by Idries Shah
‘You were overwhelmed by bugles, a drainpipe, the treachery of one of your own men, and by two or three of us, that’s all. But never mind that. We’ll take your argument into account. Have you anything else to say?’
The Colonel, his face a mask of tension, seemed to have used up most of his reserves of energy in his earlier sallies. ‘Gospodin, sir. You give me some hope. It was a matter of the honour of the Red Army. We would have tried the men.’
The Eagle paused a moment, then said: ‘We have never heard of any such trials before: but, Petrov, we know of the murders of innocent people by your forces, in our country. Six thousand men, women and children, the entire population of a village called Atrnak, near Kunduz, were massacred in May, 1980. That is only one of your crimes.’
‘That is all I can say, gospodin. Of course, if the Party or the Security Services intervenes, the sentence is not carried out.’
‘Why would that be?’
‘On the legal grounds that the men were acting in the interests of overall security, against spies and saboteurs.’
‘And you would agree with that?’
‘I am not consulted in such matters.’
‘We shall take account of that, too. Has the accused anything more to say?’
‘Yes, gospodin.’
‘Say it, then.’
‘When you captured the Armoury, forty-two men were in the barrack block nearest to the water-tower.’
‘Yes.’
‘Those men are all missing.’
‘Yes. They died, to a man, when they tried to break out, after the order to surrender had been given. There was fighting. We lost six men there, through their action.’
‘President of the court! Those men of ours were in detention, precisely because they were to be accused of killing your compatriots at the village of Kalantut.’
The Eagle was surprised. Either this was true, or else it was a most ingenious idea. Blame the dead. Aloud he said, ‘If they were in detention, accused of a crime, how could they get out so easily and attack us, fully armed, and kill six men?’
The Russian shrugged. ‘You saw the arms and ammunition piled in the open. They got out of the block and seized grenades and other weapons. That’s all.’
‘I repeat: how did they get out of detention so easily, Petrov?’
‘They were not locked in. There was no need. They knew that if they left the block they would be shot by the guards. There was no hope of escape.’
‘If they were under detention, and likely to be punished by your court of enquiry, why were they so keen to break out and help in the defence of the camp when it was attacked?’
‘I can only think that they wanted to redeem themselves. If they had helped to defeat the attack, it would have counted in their favour at a court-martial.’
The Eagle looked straight at him. ‘Colonel, is it not possible that those men had hoped to arm themselves and get away, perhaps to join the Muhjahidin, as so many Russian soldiers have already done?’
Petrov looked away, then sighed. ‘It is possible, President.’
‘Another question, Colonel. Is self-incrimination allowed in Russian courts?’
‘Yes, it is normal. The courts rely on it.’
‘And, lastly, is there presumption of innocence, or presumption of guilt?’
‘Anyone who goes before any court in the Soviet Union is presumed guilty. This is based on the contention that no innocent person ever gets as far as a court of law. He or she would be exonerated during the preliminary investigation.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Gospodin President!’
‘Yes, Colonel?’
‘I said that we were innocent and did not want to recognize your court precisely because, in our country, I would have been admitting guilt if I had acknowledged that I had been arraigned before a properly constituted court. You must allow us time to get used to your ways.’
‘Our ways, Colonel, are the ways of the entire civilized world. We have had these ways for thousands of years. You have only had your ways for – what? – sixty years. Your ways are the ways of the dictator, not of humanity. You should not need time.’
Although the Russian’s words were being translated, faithfully, for the assembled Afghan multitude, some of the finer points seemed to be escaping them. Qasim nudged The Eagle. ‘I think that we should summarize for the people. They are getting restless again.’
The Eagle stood up, the better to be seen and heard, and moved into the space between the two parties.
‘Afghans and prisoners! This case is simple, but everyone must know what it means. I shall explain in a few words. Now listen:
‘It is admitted that the villagers were massacred. Someone must pay for it. The Colonel claims innocence for himself and for all his men who are here today. The law upholds him, as we have found none who can say that anyone here has committed murder.
‘In his own regiment, the Colonel acts as judge. He states that he had no time to put the murderers on trial, so we cannot find him guilty.
‘We are also told that the men in detention at the camp were the real murderers, who killed without orders or permission. All those men are now dead.
‘It is my judgement that justice has been done, even if only by accident, with the killing of the Russian murderers. Under the law of requital, the blood of the people of Kalantut has been avenged.
‘Now we must, surely, acquit these men, for no blood is on them, so far as we know.’
The Eagle at first saw only the poetic justice and the elegance of the solution, as if fate had arranged the whole matter and planned the outcome. But the Afghans wanted blood. Most of them, after all, had not been at the battle, had not seen what was involved and had only heard of the massacre at second hand. It was the non-combatants, deprived of the release afforded by battle, who felt most deeply about justice and revenge.
The assembly drowned the voice of the Afghan interpreter, shouting for revenge. They cried out the names of relatives who had been burned by napalm, who had suffocated in gas, who had been hunted down like rabbits by strafing jets or blown apart by helicopter rockets. They threw sandals, and their cries became one voice, terrible in the echoing vastness of the immense cavern, Marg bar Rouss, marg bar qatilun! Death to the Russians! Death to the murderers!
Like every natural leader, The Eagle knew that time would reduce tension if he let them have their say. The shouting went on for ten minutes or more as he returned to his seat, and sat, impassively, waiting.
The Russians, pitiful pictures of hopelessness, huddled in groups, clutching one another, even clawing at the cave-wall, fear in their eyes, a fear made more terrible than those of cornered animals by the human ability to think about the future. They were visualizing torture, dismemberment, a sordid and meaningless death. Zelikov had a word for it. ‘Demoralizatsiya, Komondon,’ he whispered.
The Eagle was getting a first-hand demonstration – and it was to be the first of many – of the fragile esprit de corps of the Soviet Army. Adam remembered reading some of the literature. Following the Second World War, all other modern armies had concentrated upon encouraging small bodies of men to form fighting groups. Such men remained together from their early training days and through active service. The result was an army made up of a large number of strongly bonded units, like the hunting groups of man throughout the ages.
The Russians had rejected this formula because, as their own documents, closely studied by the CIA and other Intelligence agencies, showed, they feared combinations of people. Men were regularly moved from one unit to another, units were endlessly transferred. ‘Bonding’ was never given a chance to happen, even by accident. In consequence, units easily fell apart. Captives joined the enemy, especially if the enemy had the camaraderie which the Russians lacked and no doubt craved.
Desertions and suicides were surprisingly frequent, and the rapport between men and officers was not good enough to ensure morale capable of surviving adversity to the extent w
hich most other modern armies regarded as normal.
One reason for the startlingly poor quality of the Russian combat troops – even the best of them – was probably the large proportion of them who were alcohol-dependent. Adam had not read the many accounts published abroad showing alcoholism as a major problem in the Soviet Union; much less the confession of one Russian soldier: ‘Even if you are not an alcoholic when you go into the Army, you are when you come out.’ But he was now getting evidence at first-hand.
More than half of all the Russian soldiers taken prisoner craved alcohol. Some begged for drink, others showed alarming withdrawal symptoms. Adam, in the past week, had come across another factor which might well contribute to the indifferent quality of the Soviet soldier. Although the Army drew from all ranks in society, his prisoners constantly complained that what they called ‘very intelligent’ people, as well as those with good contacts, contrived to keep out of the Army altogether, buying successive deferments by bribery or going into higher education.
The storm of Afghan protest at what they thought was incomprehensible leniency had subsided to a mere background murmur, so Adam judged the time was ripe to take charge again. He stood up. ‘All this does not mean that our prisoners can get away without some recompense to us. After all, we have worked and taken great risks to acquire them. So I have a proposal to make.
‘We ourselves owe a debt, a great one, to certain people whom most of us do not even know, people who, maybe, had hardly heard the word Afghanistan till a year or two ago. But these people, in far-off lands, learnt of our plight and answered the call of humanity. They came here and they tended our sick – many are still doing so – undergoing the same hardships as us, and for no material reward. They eat poor food and have to drink polluted water. They catch diseases, they are hunted by helicopters, and still they come. They are the doctors and nurses of International Medical Aid, Médecins sans Frontières, and other organizations and they are saving hundreds of lives. It is evidence of the rottenness of our traitors’ minds that Keshtmand, Karmal’s Prime Minister, has publicly said that he sees this selfless work as a cover for “other missions”. Kabul cannot see the heroism and sacrifice of these good people.
‘One of these, a thirty-year-old doctor called Phillipe Augoyard, was captured in January 1983 by the communists while tending the sick. His trial, as a spy, was filmed and shown on television. By this travesty of justice, the communists revealed their own evil better than their worst enemies could. The film was shown here in Afghanistan and released worldwide. It showed the exhausted Dr Augoyard, a broken man, being sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for “espionage”. As the cameras recorded the scene, the doctor thanked the court “for its mercy”. This was on March 13th, 1983.
‘The crime was, in fact, committed by the Soviets: jailing an innocent man. As a result, the name of the Russians and of our country stinks in the nostrils of civilization. Do you wish it to be so?’
The Eagle raised both arms into the air.
‘I therefore propose that we offer these Russian prisoners as a part exchange for the unconditional release of the gallant Dr Augoyard. Although he is only one man, he is worth ten times as much as this trash from the New Civilization!’
The Afghans cheered.
When the possibility of their release registered in their benumbed brains, the captive Red Army men again intoned one of their hardly cheering dirges. The interpreter rendered it as ‘Rusya, Madar-i-Muqaddas!’ – Holy Mother Russia.
On June 3rd, 1983, it was announced by the Afghan Chargé d’Affaires in Paris that Dr Phillipe Augoyard had been reprieved and would leave Afghanistan within the next few days. By June 9th, the French Embassy in Kabul stated that he had been handed over to them. By the middle of the month he reached Paris.
The trial was over and the fate of the prisoners decided. Afterwards, in one of the smaller caves which Adam used as an orderly room, Qasim showed The Eagle a collection of what appeared to be waste paper – scraps from the backs of envelopes, even bits of cloth.
‘When they were waiting for the trial,’ he said, ‘the Nikolais asked that these, their last letters home, might be sent there for them.’
‘Letters home?’ The baker Nanpaz was eavesdropping and could not hide his puzzlement. ‘Are these men or not? Perhaps, given more time, they would have sent home samples of their needlework as well! They kill children, and they write letters home. They firebomb us, and ask us to be postmen.’ The baker suddenly gave a great laugh. ‘If that’s what the Russians are like, Afghanistan has nothing to fear.’
The Russian prisoners of war never saw their socialist paradise again. When they were interrogated by the GRU, it was officially decided that their spell in captivity had produced ‘disturbing symptoms of bourgeois thinking’. According to information that reached The Eagle’s band through their double agents in the KHAD, the prisoners revealed ‘taints of sympathy with the Afghan bandits’. Some had stated, defiantly, that the rebels were not counter-revolutionaries but patriots, and one Russian private had said, ‘They are farmers and workers like us.’
The Muhjahidin never learned how the Russian hostages and their dangerous sympathies were disposed of. They were very probably shot. They did, however, return to their homeland in an all too familiar form as cinders in the little chromium-plated urns, which now grace so many homes in the Soviet Union.
News travels fast in Afghanistan. Soon the shabnamas, ‘night letters’, passed from hand to hand in towns and villages, were full of The Eagle’s exploits, some real, some imaginary. In the teahouses and market-places, in government offices and army barracks, the equivocal name was whispered, in hope or in fury, more and more often, as the Russians became bogged down in their Afghan adventure, and as the spirits of the people rose accordingly.
The Russians, true to type, assumed that he was the leader of a great, countrywide conspiracy, supported from outside and directing an organization of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of men. Nothing less could dare to oppose them, nothing else could have carried out the exploits, all over Afghanistan, which were ascribed to him.
Abroad, people accustomed to thinking in conventional terms, were delighted that the Afghans ‘had thrown up a national leader at last’. But the Afghans, unlike other peoples, did not work in that way. They had always won their wars against occupiers in the past, even with an equivalent disparity of weapons: but never by following a single man at the outset of the struggle.
Adam Durany knew that an Afghan leader, living and fighting amid such a highly individualistic people, must act as a catalyst. The Afghans would, indeed, rally to a leader: but only after he had proved himself, and after they, too, had some gains to bring to the contract. They always enlisted under a leader’s banner as equals. For this reason, The Eagle had three objectives: first, to hurt the Russian invader and make him pay; second, to establish his own success; third, to raise the fighting consciousness of other Afghans, and to help them establish their positions as victorious warriors.
When he heard the radio reports of the exiled political men wrangling in Pakistan and Europe, Adam laughed. When, from the same source, he listened to thoughtful but misguided military experts explaining, with copious references to Vietnam, Yugoslavia and elsewhere, that ‘nothing important can happen among the Afghans until they rally behind a single, national leader’, he shook his head. Experts they might be: experts in anything but the facts of Afghan history.
It was less than a month after the trial of the Russians at Paghman that Adam decided to descend upon another stockpile of weapons. Since the Afghan Army had become so unreliable, their arms and ammunition had been dispersed throughout the country under Russian control, and only issued to Afghan units with the strictest precautions. This, in fact, was only when the Soviet troops pushed them forward to attack rebel strongholds, and kept them covered from the flanks and rear.
The arms store which was Adam’s new target was at the Peak of the Standard-Bearer, no
rth of Kabul. He planned to attack it, neutralize the opposition, take away what he could and destroy the rest. Afterwards, making known what he had done – and how he had done it – he would use the exploit to encourage others and to underline his motto: ‘Daring and guile!’
Like the Soviets themselves, the Afghan Army were short of trucks. Just as all transport in the USSR is available and earmarked for military use, so the Afghan Army also commandeers anything on wheels when needed. A line of such trucks, seized from firms and merchants large and small, had just driven into the guarded area of the dump, full of weapons and explosives.
The Eagle had reconnoitred the place and observed its routines several times. Today he saw that, as on previous occasions, the vehicles had stopped just inside the high wire perimeter fence, to be unloaded later in the day. Deliveries, he had noted, stayed loaded until the changeover of guard duties.
In another half an hour, just after nightfall, the last truck of the evening would arrive. This one always carried miscellaneous despatches and supplies. He and Qasim withdrew, parallel to the road, to await the final truck.
When it was a mile from its destination, two figures, in heavy sheepskin coats and carrying boxes such as are common among wandering pedlars in Afghanistan, signalled to the driver of this truck that they wanted a lift.
The driver looked out of the cab.
‘What’s this nonsense? This isn’t a bus service for beggars. We’re only going up to the military camp anyway. Get out of the way, snake venom upon your fathers!’
‘Respected sir: the officers in there have called for us. How can we refuse such a command?’ The Eagle’s whine was perfect mimicry.
‘Called for you, idiots! That’s impossible. The officers there are gentlemen – they don’t talk to scavengers, buffoons, carrion!’
‘Sir,’ said Qasim, rewrapping a greasy turban around his head and scratching for non-existent fleas, ‘we are afraid of the Rouss, too. If we don’t get to see them, they’ll be angry with you, as well.’
