The Afghan

It is a simple course based on a single precept. On the first day, a smiling sergeant instructor told them all: “On this course, we don’t try to train you. We try to kill you.”

They did, too. Only ten percent of applicants pass the initial. It saves time later. Martin passed. Then came continuation training: jungle training in Belize, and an extra month back in England devoted to interrogation resistance. “Resistance” means trying to stay silent while some extremely unpleasant practices are being inflicted. The good news is that both the regiment and the volunteer have the right every hour to insist on an RTU-return to unit. Martin started in the late summer of 1986, with twenty-two SAS, as a troop commander with the rank of captain. He opted for “A” Squadron, the free-fallers, a natural choice for a Para.

If the Paras had no use for his Arabic, the SAS did, for it has a long and intimate relationship with the Arab world. It was formed in the Western Desert in 1941, and its empathy with the sands of Arabia has never left it. It had the jokey reputation of being the only Army unit that actually makes a profit-not quite true but close. SAS men are the world’s most sought-after bodyguards and trainers of bodyguards. Throughout Arabia, the sultans and emirs have always sought out the SAS to train their own personal guards, and they pay handsomely for it. Martin’s first assignment was with the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, when, in the summer of 1987, he was called home. “I don’t like this sort of thing,” said the CO in his office at Sterling Lines, the regiment’s Hereford HQ. “No, I bloody well don’t. But the green slime wants to borrow you. It’s the Arabic thing.“ He had used the occasionally friendly phrase reserved by fighting soldiers for intelligence people. He meant the SIS-the Firm. “Haven’t they got their own Arabic speakers?” asked Martin. “Oh, yes, desks full of them. But this isn’t just a question of speaking it. And it’s not really Arabia. They want someone to go behind the Soviet lines in Afghanistan and work with the resistance, the Mujaheddin.” The military dictator of Pakistan had decreed that no serving soldier of a Western power was to be allowed to penetrate into Afghanistan via Pakistan. He did not say so, but his own ISI military intelligence much enjoyed administering the American aid pouring in the direction of the muj, and he further had no wish to see a serving American or British soldier, infiltrated via Pakistan, captured by the Russians and paraded around.

But halfway through the Soviet occupation, the British had decided the man to back was not the Pakistani choice Hekmatyar, but the Tajik named Shah Massoud, who, rather than skulking in Europe or Pakistan, was doing real damage to the occupiers. The trouble was in bringing that aid to him. His territory was up in the north.

Securing good guides from the muj units near the Khyber Pass was not a problem. As in the time of the Raj, a few pieces of gold go a long way. There is an aphorism that you ca

“The key word at every stage, Captain,” they told him at SIS headquarters, which back then was at Century House near the Elephant and Castle, “is ‘deniability.’ That is why you actually have to-just a technicality-resign from the Army. Of course, the moment you come back”-he was nice enough to say when, not if-“you will be completely reinstated.”

Mike Martin knew perfectly well that within its ranks the SAS already had the ultrasecret Revolutionary Warfare Wing, whose task was to stir up as much trouble for communist regimes worldwide as they could handle. He mentioned this. “This is even more covert,” said the mandarin. “We call this unit Unicorn-because it doesn’t exist. There are never more than twelve, and at the moment only four men, in it. We really need someone to slip into Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass, secure a local guide and be brought north to the Panjshir Valley where Shah Massoud operates.”

“Bringing gifts?” asked Martin. The smooth one made a helpless gesture. “Only tokens, I am afraid. A question of what a man can carry. But later, we might move to mule trains and a lot more kit, if Massoud will send his own guides south to the border. It’s a question of first contact, don’t you see.” “And the gift?”

“Snuff. He likes our snuff. Oh, and two Blowpipe surface-to-air tubes with missiles. He is much troubled by air attacks. You’d have to teach his people how to use them. I reckon you’d be away six months. How do you feel about it?”

Before the invasion was half a year old, it was clear that the Afghans would still not do one thing that had always been impossible for them: unite. After weeks of arguing in Peshawar and Islamabad, with the Pakistani Army insisting it would not distribute American funds and weapons to any but the resisters accredited to them, the number of rival resistance groups was reduced to seven. Each had a political leader and a war commander. These were the Peshawar 7. Only one was not Pashtun: Professor Rabbani, as well as his charismatic war leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, both Tajiks from the far north. Of the other six, three were soon nicknamed the “Gucci commanders,” because they rarely-if ever-entered occupied Afghanistan, preferring to wear Western dress in safety abroad.

Of the other three, two-Sayyaf and Hekmatyar-were fanatical supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood of ultra-Islam, the latter being so cruel and vindictive that by the end he had executed more Afghans than he had killed Russians. The one who tribally controlled the province of Nangarhar where Izmat Khan had been born was the mullah Maulvi Younis Khalis. He was a scholar and preacher, but he had a twinkle in his eye that spoke of kindness, as opposed to the cruelty of Hekmatyar, who loathed him.

Although the oldest of the seven and over sixty, for much of the next ten years Younis Khalis made forays into occupied Afghanistan to lead his men personally. When he was not there, his war commander was Abdul Haq. By 1980, the war had come to the valleys of the Spin Gahr. The Soviets were teeming through Jalalabad below the mountains, and their air force had started punitive raids on mountain villages. Nuri Khan had sworn allegiance to Younis Khalis as his warlord, and been granted the right to form his own lashkar, or fighting yeomanry.

He could shelter much of the animal wealth of his village in the natural caves that riddled the White Mountains, and his people could shelter in them, too, when the air raids came. But he decided it was time for the women and children to cross the border to seek refuge in Pakistan. The small convoy would of course need a male chaperone for the journey and the stay at Peshawar, however long that would last. As mahram, he appointed his own father, over sixty and stiff of limb. Donkeys and mules were secured for the journey.

Fighting back his tears at the shame of being sent out like a child, eight-year-old Izmat Khan was embraced by his father and brother, took the bridle of the mule bearing his mother and turned toward the high peaks and Pakistan. It would be seven years before he returned from exile, and when he came it would be to fight the Russians with cold ferocity. To legitimize themselves in the eyes of the world, it had been agreed the warlords would each form a political party. That of Younis Khalis was called Hizb Islami, and everyone under his rule had to join it. Outside Peshawar, a rash of tented cities had sprung up under the auspices of something called the United Nations, though Izmat Khan had never heard of it. The U N had agreed that each warlord, now masquerading as political parties, should have his separate refugee camp, and no one should be admitted who was not a member of the appropriate party.