shortly, prompted efforts by the UN to give concrete shape to some
of the more abstract principles contained in the Secretary-General’s
statement. There were two particular strands of activity. One was
concerned with the departure of Najibullah. This was largely a
matter of timing. All the international actors appreciated that
Najibullah would have to go, but as to the timing of his disappear-
ance, there was no consensus until October 1991, when Pérez de
Cuéllar reported that ‘some of the controversial personalities con-
cerned would not insist on their personal participation, either in the
intra-Afghan dialogue or in the transition mechanism’ (quoted in
Rubin 1995b: 126). The reference here was sufficiently oblique
that it had no immediately explosive effect. Five months later,
when the same point was made explicitly, the effect was altogeth-
er different.
The other strand of activity was concerned with the precise
composition of a ‘credible and impartial transition mechanism’.
Attracting potential ‘neutrals’ to such a body was a major under-
taking for Sevan and some of his political officers, notably
Huseyin Avni Botsali. Yet the difficulties of finding ‘neutrals’
were to prove significant. In a hard-fought conflict, neutrality
becomes a matter of perception, and partisans are likely to
intepret the silence of ‘neutrals’ as amounting to tacit support for
the enemy. In January 1992, the new UN Secretary-General, Dr
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, inaugurated a laborious procedure to
bring together an assembly of Afghans acceptable to the Afghan
parties, from which a smaller committee would be selected to
carry out wider consultations. However, it ground to a halt when
Zahir Shah, the Islamist Sunni parties, and Najibullah all
declined to provide names of recommended participants. As
events gathered pace on the ground, the UN came up with the
idea of a ‘pre-transition council’ (Coll, 1992b), which the Kabul
regime immediately accepted (The New York Times, 12 April
1992). This unravelled on 15 April 1992 and was buried in
the wreckage of Najibullah’s regime – leaving behind, among
other things, a significant number of badly disappointed
‘neutrals’.
The Interregnum of Najibullah, 1989–1992 185