330 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
Reagan could see no advantage for America in easing the USSR’s
difficulties since he had no guarantee that the Politburo would not
change its policy back to occupation. Soviet leaders had exploited
American difficulties at the end of the Vietnam war, and now they
were going to discover how that had felt. In March 1986 the President
sanctioned measures to supply the mujahidin with Stinger missiles.
The first such missiles soon arrived in Pakistan for onward dispatch to
Afghanistan.^4 Within months, the American intelligence agencies
reported that the USSR had lost two transport planes and a helicopter
to the new weapon.^5 Weinberger received a roar of welcome on his
visit to the Afghan refugee camps.^6
The Politburo ignored these complications and stuck to the goal of
withdrawal. On 11 June 1986, as a first step, it ordered the pulling out
of six whole regiments. Defence Minister Sokolov spoke in favour.
Gorbachëv commented that the return of the 8,000 troops stationed
there would prove that the USSR had no pretensions to ‘the warm
waters’ of the Indian Ocean. The Afghan communist leadership should
be told to prepare for life without the Soviet military guarantee.^7 Gor-
bachëv laid down that ‘the result must not look like a shameful defeat’
for the USSR. Of all people, Gromyko commented: ‘It’s not our war.’
Gorbachëv must have wondered why, then, Gromyko had pushed for
the invasion; but he said nothing.^8 At the Politburo on 14 August 1986
he called for Soviet advisers to cease attending meetings of the Afghan
communist leadership: ‘We,’ he declared, ‘are not the Americans.’ (The
peoples of Eastern Europe would have been interested in the idea
that the USSR was not in the habit of taking command in a foreign
country.)^9 On 25 September 1986 the Politburo sent the diplomat Yuli
Vorontsov as Gorbachëv’s special representative in Kabul. Vorontsov
was to arrange for Karmal’s replacement by Mohammad Najibullah
and to set up a meeting between Gorbachëv and Mohammad Najibul-
lah, whom the Soviet leadership thought amenable to bringing the
Afghan political opposition into a governmental coalition. His other
task was to undertake a confidential overture to the Pakistan govern-
ment.^10
It took until 13 November 1986 before the Politburo took its
momentous decision to pull all its troops out of Afghanistan. Even
Gromyko admitted that the intervention had been undertaken on
faulty premises. Gorbachëv wished to complete the withdrawal inside
two years. Chebrikov and Shevardnadze agreed, and Gorbachëv pro-
posed that the Politburo should enable Afghanistan to become simply