the USA, associates of Mohammad Zaher, former king of
Afghanistan’ (BBC Summary of World BroadcastsFE/1189/B/2, 28
September 1991). Agreeing to the plan left him in situ, and turned
pressure on Pakistan and the resistance parties to develop a
response which would not leave them looking like obstreperous
spoilers. For this very reason, the UN plan did prove divisive as
far as the resistance parties were concerned.
Hekmatyar, whose views were echoed by Sayyaf, was predictably
the most hostile to the proposal, later describing it as ‘complicated,
ambiguous and impractical’. He demanded that ‘Najibullah step
down, power be delegated to a regime acceptable to the mojahedin,
Zaher Shah remain in exile and elections be held within a year after
the formation of the transitional government’ (BBC Summary of
World BroadcastsFE/1319/B/1, 3 March 1992). Gailani, Mojadiddi,
and Muhammadi were the most in favour of the proposal, and in
February 1992 stated that ‘the UN talks – and not continued military
pressure – offered the best way to resolve the conflict’ (Coll, 1992a).
This echoed the response of 500 commanders, meeting in Paktia,
who released a statement to the effect that if the UN plan, after clari-
fication, was ‘not against the expectations of our jihad (holy war)
and national interest and results in the establishment of Islamic gov-
ernment, it will not be opposed’ (BBC Summary of World
BroadcastsFE/1298/B/1, 7 February 1992). The Hezb-e Wahdat
leadership adopted a similar position (BBC Summary of World
BroadcastsFE/1323/B/1, 7 March 1992).
The weaknesses of the UN plan
The critical section of the Secretary-General’s proposal was con-
tained in the third paragraph, and Massoud and the Jamiat-e Islami
responded with comments which went to some of the details of the
proposal. Massoud, in an interview with a French journalist,
remarked that ‘UN efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan are appre-
ciable, but as long as Najib is in power or has a share of power, in
one form or another, UN efforts will not succeed’ (AFGHANews,
15 July 1991). This echoed comments he had made a year earlier:
The Interregnum of Najibullah, 1989–1992 183