Mohammad Yousaf - The Bear Trap (Afghanistan’s Untold Story)

The US now had the same goal as the Soviets. They set about achieving it by both military and political means.

First the military. Although there was no agreement with the Soviets in the Accord that the superpowers were to cut back on arms supplies to their respective allies, this is precisely what the US did. In order to hinder the Mujahideen, who were determined to harass the withdrawal, there was a substantial cut in arms shipments. I was told that this was to ensure the Soviets had no excuse for delaying their departure, but I believe this was a cover for a real change in their policy, as the cutbacks continued after the Soviets had gone.

Mujahideen supporters in Congress voiced their concerns. Two US senators requested a congressional inquiry into why arms shipments had been curtailed. As the Washington Times reported in early April, 1989, Senator Orrin Hatch, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote to the chairman requesting an inquiry as to what the CIA was up to in Afghanistan. Mr Hatch was worried by the rate of the Soviet arms build-up, whereas, by contrast, US weapons shipments ‘have slowed down to nothing’. Four months later the Times of London reported the chairman of the Intelligence Committee as confirming and supporting the cutback. Mr Anthony Beilenson stated, “Supplying military aid to the Afghan rebels is no longer in our interest now that the Soviets have withdrawn”. There can surely be no clearer statement of the new American policy.

Even my friend Charles Wilson has, I understand, lost his former enthusiasm for a military victory. As I know from experience, most American officials were always resentful of the ISI, and how my bureau would brook no interference with arms allocations or operations. The Americans always wanted to control the war. With General Akhtar gone, and myself retired, the Americans were able to concentrate their efforts on the less experienced newcomers to ISI. House of Representatives member Bill McCollum from Florida put it neatly when he was reported by Insight magazine in April, 1990, as saying that all US military assistance to Pakistan, the third largest recipient of US foreign aid, should be re-evaluated, if not cut off, if ISI was not brought under control.

Next, the Americans’ political tactics to secure a stalemate. In this they played on the well-known tendency of all Afghans for political infighting and the rivalries between Parties. With the Soviets out of Afghanistan the Mujahideen had achieved a notable victory, the Jehad had succeeded, the infidel had been driven from their homeland. This common enemy, this common mission, had gone a long way towards uniting normally irreconcilable and fractious Mujahideen groupings. Without the Soviets there was bound to be a tendency for Parties and Commanders to think more in terms of their future political positions and authority. Old jealousies and ambitions that had temporarily submerged in the anti-Soviet crusade would rise to the surface again. The US deliberately set out to encourage these dissensions. They now wanted to direct the attention of the Mujahideen from military to political matters. The more the Mujahideen squabbled, the more their Leaders and Commanders concerned themselves with what was happening in Peshawar rather than in Afghanistan, the less likely they were to win on the battlefield. The US promoted the idea of bringing back Zahir Shah, supported the calling of a Shoora with equal numbers of representatives from each Party, irrespective of its size, and encouraged the setting-up of an interim government of Afghanistan in Pakistan, knowing it would be recognized by nobody, including themselves. I have no doubt all these things were designed to foster the break-up of Mujahideen unity in prosecuting the war.

In this endeavour they were assisted, unknowingly, by the actions of General Gull It was to be expected of him that he would wish to make his mark professionally, that he would institute changes to the existing system in order to prosecute the war more effectively. He seemed to want to give the Mujahideen forces a more conventional flavour and he obviously wanted to deal more directly with the military leadership of the Jehad, rather than through its political Leaders. It was in furtherance of this that he took over the chairmanship of the Military Committee. Gul felt, and in this he had the support of the President, that some Leaders were getting too powerful. To reduce their authority and, at the same time, he hoped improve the combat effectiveness of the Mujahideen, General Gul re-started the system of allocating weapons direct to Commanders. This delighted the US and CIA who had advocated this method from the start.

During my time at ISI the Americans genuinely believed that giving arms direct to the people they wanted to use them would lead to a better battlefield performance by Commanders. While this might have been true in the short term, or for a special operation, we knew from past experience that in the end this method led to corruption and chaos. Certainly it cut out the Party Leaders from the supply system, and thus antagonized them, but it also promoted infighting between Commanders, as those who could not get the weapons they considered their entitlement from ISI resorted to looting from fellow Commanders. How could ISI deal directly with hundreds of Commanders? This was the system that had led to the ‘Quetta incident’ in 1983, which had been instrumental in my appointment to ISI.

Another facet of this new arms distribution system, and one which was to have a catastrophic effect on supplying the Mujahideen during the actual withdrawal, was that it necessitated the build-up of stocks at Ojhri Camp. This ISI arms and ammunition depot had to hold the bulk of the weapons destined for the Commanders. The individual ‘packages’ had to be sorted out at Ojhri, as it was no longer policy to keep stocks moving quickly to the Party warehouses. In early April, 1988, a few days prior to the Soviets signing the Accord, we lost the entire stock of arms and ammunition at Ojhri in a devastating explosion. Add to this the US cutback on supplies and the disastrous strategic error of the attack on Jalalabad a few weeks after the Soviets had left Afghanistan, and the real reasons why the Mujahideen snatched defeat from the jaws of victory become clearer.

AT about 10.30 am on a bright, sunny morning in early April, 1988, the city of Rawalpindi was rocked by a colossal explosion. Many people thought that India had attacked Pakistan or that our nuclear plant or bomb had been detonated. A massive, mushroom cloud of black smoke soared thousands of feet into the air. It heralded the start of a rain of rockets and missiles that continued throughout that day. The crash and crump of secondary blasts could be heard for the next two days. People 12 kilometres away were hit by falling rockets, although fortunately they were not fused, so were not exploding on impact. The entire arms and ammunition stock held by ISI at the Ojhri Camp for the Afghan war had gone up—all 10,000 tons of it. Some 30,000 rockets, thousands of mortar bombs, millions of rounds of small-arms ammunition, countless anti-tank mines, recoilless rifle ammunition and Stinger missiles were sucked into the most devastating and spectacular firework display that Pakistan is ever likely to see.

There was absolute chaos. One moment the roads around the camp were thronged with people, bicycles, carts and cars, the next the ground was littered with dead and dying. Almost 100 people died, and over 1000 were injured. These included five ISI staff killed and 20-30 wounded.