afghanistandiverse of all the mujahidin parties. Unlike the other Peshawar-based
leaders, Rabbani was not a Pushtun but a Tajik from Badakhshan, and his
militia consisted mostly of Persian-speakers, Turkmans, Uzbeks, Aimaqs,
Badakhshanis, Panjshiris, Heratis and a few disillusioned royalists. Since
Hikmatyar regarded Jami‘at in general and Ahmad Shah Mas‘ud in particular
as a rival, the isi did not fund or arm Mas‘ud and it was several years before
the cia woke up to the fact that Mas‘ud was the most effective battlefield
commander. In 1983 Mas‘ud set up his own autonomous movement known
as Shura-yi Nazar, the Supervisory Council, and eventually the cia, Britain
and France began to arm him directly without bothering to involve the isi.
Very few of these Peshawar Islamist leaders had any military training,
let alone combat experience. Rabbani, Sayyaf, Haqqani and Khalis were
theologians while Hikmatyar’s military credentials were limited to two
years in Kabul’s Military College. Ahmad Shah Mas‘ud’s father had been a
colonel in the Afghan army, but Mas‘ud himself had trained as an engineer.
However, Mas‘ud was an avid reader of military history and manuals of
guerrilla warfare and used this knowledge to good effect when fighting
Soviet and government forces. The lack of generalship within the mujahidin
leadership often meant poor planning and the absence of coordination,
especially in the early days, though later isi and cia training improved
tactical planning. Furthermore, the mujahidin lacked heavy weaponry,
in particular any effective deterrent to combat the Soviet’s air supremacy.
In the Gurziwan region of Faryab, some mujahidin used British-made
Second World War Lee–Enfield rifles and at least one former mujahid,
who was a renowned hunter and marksman, preferred his ancient, flintlock
jezail. In Badghis, Isma’il Khan formed a camel regiment with swivel guns,
while in other areas of northern Afghanistan Uzbek, Turkman and Aimaq
mujahidin attacked Soviet armoured columns on horseback. Despite the
odds being heavily stacked against them, the mujahidin succeeded in tying
down the Soviet army in a protracted, asymmetrical war, and while foreign
money and weapons made this possible, it was the courage and tenacity
of ordinary Afghans that eventually forced the Soviet leadership to accept
the war was unwinnable. It came, though, at a terrible cost. More than a
million Afghans died as a direct or indirect consequence of the conflict,
while hundreds of thousands were maimed for life by war wounds or
stepping on anti-personnel mines.
As the proxy war ground on, u.s. funding for the Peshawar mujahidin
burgeoned. President Carter initially approved a meagre $20 million for
the resistance, but after Ronald Reagan became President in early 1981, the
military and financial aid increased year on year. By 1983 the cia’s budget