The Main Enemy Milton Bearden (read full novel .txt) 📖

Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, the only leader among the seven who’d come to the meeting in a silk-and-cashmere suit instead of a shalwar kameez.

“I have no reservations as to the requirements for accountability,” he said, “and can guarantee that the fighters of the National Islamic Front for Afghanistan will do their duty to provide complete protection for the missiles entrusted to them.” As he spoke in his cultured English accent, I took stock of the dapper Gailani. A small, well-trimmed goatee, an affectation of the old Kabul elite, European tailor, Italian cobbler, a Patek Philippe peeking out from under the cuff of his $2,000 suit. No wonder his men were called “Gucci commanders,” I thought. Gailani was a true holy man, a hereditary pir of the Qadiriya Sufi sect, with which most Pashtun Afghans are associated. He came from a wealthy family broadly associated with prerevolutionary leaders of Afghanistan. He rarely, if ever, strayed into Afghanistan, preferring instead to spend much of his time in London, and he was Europe’s most popular moderate Afghan leader.

The third so-called moderate, Nabi Mohammedi, neither spoke English nor understood it. A religious leader and former Afghan parliamentarian, Nabi simply nodded in agreement with whatever Ahktar was saying through Colonel Bacha. He looked bored, and every so often he’d open his small snuff can and snort a pinch of the powdered tobacco. Among the three moderates, Nabi’s party, the Movement for the Islamic Revolution of Afghanistan, was the least public relations oriented, the least corrupt, and the most effective in the field.

Across the room from me were the other two hard-liners, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a great barrel of a man and an ardent member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Maulvi Yunis Khales, the red-bearded mullah from Nangarhar. Khales spoke no English. Sayyaf claimed not to, either, but he betrayed himself with a look of understanding as Gulbuddin and Gailani spoke.

A Cairo-educated professor of Islam, Sayyaf wore a perpetual half smile, as if he were sharing a secret with whomever he happened to have locked in his gaze. He formed a party jointly with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the early 1980s, after he was released from prison, but the union was short-lived. They shared common origins in the Muslim Brotherhood and solid connections to Saudi money, but little else. Sayyaf spoke fluent Arabic and was particularly popular among the Arabs who were arriving in Pakistan and Afghanistan in increasing numbers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Persian Gulf.

The last of the Peshawar Seven was a unique character of the Afghan War, Maulvi Yunis Khales, the mullah from Nangarhar. In his mid-sixties, Khales looked severe and forbidding, but behind the long, scraggly beard tinted red with henna was a face with a hint of kindness and a constant look of bewilderment as he contemplated so many things that seemed beyond his control. Khales was a regional leader, without pretense to national stature like some of the others in the room. His operations were generally limited to the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Paktia, but where many of the other leaders stayed put in Pakistan, Khales, even at his age, went into Afghanistan regularly with his men to lead the fight.

Khales was the least politically complicated of the seven. He was committed to fighting the Russians until they left his country. After that, he would most likely disappear from the political scene and return to his chores as the head of a madrassa, an Islamic school where he had once taught his students lessons from the Koran. Word had it that the old Koranic teacher had enough energy left over to pour into his new bride, who was said to be about a quarter his age and who was rumored to be carrying a new descendant in an already long line of Nangarhari holy men.

Khales spoke in Pashto at some length, then waited for Colonel Bacha to translate. I caught a brief exchange of glances between Akhtar and Bacha, nothing more than an almost imperceptible shake of the head and a corresponding nod from Bacha. When Khales finished, the colonel translated in just a few sentences what had taken him much longer to say.

“Maulvi Khales says that what President Zia has decided and what the American President has promised will be good for the jihad,” said Bacha. “He says that he will do his part to ensure that the special weapons are controlled.”

Akhtar finished up quickly and invited us into the dining room for lunch, effectively closing out any further discussion.

The centerpiece of the luncheon that followed was roasted quail served with crisp efficiency by the military stewards in khaki uniforms with red Afridi tribal headgear. The lunch itself was uneventful, with a minimum of small talk. The Afghans were in a great rush to finish in time for the noonday call to prayers, and they ate their lunch hurriedly. The only drama I witnessed at the table was the specter of Sayyaf, wedged between Mojaddedi and Gailani, struggling to make sense of the Western dining setting. First he ate Gailani’s salad, then Mojaddedi’s, then he took bread from both. There must be symbolism in this, I thought. Mojaddedi looked across the table at me with an expression that seemed to say, See what I have to put up with?

Despite the theater, these seven leaders were there for a reason: They served as the conduits for as many as a quarter million full- and part-time fighters in the field. There were more parties, notably the Shia Hazaras, who’d been cut out of the usual pipeline. Try as we might, we couldn’t seem to bring the number down below seven—and if all the parties claiming a right to a seat at the table in Peshawar had actually been included, it would have grown to many more. The lion’s share of the logistical and financial support we provided through the Pakistanis went to the three so-called fundamentalist parties, led by Rabbani, Hekmatyar, and Khales. Sayyaf came in a close fourth, and