The Wars of Afghanistan by Peter Tomsen

Author:Peter Tomsen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781586487638
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2010-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

The leaders of the commanders’ shura returned to Peshawar from their Islamabad meetings with Beg and Durrani in high spirits. Abdul Haq later boasted to me that he had conducted ten meetings with the ISI’s Brigadier Janjua in two weeks. Janjua had personally written down the money, weapons, and supplies the shura was requesting to capture territory in each of the nine combat zones during 1991. Haq stated that simultaneous attacks would begin in the early spring at Khost and gradually expand around the country. The final attack on Kabul would occur only after the Afghans reached agreement on a broad-based political entity to replace Najib’s regime. Haq sketched three initiatives he was preparing to speed formation of an Afghan body to take power from Najib in a political transition: creation of tribal and ulema shuras inside Afghanistan; their linkage with the commanders’ shura; and enlistment of Zahir Shah to preside over a loya jirga bringing together all these groups. Haq’s ideas were in the tradition of Afghan consensus politics. They overlapped with the jirga proposals earlier offered by the United States. I urged Haq to proceed cautiously, enlist UN support, and, especially, to retain Pakistani cooperation.

Before traveling back to the north, Masood expressed optimism to journalists in Peshawar about the commanders’ implementation of a “new unified battle plan” for 1991 agreed to at Shah Selim.37 From Peshawar, he phoned me in Saudi Arabia to describe the success of the Shah Selim meeting. At his request, I reiterated that the United States had not supported the Hekmatyar attack on Kabul. I congratulated him on the progress of the commanders’ shura movement. He thanked me for the support of the United States. He predicted that 1991 would finally bring battlefield successes to the Mujahidin. I suggested that he encourage Zahir Shah to play a constructive role in a political settlement. Masood asked me to send word to the king that he wished to meet Sirat inside Afghanistan to discuss political coordination.

I passed on Masood’s comment to Zahir Shah during my second meeting with him on December 16 in Rome. The king stated his readiness for a dialogue with Masood and remarked that the commanders’ shura should play a role in the political settlement process. He told me that Abdul Haq had asked him to lend his support to the political settlement process. He placed a positive gloss on Sirat’s and Sultan Ghazi’s negotiations with Prince Turki in Riyadh and President Ghulam Ishak Khan, General Durrani, and the Pakistani Foreign Ministry in Islamabad. Sirat, who was present, explained that he and Ghazi had asked the Pakistanis and Prince Turki to consider Zahir Shah another resistance voice adamantly opposed to Najib. They invited a Pakistani delegation to visit the king in Rome. The Pakistanis so far had not responded.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.