m I.e., after Zia displaced Bhutto.
n In June 1982, when this interview was given, the United States had not yet admitted that it was supporting the Mujahideen via Pakistan. Therefore this was interesting news to me at the time. Five years later, it seemed only vaguely sad and sordid, like the Panjsher “Uprising”—and sadder and more sordid still because I support overt and covert aid to the Mujahideen. How true, alas, that there are so many things that one cannot say directly!
o Or, as they must say in Afghanistan: “Parcham! Parcham! Parcham! Parcham!”
p I.e., the civil convulsions in Afghanistan just before the invasion.
11. A MATTER OF POLITICS: FRIENDLY ENEMIES (1982)
It is not important whether an Afghan is Shia or Sunni. We are all brothers … All those who lead the present resistance and fight against the Russians are patriotic and great personalities. Professor Rabbani is both Shia and Sunni. I am both Shia and Sunni. Everybody is both Shia and Sunni in Afghanistan, and the one who is not is not Muslim.
(Young Man: Is Gulbuddin your brother?)
Yes, of course he is my brother. He has very courageously fought against the Russian invaders. It is a matter of politics which causes disunity among the parties. There are Russian agents who make mischief and cause disagreement and difficulties among the leaders. They are all great men of their time.
Of course the Afghans were unified now. The Young Man knew they must be; he had read it in the papers over and over. They had even formed a common organization called Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahideen. — Well, no. Actually there were two rival organizations by this name, and they hated each other. But everyone told him that until recently there had been some trouble, but now the factions were as tight as the Three Musketeers. (In his notebook he wrote: “Need to know how often they kill each other before I know whether I can countenance supporting them.”)*
“So now the Mujahideen never fight each other?” the Young Man inquired.
“That is very much exaggerated, you see,” said the refugee camp administrator quickly. “That news item is very much exaggerated now. There might have been some very few cases, but not the thing it has become in Western media. It was individual enmity that developed. That was one case. Another case was the soldiers of the Karmal regime, you see. They wanted to surrender to one party of the Mujahideen. While they were on the way, Jamiat-i-Islami people caught them. And they were going to shoot them. And the other party, Hezb-i-Islami, told them that you shouldn’t. And a fight developed … There was a fight, a long, long time ago. But now it has finished.”
“So everyone is unified now?”
The administrator nodded. They were drinking lessee in a guest tent, and the administrator finished his cup and held it up until an old man gave him more.
“Everyone is united and quite satisfied,” he said. “And if somebody body wants to surrender, he surrenders to the whole organization, you see.”
The General took the Young Man to see Professor Majrooh. Everyone meant well in this interview: the General in bringing them together, the Young Man in wishing to determine whether U.S. covert aid was effective and sufficient (imagine the laughable scene! imagine this Young Man who was about as well suited to deal with spy matters as a grasshopper!), Majrooh in aiming to help his fellow Afghans; but because the Young Man’s role was so confusingly pure, differences soon began to swarm like midges, and the usual ambiguity of these affairs dizzied the Young Man far more than the heat.
The Young Man considered that if he were going to send his nickels to a Mujahideen organization (the misunderstanding might be succinctly put by saying that Majrooh must have thought: If the boy has come all the way over here, then surely he must at least have dimes!), then he ought to make sure that said nickels went to the group that devoted the greatest proportion of its resources to killing Soviet soldiers inside as opposed to killing members of other factions in the Resistance.
And Professor Majrooh — who can blame him for responding as he did? In his mind, factionalism was unfortunate but it did not ethically prejudice the whole. And in this he was correct.
“I was a professor at Kabul University,” he said. “I was also Dean of the Faculty. I left Afghanistan at the beginning of the Soviet invasion, at the beginning of ’80, and came to help here, in my way, the war of liberation. And we are here; we have a small office. We receive information from inside and pass it on to the outside world.”
“And you are not aligned with any particular group?” asked the Young Man.
“No, we are not. The Afghan Information Office is independent and we try to be impartial, though of course we are on the side of the Resistance, but we try to have good relations with all the groups.”
“That must be very difficult,” said the Young Man politely, while on the sofa the General smiled wearily.
“A difficult task, of course,” said Majrooh brightly, “not to present the picture of one side or group, and to tell the situation as it really is: the serious burden of most refugees in Pakistan today, you know; and then we have the refugees who could not cross the border. These people must be helped. We must find a way — I don’t know how — to reach the people inside. The French are doing this, but their means are limited; the problem is too big for them.”
And he looked at the Young Man hopefully.
“How well would you say the officially recognized parties here in Pakistan represent the people in Afghanistan?”
“All are present on the fighting front inside,” said Professor Majrooh. “But they do not represent the whole. There are lots of population there who are just fighting for themselves — the Civil Defense system. Anyway, they are representing an important part of the fighting.”
“What percentage of the people in Afghanistan would you say are supporters of one or more of these officially recognized groups?”
“They make up fifty percent of the fighting forces.”
“What about the other fifty percent?”
“They have their own weapons which they captured from the Roos, and they have their own region, and they are not moving from there. And an important part inside is free; the Roos have only the big cities.”
“What would be the most practical means of distributing arms?” asked the Young Man. “If I were to give arms to Gulbuddin, say, he might use these arms to, oh, for instance, kidnap someone from the National Islamic Front.”
Professor Majrooh laughed politely. (It was here, I would say, that a shadow began to creep over the interview.)
“So can we give them directly to the people who need them,” the Young Man persisted, “or is there some party which is relatively more appealing than the others?”