The Bear Trap (Afghanistan’s Untold Story)

by Mohammad Yousaf

  Gul contacted me late at night in Peshawar, where I had gone to plan some operations with the Military Committee, telling me to halt these incursions immediately. I responded that it was impossible. I was not in communication with all the Commanders involved, and to pass on this order would take time. This infuriated Gul, whose head would roll if the Prime Minister’s instructions were not obeyed, so he insisted that I confirm to him that these activities had been halted by the morning. I could only repeat that it was impossible, but I added that if any did take place no Commander or Party would claim the credit. I told him I would endeavour to pass the message by the quickest means. I myself felt that calling them all off indefinitely was too hasty, as we would lose the momentum. When I returned to Islamabad I tried to convince General Gul of the tremendous advantages of such operations. I did not want to abandon our contacts and stop everything, just when we were obviously hurting the Soviets. Of course, I spoke as a soldier, not a politician, and I knew there was no way the Pakistan Army could meet an all-out Soviet ground attack, but I believed they were bluffing.

  Even the CIA was shaken. The local chief told me, “Please don’t start a third world war by conducting these operations inside Soviet territory”. There were no more. Looking back I believe I was right; the Soviets would never have launched an invasion of Pakistan. Within a few months they had agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan, so I do not see how Gorbachev would ever have escalated the conflict and brought the world to the brink of a world war. It was surely the last thing he wanted. I must acknowledge my limited wisdom in this matter, but I feel that had General Akhtar still been in the chair at ISI he would have allowed such operations to continue, but at a lower key.

  Be that as it may, these attacks remain for me the high point of my career with ISI. My bureau was the only military headquarters in over 40 years to have planned and coordinated military operations inside the communist superpower. The great majority were successful; they wounded the bear and they proved the effectiveness of well-led guerrilla attacks to be out of all proportion to their size. That the small-scale raids by such Commanders as Wali Beg could influence the councils in the Kremlin was of itself a singular reward.

  The Bear Backs Off

  “To those who flee comes neither power nor glory.”

  Homer, The Iliad, XV

  IN late March, 1987, General Akhtar was promoted to four-star rank. This meant he had to relinquish his post as Director-General of the ISI and take up duties as Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. His promotion was not welcomed by the Parties, the Mujahideen, myself, or indeed by the General. For eight years General Akhtar had been the architect of the strategy for the Jehad. Under his overall direction the war had been brought to the point where ultimate military victory for the Mujahideen was in sight. It had been his recommendations to the President at the outset that had put Pakistan behind the guerrilla campaign. He had battled successfully on the political front to keep some semblance of unity among the Party Leaders, but only as a prerequisite {or an outright military victory. He well understood the Afghan psyche and the imperative need to achieve military objectives before introducing the distractions of political wrangling. The Mujahideen Leaders and Commanders could only cope with one at a time. No one perceived better than he the debilitating effect of the premature debut of political power grabbing on the Jehad.

  During 1986 he had seen the Soviet resolve beginning to crumble. That was the year when President Gorbachev told the 27th Communist Party Conference that “counter-revolution and imperialism have transformed Afghanistan into a bleeding wound”. In May of that year, at the UN-sponsored Geneva peace talks, the Soviets had offered a four-year withdrawal timetable. In July they actually withdrew a token force of 6,000 men, which, significantly, included two MRRs and a tank regiment, as well as three, obviously superfluous, anti-aircraft artillery regiments. 1986 was also the year of the Stinger.

  General Akhtar was going to a job that carried little authority or influence. From the most powerful position within the military in Pakistan, from a job that for all those long years had involved the struggle with the Soviet superpower on the battlefield, he was being ‘kicked upstairs’ to a sinecure. For two weeks Akhtar did not hand over his Afghan responsibilities to his successor, Major-General Hamid Gull There was talk of his retaining these duties in his new position. This is what he hoped for, as, for personal and professional reasons, he very much wanted to see the Jehad through to final victory. But it was not to be. President Zia did not relent, so, reluctantly, he handed over to Gull It was the first of a series of major setbacks to the war that occurred both before and after the Soviets’ withdrawal, and would eventually lead to the Mujahideen snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. General Akhtar was, I believe, the victim of American pressure. It was pressure that had been evident for years, but in April it finally coincided with our President’s wishes. Although the US Ambassador protested to him that General Akhtar should retain his Afghan obligations, he did not speak with conviction. The Americans had never been happy with Akhtar as head of ISI.

  For a number of years the US had made no headway with General Akhtar over a number of issues. At the start of the war the objective had seemed clear cut—to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan and make them pay for the US humiliation in Vietnam. It was primarily a military matter, involving massive support for a guerrilla campaign. But, as the tide of battle began to turn slowly in the favour of the Mujahideen, as the Soviets began to show they were less than totally dedicated to remaining in Afghanistan, that in fact a military pull-out was possible, so the Americans began to look at an Afghanistan without the Red Army. What they saw alarmed them. They did not believe the Afghan communist regime would survive a Soviet withdrawal any more than the South Vietnamese had survived the US retreat from Vietnam. They saw an Islamic fundamentalist government in Kabul. They saw leaders like Khalis, Sayaf, Rabbani and particularly Hekmatyar, establishing an Iranian type of religious dictatorship, which would probably make Kabul as anti-American as Tehran. For this reason the US sought, with increasing vigour, to break the hegemony of the Leaders. They wanted to exploit the differences between the Parties and their Commanders. General Akhtar understood their aims and methods and opposed their every move.

  The CIA had always argued that ISI should issue arms direct to Commanders, by-passing the Parties. This, they claimed, made sense militarily. The CIA would have dearly loved to decide who got the weapons and who did not. Although we explained that our method was based entirely on operational factors, they would not accept this and grew increasingly frustrated with ISI’s refusal to change the system. Had we distributed arms direct to Commanders it would have resulted in corruption, chaos and confusion inside Afghanistan. Interestingly, this is the situation today. In 1990 the Americans got their way. Weapons are now largely given to Commanders, with the ensuing infighting and lack of control. Commanders attacking Mujahideen convoys to steal arms they feel should have been given to them is now commonplace. This suits the US and the Soviets, who are equally fearful of a fundamentalist regime in Kabul aggravating their own problems within their adjoining Muslim republics.

  General Akhtar was also strongly opposed to the Americans’ bright idea of bringing back the long-exiled Zahir Shah to head a government of reconciliation in Kabul. This was suggested in late 1986 and was just another ploy to cause more dissension between the moderates and fundamentalists. The latter regarded the former king as being, at best, a vacillating incompetent who had got through five prime ministers in ten years, or, at worst, an American puppet. Gailani, the Leader of a moderate Party, had at one time been an unofficial adviser to the King, so putting Zahir Shah forward was guaranteed to keep resentment and rivalries simmering.

  Then there was the General’s resistance to the American and Pakistani foreign office demands that the Leaders call a Shoora (Council) to discuss arrangements for the future government of Afghanistan, on the basis of equal representation of each Party irresp
ective of its size. This would mean that some numerically large Parties, whose efforts and efficiency in the Jehad were poor, would have a greater say in politics and policy than some smaller ones who were more combat-orientated. Both General Akhtar and I were vocal against the injustice of this proposal. Similarly, we both opposed the formation of an interim government by the Parties until such time as the war had been decisively won, which to us meant when the Soviets had left Afghanistan and the Mujahideen had taken Kabul.

  General Akhtar recognized that these US/Pakistani foreign office proposals were designed to increase the polarization between the Parties and to encourage dissension between Leaders and Commanders to the detriment of their efforts on the battlefield. He and I never wavered from our belief that the Mujahideen must secure a military victory before a political future for Afghanistan could be agreed. Once Commanders in the field became more interested in the politics in Peshawar than with fighting the war, they would soon, quite literally, abandon their operations to congregate in Pakistan. After all, why should they continue to prosecute the war with enthusiasm, at great personal risk, when potentially powerful political positions were up for grabs in Peshawar? Nobody was going to secure anything worthwhile unless they were there in person, to lobby and intrigue—as much a part of the Afghan character as fighting.

  General Akhtar was conscious that if political activities were initiated before the capture of Kabul it would so weaken the Jehad that a military victory might prove unattainable. How right he was. Regrettably, General Akhtar had few friends. Within the military all the senior generals regarded him with a mixture of suspicion and envy. He was at loggerheads with the Prime Minister, while the Americans regarded him as the champion of the hated fundamentalists. The final decision to remove him from ISI was made by one man President Zia. Ii the President had wanted him to stay, then nothing could have moved him. but by 1987 Zia also wanted a change at the top in ISI.

  General Akhtar had achieved a miracle—almost. The possibility of the Mujahideen defeating the communist superpower was beginning to look like a probability. The Soviets were talking about troop withdrawals and the Stinger was now deployed against them. With a military triumph, Akhtar would be the hero; he had first advocated fighting, and he had devised and overseen the strategy of the war. It would be his victory. I believe that President Zia promoted General Akhtar so that the credit would be his, Zia’s. It would strengthen his personal authority and prestige enormously. He would be seen as the victor in the greatest Jehad for centuries, and it would surely have made his position as President unassailable. When these thoughts coincided with the other, American and Pakistani, pressures to move General Akhtar, the decision was irreversible. Akhtar was not the first senior officer to be dropped when it was felt he posed the slightest threat, direct or indirect, to the President’s personal interests.

  My reaction to General Akhtar’s leaving ISI was one of dismay. As a soldier, I sought a victory on the battlefield as the first priority. My views on this coincided with the General’s. First win the war, then hand back authority to the politicians. I appreciate that this was perhaps too simplistic, naive even. Nevertheless, events were to prove that premature political squabbling was instrumental in bringing about the military chaos that reigns in Afghanistan today.

  My efforts were devoted to operations, but the intrusion of politics on to the battlefield was a part of my everyday life. Always it seemed that politics hampered rather than helped the Mujahideen. The Pakistani Foreign Minister, Sahibzada Yaquoob, was deeply committed to the UN-sponsored Geneva talks between Pakistan and the Soviet Union. He would brief the Leaders on progress at these discussions, but I found it frustrating to see the way he would only reveal what was already public knowledge, what had been reported in the press. He never took them into his confidence or disclosed his intentions. Nor was he prepared to accept their views. Our Foreign Office was determined to do a deal and under no circumstances would the Mujahideen’s leaders be given the right to veto any agreement. By the end of 1986 confidence and respect between the Leaders and the Foreign Office was at its lowest ebb. On one occasion the Foreign Minister asked the Leaders’ views on the Soviets’ withdrawal time-frame. Hekmatyar replied: “It is very simple. The Soviets should be given as much time for withdrawal as they took when moving into Afghanistan, i.e. not more than three days.”

  The Leaders were of the view that the Soviets should be asked to negotiate with them directly. Whether the Soviets would have accepted this in 1986 I do not know, but the Foreign Office was certainly not prepared to lose its importance or control over our side of the talks. The Leaders also insisted that they would never share any interim government with Najibullah or Soviet stooges, even for a single day. They were emphatic. Their struggle had been in the name of Allah and for the establishment of an Islamic government in Kabul. They spoke of such a sharing as a betrayal of the sacrifices made by millions of Afghans. Even President Zia tried to persuade them to show a little more political wisdom by sharing power in an interim government for a token period, but they could not budge. It was the Afghan at his most inflexible. In the end I gave up attending Sahibzada’s briefings; they were too depressing.

  Major-General Hamid Gul replaced General Akhtar at ISI in April, 1987. He was to last two years. His previous post was that of Director of Military Intelligence at GHQ and I had heard much of his professional competence and strength of character. Looking back now, I can sympathize with him. He was destined to preside over a series of disasters which, despite the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, culminated in the chaos of today. During his stint at ISI military victory was snatched from his grasp and instead stalemate was substituted.

  Being a new broom, General Gul wanted to start sweeping immediately. He also needed time to settle in, to meet the Leaders, to start to understand the Afghan way, and so be able to sort out what was possible and what was not. At the beginning Gul sometimes found this difficult. As a soldier with a cavalry (armoured) background he was a forthright advocate of an army having a mobile, hard-hitting task-force as a reserve—a formation that could move at speed to a crisis point, influence the battle at the right moment, and with which to exploit success. A fine idea, essential for success in a conventional war, desirable perhaps in a guerrilla war, but an impossibility for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. At the outset General Gul had little inkling of the infighting between Parties and Commanders, no idea of how this affected what was practical operationally, and had yet to realize that most Commanders would not tolerate Mujahideen from other Parties moving through their area, let alone allowing a large force to come and take over operations in their territory.

  I pointed out these problems, but he rebuked me for being a defeatist and opposed to new ideas. Out of loyalty to my superior, I made strenuous efforts to collect Mujahideen from all Parties for training for this ‘strike’ force. For four weeks we struggled to sort out the difficulties of finance, logistics, command and control, but could make little headway. By this time General Gul was starting to grasp some of the quirks of the Afghan character and agreed with me to drop the idea for the time being.

  By this time I knew I was retiring from the Army. I was told in late April, 1987, that the selection hoard had passed me over for promotion to major-general. I was disappointed but not surprised. Virtually none of the generals on the board knew me; I had not served under them in a senior appointment; all they knew was that I had been working in ISI for four years. They promoted the men they knew in preference to an unknown brigadier who had spent such a long time outside proper soldiering and in an organization they viewed with misgiving. I believe the President spoke out in my favour, but he was not prepared to overrule so many. For him it was not a crucial issue at that moment. I could have continued in ISI as brigadier, but this I refused to do. I had long before decided to retire if not promoted, so this is what I set out to do. The snag was that I could not retire with a pension unless given permission by the Army. As a brigadier I coul
d have been required to continue to serve. This is what Generals Akhtar and Gul tried to convince me to do; even the President sent word that I should not be allowed to retire as I was still needed.

  I was prepared to stay for a few months to settle in my successor, but no more. Having directed the war (I thought reasonably successfully) for so long my professional pride was hurt. But, much more importantly, I could detect the general atmosphere of change towards a policy that, in my view, would weaken the Jehad just at the time when military pressure had to be maintained. I was starting to lack confidence that an outright victory in the field was the aim of the game. The smell of political expediency and compromise was in the air. Even President Zia was talking to the leaders of sharing power within an interim government with Najibullah. To me this was anathema. With victory on the cards, I could see that the Americans were beginning to assume the war was won and to concentrate their thinking on how to prevent the fundamentalist Parties taking over in Kabul.

  I cannot resist quoting from a letter written by a well known Commander Abdul Haq, to the New York Times on 1 June, 1989. Although it was written almost two years after I retired, the sentiments it expressed were exactly those of the rank and file Mujahideen throughout the war. Referring to the US government he wrote: Your Government always claimed to support the resistance against the puppet regime of the Soviets. That puppet regime is still in Kabul. President Najibullah was not the minister of health or education, he was the minister of torture and killing note 9. Since he became President, we have had thousands more victims …. More than one and a half million people have been killed, 70 per cent of all the country has been destroyed? and five to six million people have become refugees.

  It is said we should make a broad-based government with President Najibullah and his cronies. Yet American won’t give a visa to Kurt Waldheim because he was alleged to have a role in war crimes more than 45 years ago. But you want us to compromise with the Hitler of our country.