Chapter 2 continues…

It wanted to ensure a friendly mujahideen government to replace it immediately, thereby protecting Pakistani interests and preventing a power vacuum from emerging that could have led to Afghanistan descending into further violence and chaos. In order to facilitate this transition faster, Pakistan organised a shura in Islamabad in February 1989, five days before the complete Soviet withdrawal.

It brought together some 500 Afghans claiming to represent the entire resistance: mujahideen political leaders, field commanders, religious leaders, nationalist exiles and refugee elders. The Afghan Interim Government, which was elected at the shura, was dominated by the seven Peshawar parties.32 The presidency was given to Mujaddidi, and Sayyaf was made the Prime Minister.

At the same time, Pakistan was also devising plans to launch a military offensive against the Najibullah government in the hope of bringing it down. The plan was to launch an attack on Jalalabad, the third largest city of Afghanistan and close to the Pakistan border. Following the capture of the city, the interim mujahideen government could establish itself and subsequently move towards other Afghan cities, including Kabul.

However, contrary to Pakistan and the mujahideen’s expectations of capturing Jalalabad in a short time, the expedition turned out to be a disaster as the mujahideen were unable to transform themselves from an irregular militia waging guerrilla warfare into a conventional army.

The Jalalabad campaign was not the only effort on the part of the ISI to bring down the Najibullah government by force. The ISI, in collusion with the CIA, had also laid out plans to launch an offensive in 1990 led by Hekmatyar’s Lashkar-i-Isar or Army of Sacrifice. Similarly, the ISI also assisted Hekmatyar and Shahnawaz Tanai, Najibullah’s Defence Minister to stage a coup against Najibullah in March 1990. However, both plans failed to dislodge the Najibullah government from power.

To be continued…