The Main Enemy

by Milton Bearden

  With the ambassador dead, the management of the U.S. embassy fell to the deputy chief of mission, Elizabeth Jones, one of the Department of State’s finest foreign service officers. Beth, as everyone called her, had just arrived in Islamabad and had hardly unpacked before the disaster struck. Yet within the first hour after the news came in, she had put in motion a crisis management plan that worked flawlessly until she was replaced by Robert Oakley, who arrived in Islamabad a few days later with Secretary of State George Shultz for President Zia’s funeral and to accompany the remains of Ambassador Raphel and Herb Wassom back to the United States.

  As the drama unfolded in Bahawalpur, the list of the dead on Zia’s plane continued to grow. An hour after I had returned to the embassy, I learned that General Akhtar was among those presumed dead, which now included eight Pakistani general officers, several brigadiers and colonels, and a number of civilians, for a total of thirty-one persons aboard the president’s C-130. It was later learned, after the arrival in Chaklala of the second C-130, this one carrying Vice Chief of Army Staff General Mirza Aslam Beg, that Ambassador Raphel and General Wassom had only at the last minute been invited by the president to join him in his VIP compartment inside the C-130 for the flight home. Another American Army officer, Brigadier General Mike Pfister, returned to Islamabad alone in the embassy aircraft. I had assumed Mike had also been killed with the others and was delighted to see him show up late in the day.

  The sun had not set on the day of the crash before substance was added to the rumors of foul play. Apparently the president’s C-130 had begun diving and climbing in a porpoise fashion immediately after takeoff and continued to fly in this erratic manner until it finally dove straight into the ground, with all engines at full throttle. The impact was tremendous, and the fire was intense. Early evidence of a conspiracy centered on crates of Multan mangoes that had been loaded aboard the aircraft as gifts at the last minute. And, as usual, eyewitness reports had the C-130 exploding in midair before the crash. There had obviously been a bomb in the mango crates, was the conclusion of the day. That story was followed quickly by another suggesting that a gas had been released in the cockpit, incapacitating the crew. Soon began the search for likely plotters of what had already been accepted as the assassination of President Zia.

  General Beg, who by sudden default was now the man in charge in Pakistan, was the first name on the short list, if for no other reason than that he was not on the plane with Zia. General Beg paid a condolence call the evening of the crash on the ambassador’s wife, Nancy Ely-Raphel, a foreign service officer and attorney who had taken a leave of absence to accompany her husband during his posting to Islamabad. Someone later observed that the general seemed edgy and uncomfortable in her presence. Before the day was over, there were whispers that Beg was behind the crash—certainly he stood to gain the most from the sudden departure of Zia from the scene, and certainly he was a man of ambition. Rumor fed rumor, and as the conspiracy theories thickened, others would soon be added to the short list of probable assassins, including me.

  First Chief Directorate Headquarters, Yasenevo, 0800 Hours, August 18, 1988

  Leonid Shebarshin wondered how long it would take before fingers began pointing to the KGB as the evil genius behind the crash of Zia’s plane. He had already passed up the proper assurances that the KGB’s Afghan allies in Khad had nothing to do with the crash, and there had been no real questioning from above as to whether the KGB had a hand in it. But there was, to be sure, interest in determining if there was foul play, and if so, whose.

  Shebarshin himself thought that the crash, if not just plain bad luck, was probably the result of internal disputes in Pakistan. He’d lived there long enough to know that old feuds live on forever and that sooner or later someone would seek retribution for the execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto; sooner or later someone would have to pay Zia back. Either way, Shebarshin knew he’d have to keep his eye on the how and why of Zia’s death.

  Islamabad, 0700 Hours, August 18, 1988

  Early the next morning, with the wreckage of Zia’s C-130 still smoldering and under guard, I received a cable from Langley suggesting I consider sending the team of technicians salvaging the Su-25 to the crash site to search for clues, before the site became cold and contaminated. The technicians were experienced in the examination of air crashes, the cable had said. I took the suggestion under consideration, and after consulting with my deputy, Jim Morris, and the embassy air attaché, I advised Langley it would be a mistake to use the visiting technicians. Whatever good they might be able to do would be outweighed by the fact that the CIA had people poking around in the rubble of Zia’s plane a day after it went down. Questions would linger eternally as to what we were doing at the crash site and what we’d added or removed to cover up our hand in the crash. Langley sent me a short cable seconding that position. Later, I would be glad that our technicians had not been dispatched to the crash site, as more and more people became convinced that the crash had been engineered by the CIA, with me as the executioner.

  There was an impeccable South Asian logic in the suggestion that the United States was involved in Zia’s death. According to the growing conspiracy theory, the elaborate U.S. endgame in Pakistan and Afghanistan had begun with the destruction of Ojhri camp in the spring, followed by the killing of the president and his generals in August, as they were now “in the way of bigger things.” As the story went, the United States wanted to be certain that the mujahideen would not hamper the Soviet withdrawal, and thus the CIA had arranged for the destruction of the ordnance depot at Ojhri. And to be sure that the plans Zia and Akhtar had put in place for a post-Soviet Afghanistan a decade earlier failed, both men had to be liquidated. Then, per secret agreement, the Soviets would be able to withdraw with honor, and the fundamentalist resistance parties would be unable to complete their victory in Afghanistan. The Soviets would be given their “decent interval” from the time of their withdrawal and the collapse of the Najibullah regime. Ambassador Raphel and General Wassom had simply been unexpected and unfortunate collateral damage, but in the end, they were acceptable losses.

  It made a wonderful yarn, but it was sheer hallucination. Nevertheless, once the story gained momentum, it would never again be fully discounted, only improved upon.

  The sad fact was that the Pakistan Air Force had probably put its president and many of his generals on an aircraft with mechanical problems. But the Pakistan military establishment couldn’t accept such a reality and, despite a complete lack of evidence of a conspiracy, stuck to its guns on the assassination theory. General Gul later told me that he was convinced the Indians were behind the crash, and when I said that there was no evidence to support his claim, his response explained it all.

  “Milton, you still don’t understand the Indians. They would never leave any evidence that they had been involved. That, Milton, is the evidence of their involvement.” Hamid Gul eventually gave up on the Indian plot and would in later years tell anyone who would listen that he was convinced the CIA had killed Zia.

  A few days after the crash, I was faced with a macabre problem. A team of pathologists dispatched from Washington to make a positive identification of the remains of Ambassador Raphel and General Wassom had come up with human remains that belonged to neither man. As testimony to the intensity of the fire and the tremendous impact of the crash, positive identification of the men in the VIP module proved challenging for the American team and close to impossible for Pakistani pathologists. The Americans ultimately succeeded in their task, however, and arrangements were made for the remains of the two fine public servants to be flown home on Secretary Shultz’s plane. But what to do with the unidentifiable remains?

  I contacted friends in the Pakistani Army, and we arranged for a solemn transfer of the remains of the unknown officer resting in a hand-rubbed rosewood chest draped with a Pakistani flag. The handover took place at sundown, and the remains were buried the next morning in the military cemetery, giving a fin
al salute to the unknown shaheed.

  Secretary of State George Shultz led the American delegation to Pakistan to attend President Zia’s funeral and to take Arnie Raphel’s and Herb Wassom’s remains back home. He was accompanied by Robert Oakley, who at the time was responsible for the region on the National Security Council. Oakley would stay on as ambassador as we wound down this phase of war in Afghanistan and as we stood by and watched the next phase begin.

  Charlie Wilson and Annelise Ilschenko also attended Zia’s funeral, and Annelise’s powder blue floral shalwar kameez ended up attracting far more attention in the large American procession than the craggy, solemn face of George Shultz. Before the secretary’s delegation departed with the flag-draped coffins, a small ceremony was held in the embassy compound in Islamabad, with taps being played by the teenage son of one of the embassy staff.

  Islamabad, October 1988

  The snows came early in 1988, drawing down to winter dormancy the last fighting season of the USSR’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The commander of the Soviet Union’s 40th Army, General Boris Gromov, had on his way out of Afghanistan finally shown that the Red Army could perform as a superpower should. Six months after the withdrawal began, Gromov had pulled out the bulk of his garrisons without mishaps serious enough to interrupt the process or create a diplomatic crisis. Despite counsel from both Pakistan and the United States to leave the Soviet forces alone as long as they were heading for home, there were a number of harassing attacks by the mujahideen. The hatred ran deep in a country where every family had buried their dead from the brutal war.

  A couple of times, Gromov’s troops had taken what I thought were dangerous routes of exit, and they ran into trouble passing through some valleys in the center and north of the country. On those occasions where the Soviets took casualties, they would protest. One time after the retreating units came under heavy assault for taking what anyone who knew the mujahideen might have told them was the wrong fork in the road, I was given a gentle warning. I was at the large October 1 Chinese National Day celebration when I was approached by one of the old-style heavies of the Soviet embassy in Islamabad, a minister-counselor named Botshan-Kharchenko.

  “Mr. Buuurdon.” He made his usual mess of my name. “Perhaps we should speak.”

  “Why not?” I said, stepping away from what was easily the finest buffet spread in Islamabad’s diplomatic community.

  “You must understand, Mr. Buuurdon, that these attacks against our troops as they withdraw must stop.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Then perhaps we will halt our withdrawal. Then what will you do?”

  “It is not what I will do, Counselor, it is what the Afghans will do. And I think they will simply keep on fighting and killing your soldiers until you finally just go home.”

  “But you have some control over such matters. . . .”

  “No one has control over such matters, Counselor, except the Soviet Union.”

  “Mr. Buuurdon, you must still understand that there will be consequences if these attacks continue.”

  “I am sure there will be, Counselor.”

  There would be more such conversations between me and the Soviets, and though the attacks continued sporadically, withdrawal stayed on schedule. But on the whole, the Soviets managed to find their way out of Afghanistan without major disasters slowing them down. By the time Christmas 1988 rolled around, marking with it the ninth anniversary of the Soviet invasion, even the revenge-driven mujahideen commanders were convinced that the Soviet phase of their struggle was all but over. They began moving their forces into position for the next stage of the conflict, the struggle against the Soviet puppet regime of Najibullah in Kabul. And beyond that, the disparate forces that made up the Afghan resistance began jockeying for advantage in the phase that was to come after Najibullah had finally fallen, the fight to see who among the major players would emerge on top of the rubble heap that Afghanistan had become.

  Ahmad Shah Massoud had been the first of the major leaders in Afghanistan to see the handwriting on the wall. He became convinced that the Soviets were actually going to honor the commitment signed in Geneva in April 1988, and even before the ink was dry on the accords, Massoud had redirected his energies to forging an alliance for the future struggle against the Pashtun majority. In particular, he was gearing up for his showdown with his nemesis, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Across the northern tier of Afghanistan, Massoud cut deal after deal with local commanders and forged what he at that time called the Supreme Council of the North, a non-Pashtun alliance of primarily Tajiks and Uzbeks, thereby positioning himself in the starting blocks for the race to Kabul once the puppet regime began to wobble.

  Similarly, several of the Pashtun party leaders such as Gulbuddin and Sayyaf had been stockpiling ordnance for the post-Soviet phase of the fight. As a result, there were constant complaints from all of the party leaders that the United States had abandoned the mujahideen. The resistance leaders always referred to the Ojhri camp disaster as “proof” of U.S.-Soviet connivance, designed to leave the Pashtun parties without the means to carry the fight to Kabul. I had meetings with the Peshawar Seven during those last months of the war, and the theme was always the same: We’re out of supplies, and you have left us in the lurch. At one particularly heated session, I took a gamble. Sayyaf had made an eloquent speech complaining that his commanders inside Afghanistan had only captured weapons and ammunition at their disposal since we had cut them off. As his harangue ended, I took the floor, addressing the Peshawar Seven through Colonel Bacha, the interpreter.

  “I have heard from all of you about the lack of ordnance. In particular, I have heard from Professor Sayyaf that his stores are empty. I can’t understand how that could be possible, when our satellites just yesterday photographed his supply bunkers in Ali Khel and Zhawar Kili, and our estimates are that he is very well supplied.”

  Sayyaf, who almost always spoke through an interpreter, understood exactly what I had said and responded quickly in English. “I have less than nine hundred tons in Zhawar and about the same in Ali Khel,” he said defiantly. But the effect was the opposite of what he had intended.

  Mojaddedi broke in. “That’s two thousand tons. Professor Sayyaf says he is out of ammunition and he has two thousand tons in Zhawar and Ali Khel alone!”

  There was a hubbub among the other party leaders, and Sayyaf grew quiet. It was not the first or the last time that the impartial eye of the KH-11 satellite would intervene to break up a quarrel. It was irrelevant that there had been no overhead imagery of Sayyaf’s bunkers in Paktia province—the other six parties believed there had been.

  The United States and the Soviet Union would continue to supply their respective clients as the Soviets stuck to their withdrawal schedule over the winter months and into early 1989. The CIA estimated that there was more than enough ordnance in-country to finish the job of dislodging the Najibullah regime and that there would be no shortfalls. Demands for more ordnance were understood as calls for supplies for the future, the post-DRA future, when the Afghans would begin the nasty business of seeing who would end up ruling the roost. And there was little American interest in becoming part of that fight.

  As the new year rolled in, Kabul was surrounded by what the Pakistanis called a “ring of steel.” Each of the mujahideen parties had groups overlooking the capital from winter camps in the nearby hills, and it was clear that the stage was set for a siege after the last Soviet soldier stepped across Friendship Bridge. The foreign diplomatic community had drawn down to near zero over the last few months, and as the final date for the Soviet withdrawal came—February 15, 1989—the battle lines were drawn.

  14

  Islamabad, 0700 Hours, February 15, 1989

  I had been in my office since 0630 hours, waiting for relayed reports of the last day of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. I stood by my wall map, checking and rechecking the pins marking the locations of Soviet garrisons throughout the country, red for uni
ts still in-country, green for those already withdrawn. The whole of Afghanistan was now covered with green pins, with only a few red ones left in Kabul, in Mazar-e-Sharif, and along the main withdrawal route to the north, through the Salang tunnel and across the Shomali and Mazar-e-Sharif plains. Today it was over. Boris Gromov would walk out of Afghanistan, thus ending 3,331 days of senseless war.

  I had received reports that Gromov had actually been in the Soviet Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan for the last couple of days and that he would fly down to a point on the road from Mazar to the Friendship Bridge at Termez to link up with the last column of the 40th Army on its way home. It was all to be carefully choreographed by the little general himself.

  I waited as the reports came in.

  Termez, Uzbekistan, February 15, 1989

  General Boris Gromov wanted the arrangements to be just right. The international press had been shuttled from nearby Termez in Uzbekistan to a special media center, complete with a new covered pavilion overlooking Friendship Bridge. The body of a hapless young trooper killed the day before had been furtively carried across the bridge before the press had time to reason that his blanket-wrapped form represented the last Russian soldier killed in the war. The cameras of several dozen news services zoomed in on the center of the bridge, where a lone Soviet tank had pulled to a halt. The figure of General Boris Gromov jumped from the turret, pulled his battle-dress tunic smartly into place, and strode purposefully over the last hundred yards toward the Soviet side of the Oxus. Just before he reached the end of the bridge, his son Maksim, a slim, awkward fourteen-year-old, greeted his father with a stiff embrace and presented him with a bouquet of red carnations. Son and father marched the last fifty yards out of Afghanistan together. At that moment, Gromov became the USSR’s “hero of Afghanistan.”