CHAPTER2:·

THE MUJAHIDEEN AND DRUG LORDS

"The speed of a Kalashnikov bullet is 800 meters per second.

If a Russian is at a distance of 3,200 metres from a mujahid

and that rnujahid aims at the Russian's head,

calculate how many seconds will it take for the bullet

to strike the Russian in the forehead?"

-From a third-grade children's mathematics text book designed for an Educational

Centre for Afghanistan (run by the rnujahideen in the 1980s) designed by the

University of Nebraska under a $50 million USAID grant that ran from September

1996 to 19941

Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA and the Global War Against Terror, Permanent Black, 2004, p.13 7

66

CHAPTER2:

THE MUJAHIDEEN AND DRUG LORDS

Peace has never been popular; war, on the other hand, not only makes more

interesting news but also is an extremely profitable enterprise. And no one

exploited this to optimum, as did the primary actors in the Afghan proxy war. But

what is particularly poignant about the situation that Afghanistan found itself in is

that while ten y.;:ars of the war took its toll on the entire population displacing

millions both internally and externally, destroying the pastoral farmlands and

livestock, leaving half a million women widowed yet the men heralded,

celebrated, admired and even emulated as freedom fighters were one of the

biggest profiteers from the narcotics trade. While true that poppy production, to

some extent, is rooted in the history of Afghanistan and was not completely

unknown to the region at the time the war began; but what was still unknown to

the world was that by the time the Soviets withdrew the stage would be set for

Afghanistan to be transformed into the illicit opium granary of the world. Grown

in small and controlled quantities, to be imbibed locally and socially, the traffic in

drugs was to very soon outgrow in proportions from Asia to South America. It

was through the clandestine war waged by the United States and Pakistan's

administration by arming, training and equipping the mujahideen, that the linkages

between covert agencies, Islamic militia, untraceable funds and illicit drugs were

forged, linkages that would come back to haunt America and its allies in the

twenty first century.

67

Afghanistan's destiny, all through the Cold war, fell prey to the political

manoeuvrings of the Soviet Union and the US as well as its immediate neighbour

-Pakistan. For the Afghans, who witnessed the Great Game on their soil between

the British and Soviets in the nineteenth century they were being revisited by the

same political compulsions of regional and extra-regional actors though the actors

themselves had changed. To dislodge the Soviet r~.gime in Kabul the Americans

joined hands with Pakistan and extended political, economic and military

assistance to both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The drug trade was one of the tools

in this campaign waged on Afghan soil.

The explosion of heroin, in what is now infamously referred to as tl1e Golden

Crescent region, actually began with Pakistan. But as it declined in Pakistan, due

to successful enforcement measures, it shifted its location to its north western

neighbour, next door, and it was just a matter of time before it took over the

mantle of the unofficial parallel economy of Afghanistan. While drug production

and trafficking were supposed to be the means to fund the holy war for the holy

warriors, in truth, the local consumption of the opiates also showed a steep

increase. Not only were they used to weaken and demoralise the Soviet troops

stationed in Afghanistan but now had become very easily accessible on the streets

of Pakistan as well. It was only after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan that

the US chose to mount pressure upon Islamabad to curtail the production of

opium in Pakistan. By the year 1998 almost 58 percent of the opiates were being

consumed in the region itself.2

Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: The Story of the Afghan Warlords, Pan Books 2000, p.l22

68

The tales of the use of drugs and the clout enjoyed by the drug lords, in modern

Asian history, is as old as the Opium Wars of China in the nineteenth century. At

the time that opium poppy was widely cultivated in Bengal, the British colonial

authorities had managed to monopolise the control over Bengal's opium brought

into China from India by 1836. The Opium Wars, in fact, were the result of

attempts by the Chinese to discontinue this debilitating trade from the British

colonies into their territory. According to a popular Chinese story oft told to

highlight the tragic effects of the drug menace, when the army went to crush a

local rebellion in 1832 there was, tragically, hardly any might found among them

despite being the larger numerical force because a large number of the soldiers

were opium smokers. 3 Similar stories, about the manner in which drugs were

exploited in the course of a war are abundant and not necessarily culturally

specific. Even during the World War II battle between the Nationalist

Kuomintang (Chinese) and the Japanese, both the sides engaged in the sale of

large quantities of raw opium to each other not just for profit but also to weaken

the enemy. In another part of the world, the CIA were not to be left very far

behind as their association with the Nationalists, dating back to the same time,

was related to cooperating with them in raising money through the drug trade in

Burma which along with Afghanistan continues to be the main source of the

world's drug supplies.

The map on the next page illustrates the common frontiers between Afghanistan,

Pakistan and Iran; and the important towns along these frontiers, which played a vital

role in the arms and drugs trade especially, in the last two decades.

John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press, 1999, p.126

69

70

Map6 into Neighbouring Countries after the Soviet Invasion ~ ----......; o.......1

2,000,000

IRAN

UZ.SE.K\~)f~

750,000

PAKISTAN

Arabian Sea Source: Peter Marsden, The Taliban, War and Religion in Afghanistan, Zed Books ltd. London, 2002

/ I f

0 100 20< kilomE

More importantly, these towns were home to the large number of refugees who

actually crossed these borders for safe haven in Peshawar, in Pakistan, which is

also from where they carried out the organisational aspect of their resistance

movement against the Soviets and the Soviet-supported government in

Afghanistan.

Ironically, the Soviet Union was the first nation to recognise the Afghan state in 1919,

and returning the favour, Lenin's Bolshevist regime was first recognised by its

regional neighbour Afghanistan.4 A little over half a century later they were pitted

against each other, out to destroy the very existence of the states they had themselves

been the first to extend international identity and legality to.

THE MUJAHIDEEN

"These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers," was

how Reagan introduced the mujahideen to the American media in 1985 thereby

clearly indicating the administration's intentions in its policy towards Afghanistan

- to harness extreme versions of political Islam in their struggle against the Soviet

Union. 5

Mujahideen - meaning 'Warriors in the Way of God' - the title collectively used

for the Afghan resistance fighters, were actually a wide and disparate range of

parties (tanzimat) from forces organized on a regional basis, to those with their

headquarters outside Afghanistan; or scattered groups of fighters with local

Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, Da Capo Press, New York, 2002, p.221 Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA and the Global War Against Terror, Permanent Black, 2004, p.l19

71

interests and agendas whose real attachment towards the cause of the Afghan

resistance was dictated more by an immediate need for access to military

hardware. Though these fighters or warlords nominally represented some party or

the other but their ideological linkages were potentially rather tenuous and their

tactics were inspired by and resembled those of seasonal tribal warfare.6

The foot soldiers of the jihad - the mujahideen or the holy warriors - were

operationally the most important group in this CIA-lSI sponsored proxy war. The

main force of the resistance as well as combativeness against the colossal Soviet

and Soviet-propped regime came from them. Almost each one of Afghanistan's

ethnic groups participated in the struggle against the Soviets. But keeping in mind

this complex multi-ethnic fabric of the country, it was not surprising that the

mujahideen themselves were a divided lot. They found themselves split into seven

major groups and several other minor groups and very rarely could they forget

their ethnic and tribal barriers or forget their personal jealousies to be able to

cooperate and coordinate their intelligence, sabotage and combat operations

against the Communist enemy.

The Sunni resistance parties in Afghanistan had their origin after the 1978

Communist coup in Kabul. The old Muslim Youth Movement split into three

parts with one led by Hekmatyar whose followers were mainly uprooted ethnic

Pashtuns - like Hekmatyar himself- of the Ghilzai tribal confederation. In 1975

the undivided Islamist movement had participated in the failed coup attempt

against Daud, following which they escaped to Peshawar. It is here that the first

6 Willaim Maley, 'Interpreting the Taliban,' p.9 in William Maley (ed.), Afghanistan and the Taliban: The Rebirth of Fundamentalism, Penguin 2001

72

split was formalised. The Islamists wielded considerable influence throughout the

jihad years, not just locally, but also globally as they attracted many foreign

Islamist militants. Moreover, as far as the jihad was concerned they also received

the larger volume of the aid that came in.

Hizb-i-Islami

Of the seven major groups amongst the holy warriors, the more extremist Hizb-i­

Islami, under the leadership of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was the one favoured by

Pakistan and, convinced by them, also by the CIA. As discussed in the previous

chapters, Hekmatyar' s alliance with Pakistan went way back to the time when the

militia trained by Pakistan was used, under his leadership, for the 'Afghan

resistance' against Daud. Having moved up the ranks as a militant

'fundamentalist,' as a student leader in the 1960s he opposed the king' s secular

reforms. His methods were as radical as the Taliban's, having served a prison

sentence for murdering a leftist student and instigating acid attacks on unveiled

women following which he took refuge in Pakistan. It was at this juncture of his

political career that he became part of the rebel group trained by Pakistan in the

early 1970s, which they had then unleashed against Daud. Then onwards he was

to become not just their favourite contract revolutionary but also their most

trusted intelligence asset. Hence, it was a matter of little surprise that his group

were also the chief recipients of the vast inflow of aid and arms.

Pashtun-dominated and perceived as the ultimate Pashtun party, the Hizb was the

key extremist party representing the most radical part of the Afghan student

movement. Hekmatyar's political background included participation in both

73

Communist and Islamist movements and his party could be distinguished from

others by its modem organisation. Over the years, Hekmatyar was to go on to

become a leader, trainer and an inspiration to the terrorists and guerrillas of the

Afghan international to such an extent that he inspired Islamists in as far-flung

places as Algeria and Bosnia with his pictures donning the facades of mosques.

Ironically he enjoyed very little grass root s4pport. However, despite the

preferential treatment, both in access to Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan as well

as American financial aid, that Hekmatyar and his Hizb enjoyed, in the ten-year

war they were not the most active guerrilla group which is what had precipitated

the spilt that led to the creation of the Khalis faction.

Hizb-e-Islami (Islamic Party/Khalis)

As just mentioned, the second splinter in the Islamist movement came with the

call for greater involvement in active guerrilla activities against the Soviets. This

faction of the Hizb-e-lslarni broke away from Hekmatyar in 1979. Carrying the

same name of Hizb-e-lslarni, they were led by Maul vi Y ounis Khalis, one of the

few traditional clerics to join the more modernising Islamist movement. Though it

attempted to present the fa9ade of Muslim fundamentalism, in reality it was a

tribal party constituted by his followers from the eastern tribal areas.7 One of the

best field commanders of the Afghan resistance he viewed the Afghan resistance

movement as a struggle between Islam and Kajir (non-believer). Khalis aimed at

the establishment of an Islamic state in accordance with the Quran, Sunna and the

Sharia. He maintained close relations with Burhanuddin Rabbani of Jarniat-e­

Islami. In the major cities of Kabul, Jalalabad and Ghazni, it was this party that

Robert D. Kaplan, Soldiers of God, Vintage Departures, 200 I, p.42

74

constituted the strongest mujahideen force. He was one of the most respected

amongst the seven major Afghan resistance parties even by moderate factions

because it was known that he was the only resistance leader who spent weeks on

end living in the same dangerous conditions as his troops. Among Khalis's

commanders in the field was Abdul Haq who fought the Soviets around Kabul in

some of the most daring operations of the jihad.8 ,His party in Peshawar, unlike

those of the other major mujahideen groups existed less as a political organisation

and more of a political front for a purely military organisation. This is one of the

reasons that it was so powerful and influential within the boundaries where the

actual jihad was being executed but largely unappreciated by the west.

Jamiat-i-Islami

A former professor, Burhuddin Rabbani, of the Afghan State Faculty of Islam,

headed the third group. The Jamiat-i-Islami was actually the parent Islamist

organisation active in Kabul University in the 1970s, which later split into the

Hizb and Khalis factions. Ethnically a Tajik and linguistically the only native

speaker of Persian among the Sunni leaders, Rabbani, as opposed to Hekmatyar,

was far more moderate in his views. He was not in confrontation with the US and

the other western benefactors in the jihad and was not involved in the recruitment

of terrorists to fight in the west. Yet, the Jamiat did not find favour as the most

preferred recipient of the CIA aid. Predominantly Tajik in its composition the

status of parties like the Jamiat was further bolstered through the achievements of

the commanders linked with them. The Jamaat-i-Islami drew credit from its

association with Tajik commanders like Ahmed Shah Massoud- in the Panjsher

Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, De Capo Press, 2002, p.254

75

Valley (north of Kabul) and Ismail Khan in the Herat area, who were largely

autonomous. In fact, the Jamiat eventually became the main voice of the non­

Pashtuns and over the course of the war it also developed into one of the most

powerful resistance parties. They were representative of the more moderate views

in Islamist politics while the CIA at this point was backing not just Islamist

ideologues but extremists. Most of the bitter intem~cine fighting was between the

Jamiat and Hekmatyar's Hizb. Despite emerging from the same movement in the

1960s, Hekmatyar and Rabbani, in fact, during the course of the jihad grew into

implacable enemies. Rabbani was to go on to serve as the President of

Afghanistan in June 1992 and Masoud would be his Defence Minister.

Ittihad-i-Islami

A fourth Sunni party, the Ittihad or Union was led by another Afghan intellectual,

Professor Abdul-Rab al-Rasul Sayyaf, who had been Rabbani's deputy in the

Jamiat in the 1970s. Inspired by the ultra-conservative Wahabi ideology -

officially the founding ideology of the Saudi royal family - his party was

handsomely financed almost entirely by Saudi Arabia with generous financial

support coming mostly through charitable trusts established there. As was the case

with many mujahideen, once the Afghan war came to an end, they carried the

experience of the Afghan war to other battle fronts in the name of the religious

jihad. An armed guerrilla band of several hundred men moved from the core

group at the Peshawar base to the southern Philippine islands where they operated

on the fringes of the Moro Muslim insurgency under the now quite familiar name

76

of Abu Sayyaf.9 Having established base here they utilised their CIA and lSI

training to saturation in launching their attacks and murdering Christian priests,

wealthy non-Muslim plantation owners and merchants and local government

officials in the southern Muslim island of Mindanao and came to be recognised as

one of the most violent and radical Islamist groups in South East Asia in the

1990s. Claiming to be fighting for an independent\Muslim state, the Abu Sayyaf

group in the Philippines was being funded by Osama's brother~in-law, Jamal

Khalifa. Osama bin Laden's connection here became evident from tpe fact that he

is believed to have sent two suicide bombers in March 1997 to inspire the Moro

Islamic Liberation Front (MJLF), a fact acknowledged by both the Philippine

army and Abu Sayyaf. 10

One of the leading mujahideen commanders during the Soviet invasion, Sayyaf

was to become Afghanistan's most notorious warlord who by the last decade of

the twentieth century had come to the attention of human rights groups - along

with several other mujahideen, communist and Taliban human rights abusers -

due to his atrocities in the mid-1990s, particularly in 1992-93 during the

debilitating civil war, and more recently with his return to prominence after the

fall of the Taliban. 11 He contested and won the Parliamentary elections of 2005

despite having a sizeable militia force who openly flaunted their Kalashnikovs at

campaign rallies, considering that a candidate could be disqualified if found

maintaining links with armed factions.

9

10

II

John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and Intei'national Terrorism, Pluto Press 1999, p.63 Christopher Dicky, 'Eyeing the Next Fronts,' Newsweek, November 05,2001, p.30 Sam Zarifi, 'The Road Ahead,' Human Rights Watch, September 14,2005, www.hrw.org

77

The remaining three Sunni parties of the seven major mujahideen groups were

moderate or in the definition of French scholar, Olivier Roy, 'traditionalist.'

Created and nurtured in Peshawar under the watch of the lSI, following the

Communist coup of 1978, their followers and cadres were a blend of secular-

educated young men and the traditionally Islamic-edj.lcated ulema, or Muslim

scholar-clerics. The Harakat-i-Enqela, which w~s not a radical organisation, \

rather an umbrella organisation for the clerical networks proved to be an

unattractive proposition for the foreign volunteers recruited for the jihad. Not

surprisingly, far fewer of their adherents became post-Afghan war terrorists in the

outside world. It advocated the adoption of the Muslim Sharia law but rejected

the idea of an Islamic revolution. Most of their fighters were ethnic Uzbeks or

Pashtuns. These parties were characterised by their autocratic structures and they

tended to be recognised by their leaders rather than the party.

Harkat-e-Inquilabi-e-Islami (Islamic Revolutionary Movement)

Led by Maulvi Mohammad Nabi Mohammad, this party was founded by him in

Quetta in 1978. Mohammadi was a Pashtun and being a cleric himself, his party

drew its strength from graduates of the traditional madrassas (religious schools)

and the clergy. It was considered the only traditional nationalist group with a

military presence as well. They were one of Afghanistan's strongest mujahideen

groups operating mainly in Ghazni, Kabul and Herat. Ismail Khan, the

commander in control of Herat and its surrounding areas, was at one time

believed to be associated to this party.

78

The Mahaz-e-Milli Islami Afghanistan

(National Islamic Front of Afghanistan)

The National Islamic Front (NIF) of Sayyad Pir Geelani, a layman and not a

cleric, was also a favourite of the western journalists who were covering the feats

of the mujahideen. An aristocrat himself he later came to be referred to as 'Gucci

Muj' identified by his $1,500 designer suits. 12 Rel~ted to the Afghan royal family,

he advocated the restoration of the exiled King, Zahir Shah. A tribal party, the

Mahaz, too, was Pashtun dominated and conservative. Geelani was a spiritual

leader of Afghanistan's Qadariya Sufi sect - one of the mystic Sufi orders of

South Asian Islam. But despite his religious credentials, he was opposed to radical

Islamists. More of a centrist group that was pledged to defending national

traditions, his party, in fact, was considered too nationalist and not sufficiently

Islamic to be eligible to receive aid for the jihad. Geelani even during the

formation of the Afghan Interim Government (AIG) was believed to have been

satisfied in remaining in the background as long as his party was represented in

any union or government. A decade later his early attempts, during the Taliban

presence, to patch together some kind of an opposition government with the

exiled king as the nucleus of this front did not take off because of internal

squabbling.

The Jabba-e-Nejat-e-Milli Afghanistan (Afghan National Liberation Front)

This group was headed by Sibghatullah Mujaddidi, a respected religious man who

was a theologian by training and the Pir (religious head) of another important Sufi

12 Evan Thomas and Melinda Liu, 'Warlords for Sale or Rent,' Newsweek, November 05,2001, p.21

79

order - the Naqshbandi. The National Liberation Front (NLF) was also very

popular with the west, since like Geelani, Mujaddidi had a large westernised

family and unlike many of the other mujahideen commanders, was appreciative of

the backing of the Americans. This party was also Sufi-oriented and opposed to

radical Islamist ideology. Mujaddidi, too, had links with the royalist establishment

and supported the return of the King, leading to di{!erences with Hekmatyar. This

group operated mostly around Kandahar, Farah and Baghlan. He was later to be

elected the first president of the AIG in 1989 and also the first of the rotating

presidency in Kabul in 1992. Unlike his successor Rabbani, he avoided the

temptation to look for loopholes for an extension of his tenure. While in office

Mujaddidi vigorously pressed for the AIG occupation of the Afghan seat at the

OIC and the Non-Aligned Movement. 13

The divisions amongst the mujahideen were based on the Shia and Sunni divide

while the differences between them was based on what the American media

christened as the 'moderates' and 'fundamentalists' or the traditionalist

conservatives and the radical Islamists, with Hekmatyar being the most successful

example of the latter. In this sectarian divide between the Afghans, the Shia

minority - which was about 15% of the total population at the time that the war

began in 1979 - had traditionally tended to look in the direction of Iran for both

inspiration and support. 14 The Shia-Sunni sectarian differences and the Pashtun-

Hazara ethnic rivalries combined to prevent a real Shia-Sunni cooperation in the

jihad, akin to the sectarian divide that had prevented cooperation between the two

13

14

Magnus and Naby, Afghanistan: Mullah. Marx and Mujahid, Harper Collins Publishers, 1998, p.l50 John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press, 1999, p.62

80

in most of the post-war international terrorist guerrilla movements. Though there

exists a notable exception as a testament to a Shia-Sunni convergence in their

fight against a common adversary. Both the HAMAS, a Sunni Palestinian group

with roots in the Afghan jihad, and the Hizbollah (The Party of God)- an Iranian-

supported, mainly Lebanese group are fighting the Israelis - the former in the

West Bank and Gaza and the latter in south Lebanon. Both the groups work in

parallel purpose against Israel, possibly sometimes even consciously coordinating

their efforts and missions.

By the 1980s the Sunni mujahideen had formed about a 100 parties, which were

operating sixty different offices from Peshawar. It is only when the Pakistani

government put pressure on them did they unite and only seven major parties were

recognised during the course of the jihad. 15 The differences in the parties were

also deeply ideological as on one side of the political spectrum were parties under

the leadership of Pir Sayyad Ahmed Geelani, Sibghatullah Mujadiddi and

Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi who were predisposed to the idea of Zahir Shah

playing a key role in solving Afghanistan's crisis. Straddling the others side of the

political spectrum was Hekmatyar's Hizb. Labelled fundamentalist by some, quite

expectantly, they took an extremely uncompromising stance, very much in

consonance to their Leninist approach to political organization. And at the centre

were the Jamaat-i-lslami who adopted a moderate Islamist position.

This unmistakable divergence in approach between the pre-1978 and the post-

1978 exiles was because the former had taken up arms against the pre-1978

15 Bernt Glantzer, 'Afghanistan: Ethnic and Tribal Disintegration, 'p.179 in Willairn Maley (ed.) Afghanistan and the Taliban: The Rebirth of Fundamentalism, Penguin, 2001

81

governments of Zahir Shah and Daud while the latter had accepted them as

legitimate regimes. Even as far as the aid and training was concerned the pre-1978

nucleus found more favour with the lion's share going to them, though Pakistan's

lSI did accommodate figures like Geelani and Nabi as leaders of legitimate

mujahideen groups. Differences between the groups were further heightened by

personal antagonisms and in April 1992, Hekmatyar' s spokesperson candidly

observed that 'Hekmatyar can't agree to anything that includes Ahmad Shah

Massoud' .16 It was not a wonder then that the politics of post-Communist

Afghanistan proved to be as troubled as the Soviet occupation.

While for both the Americans and the Pakistan administration their common anti-

Communist stance had seemed enough for them to jump into this proxy war, but

for their foot soldiers -the mujahideen- though their hatred for the infidel regime

was enough for them to wage a holy war against the Soviets, but it was not

sufficient reason to unite them into a single, strong and united force. They were

fraught by differences - sectarian and ideological -heightened even further by the

manner in which they were handled by the lSI, whose personal motivations

outweighed the need to amalgamate them.

By 1985, the holy warriors were receiving close to a billion dollars a year in

financial assistance from the US of which a large share went to the Hizb. 17 The

lSI had made it clear to the CIA that keeping in mind the divisions and

differences in motivations for the jihad between each group, by supplying to all

16

17

Willaim Maley, 'Interpreting the Taliban,' p.9 in William Maiey (ed.) Afghanistan and the Ta/iban: The Rebirth of Fundamentalism?, Penguin 2001 John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press 1999, p.61

82

seven different Afghan mujahideen groups, they would in effect be directing

seven different Afghan wars. According to Mamdani, rebel leaders had admitted

to US officials as early as 1979 that trying to create a unified Afghan resistance

was like "putting five different animals in the same cage."18

The table below gives an approximate division of the manner in which aid was

distributed to the seven major mujahideen group$ in the year, reflective of the

pattern followed through out the jihad years.

Table 8

Distribution of Arms to the main Mujahideen Groups, 1987

Mujahideen groups Percentage of stocks

Hekmatyar 18-20%

Rabbani 18-19%

Sayyaf 17-18%

Khalis 13-15%

Nabi 13-15%

Geelani 10-11%

Mujaddadi 3-5%

' Source: compiled from data m Yousaf & Adkm's The Bear Trap: Afghamstan s Untold Story, Jang Publishers, June 1992, p.1 05

Roughly 63 to 73 percent of the aid coming in from the Americans for the jihad

was going to the four 'fundamentalist' parties. 19 Going by the socio-ethnic nature

of Afghan society and the accompanying schisms that had always existed, the lSI

and the rebels' argument might have been true to some extent. Yet it cannot be

18

19

Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA and the Global War Against Terror, Permanent Black, 2004, p.15 8 Muhammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin, The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story, Jang Publishers, June 1992, p.1 05

83

ignored that it was also the IS I' s way of ensuring that they were to have a greater

control over where the money went and to whom, depending on the end those

groups would serve for the Pakistan authorities. As a result, even the money that

came in for the jihad from different sources went to particular groups favoured by

each sponsor and not equally to the entire jihad effort.' For instance, the Pashtun,

Hizb-i-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had limited, popular support but flourished

on the strength of the long-term patronage from the IS I. As a result, even by the

very nature of the distribution of the aid and arms the jihad effort could never

become a cohesive group. The aid-givers themselves by the very mode of

dispersion of the aid ensured that those fighting the jihad for them remained

divided amidst themselves. A part of the requirement to garner their independent

funding and resources for the jihad effort, for some groups came out of this lop­

sided distribution of aid. With everyone's geo-strategic interests at divergence,

very soon there was a plethora of sponsors - from funding even coming from

private channels. While the ouster of the Soviet troops remained the ostensible

goal, there were almost always other corollary factors - of far greater importance

to the funders -that guided the pumping in of aid and arms.

While for the mujahideen it was a legitimate war against the infidel communists;

the Communist supporters of the Soviets - like Najibullah - as well as the Soviet

and KGB propaganda machinery interpreted the rebellion as merely an extension

of the US Cold War strategy; that the Americans were simply paying the 'rebel'

Afghans to fight the rest of the Afghans loyal to the communist government; that

the jihadis were mere lackeys of west. Early in the jihad itself many of the leaders

of the mujahideen groups had openly showed their reluctance to be associated

with the war efforts of the Americans. While the money coming from the

84

Americans did contribute to the logistics of the war they waged with the more

sophisticated Soviet forces, they also made conscious and deliberate attempts to

maintain a distance from the American agencies and leadership. These probably

were the first signs of things to come as far as the US administration was

concerned, once the immediate objective of the withdrawal of Soviet occupation

of Afghanistan was achieved. Hekmatyar' s insisten,ce to keep minimum distance

from the CIA, to the extent of not meeting the then American President, Ronald

Reagan, despite being in New York for a UN meeting in 1985 clearly presaged

the vital role he was to play in the future on the global platform. He became one

of the prominent figures that enthused anti-western terrorism, a fact that escaped

the notice of the Americans and proved a costly oversight. It was indeed a

paradox posed by the gee-strategic calculations of the time that despite his anti-

American stance, that became more virulent subsequently, and the evident

demonstration of an 'intransigent authoritarianism reminiscent of Ayatollah

Khomeini,' America's most vociferous critic of the time, that the US

administration chose to promote Hekmatyar over the other mujahideen groups?0

More importantly, the resistance commanders operating on ground inside

Afghanistan had the loosest links with the seven major groups. Their affiliations

were linked more to the access to funds and weaponry coming in from the west.

There were many who through their successful campaigns against the Soviets

earned the respect and support of even the parties in Peshawar. While Zabul,

Helmand and Farah were under Hekmatyar, the Badakhshan and Herat region

remained the stronghold of Rabbani and in the later years of Massoud who came

20 Ralph H. Magnus and Eden Naby, Afghanistan: Mullah, Marx and Mujahid., Harper Collins Publishers, 1998, p.l42.

85

to be known as the Lion ofPanjsher. The Panjsher valley, meaning 'Five Lions' is

excellent guerrilla country whose criss-crossing valleys and side-valleys made

famous by the now legendary mujahideen commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud.

His was the largest single guerrilla army in Afghanistan by the 1980s, which had

started at the beginning of the war with 3,000 mujahideen regulars growing to a

strength of 50,000. Yet, they were not the biggest beneficiaries of the jihad.

Massoud, initially, even received some amount of military aid from the Chinese,

automatically raising the sensors of the Americans. 21 Toasted as a hero by many,

yet in Peshawar, which was the centre of the guerrilla effort, he remained a

controversial and suspicious figure.

Another important commander ofthe Afghanjihad, for Abdul's Haq's supporters,

though, it was he, and not Massoud, who was the 'Afghan Lion,' stalking areas in

and around the Afghan capital - the centre of the Soviet communist power

structure.22 Up against government ministries, division-size military bases, KhAD

agents and minefields, his was an urban war of sabotage as well as guerrilla war

in the adjacent mountains and villages calling for even greater organisation

especially since the Pashtuns, unlike Massoud's Tajik forces, were rife with tribal

rivalries. From an Afghan upper-class family, Haq's had been a successful

underground resistance in Kabul against the Soviets. Extremely popular amongst

that generation of western diplomats and intelligence officers, once the jihad

ended he denounced Islamic extremism and was in favour of educating women.

Haq was executed by the Taliban in October 2001, within days of entering

21

22 Robert D. Kaplan, Soldiers of God, Vintage Departures, 2001, p.39 Ibid, p.41

86

Afghanistan to form a peace coalition by enticing other warlords away from the

ruling Taliban, on charges of being a CIA spy.23

Afghan mujahideen groups like Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami, Rabbani's Jamaiat-e-

Is/ami or Hizb-e-Is/ami Khalis, Harkat Is/ami Moharnmadi got support from the

Jamaat Is/ami Pakistan (JIP) or Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami Pakistan (JUIP). The

Maktabis (hardliners) faction in Rabbani's JIA and Hekmatyar's party and were

generally affiliated with the JIP. The JUIP were also to play an important role vis-

a-vis the Taliban once they came to control considerable areas in Afghanistan

with the Saudis acting as the conduit for their cooperation. Hekmatyar's wide

access in the Pakistani government and proximity to the lSI could be traced to his

close relationship with the leadership of the JIP. Access to the military leadership

of Pakistan coupled with the largest portion of the international and military aid

directed to the Afghan mujahideen helped him form the most organised armed

and political group of Afghan refugees.

Map 7 on the next page indicates the areas in which the various mujahideen and

warlords were operating during the course of the jihad that they waged against the

Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. These were to eventually also become their

pockets of political and military control even after the jihad ended and the country

collapsed into a civil war. Control over the more fertile areas is what also

determined many of the skirmishes between the warlords and commanders, as has

been discussed later in the chapter.

23 Evan Thomas and Melinda Liu, 'Warlords for Sale or Rent,' Newsweek, November 05,2001, p.l7

87

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DRUG TRADE FINANCES THE JIHAD

It was apparent that the Americans had chosen the path of committing the same

mistakes that they had already made in Laos by supporting the opium-growers in

their rebellion against the Soviets. There were many who had expressed their

reservations when the Carter administration initiated the ferrying of arms to the

mujahideen in Afghanistan. But since different departments of the administration

had already started operating independently of each other, the reservations were

never heeded in the light of the immediate concerns, which was to stem the

influence of the Soviets at the height of the Cold War. Besides, the mujahideen

appeared as the exact canon fodder that the Americans were looking for without

getting their own hands dirty. The reasons were that the Afghan warlords were in

open rebellion against the Soviet-supported regime and the CIA could count on

them as readily available allies. Moreover, having learnt from experience, the CIA

already knew that nothing could rival the drug trade as a reliable source of big

money for an equally big covert war. To Reagan's credit is the fact that under

him, in 1985, the Afghanjihad did, in fact, become the largest covert operation in

the history of the CIA. In 1987, alone, clandestine American military aid to the

mujahideen amounted to $660 million.24 It turned out to be even more than what

America's most trusted ally at the time - Pakistan - was receiving from

Washington. But in truth this was the unaccounted money in the hands of both the

Pakistani counterparts involved in the Afghan jihad as well as their favourite

mujahideen to whom they were funnelling these resources in the name of the

jihad. This apart the mujahideen had also started generating their own funds

through the drug trade.

24 Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA and Global War against Terror, Permanent Black, 2004, p.141

89

Helmand was one of the provinces where opium poppy cultivation took a leap

from almost no production to the largest cultivator of the illicit crop during the

phase of the jihad. This region also witnessed a tussle between Hekmatyar's

forces and Mullah Nasim Akhundzada for control ov,er the poppy fields. The

region of Nangarhar, in eastern Afghanistan, ano~her opium poppy cultivating

district was under the control of Y ounis Khalis.

As already mentioned earlier, it was the Indo-China Wars that brought the French

and the American military and subsequently also civilians in contact with hard

and soft drugs as the soldiers and civilians carried their drug habits with them to

their homes. And that is what happened with the Russians soldiers serving in

Afghanistan as well. The Americans chose to exploit the memories of Indo-China

and laid the foundations of Operation Mosquito discussed in the earlier chapter,

which was to be executed on the Afghan political and military theatre.

Operation Mosquito once approved, the planning got underway, according to

which the Pakistani and Afghan operatives were to handle the distribution of the

black propaganda material. This would include, amongst other things, the

unsuppressed and abundant circulation of bogus issues of Krasnaya Zvezda (Red

Star) - the Soviet army newspaper - and other Russian newspapers carrying

demoralising articles and exhortations to desert the Red Army. Along side

Christian Bibles, hard and soft drugs were used uninhibitedly against the

90

'russkies' - as they disparagingly referred to as.25 Though conceived as a Franco-·~

American mission, William Casey, the CIA chief, wanted the involvement of the

lSI. Eventually, at the stage of execution, Operation Mosquito was never

implemented as a joint Franco-American Project as France soon dropped out after

providing the scheme. But despite the absence of the French brains at the time of

implementation, it was carried out in pretty much the fashion it had been

envisaged by them. Starting from the fake issues of newspapers, accompanied by

a wide variety of narcotics in large quantities ranging from hashish, opium straw -

a dried poppy product used in the area to make mildly narcotic tea - packets of

heroin and even small quantities of cocaine that had, as yet, not started being

produced in the Pakistani and Afghan laboratories despite the South Asian war

boom in drugs, did find their way into Kabul. This expensive habit was available

to Red Army recruits at extremely nominal prices or even as gifts and were highly

and easily accessible to the Soviet personnel.

The addiction amongst the Red Army forces was similar to the fate the Americans

had suffered in their anti-Communist crusades in Indo-China where the CIA had

deliberately encouraged drug trafficking to compensate their local tribal allies

who were helping them in their campaign against the Communists. But the blame

cannot rest squarely on the shoulders of the Americans for the Red Army's drug

addiction. What the Americans succeeded in doing was to exploit an existing

practise to the point of achieving for themselves a very strategic and decisive

advantage in this proxy war with the Soviets. As already discussed the growing of

poppy was very much a part of the agricultural set up of the Afghans and since,

25 John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press, 1999, p.l28

91

very often, even the family income depended on these seasonal enterprises the

fighters took time off from fighting to cultivate poppy and hashish crops.

The successful exploitation of their opium and marijuana crops, by the Afghans,

over a period of time had ensured that the drug habit gripped many officers and

men of the Soviet occupying forces. As a result by,the mid-1980s the Soviet high

command began to limit the stationing of some of the personnel and their units to

nine months. But this did not help the situation much or prevent the addiction

from growing or spreading. If anything then it simply speeded the return of more

and more soldiers back to Russia carrying the drug habit with them, and thus,

aggravating the incipient social problem on the home front even further. These

soldiers spread drug dependency in their homes, families, towns and cities. The

arms-for-drugs swap had a role to play amidst not just the mujahideen but the

Soviet troops as well as it funded the costly habit for the latter. Once the habit had

taken hold of them, to sustain it, it was not uncommon to find young soldiers

swapping ammunition for drugs with the very people that they were fighting. In

addition, the Red Army draftees who came from Central Asia already had the pre­

war habit of hashish consumption. The war contributed in accentuating it, as it did

alcohol addiction.

According to some Russian military historians and officers like, Lieutenant

Colonel Yuri Shvedov, who had served during the war with Afghanistan, there

definitely seemed to be a deliberate and systematic approach to the American, and

in particular to the CIA's policy with regard to Operation Mosquito's drug

trafficking guidelines despite the French intelligence having dropped out of the

92

plan.26 It is indeed worth contemplating how the Russian military personnel

surprisingly had very easy access to hash, opium and even heroin.

Besides, they got a little help from the fact that the Central Asian Republics of the

erstwhile Soviet Union had become significant producers of opium even before

the jihad started. For instance, Kyrgzstan before 1973 was the Soviet Union's

largest licit opium producer contributing 85 percent of the production and 16

percent of the world production.27 The American progrom got assistance as the

Central Asian draftees amongst the Soviet troops already had a pre-war drug habit

hence carrying it with them wherever they served. Moreover with the mujahideen

exploiting the cultivation of the illicit crop for raising funds, all the factors

simultaneously contributed towards the success of Operation Mosquito. As far as

the Americans were concerned, this was the best revenge they could have

imagined for Vietnam with the Russian having acted in pretty much the same

fashion as far as the North Vietnam was concerned. The Russians in their

investigations were believed to have found Geelani, the leader of the NIF, and

Dostum later, the chief culprits and beneficiaries of the drug trade.28 Yet, despite

these accusations levelled against them, the NIF remained a favourite with

journalists covering the war who wrote glowing accounts of these mujahideen.

This to many was the result of a deliberately and consciously cultivated image of

a respectable, reasonable and credible political fa9ade, specifically targeted

towards the western media. The Russians also believed that by 1980 most

26

27

28

John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press 1999, p.l30 UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An Internationctl Problem, Vienna, 2003, p.l8 John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press 1999, p.l30

93

American DEA personnel had been replaced by intelligence officers who behind

the garb of fighting the narcomafia actually put together the infrastructure for the

secret war against Afghanistan.

By 1980, Afghanistan was supplying 19 percent of the global demand for opium

and throughout the jihad years it grew at the rat~ of 14 percent per annum.29

Afghanistan had always exported opium, especially rich in morphine, up to 20%

in strength and before the war most of the opium was smuggled out of the country

and not consumed within it. Also, government control was purely symbolic in

these areas under poppy production, which were inhabited by militant tribes. The

American media is believed to have deliberately downplayed Afghanistan's

involvement in drug trafficking, in 1978-79 since the US administration had taken

a conscious decision to exploit the existing structures of the narcomafia and the

smugglers to topple the communist regime in Afghanistan.30 Soon these very

smugglers were glorified as 'freedom fighters' and their trafficking termed as

'battle for the religion.'

The exact manner and mode of implementing the Afghan jihad had been worked

out by the CIA, albeit in complete collaboration with the lSI of Pakistan. The lSI

was the executive agency for the jihad. The responsibilities of each of the three

parties involved- directly or indirectly- in the war were very clearly demarcated.

The Americans were responsible for the sourcing of the requirements for the

actual conduct of the war; hence, the CIA acquired weapons and specialists in

29

30

UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An International Problem, UN New York, 2003, p.89 John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press 1999, p.l30

94

guerrilla warfare from different countries and delivered them to the concerned

Pakistani authorities - the second link in this chain - along with the intelligence

and surveillance information on Afghanistan. The lSI was responsible for the

second leg and middle leg of this operation, which was the transport of weapons

to the border. They were also supposed to supervise the training of the Afghan

fighters inside Pakistan and coordinate their operatipns inside Afghanistan.

As far as the American administration was concerned, having learnt from their

lessons in Indochina this was to be a proxy war run through third and if needed,

even fourth parties. And this also meant as little contact with the mujahideen and

the field commanders, who were really carrying out the proxy war for them.

While it successfully removed American presence from the ground but it also

gave too much of independence to the 'subcontractors' of the jihad, which

eventually meant a lack of coherence in the American policy creating exactly the

space that was required for a full-fledged drug trade to flourish. 31 Map 8 on the

following page indicates the cities on either side of the border, which were to play

a significant role during the course of the jihad. Peshawar and Quetta were

important as far as the ISI-mujahideen operations were concerned. Besides, both

the lSI's Afghan headquarters as well as the lSI's main base- Rawalpindi and

Islamabad- from where the logistics for the Afghan jihad were worked out were

also located very close to the Afghan frontiers. This is the area that became the

organisational hub to launch the anti-Soviet jihad and with the growth in the arms

and narcotics trade, they also turned into, not just the important transit routes but

also one of the iargest 'bazaars' for trade in these two products.

31 Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA and Global War against Terror, Pennanent Black, 2004, p.l32

95

AN

96

t.

1\

~ 1\ 1\ /{\ 1\ AFGHANISTAN

1\ 1\ HA~RAJ~ /\~ /<0. 1\ PJIJ~­

/"<:\ IV\ !ohondond /'{\ /"(:\ 1\ 1'<\

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M

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PAKISTAN Sorpdlla

Source: Yousaf & Adkin, The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story, Jang Publishers, p.21

To

That the distribution of aid coming in from the Americans was asymmetrical in its

allocation was evidenced as the mujahideen felt the need to raise their own

resources through the length of the war. Abdul Haq, the first mujahideen field

commander to meet both President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher, claimed

that there were never enough resources to meet the demands of the jihad Not

only did the soldiers have to be paid, ammunition 'Ileeded to be bought but even

huge amounts of money was spent in just paying off bribes every time the fighters

landed in the government jails. Hence, he and his organisation had to depend on

the money that they could raise in their home province ofNangarhar.32

Alfred McCoy in his work, The Politics of Heroin traces the different steps in the

drug economy beginning with the peasant production?3 A combined enterprise

making use of the market wisdom of the peasants, the mujahideen 's abilities for

extortion and entrepreneurship, which was then organised and centralised under

the CIA's control is what gave it the face of a systemised economy. Just as the

Taliban were to do in the following decade, the mujahideen guerrillas, as they

seized territory within Afghanistan, ordered the peasants to plant opium and

collected tax from the sales as a kind of 'revolutionary tax.' This collection of tax

was read as tacit support for the cultivation by most of the poppy farmers. The

Taliban were to exploit the zakat towards the same purpose.34 That they would

have hardly put up a resistance is obvious considering that in terms of economic

returns, opium fetched five times more than wheat would for them. And the

32

33

34

John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press 1999, p.1 07 Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Lawrence Hill Books, Brooklyn, 1991, p. 77 Neamatullah Nojumi, The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan: Mass Mobilisation, Civil War and the Future of the Region, Palgrave, 2002, p.136

97

dividends only multiplied along the chain, which served to entrench it into a more

organised system. Prior to the jihad there had been no production of heroin in

Afghanistan. The traditional production had always been of opium directed more

towards the small, rural, regional markets. But the drug trade had received such a

fillip from all quarters involved in the Afghan jihad ....: the CIA, the lSI and the

local commanders that the picture had changed beyond recognition by the end of

the Soviet invasion.

By this time everybody was aware of the system that was in place. The drug

smugglers carried weapons with them into Afghanistan, which were bartered for

drugs, which they then carried back with them. The trade flourished on the basis

of a well-oiled network with hundreds of heroin laboratories dotting the Pakistani

side of the border operated by Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the

protection of Pakistani authorities. It was not without basis that these laboratories

were springing up in the rear of the Afghan battlefronts. Leaders of the Afghan

groups or 'gangs' -as they were called by the Russians- made their men smuggle

and sell drugs in Pakistan on the pretext of financing the jihad. 35 A new wave of

what was termed narcomania is what quite prophetically became a cause for alarm

as the mujahideen were seen as earning money by selling drugs to buy weapons,

which in turn would be used to expand their activities. And this in a continuous

cycle would only result in more drug addicts and more death and more crime. By

the end ofthejihadthe Pakistan-Afghan border alone was producing 75 percent

35 John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press 1999, p.131

98

of the world's opium, which was worth multi-billion dollars in revenue.36 But

addiction levels were also evidencing a rise.

The transportation of the weapons and other material was one of the crucial links

in this chain between the suppliers - the CIA - and t,he rnujahideen who were

actually fighting this proxy war for both the Americans and Pakistan. And this \,

link was the responsibility of the lSI and its corollary support agencies - in this

case the National Logistics Cell (NLC). The task of transporting these 'goods'

was carried out by the trucks provided by the Pakistani army's NLC, much like

Air America - the charter airline that had gained notoriety under the patronage of

the CIA - had done earlier in Laos. It was even reported in the local press on

several occasions, in 1985, that the 'drug is carried in NLC trucks, which come

sealed and are never checked by the police. This has been going on now for the

past three and a half years. ' 37 These trucks arrived with CIA arms from Karachi

and often returned loaded with heroin and they were protected from police

searches by the lSI. In any case the NLC was a transport service run by the

Pakistani military who were not blind to this pipeline. The final legal cover was

provided by the CIA. In fact during this entire decade when drug-dealing had

become an open secret the US DEA administration in Islamabad failed to instigate

any major seizures or arrests. It was evident that the Americans were shying away

from investigating charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies and that the US

narcotics policy in Afghanistan had been sacrificed in the face of the war against

Soviet influence in the region.

36

37

Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Muslim: Islam, the VSA and Global War Against Terror, Pennanent Black, 2004, p.143 Lawrence Lifschultz, 'Inside the Kingdom of Heroin,' The Nation, November 14, 1988, p.496

99

t

AN

100

Map9 Mujahideen Supply Routes During the Jihad

~ c::> ~~ ..

OESER T

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r::;:> c:::=C> Sovictt tiiP J)Iy routes

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- 1L. Source: Yousaf & Adkin, The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story, Jang Publishers, p.189

Map Y on the previous page shows the vanous bases usea by not JUSt tne :soviet

troops and their allies but also the mujahideen. While most of the Soviet bases

and supply routes were concentrated in the north, at Termez, in modern day

Uzbekistan, and the Kushka valley to be further supplied to Herat and Shindand,

along the Iranian border; in the case of the mujahideen their bases were in the east

and south - in Peshawar and Quetta respectively~ For the Soviets the Termez

supply base was the nucleus of their ordnance while their forward headquarters

were at Kabul. The Salang Highway, which was the arterial connection between

the two, also saw the maximum number of successful mujahideen ambushes. This

was their main and only supply route in this part of the country. The secondary

base at Kushka was to be the buffer against Iran.

A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) claimed

that it was not a coincidence that the rapid expansion of opium production in

Afghanistan could be traced back to exactly 1979, the same year that the US­

sponsored jihad began.38 And this is where Alfred McCoy draws parallels with

the situation in Burma, which had also been a victim of the CIA's interventions at

the beginning of the Cold War. A clear parallel could be drawn between the

manner in which the increase in the American agency's support to the Nationalist

Chinese (KMT) troops in the Shan states was reflected in the increase in Burma's

opium crop in the 1950s and the swelling in aid to the mujahideen guen·illas from

the CIA in the 1980s, which saw a near simultaneous expansion in the opium

38 UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan. An International Problem, UN New York, 2003, p.89

101

• production in Afghanistan which was then further linked to Pakistan's heroin

laboratories and eventually the world market.39

Table 9

Annual Growth Rate in Opium Production During the Jihad and

Civil War in Afghanistan, 1979-1994

1979-1989 1989-1994

14% 19%

Source: UNODC, The Opmm Economy rn Afghamstan: An International Problem, UN New York Publication 2003, p.94

That the mujhaideen were exploiting poppy cultivation to the fullest under

Afghanistan's war economy was evident from the fact that all through the jihad

years opium production registered an annual growth rate of 14 percent. But in the

aftermath of the jihad, once the Soviets had withdrawn, it went up by another five

percent and showed an annual growth rate of 19 percent till 1994, just before the

Taliban started making in roads.40 Though it is the Soviet occupation that had

triggered the development of an opium economy, the withdrawal of the Soviet

forces, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, with

structures of governance failing to be institutionalised in the midst of a

devastating civil war, it meant that the opium economy was now to become even

more entrenched in the domestic economy of the country.

FREEDOM FIGHTERS OR DRUG PEDDLERS

The irony was that the worst offenders in this trade - those who had maximised

profits from the trafficking in narcotics, eventually only contributed in completely

39

40

Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA and Global War Against Terror, Permanent Black, 2004, p.l43 UNO DC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan-An International Problem, UN New York Publication 2003, p .. 94

102

poisoning Afghani life with far longer lasting effects. At the end of the Afghan

war, the seven major mujaihideen groups were attributed with an annual opium

production of 800 metric tonnes, by Russian accounts, for the year 1989, which

was more than twice the annual national production of Pakistan and Iran

combined.41 These were the very people who had been hailed as the founding

fathers of Afghanistan by Reagan. One such, commander was Gulbuddin

Hekmatyar, who by no chance of faith, was to become one of Afghanistan's

leading drug lords. It was also no coincidence that Hekmatyar belonged to that

coterie of mujahideen, who enjoyed the patronage of the lSI and Pakistani

authorities in the distribution of funds towards the cause of the jihad. At the time

the CIA came in contact with him he was leading the Hizb-i-lslami, a group that

had near negligent support in Afghanistan. Yet, as the table earlier in this chapter

reflects, they were the ones who received the lion's share of the arms supplied by

the CIA. Having enjoyed the privilege of receiving more than half the covert CIA

resources, which had been to the tune of nearly $2 billion in the ten-year period, it

was by virtue of the size of this largesse that he received - a reflection of the tacit

backing from both the US and Pakistan authorities - that he was also able to

dominate the Afghan mujahideen in organisation and influence. 42

With this guaranteed long-term subsidy they grew into the mujahideen 's largest

guerrilla army, one that Hekmatyar exploited to the hilt to then go on to have a

large share in Afghanistan's narcotics industry. He had been given a free hand to

run the Afghan refugee camps sprawled around Peshawar, which he ran like a

41

42

John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and lntetnational Terrorism, Pluto Press, 1999, p.l3l Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA and Global War Against Terror, Permanent Black, 2004, p.158

103

drug lord would - under a reign of terror. His terror tactics had undergone little

change since his student days. Instead ofwinning support to his side, as a guerrilla

army would, he simply killed his opponents. In fact, from the beginning of the

covert war itself other mujahideen leaders had consistently accused his men of

excessive violence to take control of rival resistance groups and establishing their

party's political hegemony. In December 1978, it was alleged that Hekmatyar's

supporters had killed 10 members ofRabbani's group in the Parchinar area. And

little over a decade later, things had changed little when in the Takhar massacre of

1989 the Hizb-i-Islami was reported to have slaughtered 30 Jamiat-i-lslami

men.43 The reason why he was never reined in, either by the lSI or the CIA, was

also because of their shared objective of not being interested in a compromise

settlement for Afghanistan. What they really hoped for was that the anti-

Communist radicallslamists would kill the Russians and slowly but steadily bleed

the Soviet Union dry. According to the Soviets the narcotics business had become

so entrenched that the vast fields of poppy that had come up on either side of the

Pak-Afghan border were actually just one part of a complete narcotics set up, with

well-planned routes for the trafficking and a whole network of dozens of factories

for processing the raw material into morphine base and heroin.

The Soviet account of the wartime narco-business under the mujahideen is at

divergence with the western one in that, the Russians, in their early investigations

on the drug operations, suspected the National Islamic Front (NIF) headed by

Sayyad Ahmed Geelani (already mentioned earlier in the chapter). An Afghan

aristocrat with a strong business bent which he wisely used by investing profits

43 Lawrence Lifschultz, 'Dangerous Liaison: The CIA-lSI Connection, Newsline, November 1989, p.54

104

that he earned from the sales franchise of Peugeot cars in Kabul. According to the

Soviet intelligence report on his NIF they were found to hold significant financial

resources.44 Apart from the aid from various foundations in the United States,

Western Europe and the Arab countries they were also accused with making

profits from the sales of drugs and exacting taxes from the population. According

to them, the real 'King of Heroin' was Geelani who had long surpassed

Hekrnatyar in his overwhelming control over the majority of the operations of the

. fi 45 opmm rna ta.

The challenge to Hekmatyar' s position and his real opposition came from Mullah

Nasim Akhundzada, more popularly known as the 'King of Heroin,' primarily the

area of operations for both were the same - Helmand. While the extensive poppy-

opium fields of Helmand were under the control of Mullah Nasim, also a

commander for the Movement for Islamic Revolution; Hekmatyar on the other

hand had seven heroin refineries to his name, located in the same area - at the

southern end of Helmand, just inside Pakistani, in Koh-i-Sultan.46 The poppy was

processed at these refineries. With Akhundzada's control over 'Afghanistan's

breadbasket,' the best-irrigated lands in the northern Helmand valley, he, in effect

came to control the drug trade as this province was to become the largest producer

of poppy in Afghanistan. Under his directive poppy was to be planted on half of

all peasant holdings. Those landowners who defied his opium quota directives

were killed. By 1986, Helmand was clinically dotted by extensive poppy fields in

44

45

46

Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA and Global War Against Terror, Pennanent Black, 2004, p.l58 John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press 1999, p.l31 Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Muslim: Islam, the USA and the Global War Against Terror, Pennanent Black 2004, p.l45

105

every village and town. And this was explained as the need of the hour to garner

resources to be able to sustain the holy war against the Russian non-believers.

It was also commonly believed that General Rashid Dostum, the leader of the

ethnic Uzbek militia, was also involved in earning huge profits by exporting drugs

via Uzbekistan. In May 1996, a Russian daily newspaper, Konsomolskaya

Pravda, published exposes about an elaborate drug trafficking network between

Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Chechnya involving 'senior officials' of the states.

The story, which was never refuted by any one in authority, named Russians and

Chechens linked to the KGB and General Rashid Dostum.47 A one-time ally of

the Russians, Dostum changed sides and fought against them after they withdrew

support from Najibullah's Communist regime in 1991. In fact, Dostum's military

career has been characterised by his continuous defections. While in the in the

pro-Soviet government in Kabul he had been in-charge of the vicious secret

police. But now sensing the Soviet collapse he was quick to change alliances and

became the aggressor in the civil war. According to these reports, opium was

collected in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was one of the

largest producers of opium, and then sent to Termez in Uzbekistan, from where it

was airlifted to Samarkand by General Dostum's own helicopter force, each

carrying two-thirds of one metric ton at a time.

In fact, very often, instead of fighting the jihad together as they were expected to

do, these warlords played out their personal rivalries against each other and most

of the time it was for control over the flourishing drug trade. In 1988-1989, when

47 John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press, 1999, p.l55

the Afghan jihad was at its pinnacle, the most savage battle over turf was not one

fought between the mujahideen and the Soviet troops but between Hekmatyar' s

forces who, over the control of Helmand's opium harvest, challenged Mullah

Nasim's rule. The battle lasted till the spring of 1989 with both sides suffering

heavy casualties.48 But these were but small prices to pay for the dividends that

were to come from a larger share in the control over this illicit trade. It was this

encounter between the two groups - and not any with Soviet or Afghan

government forces - that turned out to be the largest single battle in the Afghan

jihad. Eventually Mullah Nasim retained his control over the Helmand valley.

This area would also later be a battleground for control for very nearly the same

reasons.

Opium production accelerated in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal because

it provided the only viable source of income for the warring factions. It had

already proven itself to be a feasible crop for cultivation and rural livelihood and

in contrast to the destroyed licit agricultural sector, had developed systems and

infrastructure that actually functioned. After the Soviet withdrawal the external

sources of income had started drying up for the mujahideen. Opium became the

best option available to them and an important method of generating income and

thereby they further d~veloped the intrinsic systems for the growth of the trade

that had already begun in the 1980s. In parallel, food prices rose by five to ten

percent and the government financed its growing budget deficits by printing

48 Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim Bad Musiim: Islam, the USA and the Global War Against Terror, Permanent Black 2004, p.l45

107

money. People lost faith in the currency and opium increasingly became a means

of savings and exchange- in effect the alternate economy.49

THE DRUG LORDS AND THEIR MASTERS

"The government which could arrest 20,000 political workers overnight is unable

to lay hands on 100 drug smugglers who are play4Ig with the lives of millions of

people in the world. "50 By 1985 this was not just an expression of Benazir

Bhutto's sense of popular exasperation but the general mood of the people

keeping in mind that Pakistan's heroin addict population had risen from point zero

to 650,000 in a span of barely six years. 51

Several references were made to the extent of the involvement of not just the

mujahideen in the drug trade but also the Pakistani political elite, which in truth,

is what really allowed the mujahideen and the warlords to sustain their enterprise.

But that the involvement would not leave even General Zia untouched came to

light with the arrest of Raza Qureshi, a Pakistani smuggler in Oslo as early as

December 1983.52 Turned approver to lessen his own sentence, he carried many

courier runs into Pakistan under the surveillance of the Norwegian police. Three

names of persons from the Pakistan heroin-based syndicate came up, one of

whom was the Vice President of Habib Bank, Hamid Hasnain, also considered

49

50

51

52

UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An International Problem, Vienna, 2003, p.94 Lawrence Lifschultz, The Heroin Empire, Newsline, July 1989, p.66 Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: The Story of the Afghan Warlords, Pan Books 2000, p.122 Lawrence Lifschultz, 'Inside the Kingdom of Heroin,' The Nation, November 14, 1988, p.492

108

very close to President Zia and his family. 53 He is believed to have handled all

private banking matters for the President and his family for more than five years.

Later in 1986, an army Major, Zahooruddin Afridi, was arrested carrying 220

kilos high-grade heroin and two months later an air force officer - flight

Lieutenant Khalilur Rehman - was intercepted on his 'fifth mission,' again

carrying 220 kilos of the same high-grade heroin. Even by most conservative

estimates the total value of this complete consignment would have been $600

million in Europe and the United States, almost equivalent to the covert military

aid to the mujahideen from the Americans the following year. 54

Quite clearly the narco-elite had established themselves within this narco industry

that was now thriving in the region with Afghanistan at its epicentre since the raw

material came mostly from there and was also processed within the region before

it was ready for export. The laboratories along the Pak-Afghan border were

believed to be functioning under the protection of none other than General Fazle

Haq, a close confidante of General Zia. General Haq, the Chief Minister and

former Governor of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) was very often

disparagingly referred to as "our own Noriega."55 The allegations surrounding the

Pakistani army, with regard to the heroin trade, very often zoomed in on the same

people who were involved in the covert effort in support of the Afghan war. In

fact, it was soon very commonly heard that "if you control the poppy fields,

53

54

55

Lawrence Lifschultz, 'Pakistan: The Kingdom of Heroin,' in Alfred McCoy and Alan Block (ed.) War on Drugs: Studies in the Failure of US Narcotics Policy, Westview Press, USA, 1992, p. 320 Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: the Story of the Afghan Warlords, Pan Books 2000, p.l21 Lawrence Lifschultz, 'Inside the Kingdom of Heroin,' The Nation, November 14, 1988, p.496

109

Karachi, and the road that links the two, you will be so rich that you will control

Pakistan. "56

In the following decade, starting from 1989, around US$1 00 million of western

aid was made available to Pakistan. Poppy cultivation was drastically reduced

from a high of 800 metric tonnes to 24 tonnes by 1997 and two tonnes by 1999.57

\

Crop substitution projects in Pakistan- unlike the Taliban's lackadaisical attitude

to the same as we shall discover in the following chapters - proved to be hugely

successful. But success was evident in only the aspect of cultivation as poppy

crops reduced but the actual narcotics industry in the region did not seem to suffer

much. This was primarily because the dealers, the transport and narco mafia were

never really eradicated along with the crops. They simply lay dormant only to be

stirred back into the highly profitable business with the arrival of the Taliban and

the subsequent boost in Afghan heroin production. What occurred, essentially,

was an intra-regional shift with all the poppy cultivation finding fertile ground,

quite literally, in adjacent Afghanistan. Though, itself, no longer a heroin

producer, Pakistan became an important transport route for the Taliban's opium

exports. Just like Pakistan had acted as the brains behind the execution of the

jihad, in a sense, its role and involvement in the growth of the opium trade had

been quite similar. While those involved brought the gains from the trade home,

yet the trade operated from adjacent soil. It was like the revival of a dormant

business with just new businessmen at the helm of affairs. Or akin to the takeover

of a sick industry in robust new hands with a fresh thrust of energy. The old

business had simply moved into the hands of new owners. The same dealers,

56 Lawrence Lifschultz, 'The Heroin Empire,' Newsline, July 1989, p.7l Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: the Story of the Afghan Warlords, Pan Books 2000, pp.l22 57

110

truck drivers, madrassas and government contacts and the arms, fuel and food

supply chain that provided the Taliban with its supplies also funnelled drugs, just

as the arms pipeline for the mujahideen had done in the 1980s.

Heroin addiction and drug money fuelled law and order problems, unemployment

and allowed ethnic and sectarian extremist groups to arm themselves. The trade \

had grown so fast and turned itself into such a well-oiled industry that arms-for-

drugs had worked out to be a very well operated system. Though this did not miss

the Americans but they played their cards very close to the chest. Pakistan once

again was accused by the Clinton administration of slipping back into bad habits.

While on the one hand they took a rigid stance by refusing to certify that Pakistan

had in effect curbed narcotics production but at the same time they gave them a

waiver on the grounds of American national security interests. Their national

interests in the region were far more important than to risk it at the altar of an

international drug enforcement commitment. As export routes multiplied in all

directions there was a dramatic increase in drug consumption across the region

and the drug problem no longer remained confined to just Afghanistan and

Pakistan.

Table 10

Heroin Addicts in Pakistan, 1979-1999

Year 1979 1986 1992 1999

No. of Addicts Nil 650,000 3 million 5 million

Source: compiled from Ahmed Rashid, Tahban:The Story of the Afghan Warlords, Pan Books 2000, p.l22

Once hailed as the toasts of the western media, these freedom fighters who

resisted the collective might of the great Soviet empire in the face of

Ill

overwhelming odds, the mujahideen were soon to be discarded as reactionaries,

fighting amongst themselves and unable to form a sustainable, stable government

by the same west that had placed them on their pedestals and even armed them

with a gamut of sophisticated weaponry in the first place. With the political

situation suddenly becoming more complex than had been envisioned, the

infighting continued relentlessly. With their immediate concerns met - the

withdrawal of the Soviet troops - the world turned its back to the country after

arming the holy warriors to their teeth and then leaving them to unleash and

exhaust their ammunition upon one another.

By the time the last Russian soldiers had marched out of Afghanistan in February

1989, over a million human lives and billions of dollars worth of money had been

expended to win the war. 58 While under the watchful eye of President Zia-ul-Haq

and the guidance of the lSI the anti-Soviet resistance had managed to shape up

into efficient and competing guerrilla forces, once the Soviets left and the

immediate goals were met for the major players - mainly Pakistan and the US -

these very 'freedom fighters' broke down into congeries of well-trained terrorists

bent upon destroying secular societies all over the world. The continuing Islamist

jihad and its export around the world had become a self-financing business for

many. This was apart from the money that was being pumped in by the CIA, Arab

sheikhs, kings and financiers. The profitable sale and resale of gifted weapons -

from rifles to Stinger missiles and other commodities- those that were given free

of cost to the fighters and their Pakistani sponsors often ended up reaching arms

salesmen. As the Soviets started to withdraw many volunteers of the jihad both

58 John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press 1999, p.l06

112

Arab-Afghan and non-Arab, actually carried the CIA training manuals and

military hardware back with them to the wars they were engaged in back home, in

Algeria, Egypt, Yemen or other areas where they were fighting battles for Islamist

causes such as Bosnia and Kashmir. Some of the Afghan leaders - who had

already built large drug networks by now - following the Soviet pullout, once they

fell out with each other actually ended up slaughtering each other. The opium-

producing Golden Crescent countries of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan now

became the Shangri La for the drug cartels and networks of the east and west, of

almost Colombian proportions. Just the way the cause of the holy war had been

sponsored by drug money during Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, following the

Soviet withdrawal now this same money helped to finance the guerrilla wars and

Islamist causes in Algeria, Egypt, Bosnia, Kashmir and the Philippines.

In Afghanistan, opium production was approximately 300 tonnes in 1979, much

lower than even Pakistan's average.59 The Soviet invasion, the government's loss

of control over the territory, the war conducted against the Communists by the

mujahideen, the destruction of legal crops and the involvement of the Pakistani

secret service in the commercialisation of heroin caused production to rise to

1,500 tonnes in 1992; and during the course of the civil war, it increased to

approximately 2,500 tonnes in 1998, which each involved party exploiting the

lucrative trade to fund their personal battles.60 Just before the Taliban appeared

59

60

Lawrence Lifschultz, 'The Heroin Empire,' pp.342-343 in McCoy and Block (ed.), War on Drugs: Studies in the Failure of US Narcotics Policy, WestView Press, USA, 1992 Conflict, Drugs and Mafia Activities, Contribution to the Preparatory Work for the Hague Peace Conference May 11-16, 1999,

http: I lwww. parl.gc. ca/3 7 I 1 lparlbuslcommbuslsenateiCom -elille-elpresentation-ellabrousse2-e. hun

113

upon the political stage, in 1994, with the civil war at its apex opium production

also registered a new high at 3,400 metric tonnes. 61

By the mid-1990s, US financial aid to the Afghan holy warriors had already

become a distant memory. The Americans lost strategic depth in the region at a

time when it proved to be disastrous for the inten:tational community. While the

Afghan mujahideen dismembered into a internecine civil war, some of the 'holy

warriors' carried their jihad further afield. With the money and weapons all out

there and having picked up their lessons in how to garner resources during the

Afghan war, they were capable of carrying out their independent wars. The BCCI,

(whose antecedents have been discussed in detail in Chapter 5) had also shut

shop. But the continuing post-1989 jihad in Egypt, Algeria, and the Philippines

was still being financed by Osama bin Laden and lesser players who had

privatised world terrorism and made it into a major enterprise.

One of the biggest threats in this privatisation process was the financing of the

jihad and the violence, which followed through the cultivation, processing and

worldwide trafficking in drugs. In the 1980s, a vast amount of drugs had begun to

flow out of Afghanistan and Pakistan to Europe, the America and South East

Asia. By the late 1990s, the flow, especially of opium, morphine base and even

refined heroin as well as marijuana in various forms had reached epic proportions.

Its impact was such that this plague, in many ways a direct consequence of the

Afghan War, enriched drug merchants but destroyed the lives of millions.

61 UNODC, Global Illicit Drug Trends 2003, Vienna, 2003, p.172

114

While in the early 1980s for many European countries the Golden Triangle was

still the main source of heroin but Afghanistan was gradually making its presence

felt in the case of opiates. In the countries neighbouring Afghanistan and in the

former Soviet republics virtually all illegally imported opiates were coming from

Afghanistan. The trading patterns of opium and heroin that had been developed in

this period - the late 1980s - continued in the future as well as are reflective in

the seizures patterns in the region running almost parallel to the trends in poppy

cultivation. For instance, high seizures in Iran were the result of growth in

cultivation in southern Afghanistan while a corresponding decline in Pakistan was

the result of lower cultivation levels in the eastern provinces. And these

trafficking patterns have continued, if not in the trade of the opium then in a

reverse trend in the smuggling of precursor chemicals. Opium production in

Afghanistan, in the period between 1980 and 2002 grew at the rate of 15 percent

per annum, which was twice as fast as the global opium production rate of 8

percent. By 1980, Afghanistan was already producing 19 percent of the world

opium, which would in a span of a decade and a half jump to 52 percent of the

global total.62

The excessively independent functioning of the various departments within the

American administration - to the extent that one could be working at cross-

purposes with the other - created incongruous contradictions of American policy

towards the Golden Crescent countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran

especially during the 1980s and 1990s. This is exactly what happened in the case

of the US DEA operating in Pakistan. They had several officers from the CIA

62 UNODC, The Opium Economy of Afghanistan: An International Problem, UN New York, 2003, p.89

115

who had been engaged in collecting overseas narcotics intelligence since 197 5

and had even identified nearly 40 significant narcotics syndicates in Pakistan, yet

not a single syndicate was broken up as the natural culmination of their efforts. 63

Moreover, Operation Mosquito's drug aspect, that is, the deliberate efforts to

spread drug addiction in the Soviet army and, as a direct consequence of the same,

into Soviet and post-Soviet society where it acquired gigantic proportions was not

only a success but also determined the manner in which the Russian Federation

subsequently, and he Central Asian Republics became important components of

the narcotics trade stemming from the region

President George Bush in 1987 and President Clinton during both his tenures in

the 1990s declared 'war on drugs.' But in theory and practise the implementation

of the grandiose announcement did not seem very different from the Taliban's

declaration on the banning of poppy production on the one hand and its obvious

flourishing trade and sales on the other because the drug wars' multi-million

dollar budget could not cope with the floodtide of drugs out of South Asia in the

wake of the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its allies in order to finance this

proxy US-Soviet. war tolerated the rise of the biggest drug empires that were ever

seen east of the Colombian cocaine cartels. Simultaneously, the US DEA and

other agencies were spending enormous amounts of the taxpayers' money to curb

the tidal wave of drugs emanating from South Asia. But the larger amount of

expenditure on the jihad effort worked contrary to this endeavour.

63 Lawrence Lifschultz, 'Inside the Kingdom of Heroin,' The Nation, November 14, 1988, p.496 .

116

When the Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 they ensured they left behind a pro­

Soviet compliant regime, represented by Mohammad Najibullah, to continue the

fight with the mujahideen. This regime endured till 1992 but immediately after its

fall factional fighting amongst the mujahideen tore up all hopes, ifthere were any,

of it being replaced by a more stable and anti-communist government. After the

collapse of the Najib regime on April 19, 1992 the government troops

unconditionally surrendered to the mujahideen forces led by Ismail Khan, who

made Herat the administrative centre of the region.64 Starting by disarming all

warlords and local militia groups in the region, particularly in Herat, he went on to

integrate his mujahideen officers, many of whom had worked at the rank of

mujahideen in the local administration, into the regular army. In his efforts to

bring greater civic support for the administration, Ismail Khan organised a city

council comprised of popular non-government individuals with varied ethnic,

religious and political backgrounds. This was the time, which also witnessed the

backward migration of thousands of Afghan refugees who chose to return home.

In the process of war and peace in Afghanistan, Herat' s strategic location as a

commercial centre for the region, and a door to Central Asia and the Persian Gulf

gave this province an important geopolitical position, thereby, awakening the

potential of it regaining some of its historical commercial significance. Ismail

Khan's political and military role in regional development assumed significance

and he came under pressure from his neighbours. While on the one hand, Pakistan

was not happy with his support of Massoud and Rabbani against Hekmatyar, Iran,

on the other hand, was demanding more authority for the pro-Iranian political

elements. And on the internal front starting from 1992 tiil the fall of Herat in

64 Neamotullah Nojumi, The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Palgrave 2002, p.l41

117

1995, a massive, organised campaign was formed against Ismail Khan within the

local and regional administrations.65 His forces pushed back General Dostum's

forces that attempted to capture Badghis while at the same time Khan sent arms

and ammunition to support Massoud in Kabul. The internal conflicts had taken

such proportions that he found himself sucked into them by virtue of his

affiliations. His involvement in the conflict betwe,en Hekmatyar-Dostum against

Rabbani-Massoud reduced his administrative and military ability. With this

involvement, Ismail Khan slipped into the civil war that he had attempted to avoid

so many times. This situation continued until 1996, when the Taliban who had

already made their appearance on the Afghan political scene in 1994, started

making serious successful advances into Kabul, Herat and other important cities

and started introducing a brutal feudal theocracy. He was eventually captured by

the Taliban forces in 1996 and lodged in a Taliban prison only to make a

sensational escape in March 2000 and restart his anti-Taliban activities.66 Ismail

Khan had been one of the few mujahideen commanders who had managed to

retain a semblance of order in his province during the Afghan civil war of the

early 1990s.

One of the major achievements of the Tali ban was that they managed to disarm most

of the factions. Only ten percent of the country in the northern parts especially in the

Panjsher valley was held by the Northern Alliance headed by Ahmed Shah Massoud,

the Lion of Panjsher. Both sides exploited the opium trade to their advantage through

the entire period of the factional fighting.

65

66 Neamotullah Nojumi, The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Palgrave 2002, p.145 William Maley (ed.), Afghanistan and the Taliban: The Rebirth of Fundamentalism?, Penguin, India, 2001, p.xii

118

The Afghanjihadwas one ofthe longest and bloodiest wars after World War II. It

left more than 15,000 Soviets and more than 350,000 Afghans dead, 250,000

injured, and created close to 5 millions refugees all around the world between

1979 and 1989.67 According to many Afghan sources immediately after the Soviet

invasion in 1979,25,000 civilians were killed injust one day's fighting in Herat. 68

Kabul bore the brunt of most of the internal displacement. With severe and

relentless bombing in the country-side Kabul's population swelled from a pre-war

750,000 to an unmanageable 2,000,000. Close to 80 percent of the wounded being

treated in 1984 were civilians.69 With the destruction of the entire economy and

urban infrastructure the people were left with little choice but to join the war

effort for survival. From a pre-war 77 percent the agricultural production had

come down to 45 percent caused by the Soviet invasion and ensuing civil war.

Correspondingly even the irrigation system that functioned was only 36 percent of

its earlier levels. 70 Of these available resources a substantial amount was

dedicated to poppy cultivation. The Afghan Conflict turned into a full-fledged

Civil War when the Afghan mujahideen, after the Soviets left, started their tussle

for power. More than 50,000 people were killed as a result of fighting amongst

mujaheddin factions since 1992.71 The long and beneficial war against the Kabul

regime and Soviet troops actually corrupted many of the mujahideen. Ethnic

67

68

69

70

71

'Who is Who in the Afghan Civil War,' BBC Online, October 20, 2001, www .afghan-info.com Magnus and Naby, Afghanistan: Mullah, Marx and Mujahid, Harper Collins Publishers, 1998, p.l57 Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Ta/ibaa, Da Capo Press, 2002, p.255 Neamotullah Nojumi, The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Palgrave, 2002, p.214 'Who is Who in the Afghan Civil War,' BBC Online, October 20, 200 I, www.afghan-info.com,

119

differences and rivalry only resulted in bloody fractional fighting and crimes

against each other.

Table 11

The Casualties of the Jihad and the Civil War

Soviets Afghans Injured Refugees

1979-89 15,000 350,000 250,000 5 million \

' ..

Source: data compiled from Who IS whom the Afghan C1vli War,' BBC On/me, October 20, 2001, www.afghan-info.com, and Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan, Da Capo Press, 2002, p.255

While the cost to human life was unimaginable, the money that had been poured

into the region, by its extent and scope, is what really sustained the war for ten

long years with devastating and long-lasting effects on the populace. As far of the

Soviets were concerned all the years of money spent on building the relationship

with Afghanistan since 1919 had got washed away with the invasion of 1979 and

the military hardware supplied by them to the government was to find its way into

the hands of the resistance forces with the barrels pointed at them. Competing

with the vast resources of the west were proving to be costly for the Afghan

Communist government and its Soviet mentors very early in the war itself. The

total cost, in 1980, of helping the Afghan resistance on a modest scale after only a

year of Soviet occupation had reached $100 million.72 When compared to the

costs that were shared equally with the Saudis accumulated in each year of the

jihad till 1989 it was a meagre amount. By February 1980 Saudi Arabia was

matching the American financial contribution to the war dollar by dollar a fact

that did not go unmissed by the CIA as well, and by early 1980 Saudi Arabia was

72 Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, Da Capo Press, 2002, p.273

120

already providing more funding than even the American administration. 73 In fact,

early in the Afghan jihad the American aid that reached the mujahideen was an

insignificant amount of US $30 million, when compared how it multiplied

exponentially over the years.74 The annual American Black Budgets -the secret

funds of the Pentagon meant for financing the jihad - had never exceeded $9

billion. But America's the largest covert war,\ once it became the CIA's

responsibility, changed all that. By 1990, the Black Budget had actually

quadrupled to $36 billion a year.75 Having turned down the offer of $400 million

as peanuts in 1980, President Zia was able to secure $3.2 billion from Reagan.76

And as the war progressed, its growing demands ensured that in a short span of

six years between 1980 and 1986 the CIA provided $2 billion in military aid to

holy warriors, including $750 million in Congressionally-approved aid. 77 By

1989, once the Soviets withdrew, the situation had undergone a drastic change.

While American aid fell drastically as they speeded up the process of disengaging

from the region, even six months after the withdrawal the Soviets were sending

4000 planeloads of weapons and supplies and their aid through 1989 went up to

$300 million. The US aid to the mujahideen meanwhile had slipped to $30-40

million.78

73

74

75

76

77

78

Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: !slam, the USA and the Global War Against Terror, Pennanent Black, 2004, p.59 Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban. Da Capo Press, 2002, p.250 John K.Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press, I999,p.I08 Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, Da Capo Press, 2002, p.251 Lawrence Lifschultz, 'The Heroin Empire,' p. 320, in McCoy and Block (ed.), War on Drugs: Studies in the Failure of US Narcotics Policy, Westview Press, 1992 Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, Da Capo Press, 2002, p.273

121

In just six years of war the military technology that had reached the mujahideen

was stupendous by any standards. From Enfield rifles in 1978 they were handling

Stinger missiles in 1986. The consequences of this technology were as direct and

by the time the Soviets withdrew in 1989 they were leaving behind 500,000

widows with no sources of survival other than their own employment. 79 In

conditions where an Afghan could barely afford even a single loaf of bread the

only options left to them was to either participate in the political wars or become a

theology student in the Taliban-run schools. These schools attracted hungry

orphans where anybody could have a piece of bread, a bowl of soup, read the

Quran, memorise prayers and later join the Taliban forces. This was the only

remaining option for employment with the others being emigration, smuggling

and the war.

Dr. Nour Ali, the former Afghan Commerce Minister between 1965 and 1969,

very aptly summed up the situation of Afghanistan when he said, "Afghanistan

has been, in fact, the victim of double military aggressions: the USSR aggression

and USA's aggression. These aggressions, though military dissimilar, politically

were conducted in a considerably similar manner. Both have been managed in

collaboration with some priorly fooled, duped, and deceived Afghan nationals.

USSR used villainously the leading members of the Soviet made Afghan

Communist party, the USA made use malignantly of its recruitees, the warring

faction leaders. In terms of their objectives, if the aim of Moscow was to expand

further South, that of Washington has been to repulse the Red Army with a view

to move in due course further North and West in betraying Afghan people, by

79 Neamotullah Nojumi, The Rise of the Ta/iban in Afghanistan, Palgrave, 2002, p.207

122

using its blood, but denying its national sovereignty for choosing the government

of its own preference. This is evidenced by the fact that although the USSR armed

aggression and occupation is a long time since over, the USA aggression and

occupation is-in connivance with its regional allies-persisting."80

80 Nour Ali; U.S. -UN Conspiracy Against the People of Afghanistan, 1998, www .greybeard9 5a.cornlwww .afghan-info.com/Research _Articles

123