I felt that we now had the basis of an overall strategy for the prosecution of the war. We had a political Seven-Party Alliance in place. I was working with a Military Committee. The quantity of supplies being handled by the pipeline was increasing, training was expanding rapidly, and we had achieved some noticeable successes in the field. I was sure that we had more than matched the increased aggressiveness of our enemies. It was not the fighting that worried me so much as the feuding. I had now grasped the extent of this seemingly intractable problem and resolved to devote my efforts towards curbing its destructive aspects. At its worst feuding was civil war between the Mujahideen. During the eleven years of the Jehad hundreds of Mujahideen have died at the hands of their comrades-in-arms in different Parties, or under rival Commanders. I believe that getting feuding under some sort of control, although we never came near to eradicating it, by 1986-87 was a major factor in the Mujahideen being on the brink of a military victory when the Soviets withdrew in 1988-89. Now, sadly, internal feuding seems once again to be taking precedence over fighting the enemy. A recent example of the extremes to which feuding can divide and destroy the Mujahideen as an effective force, which involved two subordinate Commanders from different fundamentalist Parties, will illustrate my point.

On a cold, grey morning, with a little mist concealing most of the nearby mountains, a crowd of around 1,000 people had gathered to watch an execution. It was 24 December, 1989; the place was a small park in the town of Taloqan, provincial capital of Takhar, in northern Afghanistan. Four men were about to be hanged. Each had been a Mujahid; each had been found guilty by an Islamic court of murdering fellow Mujahideen belonging to a different Party from their own; each had been specifically sentenced to be hung rather than shot, the usual sentence for a soldier. Their leader was Sayad Jamal, a senior Commander of Hekmatyar’s Party. With him walked his brother and two other prominent officers. They went to their deaths quietly. At the final moment they had nothing to say, although it was for them a particularly disgraceful way to die. The relatives of their victims had received special invitations to watch.

The executions were but another phase in a long-standing vendetta between rival Commanders. In mid-1989 Ahmad Shah Massoud, the so-called ‘Lion of Punjsher’, had been the victim of a bloody ambush by Jamal’s followers which had killed thirty-six of his men, including seven of his best leaders and friends. The previous year both groups had attacked and cleared Taloqan, but had then divided the town into opposing camps. By the middle of 1989 a truce had been arranged and sealed by the reading aloud to each other by the Commanders of passages from the Holy Koran. The truce was only temporary Whether or not Jamal was under direct orders from Hekmatyar to do what he did has never been established. Jamal led his men to Tangi Fakhar, where he positioned them at a gorge through which he knew many of Massoud’s men would shortly travel. The ambush was highly successful. Thirty-six men died in a storm of automatic fire. They were the lucky ones. The others, who were captured, were gruesomely tortured before being killed.

Massoud spared no effort in seeking revenge. This was badal on a grand scale. Thousands of his Mujahideen combed the countryside rounding up suspects, but it took the offer of a reward of one million afghanis to produce Jamal and his brother. A tip-off led to a trap door in the floor of a house in Taloqan. In the basement below were the two ringleaders.

One of my first serious experiences of feuding and double-dealing came in early 1984, from a Commander operating in the area between Chaman and Kandahar, through which the main route from Quetta passed. The Commander concerned was a former captain in the Afghan Army called Asmat who had defected with his unit in 1981. He came from the Achakazai tribe located on either side of the Pakistan border, so enjoyed considerable popular support from that area. He had fought hard against the Soviets for a year or so, but then resorted to selling weapons, extortion and robbery to enrich himself. By the time I arrived at ISI we had ceased to supply him, although he still controlled a large force. In 1984 he started to interfere with the passage of Mujahideen supply caravans moving through his domain. His men would ambush small convoys and snatch their weapons, or demand arms in return for a safe passage. Other Mujahideen combined against him and serious fighting broke out as they sought to attack his base. Asmat fought well, casualties mounted on both sides, and it was some time before a ceasefire could be arranged. Asmat then turned his attention to our Pakistani government or embassy vehicles travelling on the Quetta to Kandahar road, demanding that arms supplies to him be resumed, or his men would kidnap embassy staff. This created panic in our Foreign Office and they turned to ISI for assurances of protection. General Akhtar summoned Asmat to Islamabad, where he apologized, professed ignorance of what his men were up to and promised such things would not recur. He was a cunning character, as he extracted a promise of arms supply provided he joined a Party. Gailani accepted him, which was unfortunate as I was at least obliged to give him small arms.

He came to me with a scheme to attack Kandahar airfield if only he could have heavy weapons. I responded that he could have them if his operation succeeded. It never happened. About then we started getting reports, and intercepting radio messages, that indicated Asmat was a KGB/KHAD agent. After long discussions as to what to do, General Akhtar agreed he should be arrested. Warrants were prepared when suddenly the Pakistan Army intelligence unit in the area got wind of what was to happen, and claimed Asmat was their man, playing a double role on their instructions. It must have shaken him because within a few days he disappeared—to Kabul.

This was in 1985. Some time later he reappeared in Kandahar as a brigadier tasked with securing the city from the Mujahideen. He bore a charmed life as none of the attempts by the Mujahideen to kill him succeeded. They tried blowing him up in his vehicle with a remote-control-detonated mine, and they tried mining the landing pad where his helicopter was due to touch down. Four or five plans failed. Even the Soviets soon found him more trouble than he was worth. He was a heavy drinker, which once led to his assaulting a senior Soviet officer in Kandahar. As time went on his men established a covert ‘live and let live’ understanding with the Mujahideen. Eventually he was recalled to Kabul and stripped of his importance. Never being a man to give up easily, Asmat started sending us messages that if he was pardoned he would return to Pakistan after causing substantial damage of the Soviets. I had absolutely no faith in Asmat’s promises, although I had a sneaking regard for the man’s gall and could not deny his physical courage.

A year later it was again the Kandahar sector that produced further serious feuding. At this time Hekmatyar’s Party predominated in the Provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Helmand and Farah, but unfortunately major differences arose between some Commanders and their Party representative at Quetta over arms allocations. In their pique, several joined other Parties, which in turn infuriated Hekmatyar who demanded they return all the weapons that he had issued to them. This led to the Commanders concerned, under Mohammed Khan, establishing their own independent base on the border, partly in Pakistan, and waylaying Hekmatyar’s supply columns. To counter these activities Hekmatyar set up a strong base inside Afghanistan under Commander Janbaz, and a series of armed skirmishes took place between the two. Some of the fighting occurred in Pakistan which caused us acute embarrassment.