Islamabad, August 4, 1988
I had quit for the evening when the telephone rang. It was an ISI officer from the Afghan cell.
“Mr. Milton,” he said, “there has been an aircraft shot down near Parachinar.”
“Ours or theirs?” I was never sure when I would learn that someone had brought down a commercial flight along the border where Pakistani Fokkers flew on an irregular schedule.
“It was an Su-25, and it has come down in very good condition. The pilot ejected.”
“You’re sure it’s a Sukhoi-25?”
“We’re getting verification. The crash site is under control of one of the militias. They say the aircraft is in excellent condition.”
“Stinger get it?”
“No. A lucky burst from triple A.”
“That’s great, Colonel.” I was delighted. A lightly damaged Su-25, a superb ground attack aircraft, would add nicely to the equipment we had been collecting from the Afghan battlefield over the last ten years. We had delivered a mint-condition, flyable MiG-21bis to the USAF for use in its aggressor training squadron a few months back, and my predecessor, Bill Piekney, had gotten his hands on a serviceable MI-25 attack helicopter that he had sent back home for the U.S. Army to play with. We had actually been able to pick up one or two copies of just about everything on the battlefield over the years, and some items, such as flares used by the Soviets to counter heat-seeking missiles, were being bought by the case from Soviet quartermasters through a series of elaborate cutouts.
“Can you get word to the people at the crash site to keep souvenir hunters away from the plane?” I didn’t want anyone carrying off the nose cone or the tail cones, where the weapons systems and avionics were located.
“Nobody will touch the aircraft, but you’ll have to commit to buy it now. Otherwise they’ll put it out for bids.”
Sure they would, I thought. This war was great business for the battlefield scavengers and the scrap metal guys. It was tailor-made for the Afghan entrepreneur. Everybody was in the game, from most of NATO to the Chinese. But we often had right of first refusal, and the Afghan traders knew where to go with their first offer. I even knew of some enterprising scrap dealers in Paktia and Nangarhar Provinces who would arrange for mujahideen militias to stage attacks on Soviet garrisons just to get the garrison to counter with an artillery barrage, so that the next day they could wind up the hill in their old Bedfords and offer to buy the scrap brass from the garrison commander (they operated pretty close to the daily fix on the local scrap markets). It was also good business for a Soviet commander in a lonely outpost. For good measure, the wily scrap metal dealers would usually throw in a case of Stolichnaya or tinned caviar or Kamchatka crab wheedled out of another garrison earlier. Everybody ended up happy, and only rarely did anyone get hurt.
“What do they want?”
“Mr. Milton, I am sure that you can get this Sukhoi for less than ten Toyota Hilux pickup trucks. And maybe some BM-12 rocket launchers.”
“How many trucks? And how many BM-12s?” I asked, knowing that it would be pretty close to ten.
“Maybe eight each, Mr. Milton. But the trucks should be new and white with red pinstriping. And it would be better if there are some with double cabs—room for five inside the cab.”
“Look, Colonel. You find the new trucks from your motor pool, but you can be sure I’ll cover you. Same goes for the BM-12s. Do we have a deal?”
“Yes, I think we do.”
“Then I’ll need your office to get the Sukhoi across zero line; my people will manage it from there. Can you put it under twenty-four-hour guard until I get instructions? I’ll have an answer tomorrow. And thanks. This might be a big break. But for God’s sake, don’t tell those guys we’re excited about it. Okay? They’ll jack up the price.”
“Fine, Mr. Milton. But there’s one more thing. They also have the pilot.”
“The pilot!”
“Yes. A gray-haired colonel ejected and was captured. He was only very slightly hurt and is in custody of the same militia holding the plane. What are your thoughts on the pilot?”
“Just make sure nothing happens to him,” I said.
I had long preached to both the Afghans and the Pakistanis that the mujahideen needed to change their ways when it came to the treatment of Soviet prisoners, in particular downed pilots. Soon after I arrived in Pakistan, I was shown a photograph of a Soviet pilot in a silver flight suit, up to his waist in snow, skin burned by the relentless sun, with a bullet hole in the side of his head. His Tokarev semiautomatic was still clutched in his hand. He had killed himself rather than be captured. Soviet pilots had it particularly rough when captured, hence their extreme caution since the introduction of the Stinger in 1986. The greatest fear was not so much being hit as falling into mujahideen hands.
I had made it clear that American policy was that captured pilots be treated as prisoners of war under the norms of international agreements and that I would even be prepared to offer rewards for pilots repatriated to the USSR or, if they so desired, resettled in the West.
“They will give him to us for two more trucks and perhaps two more BM-12s.”
“Let’s make the same deal. You pay the militia and I’ll cover you. And I’ll want to talk to General Gul first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll send a car, Mr. Milton.”
Jalalabad, August 9, 1988
The 40th Army had pulled its forces out of Jalalabad early in their front-loaded withdrawal in mid-May, handing over to the Afghan 2nd Army Corps the city that had once been the old winter residence of Afghan kings. Many in the Soviet limited contingent believed that as soon as the Soviet troops pulled out of Jalalabad, Afghan defenses would collapse and the bandits would take the Nangarhar provincial capital. Some even thought that the local Afghan allies of the Soviets would panic and try to clamber aboard their departing tanks and helicopters, as the South Vietnamese had done when the Americans pulled out of Saigon. But that hadn’t happened, and one of the few men on the Soviet side who was convinced that it wouldn’t was Leonid Shebarshin, who ninety days after the withdrawal of 40th Army troops from Jalalabad was on an official visit to Kabul with Vladimir Kryuchkov, the new Chairman of the KGB.
There had not been a single Soviet soldier in Jalalabad since the May pullout—it had been determined to be too great a risk. But to Shebarshin’s amazement, Kryuchkov, another believer in the durability of the Najibullah regime, decided he would chance a quick run to Jalalabad. He and Shebarshin boarded a blacked-out Antonov AN-26 transport in Kabul after dark for the short flight to Jalalabad. Shebarshin felt self-conscious, awkward, and uncomfortable in the parachute he and the KGB Chairman were told to don, all the more so since he had no idea how the thing worked beyond the quick briefing he’d been given. Just jump out the door and pull the ring there on your chest and you’ll be fine, he’d been instructed. Nor did he draw much comfort from the pistol strapped to his side. If he jumped, he thought, he’d probably lose it. Shebarshin decided such thoughts were unworthy of a man, but then again for the sake of objectivity they should at least be noted, he would later say.
As the Antonov lifted off the runway, the pilot put it into a series of steep climbing turns that seemed to take almost twenty minutes before the lumbering turboprop transport was above the effective range of the Stinger gunners. As they leveled off for the short flight along the Kabul River, the historic route of retreat of a doomed British Army almost a century and a half earlier, Shebarshin could see flashes of artillery and small-arms fire like blinking matches twenty thousand feet below. Almost as soon as the Antonov had reached altitude, it began its descent into Jalalabad, using the same gut-wrenching spiraling motion, but this time downward. As soon as they pulled to a grinding halt at the end of the runway, engines still turning, the passengers were whisked out to a waiting car. The Antonov then wheeled around and took off into the night sky; it had been on the ground in Jalalabad for no more than a minute.
Kryuchko
v and Shebarshin were put up for the next two nights in the family residence of Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, the Afghan resistance leader. The rebel leader’s home had been damaged by occupation troops over the years, but the staff still spoke of their old master with a tone of reverence. It wouldn’t take much to fix it up after the war was over, Shebarshin decided as he surveyed the elegant old house.
The next day was surreal, sheer make-believe as they toured in and around Jalalabad, meeting with Afghan officials and troops in the field. In the stifling heat of the Jalalabad plain, they pinned medals on rows of khaki chests and heard the same half-believed mantra that everything was okay. Everything was under control. Here and there were fading red posters extolling inevitable victory. Muslim fatalism, thought Shebarshin as he absorbed the scene.
The second night, a blacked-out Antonov dropped into Jalalabad to pick up the two VIPs for the return to Kabul. The two men were rushed aboard and in seconds were in a spiraling ascent above the city to safety and the corridor home. After takeoff, the crew noted in the log that large-caliber tracer fire followed their ascent until they were above the range of any weapons known to be in the bandits’ hands. At 2245 hours, they were back on the ground in Kabul.
First Chief Directorate Headquarters, August 15, 1988
Back in Moscow, Leonid Shebarshin mused over another one of the many distractions of a war coming to an end. A freebooting militia commander in Paktia Province near the Pakistan border, a man of constantly shifting allegiances, had captured an Air Force colonel when his Sukhoi-25 was shot down near the Pakistani border about ten days earlier. Negotiations had been under way since the day after the shoot-down for a cash ransom for the release of the colonel. Shebarshin was aware it would cost a tidy sum to secure the freedom of a full colonel, certainly more than might be paid for a lieutenant, but it was worth it to get a brave officer out of captivity. Too many pilots had died at the hands of the bandits over the years, and now it seemed that everybody was willing to make a deal.
The Paktia shoot-down was a case in point. Within hours of the incident, a message had been delivered to the 40th Army and to the KGB that a white-haired colonel was safe and sound and that those holding him were ready for a trade. Now all that had to be done was the haggling over the price. Not a bad way for a pilot to end his own war, particularly considering the alternatives, Shebarshin thought. He scanned the report until he found the colonel’s name. He decided he didn’t know the man.
Islamabad, August 15, 1988
The operation to extract the downed Su-25 from Paktia had gone well, as had the bargaining over the pilot. The pickup trucks and the rocket launchers were handed over in return for the plane and the pilot. We never sought access to captured Soviet pilots or other troops unless they stated clearly to the Pakistanis that they wanted to defect to us. Memories of Soviet interrogations of U.S. POWs in Vietnam and Korea were fresh enough, and the policy was that there would be no direct American interference with captured Soviet combatants. The previous year, we had assisted in the resettlement of three Soviet soldiers who had been held by the mujahideen for more than a year and finally decided they wanted to resettle in the West. They ended up in Canada, but we helped process them into the resettlement system.
Most of the Soviet soldiers who fell into mujahideen hands were a pretty troubled lot. Hazing in the Soviet Army made for a miserable life in the best of times, but add to that the crushing insanity of the war in Afghanistan, and it was no surprise that a significant number of Soviet troops were sliding into the Afghan drug scene. Many of them were actually captured by the rebels after having been lured away from the safety of their garrisons on drug deals. Once captured, some very quickly found an enthusiasm for Islam and for the Afghan resistance. They had heard enough stories of their comrades being buried alive or becoming the objects of entertainment for primitive men with knives. Even then, their lives with the mujahideen were often a terrorized combination of concubine and beast of burden. By the time they ended up with us on their way to a resettlement in the West, they were in need of more help than we were often able to give.
After being pulled out of Paktia, the Soviet colonel remained the guest of the Pakistanis while arrangements were worked out with the Soviet embassy in Islamabad for his repatriation. Hamid Gul told me that the Soviet airman was a congenial man who had no interests beyond going home to Moscow to fight another day. He gave up no information and didn’t take the usual defection bait—the big-chested homecoming queen blonde, the bass boat, and the pickup truck with Arizona plates that I had told Hamid Gul to offer him. Instead, the pilot was handed over to the Soviet embassy in Islamabad, and two weeks later he was in Moscow, where he was regaled and decorated for his heroism and his steadfast commitment to his “internationalist duty.”
His rescue was characterized as the result of the gallant efforts of the “competent organs.” No mention was ever made of how his release had been arranged; certainly nothing was said of the Toyotas or the BM-12s the CIA had kicked in. Altogether a nice final chapter, I thought. But it wasn’t yet the end of the game for the colonel. Years later, the kindly, white-haired colonel would be at center stage in Moscow politics.
13
Rawalpindi, August 13, 1988
Akhtar couldn’t let go of Afghan affairs since he had handed over ISI to Hamid Gul six months earlier. Though his move to take over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had included a promotion to lieutenant general, he felt left out of the action in the last days of the war. He continued to call me for a quiet dinner talk every month or so; in return, he would update me on what was going on in the Army. A pretty good trade, I thought, and so it was that I joined him for dinner on the evening of August 13.
Akhtar was in good spirits, having survived the scandal of the Ojhri camp disaster, but just barely, and only because Zia had kicked out Prime Minister Junejo’s civilian government. I had kept up these quiet sessions with Akhtar for the last eighteen months partly as a means of keeping tabs on the current thinking among the corps commanders and senior staff chiefs and partly because I had become close to the general. He would invariably probe for information on what Hamid Gul was up to in Afghanistan, sometimes critically, but since the Soviets were well into their withdrawal, and since most of the news was reasonably good, I never felt I was being caught between a suspicious predecessor and an ambitious successor. Toward the end of our dinner, I mentioned the big event of the week.
“I suppose you’ll be joining everybody else in Bahawalpur on the seventeenth,” I said, referring to the field demonstration in Bahawalpur of the American M1 Abrams tank we were trying to sell the Pakistan Army.
“Bahawalpur? Who’s going?” Akhtar was perplexed; he clearly hadn’t heard about the demonstration.
Catching his tone, I tried to downplay its importance. “They’re showing off the Abrams tank, but you know all about it. It’s a technical affair. I understand the president will be going.”
“Bahawalpur?” Akhtar said again, clearly irritated at having heard from me about a military gathering that involved President Zia. “Will you be going along?”
“No, I’ve got nothing to do with the Abrams. I’ll leave that to the representational crowd, the ambassador and some of our military brass.”
The rest of the dinner was awkward, and I tried to change the subject by briefing the general on the progress CIA technicians were making in salvaging the Su-25, which, it turned out, was as promised in excellent condition. But Akhtar had little interest in this or any other subject, and I ended up leaving for Islamabad a little earlier than usual.
Islamabad, 0830 Hours, August 14, 1988
The next morning, I had barely gotten through my cable traffic before Akhtar was on the line from Rawalpindi:
“Funny thing about the Bahawalpur affair. I found my invitation on my desk when I arrived at the office this morning. It was held up in the mailroom. I’m sending over an invitation for you, as well. You can come with me. It ought to be an
interesting day.”
“Thanks, General, but I’ll have to check my schedule and get back to you.”
I didn’t believe for a minute that Akhtar’s invitation had been on his desk. I was sure that he’d made life unpleasant for anyone around him below three-star rank and that the hastily prepared invitation had been the only way to end the unpleasantness. When my invitation arrived by courier later that day, I tossed it in a burn bag, pausing for only a second or two to contemplate whether I ought to give it to my deputy Jim Morris and have him cover for me. Not worth it, I decided.
Islamabad, 1800 Hours, August 17, 1988
I had just walked into my residence in Islamabad’s quiet and shady Shalimar residential quarter when my phone rang. It was my secretary, still at work.
“Milt, it’s Susan. We just got an odd call saying that President Zia’s plane has crashed.”
“Is there any more than that?” I had an instant sinking feeling that what Susan had just reported was true.
“No, they’re trying to check it out now.”
“I’ll be right in,” I said.
I was back in the office in ten minutes, by which time there was no longer any doubt about the crash. The reports coming in from Bahawalpur also placed Arnie Raphel on the plane with the president, as well as Brigadier General Herb Wassom, a fine Army officer and a good friend who ran the military cooperation office in the embassy. Fragments of information were coming in by the minute, and the early assessment was that there had been a catastrophic loss of life among senior officers in the Pakistan Army. The first thing I did was send a “Critic” message with worldwide distribution, outlining the facts as we knew them. The Critic message is called for whenever events occur in an area of interest to the United States that might even remotely deteriorate into a military confrontation. The assassination of a major world leader fell into that category, and there were already whispers, soon to be shouts, that Zia’s plane had been brought down by an assassin’s hand. This could only add tension to the always tricky standoff between Pakistan and India, particularly if a leadership vacuum in the Pakistan Army was perceived by the Indians as an opening for mischief.
The Main Enemy Page 38