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

reputation for corruption and ineffectiveness on the battlefield. Mojaddedi himself hadn’t been inside Afghanistan in three years, perhaps longer, and his party’s only real strength was its gift for public relations. In that department it was near the top. The diminutive leader caught me studying him and flashed a faint smile, perhaps welcoming me to the fight. I held his gaze for just a second, knowing I was being scrutinized by the others, always on the lookout for signs of threatening alliances.

Next to Mojaddedi was Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, the lone Tajik among the “Peshawar Seven”—the other six were from the Pashtun majority that made up over 40 percent of the Afghan population. A former professor of Islamic law at Kabul University, Rabbani bore some resemblance to the diminutive Sufi sitting by his side on the couch. He had the same salt-and-pepper beard, the same gentle eyes, and the same impassive demeanor. But all similarity stopped there. Rabbani was a tough infighter who at forty-six had built a large and effective resistance party from his northern base in Badakhshan, in the process luring away large numbers of able commanders from other resistance parties. The most famous commander in Rabbani’s Jamiat Islami, which translates loosely as “Community of Islam,” was the fabled Ahmad Shah Massoud, whose stronghold was in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. Rabbani was a cipher. I could read nothing in his face as he stared at the floor. He didn’t scan the room and appeared to have no interest in making eye contact with me.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, on Mojaddedi’s other side, leaned forward slightly in his seat and took a long look at me. He was a commanding presence, and his movements drew the others involuntarily into following his gaze. Hekmatyar was 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. He was the single leader who stirred controversy in both Moscow and Washington, where his brand of paranoid fundamentalism was equally understood and feared. The KGB had a special disinformation team tasked with sowing discord among the Peshawar Seven, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as Pakistan’s favorite, was its central target. The line from Moscow blended known facts with classic KGB fantasy. There was the story of Gulbuddin the Kabul University radical throwing acid in the faces of young Afghan women who refused to wear the veil; the cool murderer, killing with his own hands fighters who violated his code of loyalty. And there was in furtive circulation a KGB-forged order from Gulbuddin to one of his lieutenants for the murder of one or more of the other Afghan leaders.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was forty, of medium height and build, with clear, olive skin and a coal black beard to match his black eyes. He wore a light gray wool shalwar kameez under an open black vest and a tightly wound black turban. A former classmate of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s, Gulbuddin was now the Panjshir commander’s mortal enemy. Colliding ambitions would have been enough to keep them at sword point, but their ethnic difference—Massoud was Tajik, Hekmatyar Pashtun—added tribal distrust as a multiplier of their hatred. Though convenient battlefield alliances had been forged from time to time, they had long since torpedoed any existing common ground. Their rivalry would become a preoccupation for the remainder of the war, setting the stage for more brutal competition in the years ahead.

I watched Gulbuddin as he fingered his agate prayer beads and waited for him to speak. But he said nothing, and the moment was again commandeered by General Akhtar, who had watched closely the silent interplay between us and now drew the attention of those in the room back to himself.

“To ensure that this new weapons program is an unqualified success, I will ask that each of you take personal responsibility for the monitoring and control of these new antiaircraft missiles. If any of these weapons fall into enemy hands, or if I hear of any of these missiles being sold to others, I will hold each of you personally responsible. Anything less than your complete commitment to these measures will be a serious betrayal of the jihad.” Akhtar’s admonition was stilted and overly officious, but he had laid out the new procedures neatly for my benefit. Invoking Islam and the sanctity of the jihad had been a flourish for his audience.

Gulbuddin was the first to pick up the signal from Akhtar that the discussion period had opened. Speaking in Pashto, in a controlled tone, he was a few seconds into his presentation when Akhtar cut him off.

“Engineer Gulbuddin, please speak English,” Akhtar said, barely concealing his irritation. “Your English is perfectly good.”

“Of course, General,” Gulbuddin replied, and he picked up where he had left off, this time in precise, uninflected English.

“I wish to take this opportunity to reiterate the gratitude of the people of Afghanistan to President Zia and to you, General Akhtar, for the steadfast support you and your countrymen have given to us in our time of need. I also thank our friend for the assistance his government has provided us through Pakistan in the past. That assistance has allowed us to stand up to the Russian invaders, and now to stop them—”

“Thank you, Engineer Gulbuddin,” said Akhtar, cutting him off again. “I think we can move on from here.”

Akhtar’s abrupt intervention came as a surprise, and not only to me. Even Rabbani lifted his eyes from the floor. Gulbuddin was the Pakistanis’ favorite—Zia and the powerful Islamic parties saw him as Pakistan’s “solution” in postwar Afghanistan—yet he was being put down here in front of me and the others. I decided later that Akhtar thought he might be building up to an attack on the United States and decided not to give him enough rope to hang himself on our first encounter.

Another voice broke in, bringing the tension down a notch. I glanced to my left and caught sight of