Like most military commanders, Wali’s problems were largely centred on getting to and from the target. The actual firing was the easy part. It was a question of time and space. He would need to go lightly armed, with only personal weapons and two Chinese-made 107mm SBRLs. These were ideal. With a range of 9 kilometres, they could each be manpacked by two men, one carrying the bipod, the other the barrel. Wali considered taking only one, but the thought of it failing at the crucial moment convinced him to play it safe. He wanted to fire up to thirty rockets, which, at one per man, meant a total force of at least thirty-four men.
With four recce boats, he would need one night to get his men and weapons across the Amu and safely into a scrub-covered gully in the hills beyond his contact’s village. They would shelter in the gully that day and set off immediately it got dark at around 7.00 pm. That would give him 11 hours to do the job and return, walking at night carrying the SBRLs, rockets and rifles. By day it had taken eight, so it was cutting it a bit fine, but if they stopped an hour before dawn to find a suitable hide it should be enough. He was certain they would have to wait another day in the hills before re-crossing the river on the third night.
The operation went ahead in mid-April. After pre-positioning the recce boats in the reeds near the river bank the night before, Wali and his men crossed over and were met by their guide. He safely led them between the Soviet border posts up into their hide in the hills. A sweltering day was spent under blankets and rocks in a small gully, trying to sleep, occasionally nibbling at nan bread, or drinking a little water from chugals water bottles).
It took five hours hard marching to reach the firing position. The night sky was lit by myriad stars, while the plain below sparkled with hundreds of electric lights. Both SBRLs were set up with fifteen rockets apiece. Wali took his bearing, then went to each launcher to check the setting. He adjusted the elevation to give a range of 8 kilometres on one launcher and 7.5 on the other, to give himself a better chance of hitting the factory with at least some of the rockets.
‘Allah o Akbar—Fire’. With their distinctive whoosh and roar two rockets soared up in their graceful arcs. All eyes followed the trails until they both plunged out of sight into the blackness, the white flash of the final explosions just visible for a split second. Wali had included ten smoke rockets, for their incendiary properties, with the HE, as he hoped to set some buildings on fire. Now both launchers fired indepedently until all the rockets had gone, while Wali peered through his binoculars at the impact area. Something was burning over there, but Wali did not wait to watch for more than a few minutes, just long enough to know the strike was successful.
The journey back to the hide was uneventful. As Wali had anticipated, they did not have sufficient darkness left to cross the river, so spent a second day crouched among the boulders and scrub. From there they saw the start of the Soviet reaction. Within an hour of daybreak gunships and fighter bombers swarmed south over the Amu to pound the area around Imam Sahib and the high ground beyond. All day the planes flew back and forth, blasting every village, every valley that might conceal Mujahideen—not that the already ruined buildings housed more than a handful of people. By 1987 they had long gone to Pakistan, Kunduz or Kabul. The planes kept coming for a week. Wali’s cut into the ‘soft underbelly’ had been deep and the bear’s roar of rage was loud and long.
It was the next night, after recrossing the river, when the party was making its way round Imam Sahib that disaster struck. Unbeknown to the Mujahideen, the Soviet helicopters had been dropping hundreds of anti-personnel mines, mostly of the ‘butterfly’ type. They took their name from the little wings they had, which enabled them to flutter gently down without tumbling. Coloured brown or green, these vicious mines blended with the soil or rocks and could easily remove the foot of the unwary. This is what happened to Wali. A flash, a bang, and Wali collapsed with his left foot hanging by a piece of tendon and skin. A quick tourniquet with a piece of cord, a quick cut with a sharp knife to remove the foot before the numbing effect of the injury wore off was the best his companions could do; then a blanket tied to rifles as a stretcher, followed by the long, agonizing trek into the hills. They were hounded from the air for six days, during which four more men were wounded. Wali would have preferred to die. He would have been a Shaheed; he would have joined his family; Allah the Merciful would surely have welcomed him. Now, he was a cripple with nothing to live for. He could not even continue to kill Soviets.
Somehow, even though the will to live had gone, even though it was several weeks before he could be brought on horseback to Pakistan for proper attention, Wali survived. It was several weeks after I had left the Army that I heard the full story of his raid into the Soviet Union from Wali himself, as he sat learning to make carpets in a camp not far from Peshawar. Had he been a regular soldier Wali would have received a high decoration for his leadership that day. As it was, he was content to know that his attack had been too successful, too damaging and too daring.
By one of those strange twists of fate 25 April, 1987, the date that brought the Soviet Ambassador in Islamabad to our Foreign Minister’s office, was the same day that the Army Promotion Board declined to promote me to major-general.
Wali’s attack had caused considerable damage and inflicted a number of Soviet casualties, although I was never able to establish exactly how many. The smoke rockets had started a fire which had consumed several buildings, but it was the suddenness, the ferocity and the distance (about 20 kilometres) inside the Soviet Union that was so galling to the enemy. It was the third successful attack within three weeks, and the Soviet Ambassador had been instructed by Moscow to use whatever language necessary to get future attacks halted immediately.
Our Foreign Minister, Sahibzada Yaqoob, was left in no doubt that if any further operation was conducted in the Soviet Union the consequences for the security and integrity of Pakistan would be dire. It was a threat of outright attack by the Soviet military. That they used this threat was itself confirmation that our raids were hurting. They were concerned, not so much with the actual damage caused, but by the effect they were having on the local Muslim population. If the attacks were to continue unchecked it might not be long before they had a general uprising on their hands. There was panic in our Foreign Office. The Prime Minister was informed that Pakistan might be on the brink of war, so he at once ordered General Gul, who had recently replaced General Akhtar at ISI, to cease all such operations at once.
Gul contacted me late at night in Peshawar, where I had gone to plan some operations with the Military Committee, telling me to halt these incursions immediately. I responded that it was impossible. I was not in communication with all the Commanders involved, and to pass on this order would take time. This infuriated Gul, whose head would roll if the Prime Minister’s instructions were not obeyed, so he insisted that I confirm to him that these activities had been halted by the morning. I could only repeat that it was impossible, but I added that if any did take place no Commander or Party would claim the credit. I told him I would endeavour to pass the message by the quickest means. I myself felt that calling them all off indefinitely was too hasty, as we would lose the momentum. When I returned to Islamabad I tried to convince General Gul of the tremendous advantages of such operations. I did not want to abandon our contacts and stop everything, just when we were obviously hurting the Soviets. Of course, I spoke as a soldier, not a politician, and I knew there was no way the Pakistan Army could meet an all-out Soviet ground attack, but I believed they were bluffing.
Even the CIA was shaken. The local chief told me, “Please don’t start a third world war by conducting these operations inside Soviet territory”. There were no more. Looking back I believe I was right; the Soviets would never have launched an invasion of Pakistan. Within a few months they had agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan, so I do not see how Gorbachev would ever have escalated the conflict and brought the world to the brink of a world war. It was surely the last thing he wanted. I must acknowledge my limited wisdom in this matter, but I feel that had General Akhtar still been in the chair at ISI he would have allowed such operations to continue, but at a lower key.