Over cheeseburgers or sloppy joes, we listened and laughed to a pot-bellied twinkle-eyed American called Steve Masty strum his guitar and sing songs like the ‘Burqa Boogaloo’ or ‘Disco Pir’, poking fun at the mujahideen. But woe betide anyone that dared criticise them in print. The American Club was lorded over by a clique of right-wing American journalists led by Kurt Lohbeck of CBS and his girlfriend Anne Hurd of the Mercy Fund who saw this war strictly in black and white. The Afghans were the good guys, noble warriors fighting solely to liberate their country from the evil commie invaders. Anyone who wrote otherwise was labelled a communist and ostracised from the club.
On one level it was easy to portray the war in Afghanistan as a David-and-Goliath struggle – these men from the mountains in rope sandals with old Lee-Enfield rifles, ranged against one of the most powerful armies on earth. Like many British before me, I was captivated by the proud-faced Afghans who I found to be impressive, brave, and the most hospitable people I had ever met.
But I soon learnt it was not so simple. The Afghans may not have had tanks or planes but they did have Stingers and blowpipes and billions of dollars in the CIA’s biggest ever covert operation. Their leaders were living in luxury houses and many had property overseas. The money-making potential was enormous.
Psst…Wanna buy a tank?
Time magazine, 9 January 1989
SOME COUNTRIES WILL do just about anything to buy a hot tank – in this case a Soviet T-62 model equipped with the latest laser range-finding gear. The French dispatched a few video cameras as a token of their interest. The West Germans, more pragmatically, proffered mine-sweeping equipment. A third country maintained its anonymity by sending a Swiss middleman, impeccably coiffed and dressed in a double-breasted suit, to barter over dishes of mutton in the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar, where Afghan mujahideen occasionally stroll the dusty streets with AK-47 rifles slung over their shoulders. In the end, though, the discreet Swiss lost out to representatives of a West European member of NATO, who weighed in with the highest of the bids – a cash offer of $135,000.
The tank was the most spectacular commodity at auction in Peshawar, the venue for a brisk trade in all kinds of Soviet war materiel in the waning phases of the Afghan war. In Peshawar, an AK-47 sells for about $1,000, while an anti-aircraft gun can bring anywhere from $3,200 to $5,350. A Soviet jeep goes for $16,000.
The sought-after T-62 was not the latest Soviet model, but its range-finding equipment made it a notable prize. It was captured outside Kandahar by a unit of the Afghan National Liberation Front, one of the smaller members of the seven-party resistance alliance. As soon as news of the prize leaked through the intelligence grapevine, the unit’s commander was inundated with importuning messages and presents from interested embassies in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
For the commander, the T-62 represented not only a source of extra funds but also an opportunity to gain greater tactical independence. Most of the weapons support for the Afghan resistance comes from the US, and is funnelled through Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency. All too often, the mujahideen believe, ISI uses its control over equipment and purse-strings to insist that the guerrillas conduct operations of greater interest to Pakistan than to the resistance. In July, for example, the mujahideen were forced to fight the pro-government forces of tribal leader Ismat Muslim at Spin Boldak near Kandahar. They suffered heavy losses and failed to achieve their objective. But when the mujahideen baulk at ISI’s requests, the arms pipeline can dry up. Consequently, guerrilla leaders are always looking for alternative means to keep their military effort going.
Bringing a tank to market is a complicated affair. Driving the T-62 from Kandahar to the Pakistani border took twelve days – travelling initially by night to avoid attack by Soviet aircraft – while a contingent of guards walked alongside to ward off potential hijackers. Once across the frontier, the tank was hidden in a tribal enclave in Baluchistan while the sales negotiations took place. Well-armed tribal members stood guard to prevent the weapon’s seizure by ISI, which a year ago successfully liberated from the guerrillas another highly coveted bit of war booty, an armoured personnel carrier.
Once the deal was struck, the tank was covered with a tarpaulin, loaded on a flatbed truck and hauled to a Karachi warehouse. The commander then turned over the tank, leaving the buyer the task of getting the behemoth out of Pakistan.
When all his accomplices were finally paid off and bribes were delivered to the many people in authority who kept silent about the deal, the Afghan commander was left with about $80,000. For the hardscrabble fighters, that sum translated into a prized measure of independence. For this particular English-speaking commander, it was then time to get back to the fighting – but not before buying an airline ticket for a brief respite in Hawaii. The arms business, Afghan-style, is hard work.
I celebrated my twenty-second birthday in a kebab shop in Peshawar’s old Storytellers’ Bazaar with flat chapli kebabs followed by yellow cake with a candle on top. When my friends asked what I most wanted to do afterwards, options being limited in Peshawar, I said, ‘drive a rickshaw’. A rickshaw driver was duly waylaid and his tuk-tuk appropriated for a suitable fee and we spent a hilarious hour careering in and out of the alleys of the bazaar scattering Pathans horrified to see a foreign woman at the wheel. Afterwards we went for a moonlit swim in the pool of the Pearl Continental, or PC as we called it, where proper correspondents with expense accounts stayed.
There were other things to celebrate that night: 15 May 1988 marked the start of the withdrawal of the Red Army that had occupied Afghanistan since Boxing Day 1979. The supply of Stinger missiles which could down Soviet planes had turned the war around. For the mujahideen who had humiliated the largest army on earth, these were the glory days before jihad became a dirty word.
Like most journalists in Peshawar I spent much of my time going back and forth across the border into Afghanistan. ‘Going inside’, we called it. When you were out you spent all your time attempting to get in, and once in, living in caves on stale bread and trying to avoid landmines and bombs, you desperately wanted to be out.
By foot, donkey or motorbike we would slog across the jagged mountains, terrified of stepping on a mine or being spotted by a Soviet MiG. We were scared too of the Arabs who had come to join the jihad and just across the border in Jaji had set up a menacing-looking camp entered through a crevice in the rocks. Sometimes I would be disguised in a burqa, even provided a small child for authenticity; sometimes as a muj, swathed in shawls and my face darkened with a mixture of dirt and potassium permanganate.
Even when you got in, Afghanistan, like all guerrilla wars, was not an easy conflict to cover. I was convinced that one of the reasons the Soviets found the mujahideen so hard to defeat was that they were impossible to predict because they themselves had no idea what they were going to do next. The Afghan capacity for exaggeration is legendary. I would constantly arrive in places after a long journey for them to claim I had just missed a battle or them shooting down a Russian helicopter earlier that morning. Strangely there would be no sign of wreckage.
You might be away for weeks and then not get a story. I made eleven trips across the border yet only on four did I see any real action. These were the days before satellite phones so even if something did happen there was no possibility of filing from inside Afghanistan; it would have to wait for the return to Pakistan and the hated PCO or Public Call Office and a bribe for the telex operator.
For those correspondents coming in especially on assignment from London or New York, the idea of all that risk, hardship and expense for no return was unthinkable and they would invariably emerge with tales of a major attack. Mostly the mujahideen took them to Khost, which was reasonably easy to get to. Those of us that lived there would laugh as we saw yet another dramatic article appear on the ‘Battle for Khost’.
As later became public, some TV crews did not even bother going in to Afghanista
n but filmed rockets firing from the Pakistan side. There was no marked border and both sides looked the same. Others weaved in material shot inside by brave freelance cameramen like Rory Peck, Peter Jouvenal and Vaughan Smith, many of whom were former soldiers.
The Afghans were often complicit. Pakistan intelligence (ISI), through which US aid was funnelled, had divided the resistance into seven groups, following the British model of divide and rule, and would withhold arms supplies from any not in favour. ISI officers laughed at the Americans’ gullibility as they directed most of the CIA funds into the hands of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who made no secret of his hatred of the US.
Most media-savvy were Jamiat, led by Professor Rabbani, and National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (NIFA), led by the Gilani family. Some of the Gilani boys had lived in Chelsea and we called them the ‘Gucci muj’ for their designer combats and gold pens fashioned from AK-47 bullets.
If it is true, as Martha Gellhorn said, that you only fall in love with one war, then mine was undoubtedly Afghanistan. I would find myself drawn back again and again. To this day I still wear on my wedding finger a ring of yellow gold studded with tiny coloured jewels given to me by a proud Afghan tribesman.
Never had I met people with such passion for their country. For me England was just somewhere I happened to be born and I could easily imagine living in Spain, Italy or Brazil. But for my Afghan friends, who would regale me with stories of the exquisitely perfumed flowers, the mouthwatering fruit, the word-spinning poets, their dusty broken land was the most beautiful country on earth.
Inevitably, all of us living in Peshawar developed allegiances. Some journalists only ever travelled with Ahmed Shah Massoud, the charismatic Tajik known as the Lion of the Panjshir; others like me hung out with the Pashtuns. My favourite commander was Abdul Haq, a young Kabul commander who had lost his foot stepping on a landmine and told stories of how he had watched it fly up in the air. Over bowls of pink ice cream, he would tease me: ‘You’re a girl. Girls don’t go to war.’
One of the smallest and least influential parties was that of Professor Sibghatullah Mojadidi. Its spokesman was a young man called Hamid Karzai, with whom I shared a love of Keats and Tennyson poems and
Cadbury’s chocolate. He was a Popolzai, one of the royal tribes of Kandahar, and would talk to me late into the night about the tribes and his beloved homeland, where he said forty different kinds of grapesgrew. He complained that very few journalists made the journey to Kandahar and determined he would take me there.
Jihad on stale bread and mud crabs
Financial Times, 17 September 1988
Kandahar
ABDUL WASIE is an 18-year-old Afghan guerrilla who has been fighting since the age of 15 to free his country from Soviet occupation. Clutching a powerful heavy-calibre rifle, he was the first of 100 young mujahideen to pass under a copy of the Koran last Tuesday night before risking his life in a daring operation to destroy a military post in the centre of Kandahar. President Najibullah’s Afghan government forces have been in control of this city in south-west Afghanistan since the departure of Soviet troops last month.
The raid was important for the Afghan resistance; it proved they can, at will, break through the government defences and strike at the heart of key cities. Kandahar is the most important city after Kabul, the land of Afghanistan’s first king and a place which the Najibullah regime is desperate to hold.
Guerrillas fighting to dislodge government forces from Kandahar are nicknamed ‘Texans’ because of their loud-mouthed and abusive behaviour. But they were unusually silent as they gathered at the city perimeter on foot, bicycles and motorcycles – anything larger is swiftly detected and destroyed by government forces.
The group comprised mujahideen allied to five of the seven resistance parties based in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar. But these parties have little relevance in Kandahar where strategy is decided by tribal councils.
Our move into the city centre began at dusk. The men were tense – government reconnaissance planes had buzzed overhead all day and heavy shelling was under way in the southern area of Malajat, whose inhabitants have fled, leaving the area inhabited only by resistance fighters.
In single file we tiptoed barefoot past military posts – often so near that conversations inside were clearly audible. Rocket launchers, Kalashnikovs and machine guns were clasped tightly – even the slightest metallic click would alert the guards.
The target was next to the Governor’s office in Kabul bazaar, once a famous wood market, in the city centre. The Russians long ago felled the pines lining Kandahar’s streets to prevent their use as cover, and bulldozed the bazaar to construct a wide highway connecting the government security posts which bisect the city. Only the shop backs remain, giving the appearance of a walled road.
At 2.20 a.m. the city shook as all the guerrilla groups fired off their weapons simultaneously, filling the air with choking dust and flames. Within ten minutes their ammunition was spent, the post knocked out and the guerrillas were racing away silently through the streets.
The government forces, caught on the hop by the first such attack on a post in the city centre, reacted slowly and then indiscriminately; bullets and mortar fire rained down on civilian homes while the mujahideen escaped unharmed, scrambling over the dried-up irrigation ditches. To my horror, they then stopped just outside the city to catch up on the evening prayers they had forgone earlier.
This hit-and-run operation in the heart of the city marked a change in resistance strategy for Kandahar, the scene of some of the bitterest fighting during the nine-year war against the Soviet occupation and its puppet regime in Kabul. Until now the mujahideen have launched mortar attacks and fought from outside the city.
The plains surrounding Kandahar resemble the set of a war film, criss-crossed with muddy trenches, scattered with burnt-out tanks and rotting bones. This style of fighting was partly forced on the resistance commanders by the open nature of the terrain, which is unsuitable for guerrilla tactics, unlike the mountains to the north and east. The wheat fields give some cover and the fighters move around by motorbike, me clinging on the back trying not to lose my turban which kept unwinding.
Mullah Mohammad, deputy commander of the largest guerrilla front in the region, is dismissive of what he calls ‘the war of technology’ under way elsewhere in Afghanistan. The Soviet-trained government forces invariably win such missile contests, their precision far outranking the guerrillas’, who often have no idea of range, relying on a sort of third-time-lucky principle. Nonetheless, the accuracy of guerrillas in the Kabul area has improved immeasurably in recent months and they have scored important hits on the airport, the Soviet lifeline.
According to Mullah Mohammad the arrival of the US ground-to-air Stinger missile last year has made the guerrillas far less vulnerable to air attack, previously their main hazard on the plains. Although one Stinger was recently swapped for a prisoner, Kandahar mujahideen still have in reserve six of the resistance’s original fifty.
Mullah Mohammad claims that the mujahideen could ‘take Kandahar tomorrow’ if they wished. Since the Soviet troops pulled out of the city in mid-August, the 10,000-strong resistance forces have gained control of all but the city centre, the heavily defended airport fourteen miles south-east, and a few posts to the east.
Of the three defence rings round Kandahar, the outermost has been destroyed and the innermost evacuated by government forces who have moved out to strengthen the second belt. It was to prove that the remaining ring could be penetrated that Tuesday’s operation was undertaken.
Trenches had been prepared for an all-out attack on Kandahar. But fearing just such an attempt, the government sent in 6,000 fresh troops, boosting their forces to around 20,000. A tribal council of resistance commanders decided that an assault would inflict too many civilian casualties in the city centre.
A raid launched from the trenches on the airport last week resulted in the men being pinned down in the muddy water for
two days by Russian tanks. Mujahideen morale had also been shaken by an attack on Arghandab, an orchard area north of Kandahar, where taking a small post had cost 200 dead and caused 50,000 civilians to flee. The fruit crop on which Arghandab depends for its livelihood was almost completely destroyed.
Dad Mohammed, another of the regional commanders, says: ‘None of us wanted the attack but one of the political parties sent money to pay people to fight. I do not call that jihad [holy war].’
Such conflict over strategy between commanders in the field and the parties in exile is symptomatic of a growing rift. The so-called Peshawar leaders believe impressive victories are necessary to prove their worth, whereas field commanders, often reliant on local goodwill for supplies and shelter, are reluctant to risk further civilian lives and property. Instead of full-scale attacks, the field commanders are opting for sieges and hit-and-run attacks.
They have started laying siege to Kandahar, gradually replacing the civilian population with guerrillas and cutting off supply routes to the government forces. The resistance controls important sections of the highways to Kabul and Herat, lining each side with a wall of burnt-out tanks. Since the Russians left, no government convoy has been able to reach the city.
The only remaining supply route is from the airport and the guerrillas have dug trenches close to the road and worked under it through flood pipes. Even this strategy has aroused civilian resentment because it has resulted in scarcities and rising prices.
Many mujahideen do not relish another winter living on stale bread and mud crabs from the trenches and the truth is that both sides in the local conflict would like it to end.
The Governor of Kandahar has approached nationalist forces and
tribal leaders to negotiate a surrender. But they will only agree if the air force also surrenders and hands over the airport to the guerrillas, which seems unlikely.
Small Wars Permitting Page 4