trauma (Saikal and Maley, 1986: 13–17). Although Pakistan was
not a party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees, it had initially sought the help of UNHCR in April 1979
to deal with the refugee outflow, and it established a ‘Chief
Commissionerate of Afghan Refugees’ to manage the so-called
‘Refugee Tented Villages’ in which the bulk of the refugees were
located. While many Afghan refugees were to experience harass-
ment at the hands of corrupt Pakistani officials, overall Pakistan
performed remarkably well in sheltering and feeding as many
refugees as it did, although in the vital area of education (where
Pakistan was understandably dependent upon outside assistance),
the achievements were extremely limited, and the long-term conse-
quences of this neglect quite lamentable. The ‘Refugee Tented
Villages’ were not simply politically-neutral residential areas for
the indigent; they developed their own internal political organisa-
tions, in which Afghan maleks(officials), resistance parties, and
committees of public order vied for influence (Centlivres and
Centlivres-Demont, 1988a). These internal political structures were
linked to the wider mechanisms of Afghan resistance. Refugee
camps very often become important resources for those engaged in
struggle against oppression (Terry, 2002), and the Pakistan-based
camps for Afghan refugees were to prove no exception.
Pakistan as a conduit of external aid: the role of ISI
The Pakistan Army became the prime channel through which out-
side military assistance was directed to Afghan resistance groups,
and the process was the easier to manage because Pakistan was
effectively under military rule for most of the period of the
Soviet–Afghan war (although a civilian Prime Minister,
Mohammad Khan Junejo, took office on 23 March 1985, also the
day on which Zia ul-Haq was sworn in as ‘elected’ President). The
Pakistan Army was numerically substantial, totalling 400,000 at
the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, with 16 infantry
divisions. At the time of independence, the officer corps was
Punjabi-dominated (Cohen, 1985: 42), and the pattern has persisted
72 The Afghanistan Wars