The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [86]
McCreery coughed.
‘Let me give you a little history lesson,’ he said. Whisky in hand, hair faintly dishevelled now, McCreery might have been a professor of poetry discussing Yeats down the pub. ‘Throughout the 1980s, the Afghan resistance received arms and ammunition from a number of different sources: China, Egypt, the Pakistani intelligence service, even bloody Gaddafi got in on the act. Additional bulk funding was provided by the Saudis, the Reagan administration and, to a lesser extent, the Frogs, the Japs and our own Conservative government. Mrs Thatcher was a huge fan of Abdul Haq, for example, a key mujahadd in figure who was eventually murdered by the Taleban. Quite an alliance, I’m sure you’d agree, but we were all aware that the Soviets were trying to surround the oil fields of the Gulf, which would have been catastrophic for the international community. At that time the CIA station in Islamabad was America’s largest international intelligence operation, far bigger than Nicaragua, Angola and El Salvador combined. Bone is right about a lot of this. Now there was a hawk in Texas, man by the name of Charles Wilson, a boneheaded Congressman of the McCarthy mould, who was paranoid up to his eyeballs about reds under the bed. Yes, for him - and for others with Reagan’s ear - Afghanistan was to be the Soviet Vietnam, no question. Wilson was a big fish in the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committee and he pushed a lot of money the way of the mujahaddin.’
Ben was beginning to glaze over with facts. He felt suddenly cold from the open pub door and put on his coat.
‘Alas, Wilson and others in Congress backed the wrong horse, and America has been paying for it ever since. Bone, as a CIA man, has a vested interest in playing down those failings at the expense of my own - and your father’s - organization. Allow me, for example, to illustrate the mess that many of us are still to this day cleaning up. Bill Casey, the head of the CIA whom Bone refers to in his letter, took a liking to an individual by the name of Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, who was the leader of the most fanatical group of mujahaddin, Hezb-i-Islami. By fanatical, I mean panIslam, that is to say an organization virulently opposed to all things Western, from Dallas to Warren Buffett. This was an irony apparently lost on the Pentagon, who clearly thought he was Mahatma Gandhi. Both the Pakistani government and its intelligence service - without either of whom the Cousins simply couldn’t operate - were also card-carrying members of the Hekmatyar fan club, which rather explains the relationship. No matter that he’d organized the killing of other mujahaddin leaders in order to cement his power base, and had never been directly involved in any confrontation with the Soviet invasionary forces. That didn’t seem to bother the Yanks. Perhaps eventually they wanted a fundamentalist regime in Kabul to destabilize the communists in the north. Who knows? Always playing God, the Americans, never keep things simple. And, of course, these US-backed fundamentalists have had a field day ever since, knocking off Sad at in ‘81, blowing up US Marines in Lebanon. When it came to the Gulf War, in fact, Hekmatyar was one of the first public figures to denounce American involvement in Kuwait. Lovely way of repaying the favour, don’t you think?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said, licking peanut salt off his fingers. ‘What does any of this have to do with Kostov?’
‘I’m coming to that, old boy.’ McCreery reacted as if Ben were being impatient. ‘I’m trying to paint a picture of blatant American incompetence which feeds into the Mischa situation.’
‘So Mischa did exist?’
‘Oh, absolutely. He must have existed. Yes.’ McCreery scratched the back of his neck. ‘Now at one stage your father helped to set up an organization called Afghan Aid, which nominally worked on medical and agricultural projects for refugees. However, it also provided support for Ahmed Shah Masood, a far more sensible and moderate muj leader who was later to command the Northern Alliance. You may recall that he was assassinated immediately