Strangely, stores were still full of luxury western consumer goods, which the Soviet troops snapped up if they could afford them. For the average Kabuli, who earned some 3000 afghanis a month, buying such items could only be dreamt about. A small refrigerator cost a year’s salary, a colour TV two year’s, and a Toyota car 27. Some sought to forget their sorrows in drink. A new distillery had been constructed for vodka, brandy and wine. Drunks in Kabul’s bazaars were now common. It was all part of the communists’ anti-Islam campaign, which went to the extent of forcing Afghan Army conscripts to drink alcohol.
Well over half the population inside Kabul supported the Jehad if not in practical ways then at least by their hatred of the Soviets, and indifference to their Afghan allies. Although fear pervaded the city, many of its people were Mujahideen who risked their own and their families’ lives daily by carrying out acts of sabotage, passing on information, or giving shelter to those on the run. Despite the tightening of security, despite the use of terror and torture, we always had active supporters in Kabul throughout the war. Our problem was how to bring about the collapse of communism without resorting to a direct military assault, which the Mujahideen could not hope to mount successfully with the Soviet Army occupying the city.
Our strategy had three features. First, there was a concerted effort on my part to coordinate attacks aimed at cutting off Kabul from supplies or facilities coming from outside the city. This involved ambushes on convoys on roads leading to Kabul, the mining of dams that provided its water, or cutting its power lines.
Next was sabotage and assassination from within. I always emphasized that our targets were Soviets, KHAD agents, government officials and their facilities in Kabul. These attacks could range from a knife between the shoulder blades of a Soviet soldier shopping in the bazaar to the placing of a briefcase bomb in a senior official’s office. The former were sufficiently successful to force all Soviet troops to move about in armed groups, and for civilians to have military escorts. Markets were eventually declared off-limits to Soviets and their families. The latter included placing a bomb under the dining-room table of Kabul University in late 1983. The explosion, in the middle of their meal, killed nine Soviets, including a woman professor. Educational institutions were considered fair game, as the staff were all communists indoctrinating their students with Marxist dogma. To the Mujahideen this was corrupting the youth of the country, turning them away from the true faith of Islam. I would point out that in 1982 no fewer than 140 Soviet specialists and 105 Russian language teachers taught at the university and Kabul technical colleges. Among other victims were the rector of the university and General Abdul Wadood, the commander of the Central Corps, who was killed in his office. In 1983 seven senior Soviet officers were reported as killed in Kabul. Two such officers were shot dead by a 17-year-old boy whose parents had been killed by the Soviets. He hid a pistol under his blanket and approached them as they were leaving the Soviet Cultural Centre (a cinema), where films were shown for senior officials. Several quick shots and the boy escaped by dashing into the back streets. We later provided him with false identity documents.
We made numerous attempts to kill Najibullah, both when he was head of KHAD and after he became President. In late 1985, for example, a Commander who had the assistance of a KHAD officer in Kabul who was a Mujahideen sympathizer, almost succeeded. Explosives were smuggled into the city, a car purchased under a false name, and a bomb placed in the vehicle. The Commander got details of a planned visit by Najibullah to the Indian Embassy, which was almost opposite the KHAD headquarters in the Ministry of the Interior on Shari Nu Road. He parked the car between the two buildings. As the remote-control exploder had been known to fail at the crucial moment, on this occasion a timing device was used as well. Unfortunately Najibullah was delayed by 40 minutes, so the bomb detonated before its intended victim arrived. The Commander drove off in his get-away car, only to die some months later when he blew himself up preparing another bomb—a not uncommon fate for amateur bomb-makers.
The third way of hitting Kabul was by stand-off long-range rocket attacks. This was by far the most common method. Tens of thousands of rockets have fallen on the city and its environments during the war. Only for brief periods during the winter has a day passed without such an attack. Kabul is a huge place and so is virtually impossible to miss, but I would stress that we never deliberately fired indiscriminately. Our targets were always military, or associated with the Communist government in some way. I am not saying that innocent civilians or Mujahideen supporters were never killed by rockets: they were, but it was unintentional. Regrettably, no modern war can be fought without the innocent suffering. If we had ceased to attack Kabul because of the possibility of hitting civilians it would have pulled the carpet from under our fundamental strategy.
A revealing comment on the unintentional killing of civilians was made to Mark Urban, the author of War in Afghanistan, by Abdul Haq, a Commander who operated against Kabul. He said, “Their note 7 target is not the civilians … but if I hit them I don’t care…. If my family lived near the Soviet Embassy I would hit it. I wouldn’t care about them. If I am prepared to die, my son has to die for it, and my wife has to die for it.”
My list of potential targets suitable for rocket attack in Kabul ran to over seventy. On Map 12 I have included the important ones. The Soviet and Afghan military installations, barracks and depots were top priority. The Darulaman Palace and Tari Tajbeg Camp, which housed the headquarters of the Soviet 40th Army and Afghan Central Corps; Kabul airport, with its surrounding garrison; Chihilasatoon barracks; the camps opposite Pul-i-Charki prison; Bala Hissar Fort, with its Soviet signals regiment; Khair Khana Camp, housing a massive motor transport depot, and the 108th MRD; Rishkoor garrison, the headquarters of both the Afghan 7th Division and 37th Commando Brigade, plus the 88th Artillery Brigade; and Kargha Garrison, with its enormous ammunition depot and 8th Division headquarters, are examples of purely military targets.
First on the list of Soviet civilian establishments was their Embassy. Hardly a week went by without attempts being made to hit this building. A close second was the Microrayan district of the city. This was a sprawling, prefabricated, apartment development reserved for Soviet advisers, their families and senior Afghan Communist Party officials. KHAD headquarters buildings, all government ministries, the President’s palace, Radio Kabul (which was awkward as it was the neighbour of the US Embassy), television studios, transport pools, power stations and fuel storage tanks, all merited our attention.
Our ability to inflict damage or casualties depended on the weapons we used and their handling by the Mujahideen. With the weapons, it was all a question of range. How far into Kabul would the bomb or rocket fall, and therefore how close to the target must the firing-point be? It was not until early 1984 that we had 107mm MBRLs with ranges of 8 to 10 kilometres. Prior to this our artillery was the 82mm mortar, so we had to get to within 3000 metres of the target which, as the ring on Map 13 illustrates, often meant a firing point inside the city. As time passed, and the Kabul defences were pushed steadily further out from the centre, these short-range attacks became impossible to mount. The arrival of the Chinese MBRL gave us the breakthrough we needed. Although it was a cumbersome and weighty weapon it had the necessary range, accuracy and firepower. With its twelve barrels we were able literally to rain rockets on a target, provided we could hump sufficient ammunition to the firing point. This enabled us to mount truly stand-off attacks throughout the remainder of the war. Some 500 of these weapons were obtained during my time at ISI, of which 75 per cent were deployed against Kabul.