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Viii ~ PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSdisintegration- A year later I was sipping tea in Kandahar's bazaar whenthe first Soviet tanks rolled in. As I covered the Soviet Union's war withthe Mujaheddin my family urged me to write a book, as so many journalistswere doing at the time. I abstained. I had too much to say and didnot know where to start.I was determined to write a book after spending several months inGeneva covering the excruciating UN sponsored negotiations in 1988,which ended with the Geneva Accords and the withdrawal of Soviet troopsfrom Afghanistan. Packed in with 200 journalists I was fortunate enough tobe privy to many of the internal stand-offs between diplomats from the UN,the USA, the Soviet Union, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. That booknever got written as my first love, the Afghans, drove straight from Genevainto a bloody, senseless civil war that still continues today.Instead I went to Central Asia to see the ancestors of the Afghans andbecame a witness to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which I wrotebook about from the perspective of the newly independent Central Asistates. But Afghanistan always drew me back.I should have written another book in 1992 when I spent a momdodging bullets in Kabul as the regime of President Najibullah collapsedand the city fell to the Mujaheddin. By then the Afghan saga had takenme to Moscow, Washington, Rome, Jeddah, Paris, London, Ashkhabad,Tashkent and Dushanbe. Ultimately it was the unique nature of the Talibanand the lack of literature about their meteoric rise, which convinced*me I had to tell their story as a continuation of the last 21 yearsAfghanistan's history and my history.For years I was the only Pakistani journalist covering Afghanistan seriously,even though the war was next door and Afghanistan sustainedPakistan's foreign policy and kept the military regime of General Zia ulHaq in power. If there was another abiding interest, it was my convictionas early as 1982 that Islamabad's Afghan policy would play a critical rolein Pakistan's future national security, domestic politics and createIslamic fundamentalist backlash at home. Today, as Pakistan teetersthe edge of a political, economic and social abyss while a culture of drugs,weapons, corruption and violence permeates the country, what happensin Afghanistan has become even more important to Pakistan.Pakistan's policy-makers did not always agree with what I wrote. Itnot easy to disagree with Zia. In 1985 I was interrogated for several hoiby Zia's intelligence agencies and warned not to write for six monthsbecause of my criticism. I continued to write under pseudonyms. Myphones were constantly tapped, my movements monitored.Afghanistan, like the Afghans themselves, is a country of contradiC'tions that are constantly played out for any reporter. Gulbuddin Hikme'tyar, the extremist Mujaheddin leader sentenced me to death for being aPREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ~ ixcommunist sympathiser - along with George Arney of the BBC - and fora year published my name in his party newspaper, like a wanted ad. Later,in Kabul, a crowd chased and tried to kill me when I arrived momentsafter a rocket fired by Hikmetyar had killed two small boys in the Microyanhousing complex. The Afghans thought I was a Hikmetyar agentchecking out the damage.In 1981 when Najibullah was head of the notorious KHAD, the Afghancommunist secret service modelled on the KGB, he personally interrogatedme after KHAD officers arrested me for reading a banned copy ofTime magazine at Kabul's Post Office. After he became president and Ihad interviewed him several times, he thought I could carry a conciliatorymessage from him to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. I told him she wouldnot listen to me, and she did not.And many times I have been caught in the contradiction of crossfires,between Afghan communist troops and the Mujaheddin, between rivalMujaheddin warlords and between the Taliban and Ahmad Shah Masud'stank-gunners. I have never been the warrior type and mostly ducked.My interest in Afghanistan could not have been sustained without thehelp of many people, above all the Afghans. To the Taliban mullahs, theanti-Taliban commanders, the warlords who went before them, the warriorson the battlefield and the taxi-drivers, intellectuals, aid-workers andfarmers - too many to mention and mostly too sensitive to mention - mymany thanks.Apart from the Afghans I have received the greatest help from Pakistaniministers, diplomats, generals, bureaucrats and intelligence officers,who either wanted to take me on or were sincerely sympathetic to myviews. Many of them have become firm friends.Over the years the UN agencies and the non-governmental aid organizationshave provided a home for me all over Afghanistan and have givenme ideas, information and support. At the UN Office for Co-ordinationof Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan I owe many thanks to itssuccessive chiefs, Martin Barber, Alfredo Witschi-Cestari and Erick deMul and to Brigette Neubacher, who has been in the Afghan businessalmost as long as I have. At the UN High Commission for Refugees Ithank Robert Van Leeuwen, Shamsul Bari, Sri Wijaratne, JacquesMuchet, Rupert Colville and Monique Malha. At the World Food Programmethe indefatigable Adan Adar understood the Taliban better thanany other UN officer.At the UN Special Mission for Afghanistan many thanks are due toFrancis Okelo, James Ngobi, Hiroshi Takahashi, Arnold Schifferdeckerand Andrew Tesoriere and at the UN in New York, Benon Sevan andAndrew Gilmour. At the International Committee of the Red Cross,Thomas Gurtner and Oliver Durr, at Acted aid agency Frederick Rousseau