FIGURE 2.1 Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, 197918
“The rural areas,” admitted one Soviet report, were “controlled by the rebels.” Even if Soviet and Afghan forces could clear territory, they would “as a rule return to their bases and the regions fall back under the control of the rebels.”19 The rural nature of the insurgency foreshadowed the U.S. experience after the overthrow of the Taliban regime. A Soviet report to Defense Minister Ustinov in 1981 concluded: “The poor functioning of government bodies in the provinces negatively influences the stabilization of the situation in the country.”20
With their troop level holding steady at around 85,000 men, the Soviets vastly increased their numbers of helicopters and jet fighters. Helicopter strength rose from 60 in mid-1980 to more than 300 in 1981.21 In 1981, the Soviets launched two offensives into the Panjshir Valley, a geologically dramatic area, surrounded by sheer rock, 100 miles northeast of Kabul. The Panjshir River, which cuts through it, has a fertile flood plain and attracts visitors during the mulberry, grape, and apricot harvests. From this valley, Ahmed Shah Massoud had been orchestrating attacks against Soviet troops in Bagram and Charikar and along the Salang Highway. Massoud, an ethnic Tajik, had undergone guerrilla training in Egypt and Lebanon with Palestinian groups. He became known as the “Lion of Panjshir” for his brazen attacks against Soviet forces and his defense of the Panjshir Valley.22 In 2001, journalist Sebastian Junger embedded with Massoud in the Panjshir, shortly before the military commander’s death, and described him as “a genius guerrilla leader, last hope of the shattered Afghan government.”23
Twice the Soviets attacked Massoud’s forces in the Panjshir, but they withdrew after two weeks, leaving behind the wreckage of scores of armored vehicles and newly devastated villages along the valley floor. To the extent that the Soviets penetrated into rural areas, it was with airpower, and the Afghans particularly loathed the Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter. Designed for battlefield assault and equipped with four pods for rockets or bombs under its auxiliary wings, the Mi-24 could carry 128 rockets with a full load, as well as four napalm or high-explosive bombs. Its machine guns could fire 1,000 rounds per minute, and its thick armor made it largely immune to medium or heavy machine guns. It could strafe the ground with impunity and, by staying above 5,000 feet, remain out of reach of the mujahideen’s SA-7 surface-to-air missiles.24
In 1984, Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko escalated the high-altitude carpet bombing and ordered more helicopter gunship attacks to accelerate the process of depopulating some rural regions that remained outside Soviet control. Hundreds of thousands of “butterfly” mines—equipped with fins to float down gently—poured out of Soviet aircraft. Once on the ground, they maimed insurgents by blowing off their legs or feet. By mid-1984, 3.5 million Afghans had fled to Pakistan and more than a million others had fled to Iran. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced internally. Kabul’s population swelled from a prewar 750,000 to two million as frightened Afghans streamed in from the countryside.25 Insurgents responded by increasing attacks on airfields, garrisons, and other military targets, and they harassed Soviet ground convoys, making road travel perilous.26
The ISI’s War
The Soviet invasion had an enormous impact on Pakistan. Deeply troubled by the incursion of Soviet troops, President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq asked for an intelligence assessment from Lieutenant-General Akhtar Abdul Rehman Khan, the director-general of the ISI. Major General William Cawthorne, a British Army officer who served as army deputy chief of staff for the new state of Pakistan, had formed the ISI in 1948.27 Cawthorne had created the ISI within the Pakistan Army to help address the lack of intelligence and military cooperation, which had proven disastrous for Pakistan in the 1947 India-Pakistan War.
Akhtar argued that the Soviet invasion threatened Pakistani security: if the Soviet army conquered Afghanistan, it would only be a short step to Pakistan. Akhtar recommended backing the Afghan resistance and turning Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. Zia agreed, but only up to a point. He did not want to goad the Soviets into a direct confrontation with Pakistan. This meant keeping Pakistani support covert and prohibiting Pakistani forces from engaging in direct combat in Afghanistan. Over the course of the war, however, Pakistani soldiers did accompany mujahideen during special operations. They acted as advisers and helped the mujahideen blow up pipelines and mount rocket attacks on airfields. Akhtar selected ISI Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf to coordinate training, strategy, and operational planning for the mujahideen inside Afghanistan—and later inside the Soviet Union.28
The ISI had been a relatively small organization throughout the previous three decades. But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan transformed the ISI into a powerful intelligence organization.29 Led by key individuals, including Akhtar and Mohammad Yousaf, the ISI was involved in all aspects of the anti-Soviet conflict. Virtually all foreign assistance—including that from the CIA—went through the ISI. The Soviets were well aware of the ISI’s role, and one Soviet military-intelligence assessment indicates that they also knew of Western involvement: “A working group has been created in Islamabad which includes officials of the General Staff and military intelligence of Pakistan and representatives of the U.S., British, and Egyptian embassies. At a meeting of the group they discuss specific operations to conduct subversive operations and the participation of individual countries in organizing the rebel movement on [Afghan] territory.”30
In early 1984, Zia, Akhtar, Yousaf, and other key ISI figures called a meeting with seven of the most powerful Afghan mujahideen leaders to better coordinate the insurgency. One of the great challenges for the Pakistan government, including the ISI, was the haphazard nature of the Afghan resistance, which consisted of a disorganized network of mujahideen constantly roiled by personal rivalries and grievances. In 1984, Zia’s patience finally snapped, and he issued a directive that the insurgents were to form a seven-party alliance, what some CIA operatives called the “Peshawar Seven.” He did not say what he would do if they failed to follow his order, but they seemed to understand that support from Pakistan was hanging in the balance. “Every Commander must belong to one of the seven Parties, otherwise he got nothing from us at ISI,” recalled Yousaf, “no arms, no ammunition and no training.”31
Just as Americans know it today, Soviet leaders were aware how important a motivation Islamic fundamentalism was for insurgent leaders.32 Indeed, four of the seven parties were composed of Muslim fundamentalists: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami; Burhanuddin Rabbani’s Islamic Society of Afghanistan; Abdul Rasul Sayyaf’s Islamic Union for the Freedom of Afghanistan; and Yunus Khalis’s breakaway wing of Hezb-i-Islami. The moderate parties included Mawlawi Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi’s Movement of the Islamic Revolution; Pir Sayyid Ahmad Gailani’s National Islamic Front of Afghanistan; and Sibghatullah Mujadiddi’s Afghanistan National Liberation Front. Cooperation was not easy, but the ISI tried to minimize infighting. Between 1983 and 1987, the ISI trained roughly 80,000 mujahideen in Pakistan. Their distinctive battle cry became
One of the most ruthless of these leaders was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The youngest of seven children, he had a thick black beard and penetrating eyes. Hekmatyar, who spoke excellent English, was renowned for his staunch Islamic views and a disdain for the United States that was surpassed only by his hatred of the Soviets. In 1985, on a visit to the United States, he had refused to meet with President Ronald Reagan—despite repeated requests from Pakistan’s leaders—out of concern that he would be viewed as a U.S. puppet. During the Afghan War, the KGB established a special disinformation team to split apart the seven mujahideen leaders, and Hekmatyar was one of its prime targets.
Milton Bearden, who served as the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989 and worked with the mujahideen, described Hekmatyar as “the darkest of the Afghan leaders, the most Stalinist of the Peshawar Seven, insofar as he thought nothing of ordering an execution for a slight breach of party discipline.” Reflecting on his visits with Hekmatyar, Bearden acknowledged that “it would only be Gulbuddin Hekmatyar whom I would have to count as an enemy, and a dangerous one. And, ironically, I would never be able to shake the allegations that the CIA had chosen this paranoid radical as its favorite, that we were providing this man who had directly insulted the President of the United States with more than his share of the means to fight the Soviets.”34 William Piekney, the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan before Bearden, similarly recalled: “I would put my arms around Gulbuddin and we’d hug, you know, like brothers in combat and stuff, and his coal black eyes would look back at you, and you just knew that there was only one thing holding this team together and that was the Soviet Union.”35
Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami was built on the Ikhwan model of Islamic revolution. Hekmatyar, a Ghilzai
