I was hurt on my visit to the CIA’s sabotage school a short distance from Washington. We flew there, although I think this was designed to convince me that its location was a long way from the capital. I am certain the aircraft circled round a lot more than it need have done to use up time, while the curtains of all the windows were tightly drawn. I was not to be allowed to catch a glimpse of where we were going. On the ground it was the same. Our car was completely closed, making it impossible to see out. I might just as well have been blindfolded from the outset. I regarded this as insulting. It was explained that my hosts had to abide by the regulations, but I was not suspect, and whenever the CIA visited my training camps in Pakistan they were never subjected to this kind of treatment. They came in broad daylight in open vehicles, with no attempts at concealment of the route or the camp’s location.
It was during this visit also that my suspicions that the CIA gave undue weight to the opinions of desk-bound analysts were verified. Firstly, I was ushered into a conference room to be briefed on Afghanistan. I had never been briefed by a woman military analyst before, so my attention was immediately captured. The poor woman was nervous and shaky, reading from her notes—a sure way of alienating her audience, but a practice many Americans seem to adopt. It is a sign that the speaker has not mastered the subject. And so it proved on this occasion. When she had finished I asked what she meant when she had stated that the Mujahideen had suffered heavy casualties in a particular battle. What percentage did she consider heavy 10 per cent, 20 per cent, or 50 per cent? She was immediately flummoxed. She was similarly confused when I pressed her for the numbers who actually fought in the battle. Her male companions attempted to come to her rescue. Later, I was told she had been working on Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion and had obtained a Master’s Degree in war studies before joining the CIA. Of course she had no practical experience of war, and never would have. Without this experience, or first-hand knowledge of conditions on a battlefield, even the best analyst is apt to draw the wrong conclusions from his facts and figures.
The next example involved a man considered to be an expert on Soviet tactics. After listening for a while to his discourse on what seemed to me to relate to how the Red Army would advance across the north European plain, I queried the relevance of what he had said to the terrain in Afghanistan. This seemed to upset him because he didn’t speak again.
To sum up: the CIA’s tasks in Afghanistan were to purchase arms and equipment and arrange their transportation to Pakistan; provide funds for the purchase of vehicles and transportation inside Pakistan and Afghanistan; train Pakistani instructors on new weapons or equipment; provide satellite photographs and maps for our operational planning; provide radio equipment and training, and advise on technical matters when so requested. The entire planning of the war, all types of training of the Mujahideen and the allocation and distribution of arms and supplies were the sole responsibility of the ISI, and my office in particular.
I stress that the CIA’s strength was in their access to sophisticated technology. If it was possible to solve a problem by technical means they would get the answer, but if military decisions had to be made on the basis of experience, military knowledge, or even applied military common sense, then, in my view, few CIA officers could come up with workable solutions.
A lot of money was wasted, and probably still is, on the war in Afghanistan. Some of it was undoubtedly due to corruption or mistakes in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but I believe a larger proportion has disappeared into the pockets of unscrupulous governments, arms dealers, politicians and CIA agents, who through incompetence or dishonesty bought or sold millions of dollars worth of worthless or inappropriate arms and ammunition.
Let me finish on a positive note. Notwithstanding all I have said, on balance the CIA’s contributions have played a vital role in the conduct of the Afghan Jehad. Without the backing of the US and Saudi Arabia the Soviets would still be entrenched in that Country. Without the intelligence provided by the CIA many battles would have been lost, and without the CIA’s training of our Pakistani instructors the Mujahideen would have been fearfully ill-equipped to face, and ultimately defeat, a superpower.
What happened once the weapons arrived in Pakistan was our responsibility.
The Pipeline
“We have found that the CIA’s secret arms pipeline to the
Mujahideen is riddled with opportunities for corruption. The losers
are the poorly equipped guerrillas fighting the Soviets in
Afghanistan, and the American people whose congressional
representatives have been betrayed by the CIA.”
Washington Post, 8 May, 1987.
THE above is an extract from the text of an article on the supply of arms and ammunition to the Mujahideen written by a journalist who had spent some weeks in Pakistan trying to unravel the complexities of a system that stretched half way round the world, involved six countries other than Pakistan and Afghanistan, and was costing, by 1987, over a million dollars a day. Perhaps, not surprisingly, Mr Jack Anderson’s comments were largely guesswork, but in this case not too far from the mark. As I have explained in the previous chapter the CIA has much to answer for with its wasteful purchasing system. Nevertheless, it was not the CIA’s pipeline that provided weapons to the Mujahideen. As soon as the arms arrived in Pakistan the CIA’s responsibility ended From then on it was our pipeline, our organization, that moved, allocated and distributed every bullet that the CIA procured. But even the ISI did not actually give the guns and ammunition to the Mujahideen who were to use them in battle. The last stretch of the line into and across Afghanistan was in the hands of the seven Parties and the Commanders in the field. To understand how the arms reached the battlefield from places as remote from Afghanistan as the USA or Britain it is necessary to know that the pipeline was divided into three distinct parts. The first part belonged to the CIA, who bought the weapons and paid for their delivery to Pakistan; the second stretch was the ISI’s responsibility, getting everything carried across Pakistan. allocated to, and handed over to the Parties at their headquarter offices near Peshawar and Quetta; the third and final leg of the journey belonged to them. The Parties allocated the weapons to their Commanders, and distributed them inside Afghanistan.
When a Mujahid dropped a bomb down the barrel of his mortar it was the end of a journey that had involved being loaded, or off-loaded. at least fifteen times; being moved many thousands of kilometres by truck, ship, train, truck again, and pack animal, before being carried to the firing point by the mortarmen themselves. Seldom, even in guerrilla operations, can a line of communication have been so tenuous and fraught with frustrations long before any item reached hostile territory. A British general once said something to the effect that, for every thought that a commander bestows upon his enemy, he probably directs a hundred anxious glances to his own supply line in his rear. I would endorse that comment.
As far as I was concerned my major headache was logistics getting sufficient supplies forward, in time, to the right people, and at the right place. Everything else was of secondary importance. My difficulties were compounded by the fact that I only had direct control over the centre section of the pipeline, both ends being in the hands of others (see Map 8). With the CIA and the Parties I could only plead, explain, cajole or persuade. I could not intervene directly when things went wrong and I could not use my own resources to put matters right. The task of my logistics colonel was certainly the most unenviable within my bureau, if not within the entire ISI organization. His was the daily grind of keeping supplies moving, of worrying about ship or aircraft arrivals, lack of manpower, late supply of railway wagons, insufficient vehicles, mechanical breakdowns, and above all security—preventing any leaks as to what we were doing getting to the public, or over-inquisitive foreign journalists and enemy agents. What he achieved was a minor miracle, as the system was never exposed, never disrupted by sabotage inside Pakistan, during the period 1984-87. In 1983 s
ome 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition went through the pipeline. By 1987 this amount had risen to 65,000 tons, all of it handled by 200 men from the Ministry of Defence Constabulary (MODC) with four fork-lift trucks, working seven days a week, month after month.
At the CIA end of the pipe it was not just that we often received inappropriate and outdated weapons systems that we did not want, but their scheduling of shipments frequently took no account of our capacity to handle the huge quantities involved. It was usually a feast or a famine situation. I repeatedly stressed that we needed a smooth, regular flow of arrivals at Karachi port, of about one or two ships a month. This we could manage. Such a steady build-up would prevent bottlenecks when our stores were overflowing, or periods when they were virtually empty. Perhaps I was asking the impossible, because sometimes three, or even four, ships would arrive within a month, or there would be a long period when nothing came.
A small proportion of arms arrived by air at Rawalpindi (Chaklala Air Base). Until 1986 many of these deliveries were the cause of increasing friction between ISI and the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). The trouble seemed to stem from Saudi Arabia, where the CIA had arranged to dump supplies at Dhahran Air Base either for onward delivery by Saudi aircraft or collection by the PAF. For some reason unknown to me, these flights always seemed to go wrong. The CIA provided the liaison, but even when they had an agent at the Saudi airfield invariably our planes were not allowed to land on schedule, or were even turned away. When Saudi aircraft flew to Pakistan they did not arrive on time, or came completely unannounced, causing the PAF to go on unnecessary alerts. After nearly two years of this I managed to get the system stopped and USAF planes used, but our relationship with the PAF was badly soured.
Once the arms arrived on Pakistani soil we took over. I should explain that the supply system had been established before I arrived at ISI and that overall security of our methods was greatly enhanced by our operating under martial law. The military was in complete control. They were both the makers and executors of the law. For example, the normal bureaucratic stream of paperwork was suspended as far as we were concerned. Until later, when the size of the supply system expanded so enormously, nothing was committed to writing. Officials in government agencies or departments that had to be involved in keeping things moving were briefed verbally on what they had to do. If they became too curious they were told that the consignment or work was related to the widely publicized, but ‘secret’, project of making a nuclear bomb. This was normally enough to get cooperation.
At Karachi the port authorities were paid their dues in cash, the ship’s manifest merely stated ‘defense stores’ and the customs department was not involved. From the ship the crates were loaded on to between ten and twenty freight wagons for the journey by rail to my warehouse at Ojhri camp or, for a small proportion, direct to Quetta. The wagons were accompanied by armed MODC escorts. This rail movement was a daily event. Ten wagons would take about 200 tons, although I could cope with up to 400 as a maximum. If several ships arrived in quick succession the system broke down, with a build-up of stores at the docks as my men toiled to shift them, while my colonel contended with the railway functionaries for more rolling stock.
At Rawalpindi we had a fleet of 200 vehicles, mostly five– or ten-ton trucks with false and frequently changed number plates, with which to move the weapons further down the pipeline. All the boxes had to be brought to the camp from the railway station to be separated, checked and stored in the warehouse. Everything had to be taken on charge and stock lists updated daily. I insisted on having this information on my desk early every morning.
Next came the business of breaking bulk, and dividing up the weapons and ammunition into consignments for the Parties at Peshawar. This was done in accordance with the allocation priorities that I will describe later. Arms and ammunition is useless sitting at a depot, it needs to be in the hands of the user, so I made it a point of honour to keep the flow moving towards Afghanistan I preferred an almost empty warehouse to a full one—it was also a much less tempting target should a saboteur obtain knowledge of its location, or in the event of an accidental fire. We were, after all, sitting on a potentially very large bang, close to a built-up area. At least 80 per cent of all arms and ammunition used in Afghanistan passed through my warehouse at Ojhri, yet I believe our secret was kept. Despite the daily volume of traffic and activity to and from the camp, we never experienced any incident that suggested security had been breached during those four years.
Every morning, at times varying from 5.00 am to noon, a convoy of trucks with MODC drivers in civilian clothes would leave for Peshawar. It was a 150-kilometre drive, which had to be completed by evening so nothing could leave Rawalpindi later than noon. Every afternoon empty vehicles from the previous day’s delivery arrived back. Our workshop staff were kept frantically busy on maintenance.
To call these vehicles convoys is perhaps misleading, in that the 50-60 trucks did not follow one another in a long column—far from it. We sent them off in small packets of two or three lorries at intervals of five to ten minutes. They merged with the civilian traffic, with the man riding shotgun in the cab having his weapon concealed on the floor. Once, when travelling from Peshawar with the local CIA chief, I challenged him to try to spot any of our vehicles. He failed to do so.
Our main worry was the possibility of road accidents. An officer always travelled with the leading truck and another at the end of the convoy, and we included one or two empty vehicles in case of breakdowns. General Akhtar refused to countenance the possibility of accidents, although he knew our difficulties and that the law of statistics made a few inevitable. He remained adamant that they were not to happen, so I was forced to increase the number of officers on convoy duties to the detriment of training and operational requirements.
In 1986 I calculated that my trucks travelled well over a million kilometres. With such distance accidents happened. The most unfortunate was when a truck hit a car head on. By the time the officer at the rear reached the scene the casualties had been evacuated, and despite enquiries at the nearby hospital he failed to locate the car passengers. It turned out that the car occupants were Army officers and that two had died at the military hospital. There was a lot of unpleasantness as the Army blamed the ISI, despite witnesses testifying that the car was at fault.
At Peshawar the Parties took over. Their consignments were off-loaded at their warehouses while the drivers overnighted before the return journey next day. This was the system I used for the great bulk of arms and ammunition. There were a few exceptions, apart from those going direct to Quetta from Karachi. These involved rocket launchers and SAMs, weapons that were scarce and were needed in particularly critical operational areas such as around Kabul, or airbases, or along the Salang Highway. Everybody wanted to shoot down helicopters or launch rocket attacks from 10 kilometres from the target as this added to a Commander’s prestige, but I insisted they must be deployed in accordance with the overall guerrilla strategy. With these weapons I insisted I deliver them direct to the Commanders from those key areas, but in consultation with the Parties. Similarly, if there was a special operation being mounted, such as the sinking of barges on the Amu that required limpet mines, or a coordinated large-scale attack on a large enemy garrison, then I would also arrange a direct issue to the Commanders involved, again with the Parties’ concurrence.
Despite the allegations of corruption levelled at those involved with the arms pipeline, I remain totally convinced that as far as my organization was concerned nothing much went astray. The middle section of the pipe was virtually corruption-free. The beginning section under the CIA was riddled with opportunities for fraud and, as I have shown, there was ineptitude and probably dishonesty as well.
I should explain that there were also charges that the ISI diverted arms to the Pakistan Army. These were correct to the extent that some 200 14.5mm machine guns, RPG-7s and SA-7s were given to the Army to be deployed in emergencies on the western borde
r when the Soviet/Afghan forces stepped up their air and artillery violations into Pakistan. I can say with absolute authority that no other weapon was so diverted. It was foolish of us to do it without taking the CIA into our confidence, as I am sure they would not have objected. As it was, they found out, so there was a flurry of accusations and denials which damaged our relationship unnecessarily. Perhaps more detrimental, and increasingly so as time went on, to our association with the CIA was the endless bickering over their persistent demands for control over the allocation of all arms and ammunition entering Pakistan.
During General Akhtar’s eight years as Director-General of ISI it was the policy, on which he rightly remained unmoveable, that ISI decided who got the weapons, how many, and what types. By this I mean that, after the formation of the Alliance, the detailed allocation to each Party was our responsibility. It bears repeating. No one outside the ISI, including President Zia, had any say or control over the allocation of arms, ammunition and allied logistic stores from our warehouses at Rawalpindi and Quetta. It was not only the CIA who criticized us over this matter. The US Ambassador was often outspokenly disapproving, as were the US Congress, foreign journalists, senior generals in the Pakistan Army and the Parties themselves. They all thought they knew best. They all had their own political and personal motives for knocking the system, so they took every opportunity of pressuring ISI to alter allocations. Parties and Commanders routinely clamoured for more, for bigger and better weapons, while the Americans insisted we favoured the Fundamentalist Parties, particularly Hekmatyar. It was a never-ending source of friction, in-fighting and frustration.
The Bear Trap (Afghanistan’s Untold Story) Page 14