to the present: figures cited by Rizvi suggest that the Punjab pro-
vides 65 per cent of the officer corps (Rizvi, 2000: 240). Zia ul-
Haq was himself a Punjabi. However, some key figures closer to
the implementation of the Army’s Afghanistan policy were
Pushtuns, notably Lieutenant-General Akhtar Abdul Rahman, the
Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI): according
to one of his closest associates, he ‘was intensely proud of the
Afghan blood he had inherited’ (Yousaf and Adkin, 1992: 23). In
addition to ethnic affinity, religious sentiment was increasingly
emphasised after Zia seized power: the superficially secular traits
of the Army, inherited from the British military tradition, were
blended with Islamic justifications for policy positions, and reli-
gious groups such as the Jamaat-i Islamibegan to make their pres-
ence felt within the ranks of the Army. For all these reasons, as
well as from calculations of interest, the Pakistan Army threw
itself into the process of backing the Afghan Mujahideen with con-
siderable gusto.
At the heart of the Pakistan Army’s Afghanistan policy was the
Afghan Bureau of the ISI. The ISI itself was remarkably unencum-
bered by checks and balances, even in comparison to other intelli-
gence agencies. Its Director-General reported directly to General
Zia, and the head of its Afghan Bureau directly to the ISI Director-
General. However, its Afghanistan operations were dependent on
total secrecy, partly because of Pakistan’s desire to avoid Soviet
reprisals for military activities against the Afghan communist
regime orchestrated from Pakistani soil, but also because the USA
put great store on ‘plausible deniability’ as an element of covert
operations in Afghanistan. Former US Secretary of State George
Shultz recorded in his memoirs a conversation which President
Ronald Reagan had with Zia in 1988 after the signing of the
Geneva Accords on Afghanistan: ‘I heard the president ask Zia
how he would handle the fact that they would be violating their
agreement. Zia replied that they would “just lie about it. We’ve
been denying our activities there for eight years”’(Shultz, 1993:
1091). Over time, Pakistan’s role as conveyor of arms to the
Afghan resistance, as well as trainer and logistical supporter of
The Development of Afghan Resistance 73