Return of Refugees. This was the least contentious of the docu-
ments, providing in Article I that ‘All Afghan refugees temporarily
present in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan shall be
given the opportunity to return voluntarily to their homeland in
accordance with the arrangements and conditions set out in the
present Agreement’, and in Article VI that ‘At the request of the
Governments concerned, the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees will co-operate and provide assistance in the process
of voluntary repatriation of refugees in accordance with the present
Agreement.’
The final text was simply entitled Agreement on the
Interrelationships for the Settlement of the Situation Relating to
Afghanistan. This text provided in Paragraph 5 that
The Bilateral Agreement on the Principles of Mutual Relations,
in Particular on Non-Interference and Non-Intervention; the
Declaration on International Guarantees; the Bilateral Agreement
on the Voluntary Return of Refugees; and the present Agreement
on the Interrelationships for the Settlement of the Situation
Relating to Afghanistan will enter into force on 15 May 1988. In
accordance with the time-frame agreed upon between the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Republic of Afghanistan
there will be a phased withdrawal of the foreign troops which
will start on the date of entry into force mentioned above. One
half of the troops will be withdrawn by 15 August 1988 and the
withdrawal of all troops will be completed within nine months.The limitations of the Geneva Accords
The merits of the Geneva Accords continue to be debated. Bokhari
has argued that the Geneva Accords ‘were an important success
story in large part because of the way the negotiation process was
conceived: aims were kept limited, the art of the possible was
stressed, and the mujahideen were excluded from the process’
(Bokhari, 1995: 261). From a narrowly diplomaticperspective, this
was certainly the case. But a conflict resolutionperspective yields a
The Road to Soviet Withdrawal 141