afghanistanmilitary training be channelled through the Inter-Service Intelligence (isi),
Pakistan’s equivalent of the cia. Later, when Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Britain
and France joined the military campaign, they too had to agree to the same
conditions. The isi then used its position of power to channel weapons and
cash to those mujahidin factions who were most sympathetic to Zia’s and
Pakistan’s interests, in particular to factions with close ties with Pakistan’s
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami (jui), the Islamist party that had supported and
legitimized Zia’s coup.
Pakistan also exploited the supply and delivery of aid to control
the Afghan resistance’s political agenda and to extend its influence into
Afghanistan’s Pushtun belt. Later, the isi set up training bases across the
Afghan frontier to train militants for attacks on Indian-held Kashmir. The
usa also rearmed the Pakistan military and when Zia-ul-Haq cancelled
elections, banned political parties and Islamized Pakistan’s Constitution,
the usa and nato countries made only token objections. Pakistan’s econ-
omy too benefited from the millions of dollars of aid and assistance that
poured in to meet the refugee crisis.
The decision to arm the Peshawar Islamist mujahidin was a body
blow to the Muhammadzais and Afghan royalists. They expected the usa
would support the return of the monarchy, especially since, in their view,
monarchists were the most pro-Western and progressive party, many of
whose leaders had studied in American institutions as well as in France and
Germany. Zia-ul-Haq, however, had no interest in restoring the monarchy
and risking a revival of the Pushtunistan issue, while the cia regarded the
royalist mujahidin as militarily ineffective. When the king’s party called a
Loya Jirga in Peshawar, in an attempt to unify the resistance in the name
of Zahir Shah, the five main Sunni Islamist parties walked out and set up
a rival shura, sidelining the royalists in the process. Many Muhammadzais
eventually applied for, and were granted, asylum in North America and
European countries and watched while their political enemies were armed
to the teeth and feted by the leaders of the Western world.
The isi’s preferred allies were all former members of Niyazi’s Muslim
Brotherhood network, which in the 1960s and ’70s had been responsible
for violent protests against the secularizing policies of King Zahir Shah’s
administrations on the one hand and the pdpa on the other. These Islamist
militias were supplied with a vast arsenal of Soviet-made weaponry, mostly
from Egypt, as well as millions of dollars in cash, while their leaders became
the spokesmen for Afghanistan’s political destiny on the international stage.
The bulk of the cia arms and cash went to Gulbudin Hikmatyar’s Hizb-i
Islami since the isi regarded this militia to be the most pro-Pakistani, while