Court’, Hekmatyar as ‘Defence Minister’ and Rabbani as ‘Foreign
Minister’. However, Muhammadi then used a procedural device to
opt for the ‘Defence Ministry’, which led an enraged Hekmatyar to
claim the ‘Foreign Ministry’, displacing Rabbani to the position of
‘Minister for Reconstruction’. This outcome verged on the farcical,
for it marginalised the parties whose commanders were most effec-
tive in Afghanistan, and left as the external face of the ‘Interim
Islamic Government’ one of the most unappetising Mujahideen fig-
ures, namely Hekmatyar, who later in the year was to be named in
the British press as the likely owner of the world’s largest heroin
factory (Teimourian, 1989).
The ‘Interim Islamic Government’ secured recognition from
only four states – Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Bahrain, and Malaysia
(Talmon, 1998: 314) – and in March 1989 was granted
Afghanistan’s seat in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference
(OIC). The USA in June 1989 appointed Peter Tomsen as Special
Envoy to the Afghan Resistance with the personal rank of
Ambassador, succeeding Edmund McWilliams, who (unlike
Tomsen) had had to report to Washington through the US Embassy
in Pakistan, and was repeatedly contradicted by the US
Ambassador to Pakistan, Robert Oakley (Rubin, 1991: 85). But
neither Pakistan nor the USA was prepared to grant the ‘Interim
Islamic Government’ formal recognition, and Pakistan even
abstained on the vote to grant it the OIC seat. Launching a gov-
ernment-in-exile is always a difficult undertaking. But few have
failed on the launching-pad as spectacularly as this.
The completion of the withdrawal
As the final date for the withdrawal approached, the international
isolation of the Kabul regime became ever more palpable. In the
first week of January 1989, the Soviets closed their military hos-
pital in Kabul and evacuated the patients. On 21 January, West
Germany’s diplomatic personnel left, and on 27 January, the
United Kingdom, France, Japan, and Italy announced that they
were withdrawing their diplomats. Finally, on 30 January, the
The Road to Soviet Withdrawal 151