stage with its Afghan clients: Gromyko in March 1983 indirectly
highlighted this when he observed to the Politburo that ‘The
Afghans, of course, must be given materials which would give
them the ability to prepare well for the negotiations’ (Hershberg,
1996–97: 178). However, it would be a mistake to conclude that
the Kabul delegation simply parroted instructions from Moscow:
indeed, by September 1987, the Afghan delegation, well aware of
the peril in which Najibullah’s regime found itself, proved exceed-
ingly obstreperous in Geneva (Cordovez and Harrison, 1995:
303–6). Similarly, the interests of Pakistan were in significant
ways different from those of the USA and Iran, and by 1988 there
were even important differences surfacing between President Zia
and his Prime Minister, Mohammad Khan Junejo. But most funda-
mentally, the Afghan resistance was not directly involved in the
negotiations, with consequences I will highlight shortly.
When one is dealing with complex political problems, the mere
existence of negotiations in no way implies progress towards a nego-
tiated settlement. Negotiators typically deal first with the least
troublesome or intractable issues on an agenda, in the hope of build-
ing some confidence between the parties. It is thus quite common
for an illusion of progress to develop, after which negotiations stall.
Leadership change in the USSR added to this. Thus, in 1983, there
was a flurry of optimism that the Andropov leadership might preside
over a shift in Afghanistan (see Cordovez and Harrison, 1995:
100–5). However, it was not to be, and declassified documents raise
real doubts as to whether the prospects at the time were at all bright.
‘We are fighting’, he argued at a Politburo meeting on 10 March
1983, ‘against American imperialism which well understands that in
this part of international politics it has lost its positions. That is why
we cannot back off.’ (Hershberg, 1996–97: 177. Emphasis added).
Given the nature of his audience, it seems reasonable to conclude
that this represented Andropov’s genuine conviction, and that his
reported support for a settlement in a conversation less than three
weeks later (Bradsher, 1999: 271) was a form of disinformation.
Rather than concluding that the USSR had lost the battle for the
Afghan people, Andropov pointed to the length of time it had taken
The Road to Soviet Withdrawal 137