yemen and in a string of countries across the Maghreb, Anderson had come to understand the shifting realities of the world of Islam. But it was in Washington that he had developed his sharpest political skills. He was a natural for the Afghan Task Force, and to my great fortune, the handover from Jack Devine to Frank Anderson was seamless.
By the spring of 1987, the menace from the air had subsided, in large part because of the Soviet and DRA decision to fly above the Stinger’s ceiling. Soviet armor had become the new challenge. Though we’d been asked repeatedly over the years to provide something, anything, to give the resistance an edge over Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs), nothing had worked. The problem was range. The antiarmor weapons in the mujahideen arsenal—RPG-7s and the 75 mm and 82 mm recoilless rifles—were limited to about a three-hundred-yard killing radius as they were employed by the Afghans. A three-hundred-yard duel usually meant that a muj
ahideen gunner might get a shot off at a tank or APC, but as often as not he would be killed as soon as he fired.
To turn the tables, Anderson decided to deliver a new weapon, if possible, every few months. He concentrated on antiarmor systems that would foster the same jubilation among the Afghan fighters as the Stinger and cultivate the same sense of dread among the enemy forces. The results were magic. Within a few months, I took delivery of two new antitank weapons that did for armor what the Stinger had done for aviation. Anderson’s covert arms procurement team first came up with the French-made Milan antitank missile. The Milan, when fired, trailed behind it a thin copper wire through which the gunner sent electrical, course-correcting commands as the missile flew toward its target. With an effective range of at least three thousand yards, the Milan increased the killing range of the mujahideen tenfold, and soon reports of spectacular successes were flowing back from the battlefront, along with anecdotal reports of excited reactions among Soviet and, especially, DRA armor commanders upon discovering the telltale copper wires strung across the rugged battlefields. In one particularly spirited battle on the Jalalabad plain at the mouth of the Konar Valley, a Milan gunner brought down an MI-24D hovering low over the battlefield, an act that added new verses to the Afghan ballads of war. Eastern Afghanistan, where most of the Milans were deployed, was perfect ambush country, and soon after its deployment we saw fewer tank probes out into the field.
The next silver bullet came directly out of the Warsaw Pact arsenal. Anderson’s team acquired a supply of Soviet-designed SPG-9s, 73 mm recoilless rifles, and sent them by air to Pakistan. The SPG-9 had an effective range of about a thousand yards, roughly triple the killing range of the older recoilless rifles in the resistance inventory. As the mujahideen began to train on the new weapon, they couldn’t conceal their enthusiasm at being able to reach out to targets at three and four times the range they’d been limited to over the years. I even took a couple of shots myself at a white tank chalked onto a cliff about eleven hundred yards away. I got one bull’s-eye and one too close to call—but both worth a resounding “Allah hu Akhbar!” from the Afghan trainees gathered around me as I lay on the ground, firing the slender antitank round across the valley of the temporary training camp. All through the next fighting season the mujahideen kept up the pressure with hit-and-run ambushes, and in the major Soviet and DRA assaults of the season, the new systems were crucial.
The Main Enemy Page 30