Somehow, even though the will to live had gone, even though it was several weeks before he could be brought on horseback to Pakistan for proper attention, Wali survived. It was several weeks after I had left the Army that I heard the full story of his raid into the Soviet Union from Wali himself, as he sat learning to make carpets in a camp not far from Peshawar. Had he been a regular soldier Wali would have received a high decoration for his leadership that day. As it was, he was content to know that his attack had been too successful, too damaging and too daring.

By one of those strange twists of fate 25 April, 1987, the date that brought the Soviet Ambassador in Islamabad to our Foreign Minister’s office, was the same day that the Army Promotion Board declined to promote me to major-general.

Wali’s attack had caused considerable damage and inflicted a number of Soviet casualties, although I was never able to establish exactly how many. The smoke rockets had started a fire which had consumed several buildings, but it was the suddenness, the ferocity and the distance (about 20 kilometres) inside the Soviet Union that was so galling to the enemy. It was the third successful attack within three weeks, and the Soviet Ambassador had been instructed by Moscow to use whatever language necessary to get future attacks halted immediately.

Our Foreign Minister, Sahibzada Yaqoob, was left in no doubt that if any further operation was conducted in the Soviet Union the consequences for the security and integrity of Pakistan would be dire. It was a threat of outright attack by the Soviet military. That they used this threat was itself confirmation that our raids were hurting. They were concerned, not so much with the actual damage caused, but by the effect they were having on the local Muslim population. If the attacks were to continue unchecked it might not be long before they had a general uprising on their hands. There was panic in our Foreign Office. The Prime Minister was informed that Pakistan might be on the brink of war, so he at once ordered General Gul, who had recently replaced General Akhtar at ISI, to cease all such operations at once.

Gul contacted me late at night in Peshawar, where I had gone to plan some operations with the Military Committee, telling me to halt these incursions immediately. I responded that it was impossible. I was not in communication with all the Commanders involved, and to pass on this order would take time. This infuriated Gul, whose head would roll if the Prime Minister’s instructions were not obeyed, so he insisted that I confirm to him that these activities had been halted by the morning. I could only repeat that it was impossible, but I added that if any did take place no Commander or Party would claim the credit. I told him I would endeavour to pass the message by the quickest means. I myself felt that calling them all off indefinitely was too hasty, as we would lose the momentum. When I returned to Islamabad I tried to convince General Gul of the tremendous advantages of such operations. I did not want to abandon our contacts and stop everything, just when we were obviously hurting the Soviets. Of course, I spoke as a soldier, not a politician, and I knew there was no way the Pakistan Army could meet an all-out Soviet ground attack, but I believed they were bluffing.

Even the CIA was shaken. The local chief told me, “Please don’t start a third world war by conducting these operations inside Soviet territory”. There were no more. Looking back I believe I was right; the Soviets would never have launched an invasion of Pakistan. Within a few months they had agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan, so I do not see how Gorbachev would ever have escalated the conflict and brought the world to the brink of a world war. It was surely the last thing he wanted. I must acknowledge my limited wisdom in this matter, but I feel that had General Akhtar still been in the chair at ISI he would have allowed such operations to continue, but at a lower key.

Be that as it may, these attacks remain for me the high point of my career with ISI. My bureau was the only military headquarters in over 40 years to have planned and coordinated military operations inside the communist superpower. The great majority were successful; they wounded the bear and they proved the effectiveness of well-led guerrilla attacks to be out of all proportion to their size. That the small-scale raids by such Commanders as Wali Beg could influence the councils in the Kremlin was of itself a singular reward.

The Bear Backs Off

IN late March, 1987, General Akhtar was promoted to four-star rank. This meant he had to relinquish his post as Director-General of the ISI and take up duties as Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. His promotion was not welcomed by the Parties, the Mujahideen, myself, or indeed by the General. For eight years General Akhtar had been the architect of the strategy for the Jehad. Under his overall direction the war had been brought to the point where ultimate military victory for the Mujahideen was in sight. It had been his recommendations to the President at the outset that had put Pakistan behind the guerrilla campaign. He had battled successfully on the political front to keep some semblance of unity among the Party Leaders, but only as a prerequisite {or an outright military victory. He well understood the Afghan psyche and the imperative need to achieve military objectives before introducing the distractions of political wrangling. The Mujahideen Leaders and Commanders could only cope with one at a time. No one perceived better than he the debilitating effect of the premature debut of political power grabbing on the Jehad.

During 1986 he had seen the Soviet resolve beginning to crumble. That was the year when President Gorbachev told the 27th Communist Party Conference that “counter-revolution and imperialism have transformed Afghanistan into a bleeding wound”. In May of that year, at the UN-sponsored Geneva peace talks, the Soviets had offered a four-year withdrawal timetable. In July they actually withdrew a token force of 6,000 men, which, significantly, included two MRRs and a tank regiment, as well as three, obviously superfluous, anti-aircraft artillery regiments. 1986 was also the year of the Stinger.

General Akhtar was going to a job that carried little authority or influence. From the most powerful position within the military in Pakistan, from a job that for all those long years had involved the struggle with the Soviet superpower on the battlefield, he was being ‘kicked upstairs’ to a sinecure. For two weeks Akhtar did not hand over his Afghan responsibilities to his successor, Major-General Hamid Gull There was talk of his retaining these duties in his new position. This is what he hoped for, as, for personal and professional reasons, he very much wanted to see the Jehad through to final victory. But it was not to be. President Zia did not relent, so, reluctantly, he handed over to Gull It was the first of a series of major setbacks to the war that occurred both before and after the Soviets’ withdrawal, and would eventually lead to the Mujahideen snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. General Akhtar was, I believe, the victim of American pressure. It was pressure that had been evident for years, but in April it finally coincided with our President’s wishes. Although the US Ambassador protested to him that General Akhtar should retain his Afghan obligations, he did not speak with conviction. The Americans had never been happy with Akhtar as head of ISI.

For a number of years the US had made no headway with General Akhtar over a number of issues. At the start of the war the objective had seemed clear cut—to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan and make them pay for the US humiliation in Vietnam. It was primarily a military matter, involving massive support for a guerrilla campaign. But, as the tide of battle began to turn slowly in the favour of the Mujahideen, as the Soviets began to show they were less than totally dedicated to remaining in Afghanistan, that in fact a military pull-out was possible, so the Americans began to look at an Afghanistan without the Red Army. What they saw alarmed them. They did not believe the Afghan communist regime would survive a Soviet withdrawal any more than the South Vietnamese had survived the US retreat from Vietnam. They saw an Islamic fundamentalist government in Kabul. They saw leaders like Khalis, Sayaf, Rabbani and particularly Hekmatyar, establishing an Iranian type of religious dictatorship, which would probably make Kabul as anti-American as Tehran. For this reason the US sought, with increasing vigour, to break the hegemony of the Leaders. They wanted to exploit the differences between the Parties and their Commanders. General Akhtar understood their aims and methods and opposed their every move.