The Main Enemy by Milton Bearden (epub e reader txt) 📕

the matter was that by 1987, the CIA and the FBI were no longer expending much energy trying to explain why they had lost so many agents. Operations were up and running again in Moscow, and the atmosphere of suspicion that had descended over SE Division was starting to lift.

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Islamabad, February 2, 1988

Arnie Raphel and I were sitting on my verandah in sweaters, enjoying the bracing coolness of the Islamabad evening. Over the last few months, it had become virtually certain that Gorbachev was ready to quit Afghanistan, his preconditions for a friendly and neutral Afghanistan no longer blocking the negotiations. Discussions in Geneva between the U.S. negotiator, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Mike Armacost, and his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Vorontsov, had reached a critical stage. We expected the final breakthrough at any moment, and Raphel and I were discussing prospects for an interim government in Afghanistan when my steward interrupted our conversation. It was a call for the ambassador, he reported solemnly. Arnie disappeared for five minutes, then returned, tilted his glass to mine, and said, “It was Armacost. It’s over. They’re going to sign in Geneva. Gorbachev will announce it in a week.”

“That’s it?” I said, still letting the news sink in. “Now what?”

“The ‘now what’ part might even be the hard part,” Raphel said.

And he was right. The road to a settlement had been full of detours ever since Gorbachev took his first tentative steps just over two years earlier, and Washington was split down the middle on the issue of whether the Soviets would ever really leave. Mike Armacost had declared flatly in mid-1987 that the Soviets would withdraw. Eduard Shevardnadze told George Shultz in September 1987 that they would be out of Afghanistan by 1988, but Shultz held the substance of his conversation with the Soviet Foreign Minister tightly until November of 1987, when he finally shared it with the DCI, Bill Webster.

But the CIA was still doubtful about how Gorbachev would manage the withdrawal politically, pulling it off without looking like the United States at the end of its Vietnam experience. Bob Gates bet Armacost $25 that the Soviets wouldn’t be out of Afghanistan by the end of the Reagan administration, though he acknowledged that the decision to get out had been made.

Precisely one week later, Mikhail Gorbachev addressed the Soviet people and declared that Soviet troops would commence their withdrawal from Afghanistan on May 15 and would complete it by March 15 the following year.

Chiang Mai, Thailand, April 10, 1988

As soon as it appeared certain that the Geneva Accords would be signed, I took off for a short break in Thailand with Marie-Catherine. The fight over the agreement had been long, but the Soviets, against most predictions, had finally bitten the bullet. The formal agreement would be signed in Geneva on April 14 and would go into effect on May 15. The Soviets would thus begin their withdrawal on May 15 and complete it within nine months, by February 15, 1989, almost ten disastrous years after they had invaded Afghanistan.

We arrived in Chiang Mai two days ahead of the Thai New Year and had planned on doing little or nothing for a few days while the lively up-country Thais swept their ancestral graves, cleaned up their houses, and happily doused anyone in town with cleansing water. I checked in with our people in Thailand as a courtesy and to let them know how and where to reach me if someone came looking. When a colleague called the next day and suggested that I come back to the office to read an immediate precedence cable, I tried to double-talk the subject out of him.

“Where’s it from?” I asked.

“From the place you work now,” came the reluctant, spooky answer.

“What can you tell me about it?” I probed.

“Wait a minute.” There was a pause as he scanned the cable again. “It looks like an ammo dump has blown up.”

I was relieved that the cable had turned out to be a routine report of another mujahideen success just before the Geneva Accords went into effect. It might reinforce the wisdom of the Soviet decision to throw in the towel. I guessed that Islamabad was probably sending it along as an info copy to me to give me some more good news while I was on break. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks. That’s great. I’ll get all the details when I get back. If you would, just do me a favor and send a short cable back to my people with one word: ‘Bravo.’ Sign my name to it. Okay?”

“Wait a minute. Your guys are saying that the dump that blew is your dump, the one not far from where you live! There’s a firestorm at your place.”

“Oh, shit. Tell them I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

By the time Marie-Catherine and I got back to Islamabad, the most dangerous explosions had subsided. But ammunition was still cooking off at Ojhri camp, where thousands of deadly, unstable rounds were strewn about, ready to blow at the slightest jolt. When Ojhri blew, there were close to ten thousand tons of rockets, mortars, small-arms ammunition, plastic explosives, and Stingers in storage. Many of the 107 mm rockets had launched, some causing casualties throughout Rawalpindi and in nearby Islamabad; but since they were not fused, the rockets had not exploded on impact and there had been far less damage and loss of life. A couple of 107 mm rockets hit the American International School in Islamabad, causing an understandable panic among the parents and students but no injuries.

The people of Rawalpindi were less fortunate. The first major explosion flattened a shanty town that had built up outside the walls of Ojhri camp, killing dozens. As the explosions continued through the morning, with black clouds rising above Ojhri and drifting over Rawalpindi, many others were killed by falling ordnance and debris. At day’s end, casualties were up to one hundred killed and one thousand injured.

First Chief