At the end of 1983 we were operating two camps in Pakistan, each with a capacity of 200 trainees. By mid-1984 we were putting over 1000 a month through the system, and by 1987 we had seven camps operating simultaneously—four near Peshawar and three around Quetta. This crash programme necessitated more staff and more money, both of which General Akhtar quickly provided, so the resultant statistics were startling. In 1984 20,000 Mujahideen benefited from our efforts, with 17,700 completing courses in 1985 and 19,400 in 1986. It is no exaggeration to say that by the time I left ISI in late 1987 at least 80,000 Mujahideen had received training in Pakistan over a four-year period, and many thousands more had done so in Afghanistan. I salute my staff; they have never been called upon to work so hard before or since.
Setting up a training camp was never a simple matter of our commandeering an Army camp or using the military’s firing ranges. Like all our activities, complete secrecy was the name of the game. Nobody outside the Afghan Bureau was to know what we were doing. The public, the politicians, enemy agents, the Pakistan Army and Soviet spy satellites had to be kept in complete ignorance of the whereabouts of each camp. This necessitated our finding our own sites well away from prying eyes. It was easier said than done.
The camps had to be within a night’s drive from Peshawar or Quetta as all trainees were brought by truck during darkness so they would have no inkling of their location. They had to be administratively convenient and self-sufficient with water. We could not locate them near any Army base or exercise area, nor could we use places to which the public had easy access. Wherever they were sited they had to be concealed from the ground and the air. The latter caused the most difficulty, which we overcame by camouflage and strict track discipline. By this I mean we only used existing roads or paths to, from, or around the camp. Nothing shows up so clearly on an aerial photograph as fresh tracks.
Probably our greatest problem was in finding suitable sites at which we could fire all our weapons. It was not just small arms. We had to fire extensively, on a day-to-day basis, mortars, machine guns, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft guns and SAMs. To anybody within earshot it would sound like a major battle being fought every day, and often at night, with rockets and tracer rounds arching across the sky.
Theoretically we were bound by peacetime safety regulations, but if we had followed them, 90 per cent of our live firing would have been forbidden. We fired and prayed that nobody would find out and that there would be no accident. Allah and General Akhtar were kind, as we got away with it but only just. Once, when General Akhtar was with us watching the firing of Blowpipe and SA-7 SAMs against illumination mortar bombs floating down on their parachutes, I had to order cease fire when some PAF planes roared overhead. General Akhtar demanded to know why the Air Force was overflying the area. Had they not been warned? He was most upset when I explained the situation, and only with reluctance did he allow the shooting to continue. Within a few minutes more aircraft flew over and we had to abandon the firing. It took a long time to convince General Akhtar that we had no other option. Amazingly we never did have an accident.
We did, however, frequently have to move the camp because we thought its location had been compromised. If civilians wandered into the area we invented some story about an Army exercise with soldiers dressed as Mujahideen. We were gone by the next morning. These hasty moves were most disruptive and we had to have an alternative location already earmarked. Fortunately, the physical effort of dismantling tents was not great, so we could vacate a site quickly.
Another precaution we took was that, until late 1985, none of our training camps had any means of communicating with us. The use of a telephone was obviously totally insecure, and I was fearful of Soviet radio interception being able to pick up transmissions and pinpoint the sites. By the end of that year I had obtained secure radio sets from the CIA so they were installed at the camps. The story of these radios makes for an interesting slight digression.
One of the most vexing aspects of controlling guerrilla forces was the impossibility of communicating, quickly and securely, with scattered Commanders. I knew full well from the use we made of radio interception that insecure communications were worse than none at all. Messages by runner were inordinately slow, but normally they would eventually arrive, uncompromised.
I held many discussions with the CIA experts on this problem before we finally settled for two types of set. The long-range one was known as a ‘burst communication’ set with a range of over 1000 kilometres; the short-range one was called a ‘frequency hopper’ having a range of 30-50 kilometres. The technology of the burst sets was impressive. A message of 1000 words would take a few seconds to transmit, making it virtually impossible to decode. Operationally my intention was to locate the burst sets at Parwan (Hekmatyar), Paghman (Sayaf), Mazar-i-Sharif (Rabbani) and Kandahar (Khalis), with about ten frequency hoppers issued to the main Commanders of each Party. This would enable us to get in touch with all groups within 30-50 kilometres of the long-range sets. Other frequency hoppers would be positioned at the training camps. The Leaders agreed, so I pressed ahead. By the time the sets arrived they had changed their minds. Now they refused to pass any messages through another Party. They could not be moved. This forced me to revise the system to an entirely Party one, which was operationally most unsatisfactory.
We initiated long, 20-week radio courses for Party operators part of which included English language instruction. Late in 1985 the first batch went into the field in groups of four, with their sets. Regrettably, the only burst set that functioned was Hekmatyar’s, in Parwan Province. For almost three years this radio remained in daily contact with us. Not so the others, who were out of touch for weeks, even months, at a time. There was nothing wrong with the sets, the fault lay with the operators and their Commanders.
There was just no control or discipline. Both operators on duty would absent themselves at the same time, or were too idle to maintain schedules. As we required these men to stay inside Afghanistan for up to a year at a stretch, with the set opened up daily on a pre-arranged schedule, which we knew would be unpopular, we paid each operator 1500 rupees monthly as an inducement. It was futile; only Hakmatyar’s Commanders kept communications open. Once again a strongly fundamentalist Party had proved more efficient, so as more sets arrived it got priority, much to the annoyance of the CIA.
It would seem that we were successful in concealing the camps as we never experienced any security incident. Although the Soviet Ambassador to Pakistan went so far as to announce the supposed locations, he was not within 100 kilometres of any of them. They became part of the diplomatic game of denouncements and denials that went on for years, as the Soviets kept accusing Pakistan of supporting the Jehad and our government kept refuting it.
Each camp had a staff of 2-3 officers, 6-8 JCOs and 10-12 NCOs, assisted by about ten soldiers for administrative and guard duties. In most cases the medium of instruction was Pushtun, with a few instructors learning Dari (Persian). The problem of language was accentuated when we had Uzbeks who could not speak either. In this case our trainer taught in Pushtun, which was translated into Dari, and then another Uzbek put it into his own language. Cumbersome, but it seemed to work.
As the months passed our programme expanded to cater for a wide variety of both weapon training and tactical subjects. We set up a two-week heavy weapons course for anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, and 82mm mortars; there was a mine-laying and lifting course; demolition courses to cover the destruction of bridges, electricity pylons, gas or oil pipelines, and road cratering; urban warfare, which was designed to teach sabotage techniques for use in Kabul or other cities; long communication courses; instructors’ courses for Mujahideen and junior leaders courses. Most of these were held at the outdoor, tented camps. When we received the Blowpipes from Britain, and later the Stingers from the US, we opened up indoor facilities, which included simulators, at my headquarters at Ojhri camp. General Akhtar was initially adamant that no visitors should be allowed to any camp; however, the clamour from the CIA and the US was so persistent that eventually he conceded that CIA officials could be admitted. This concession was never given to Chinese or Saudi visitors, nor to US congressmen. The solitary exception was Senator Humphrey who was able to visit the Stinger school in 1987.