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

A couple of times, Gromov’s troops had taken what I thought were dangerous routes of exit, and they ran into trouble passing through some valleys in the center and north of the country. On those occasions where the Soviets took casualties, they would protest. One time after the retreating units came under heavy assault for taking what anyone who knew the mujahideen might have told them was the wrong fork in the road, I was given a gentle warning. I was at the large October 1 Chinese National Day celebration when I was approached by one of the old-style heavies of the Soviet embassy in Islamabad, a minister-counselor named Botshan-Kharchenko.

“Mr. Buuurdon.” He made his usual mess of my name. “Perhaps we should speak.”

“Why not?” I said, stepping away from what was easily the finest buffet spread in Islamabad’s diplomatic community.

“You must understand, Mr. Buuurdon, that these attacks against our troops as they withdraw must stop.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then perhaps we will halt our withdrawal. Then what will you do?”

“It is not what I will do, Counselor, it is what the Afghans will do. And I think they will simply keep on fighting and killing your soldiers until you finally just go home.”

“But you have some control over such matters. . . .”

“No one has control over such matters, Counselor, except the Soviet Union.”

“Mr. Buuurdon, you must still understand that there will be consequences if these attacks continue.”

“I am sure there will be, Counselor.”

There would be more such conversations between me and the Soviets, and though the attacks continued sporadically, withdrawal stayed on schedule. But on the whole, the Soviets managed to find their way out of Afghanistan without major disasters slowing them down. By the time Christmas 1988 rolled around, marking with it the ninth anniversary of the Soviet invasion, even the revenge-driven mujahideen commanders were convinced that the Soviet phase of their struggle was all but over. They began moving their forces into position for the next stage of the conflict, the struggle against the Soviet puppet regime of Najibullah in Kabul. And beyond that, the disparate forces that made up the Afghan resistance began jockeying for advantage in the phase that was to come after Najibullah had finally fallen, the fight to see who among the major players would emerge on top of the rubble heap that Afghanistan had become.

Ahmad Shah Massoud had been the first of the major leaders in Afghanistan to see the handwriting on the wall. He became convinced that the Soviets were actually going to honor the commitment signed in Geneva in April 1988, and even before the ink was dry on the accords, Massoud had redirected his energies to forging an alliance for the future struggle against the Pashtun majority. In particular, he was gearing up for his showdown with his nemesis, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Across the northern tier of Afghanistan, Massoud cut deal after deal with local commanders and forged what he at that time called the Supreme Council of the North, a non-Pashtun alliance of primarily Tajiks and Uzbeks, thereby positioning himself in the starting blocks for the race to Kabul once the puppet regime began to wobble.

Similarly, several of the Pashtun party leaders such as Gulbuddin and Sayyaf had been stockpiling ordnance for the post-Soviet phase of the fight. As a result, there were constant complaints from all of the party leaders that the United States had abandoned the mujahideen. The resistance leaders always referred to the Ojhri camp disaster as “proof” of U.S.-Soviet connivance, designed to leave the Pashtun parties without the means to carry the fight to Kabul. I had meetings with the Peshawar Seven during those last months of the war, and the theme was always the same: We’re out of supplies, and you have left us in the lurch. At one particularly heated session, I took a gamble. Sayyaf had made an eloquent speech complaining that his commanders inside Afghanistan had only captured weapons and ammunition at their disposal since we had cut them off. As his harangue ended, I took the floor, addressing the Peshawar Seven through Colonel Bacha, the interpreter.

“I have heard from all of you about the lack of ordnance. In particular, I have heard from Professor Sayyaf that his stores are empty. I can’t understand how that could be possible, when our satellites just yesterday photographed his supply bunkers in Ali Khel and Zhawar Kili, and our estimates are that he is very well supplied.”

Sayyaf, who almost always spoke through an interpreter, understood exactly what I had said and responded quickly in English. “I have less than nine hundred tons in Zhawar and about the same in Ali Khel,” he said defiantly. But the effect was the opposite of what he had intended.

Mojaddedi broke in. “That’s two thousand tons. Professor Sayyaf says he is out of ammunition and he has two thousand tons in Zhawar and Ali Khel alone!”

There was a hubbub among the other party leaders, and Sayyaf grew quiet. It was not the first or the last time that the impartial eye of the KH-11 satellite would intervene to break up a quarrel. It was irrelevant that there had been no overhead imagery of Sayyaf’s bunkers in Paktia province—the other six parties believed there had been.

The United States and the Soviet Union would continue to supply their respective clients as the Soviets stuck to their withdrawal schedule over the winter months and into early 1989. The CIA estimated that there was more than enough ordnance in-country to finish the job of dislodging the Najibullah regime and that there would be no shortfalls. Demands for more ordnance were understood as calls for supplies for the future, the post-DRA future, when the Afghans would begin the nasty business of seeing who would end up ruling the roost. And there was little American interest in becoming part of that fight.

As the new year rolled in, Kabul was surrounded by what the Pakistanis called a “ring of steel.” Each