Seth Jones - In the Graveyard of Empires - America's War in Afghanistan

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. 27Cawthorne 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. 29Led 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. 32Indeed, 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 “Allah o Akbar. Mordabad Shuravi” (God is Great. Death to the Soviets). 33

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.” 34William 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 Pashtun, entered the College of Engineering at Kabul University but failed to complete his studies, instead spending the majority of his time on political activism and Islam. He became a disciple of Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and advocated a pure Islamic State. He was radicalized during his studies at the university, where, according to legend, his zealousness began to show its face: one story claims he sprayed acid on several female students for refusing to wear the veil. Others, however, have chalked up this story to black KGB propaganda. 36After a brief period of involvement with Afghan Communists, Hekmatyar became a disciple of Sayyid Qutb, the Islamic scholar and leading intellectual of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s who inspired Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden. 37Hekmatyar’s followers addressed him as “Engineer Hekmatyar,” even though he failed to complete his degree because he was imprisoned in 1972 for criticizing the monarchy.

In 1973, when Zahir Shah’s government was overthrown by Daoud Khan, Hekmatyar was freed from prison and took refuge in Pakistan’s border city of Peshawar with Rabbani, Qazi Muhammad Amin Waqad, and other budding jihadi leaders. 38During that period, he developed a close relationship with Pakistan. “We had good information that he was being directly funded by Pakistan,” acknowledged Graham Fuller, the CIA station chief. “This was critical because the Soviets had provided a range of assistance to individuals such as Daoud. Hekmatyar was Pakistan’s answer to Daoud.” 39

According to ISI agent Mohammad Yousaf, Hekmatyar’s organization was dependable and merciless: “One could rely on them blindly. By giving them the weapons you were sure that weapons will not be sold in Pakistan because he was strict to the extent of being ruthless…. Once you join his party it was difficult to leave.” 40From the 1980s to the early 1990s, Hezb-i-Islami received more funds than any other mujahideen faction from Pakistan intelligence. The power base of Hezb-i-Islami did not extend much beyond the network of the Islamists, but its approach to politics was that of a true political party.