While some of these groups had reasonable weaponry – mostly
captured in operations against the communists or handed over by
defectors – others had little more to use than ‘ten-rupee jezails’ of
the type immortalised by Kipling in his apposite verse ‘Arithmetic
of the Frontier’. However, as time passed, the shape of the resist-
ance changed as the need for a regular flow of weapons and
ammunition drew the grassroots increasingly into contact with
other, externally based, resistance groups. This set the scene for
future tensions, for while few grassroots groups had a state-
building agenda, this was exactly what dominated the thinking of
some of the more important external groups with which they were
increasingly obliged to align themselves. The military activities of
the resistance were also diverse. ‘Hit-and-run’ operations figured
prominently in their tactics: for the most part they wisely eschewed
attempts to hold territory, although before ‘running’ from fixed tar-
gets they tended to help themselves to whatever military equip-
ment might have been stored at the outpost or facility under attack.
Jalali and Grau (n.d.) divided the resistance’s main form of offen-
sive operation into ‘ambushes’, ‘raids’, ‘shelling attacks’, ‘mine
warfare’, and ‘blocking enemy lines of communication’. While
these activities were not necessarily driven by an overarching
strategic vision, their overall purpose was obvious: to make the
Soviet presence in Afghanistan costly.
Resistance political parties
Within the Afghan resistance there emerged a number of signifi-
cant ‘parties’, based for the most part in Pakistan. Not remotely
like modern parties in competitive democracies, some were little
more than personalised networks built around religious notables,
while others were rigidly hierarchical organisations of Leninist
stripe, organisationally if not ideologically. Some came into exist-
ence as a result of the war. Others were outgrowths of an Islamic
political movement which had been developing within circles of
the intelligentsia since the time of Zahir Shah. The history of these
groups has been well-documented (see Roy, 1990: passim; Kakar,
62 The Afghanistan Wars