When Rabbani took over, pandemonium ensued. Disputes erupted over the division of government posts, and fighting flared. Pashtun leaders resented the handover of power to other ethnic groups, especially Tajiks and Uzbeks.12 The United Nations tried—and eventually failed—to broker a political settlement.13 Afghan commanders controlled fiefdoms, and each was supported by a neighboring country, such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and India.
Rabbani’s presidency symbolized northern control of the capital, since he was a Tajik. And it prompted Hekmatyar, a Ghilzai Pashtun, to unleash vicious bombardments on Kabul from the south. According to one of his commanders, “We know that non-military people will be killed today; if they are good Muslims, God will reward them as martyred and send them to heaven…. if they are bad Muslims, God is punishing them at the hands of his true believers.”14 Human Rights Watch reported that Hekmatyar’s bombardment “killed at least 2,000, most of them civilians.” Hundreds of thousands fled the city and remained in makeshift camps along roads leading to Pakistan. 15 Street battles broke out in Kabul between the forces of Hekmatyar, who had Pakistani backing, and those allied with Ahmed Shah Massoud. But Hekmatyar was ultimately too weak to seize and hold Kabul. In 1995, the State Department issued an important cable on the deteriorating security situation, “Discussing Afghan Policy with the Pakistanis.” The document explained, “The past year has seen several dramatic reversals of fortune for the armed factions in Afghanistan as well as concurrent changes or hardening of the Afghan policies of Russia, India and, not least, Pakistan.” The effect of this meddling was to lessen the prospects for success of the United Nations mediation process, increase the likelihood of internecine fighting, and continue the agony of the Afghan people.16
Interference from Neighbors
There were clear battle lines among neighboring countries. Iran, India, and Russia supported the Rabbani government and northern commanders such as Massoud. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia supported Pashtun opposition groups such as Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami. Iran, which regarded Pashtun commanders as Sunni fundamentalist and anti-Iranian, favored the northern commanders and the Rabbani government.17 A State Department cable found that “the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in February 1989 and fall of the communist regime in Kabul in April 1992, set the stage for a more or less open competition for influence in Afghanistan between Pakistan and Iran.”18
Other U.S. government reports explicitly described Iranian funding for northern groups such as Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Jamiat-e-Islami. One said, “Jamiat was receiving large amounts of cash and military supplies, mostly from Iranian government sources. The funds and supplies reportedly come from Iran to points in Tajikistan (Kulyab Airbase, for example), where they are picked up by Jamiat helicopters and ferried to the Panjshir Valley and other points.”19 The report revealed that officials from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), as well as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), were stationed with Massoud in the Panjshir Valley, where they helped unload and distribute the supplies.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, fourteen of the fifteen Soviet republics had become independent states. The newly formed Russian Federation provided what little assistance it could to Rabbani and Massoud.20 U.S. intelligence thought Russia was concerned about the “spillover of Islamic militancy into Central Asia.”21 Consequently, Russia backed northern commanders in an effort to protect its southern flank. Following conversations with Russian government officials, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel reported that while Moscow was publicly committed to the UN mediation process, it was more interested in keeping Rabbani in power. “From Washington’s perspective,” the 1995 cable said, “Moscow appears more committed to keeping Rabbani in Kabul and, necessarily, less committed to a UN brokered transfer of power.”22
Indian support for Rabbani and Massoud was primarily motivated by a desire for balance against Pakistan. The 1995 cable was blunt: as “has been the case since Indian independence, New Delhi’s primary foreign policy objective in Afghanistan is to counter Pakistan.” U.S. intelligence understood that India’s assistance to northern commanders would likely trigger an increase in Pakistani aid to the rival Pashtun groups.23
In the face of such entrenched resistance, Pakistan adopted an increasingly anti-Rabbani, anti-Indian, anti-Russian, and anti-Iranian stance. Even during the Clinton years, the United States understood that the Pakistan government “ha[d] contacts with all the major opponents of Rabbani and Massood and has encouraged cooperation among them.”24 The main Pakistani message, it concluded, was to unite opposition against the Kabul regime. Another State Department memo characterized the Pakistan government as “following a ‘Rabbani must go at any price’ policy.” A major motivation, it continued, was “Pakistan’s fear of an emerging “Tehran-Moscow-New Delhi axis’ supporting Kabul.”25 In his 1991 RAND paper, Zalmay Khalilzad had interviewed senior Pakistan officials, including Lieutenant General (retired) Shamsur Rehman Kallue, head of the ISI, and General Assad Durrani, head of Army Intelligence. They told him that the ISI continued to subcontract directly with key commanders, such as Hekmatyar, “for specific military operations, allowing Pakistan to increase its direct control over military operations…. This control remained within ISI.”26
Saudi Arabia also provided assistance to the Pashtun groups. “The Saudis supported the Sunnis against the Shia,” recalled Robert Oakley, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. “They continued to push the Wahhabi version of Islam into Afghanistan and Pakistan, and built madrassas [religious schools] and mosques in places like Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and North West Frontier Province. As Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of Saudi intelligence, used to tell me, ‘We are simply doing Allah’s work.’” 27
Waning U.S. Interest
The official U.S. position was to back UN mediation efforts, but the Clinton administration had generally lost interest in Afghanistan. The Cold War had ended, and U.S. officials saw little geostrategic value in Afghanistan; it had become a backwater of U.S. foreign policy. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin had agreed to end arms shipments to the Afghan government and rebel groups by January 1, 1992, and the CIA’s legal authority to conduct covert action in Afghanistan had effectively been terminated.
Some U.S. policymakers, such as Peter Tomsen, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, frantically tried to keep U.S. assistance alive. In a classified cable, he wrote that “U.S. perseverance in maintaining our already established position in Afghanistan—at little cost—could significantly contribute to the favorable moderate outcome, which would: sideline the extremists, maintain a friendship with a strategically located friendly country, help us accomplish our other objectives in Afghanistan and the broader Central Asian region.” And he prophetically warned: “We are in danger of throwing away the assets we have built up in Afghanistan over the last 10 years, at great expense.”28 But Tomsen’s effort failed. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which had been officially closed since January 1989, would not be reopened until December 2001.
The U.S. interest in neighboring Pakistan also waned with the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet Union. To make matters worse, growing Pakistani efforts to build a nuclear weapon—a process monitored by the CIA—triggered an American law known as the Pressler Amendment. Named after Larry Pressler, a deft Republican senator from South Dakota, it banned the sale or transfer of military equipment and technology to Pakistan unless the U.S. president could annually certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device. In October 1990, President George H. W. Bush was unable to issue this certification. As Robert Oakley recalled, “I had the unfortunate pleasure of handing President Bush’s letter to the Pakistanis.” The result, Oakley believed, was devastating: “The Pakistan military accused us of betraying them and leaving them defenseless against the Indians. And we lost any possibility of working with Pakistan in Afghanistan, even if we wanted to.”29 The United States declined to be a major player in the region.