Much of the misery of life was caused by health hazards related to the water supply and pollution. The water ration of 6.5 gallons a day per person was seldom available as the tube wells were too few, while the water trucks were often broken down, and always late—unless you kept the driver happy. Diseases are endemic, as sanitation is frequently non-existent, with everybody using the surrounding fields as one vast communal latrine. Malaria, measles, tetanus, typhoid, diarrhoea and tuberculosis are but a few of the sicknesses that plague most camps.
It is the women who suffer the worst. Eighty per cent of the refugees in the camps at any one time are women and children. Many are widows. For the first time in their lives they must fend for themselves when they are suffering from shock, depression and grief. Into these hotbeds of suffering and squalor the Afghan secret police, KHAD, sends its female agents to intimidate and subvert. Farid’s wife had first-hand experience of their methods. At first she did not realize the young woman who befriended her was an agent, but slowly it dawned on her that the woman’s persistent railing and complaining about the Jehad was aimed at subverting her. Her ‘friend’ would continually protest at the suffering caused by the war, at the disgraceful conditions in the camps, emphasizing how the Mujahideen were dying while their political leaders lived a life of luxury around Peshawar, driving cars, spending money and seldom exposing themselves to danger. “We are not fighting a Jehad,” she would say, “we are fighting each other, Afghan against Afghan. This is not a Jehad, but a war between foreign superpowers. Our men die for America or the Soviet Union.”
Agents would also do their utmost to stir up Pakistanis against the refugees. It was not hard to create hostility, even hatred. They would make a sweeping gesture with their arms, saying, “Before the war this was your land; now all these foreigners camp on it. They take away your business, your grazing rights, they are the cause of rising inflation. They will soon outnumber you in your own province. It is these wretched refugees that cause the water shortages. Why does Pakistan spend so much to support them? They should return to Afghanistan.”
After a few weeks it became obvious to Farid’s wife that her companion was working for KHAD so she reported her to a camp official who in turn had her arrested by the police. The end of the problem? Not a bit of it, as within 24 hours she was back again. She had been well able to afford the 250 rupees which was the going rate for the police to forget the charges.
By the end of 1985, which had seen some of the fiercest fighting of the war, I remained confident that the Mujahideen were still holding their own. Except around Kabul, where the situation was worsening for reasons to be explained in chapter nine, the Mujahideen had not suffered any major setbacks. This was despite greatly increased pressure from the Soviets, and the improved performance of the Afghan Army.
The best-coordinated offensive, and most dangerous to ourselves, was the August/September Paktia operation. It involved an elaborate pincer movement, aimed at the Mujahideen bases just west of the Parrot’s Beak, by an armoured column from Kabul moving up the Logar Valley, and another advancing SW from Jalalabad. At the end of August the enemy force around Khost moved against our forward bases at Ali Khel and Zhawar, only a few kilometres from the Pakistan frontier. There was bitter fighting before these attacks petered out. Although this Paktia offensive cost us casualties, and the loss of several supply dumps, we did not suffer as severely as the Soviet propaganda and press would have had the world believe. As in 1984, foreign journalists proclaimed that the Mujahideen were on the run, that the Soviets were coming close to a military victory and that the Kabul regime was secure.
I did not share this view. 1985 had seen some spectacular Mujahideen successes. In June Massoud, in the Panjsher Valley, seized the heavily defended post at Peshghor which was held by a battalion of 500 men, supported by ten mortars, four 76mm guns, two T-55 tanks and five BTR-60 APCs, all protected by sandbagged bunkers, mines and barbed wire. The attackers breached the minefields during darkness, to storm the place at dawn under cover of rocket and heavy machine-gun fire. Resistance was quickly subdued and among the corpses was the Afghan Central Corps Chief of Staff, Brigadier Ahmaddodin. Over 450 prisoners were taken, including five visiting colonels from Kabul.
Also in June we had stepped up our efforts around Kandahar airfield. Rocket attacks on aircraft on the ground were so successful that the Soviets were forced to move the bulk of their planes to Lashkargah and Shindand bases. Lashkargah was developed into their alternative airfield for Kandahar. Our ambushes on the main road leading to Kandahar became so frequent and effective that a by-pass route had to be developed in order to get transport to the city.
In the northern provinces our attacks were gaining momentum, and barges were now being sunk on the Amu River. If our efforts at training, increasing the quality and quantity of supplies and persuading the Mujahideen Leaders and Commanders to spend less time feuding and more fighting the enemy had not been successful, I have little doubt that 1985 would have seen the collapse of the Jehad. Instead, the Mujahideen withstood all that the Soviets could throw at them, despite the grave imbalance in numbers and weaponry. Not that I was overconfident. I was fearful of the effect on our supply system of the Soviets’ scorched-earth tactics that deprived the guerrilla of his local source of food and shelter; there was a real need for a light, but long-range rocket-launcher to supplement the heavy MBRLs; the lack of reliable, modern radio communications to important Commanders inside Afghanistan was a major handicap; and without an effective SAM to supplement the SA-7 I despaired of ever being able to defeat the helicopter gunship. But my real worry was Kabul.
Kabul, the Key
“Kabul must burn.”
IN the twenty months from April, 1978 to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December, 1979, Kabul was surely the coup capital of the world. In that short period no less than three bloody coups took place in the city. During those months tens of thousands of Afghans died in perhaps the most murderous purges since Stalin’s day. As always Kabul was at the centre of the bloodbath, with its brand new jail at Pul-i-Charki, 10 kilometres east of the city, becoming the primary site for executions and torture. Whoever controlled Kabul controlled Afghanistan, both in the eyes of its people and the world.
For centuries the palace and throne of Afghan kings had been in Kabul, until royal rule was abruptly overthrown by King Zahir Shah’s cousin, Daoud Khan, in 1973. But within five years Daoud was showing disturbing signs of independence from his Soviet masters in Moscow. Things came to a head in 1977 when, during a visit to the Kremlin, Daoud had a flaming row with Brezhnev, literally banging his fists on the table, while yelling that Afghans made the decisions in Afghanistan. Fury showed on the Soviet President’s face. Daoud had signed his own death warrant. At 9.00 am on 27 April, 1978 a group of young Marxist officers led an armoured and air attack on the Arg Palace in the city centre, where Daoud and his family lived surrounded by the 1,800-strong Presidential Guard. The coup got off to a slow, unsteady start at Kabul airport. By afternoon the palace was being strafed by MiG-21s and Su-7S, but was holding out; that evening Radio Kabul fell; but not until 4.00 am on the 28th did Daoud die, with his family, in the rubble of the palace.