Afgantsy

administrative centre at Rukha and other key villages. But he mishandled the politics: he failed to secure the support of the local inhabitants, and the criminals he released from the local prison went on the rampage. Once again he sought refuge in Pakistan. But he had learned an important lesson: success in guerrilla warfare depends on having the people on your side.

Masud applied this lesson very carefully during the war against the Russians. He ensured that his people had a minimum of food and shelter, and during the Russian incursions he moved them away from the bombs and the soldiers into the side valleys or up into the high mountains. He stuck closely to the fundamental maxim that irregular fighters should always avoid direct confrontation with their enemies. Until the war against the Russians was over, he did his best to keep clear of the vicious internecine fighting which so often erupted between rival mujahedin forces. He systematically built up institutions of local government and administration, financed with taxes imposed on precious stones mined in the area, land, goods, and on Panshiris living in Kabul. It was always his eventual ambition to win power in Kabul itself and in 1984 he began military operations outside the valley. None of the other mujahedin commanders had the same broad ambitions and the same interest in institution building.⁴⁶

The vicious fighting in the Pandsher Valley in the first years of the war gave the Russians a healthy respect for Masud’s military skills and in January 1983 they negotiated a ceasefire with him which was more or less scrupulously observed by both sides until April 1984. The negotiator was a colonel in the GRU, Anatoli Tkachev, who had been unimpressed with the failure of successive operations in the Pandsher Valley. He spoke first to General Akhromeev, at that time still a member of the Ministry of Defence’s Operational Group in Kabul. ‘I told him that we ought to try to reach an agreement with Ahmad Shah on a ceasefire, since the peaceful population was being killed by artillery and air strikes, and soldiers were being killed by the mujahedin. He answered that all those old men, women, and children were relatives of the rebels, and as for the deaths of our soldiers, they were only doing their duty. If one was killed, ten more could be sent to take his place. Ahmad Shah should be brought to his knees and made to lay down his weapons.’

Tkachev’s idea was, however, supported by the head of the GRU in Afghanistan, and by Akhromeev’s superior, Marshal Sokolov. In reply to a proposal for a meeting which Tkachev sent through agents among the Pansheri refugees in Kabul, Masud laid down the conditions. The meeting was to take place on New Year’s Eve 1983, in the Pandsher Valley on territory controlled by his men. Tkachev was to go to the meeting by night, unarmed, and without an escort.

At nightfall on New Year’s Eve Tkachev set out with his interpreter for the meeting place. As soon as he got there he fired a rocket, the agreed signal, and a group of rebels emerged from the frozen darkness, led by the head of Masud’s counter-intelligence, Tajmudin. Tajmudin asked Tkachev if he would like to rest. ‘No,’ said Tkachev, ‘let’s get a move on. The business is the main thing.’ They marched through the night for about four hours until they reached Bazarak, the place where Tkachev was to meet Masud.

‘The attitude of the mujahedin was quite friendly. They put us up in a well-heated room. There was no electricity, but there was a kerosene lamp and a Soviet stove. The mujahedin looked at us carefully as we began to get undressed, in case we had explosives hidden under our clothes. Then they offered us tea, and brought in mattresses and clean bed linen—all army stuff, with official stamps on it. We went to bed at about four in the morning and slept in the same room as the mujahedin.

‘At breakfast the following morning, we were given all the traditional honours: we were the first to wash our hands and to dry them with a fresh towel, the first to break the bread, and the first to begin eating plov from the common bowl. We were consumed by curiosity as we waited to see Masud: after all, no Soviet officer had seen him before, even in photographs.

‘Exactly at the time laid down, three or four armed men came into the room. These were Masud’s bodyguards. Immediately behind them appeared a young and not very tall man. He was dark-haired, dressed in traditional Afghan costume, and the expression on his face was of concentration and openness: quite unlike the picture painted by our propaganda.

‘After a second’s confusion we exchanged traditional greetings and general conversation in the best Afghan style for about half an hour. Then we were left in the room alone. Masud suggested we get down to business. We began by discussing the history of friendly and traditionally good neighbourly relations between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Masud said sadly, “What a great pity that your forces invaded Afghanistan. The leaders of both countries made the greatest possible mistake. You could call it a crime against the Afghan and Soviet peoples.” But as for the Kabul regime, he was and would remain their implacable opponent: once the Soviet forces had left, they would have no future.

‘When we made the points which had been laid down by our superiors, he was a bit surprised that there were no ultimatums, no demands for capitulation. Our central proposal was for a mutual ceasefire in Pandsher and common measures to enable the local population to lead a normal life. We debated for most of the day and the end result was a genuine ceasefire. The civilian population returned to the Pandsher, the situation on the road between Salang and Kabul became very much more quiet, and there was no major military operation in the Pandsher Valley until April 1984.

‘However, this did not suit the Kabul regime, which continually insisted that the Soviet military should take offensive action against Masud. For this reason the ceasefire was broken by us more than once. For example, during one of my subsequent meetings with Masud we heard the sound of helicopters approaching. I said to Masud that as there was a ceasefire we need not worry about the helicopters, but he said that we should go to the shelter just in case. We had barely done that when the helicopters struck the house and half of it was destroyed. Masud pointed to the ruins and said, “International assistance in action.”

‘The next day I was shown an Afghan government intelligence report which said that there had been a strike the previous day, at one o’clock in the afternoon, on a kishlak where Masud and a number of other rebel leaders had been meeting. All had been killed. Masud’s arms had been torn off and his skull split. I said that I had been drinking tea with Masud six hours after the alleged strike: so I must have been drinking with a corpse.’⁴⁷

The Soldiers Off Duty

Even on the larger posts the soldiers’ day was so filled with physical training, compulsory sports, weapons drill, guard duties, and domestic chores that many yearned to go out on operations to relieve the boredom. But some provision was made for them to relax. The bigger bases had, in addition to the ‘Lenin Room’, a library where the soldiers could borrow books and chat up the woman librarian. In the Voentorg military shop, the soldiers could use their exiguous pay to buy cigarettes, confectionery, and occasionally Japanese-made electronic gadgets. For Sergeant Fedorov the shop in the base of the 860th Independent Motor-rifle Regiment in Faisabad was a treasure house: ‘There were things in it that we could never have imagined in the Soviet Union… Eau-de-Cologne, lotion, and other products containing alcohol… were sold under strict control, because some people simply diluted them with water before they drank them; others were clever enough to distil them into proper drinks. Some goods, such as briefcases and sports clothes, were distributed by the political officers to the politically correct or to those who had distinguished themselves in battle. Electrical goods such as tape recorders were held back for the officers. The shortages, real or artificially created, simply led to corruption within the garrison. If you had cheques [military currency] you could get everything, even vodka and champagne.’⁴⁸

But the real treasures were to be found in the bazaars, which bulged with Japanese electronics, fashionable Western clothes, sneakers and jeans, cassette recordings of Western and even Soviet music banned back home. For the shopkeepers at least, the invasion was a business opportunity. For the soldiers, it was their first contact with a market economy, ‘a ticket to another life’.⁴⁹

The problem was that neither the soldiers nor the officers had the wherewithal to satisfy their desires. The officers were paid reasonably well by Soviet standards: a lieutenant would get a lump sum of 250 roubles on finishing his training; his pay thereafter would be 200 roubles a month. By way of comparison, at that time an engineer designing rocket-guidance systems got 250 roubles a month.⁵⁰ But conscripts did very much worse. Some of their salary was paid into Sberbank, the national savings back, which they could draw when they finished their service. They would get small lump-sum payments for injuries. But in the field sergeants only got