settlement in Afghanistan to augment the Geneva Accords
(Cordovez and Harrison, 1995: 378; Rubin, 1995b: 101), Gul, who
came to the position from a cavalry background and with little
grasp of Afghanistan’s complexities, favoured highly structured
conventional military operations, for which the Mujahideen were
organisationally unsuited. Removed as head of ISI in 1989 and
forced into retirement in 1992, he thereafter drifted into ever more
extreme circles, ultimately surfacing as an ardent supporter of the
Taliban. Capping a career marked by misjudgment, he graced them
with his presence at their celebration of Afghanistan’s
Independence Day in Kabul in August 2001. General Gul in an
interview even told his interviewer that ‘You Americans will have
to support the Taliban one day’ (Frantz, 2001). It was Pakistan’s
misfortune that this limited man should ever have found himself in
a position of influence. It was Afghanistan’s misfortune even more.
Mujahideen positioning
In May 1988, the head of the Central Political Directorate of the
Soviet armed forces, General Aleksei Lizichev, announced that 311
Soviet soldiers were ‘missing in action’ in Afghanistan. This high-
lighted the issue of missing Soviet soldiers and Soviet prisoners of
war more generally, and gave a certain amount of leverage to the
Afghan resistance, since they and they alone were in a position to
satisfy the desire for information on the part of Soviet families.
The result was a series of meetings between Soviet officials and
resistance delegates. On 13 October, Iulii Vorontsov, a very senior
official of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, was named Ambassador to
Afghanistan – a position which normally would have been filled
by a nominee somewhat below his rank of Deputy Foreign
Minister. Rubin argues that Vorontsov had a mission ‘to create a
coalition government that would include the PDPA, the mujahidin,
and representatives of the old regime and would take power after
the Soviet withdrawal’ (Rubin, 1995b: 102). On 27 November, a
meeting took place at the Pakistani Foreign Ministry in Islamabad
between four Soviet officials and two resistance officials: Engineer
148 The Afghanistan Wars