| Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf’s new book ‘The Bear Trap – Afghanistan’s Untold Story’ is not dissimilar to the Stinger missiles used with such effectiveness in that war, in that it aims to strike at selected targets, it hits as often as it misses, and it has beer fired resting upon the shoulders of the Afghan mujahideen. If you have not heard of Brigadier Yousaf before, it is not perhaps surprising; in fact it might have been surprising had you heard of him before, for he was one of the wraith-like secretive figures who organised the furtive supply of arms and logistical services to the Afghan mujahideen from Pakistani territory. |
| After years of stealth, he has suddenly found it necessary to reveal with a disarming, disquieting frankness the extent of our covert support to the Afghan mujahideen. His account has been substantially rephrased by a British author Major Mark Adkin who, one suspects, provided the sort of assistance to the Brigadier that Faiz Ahmad Faiz once claimed to have given to a book of memoirs by Malik Feroz Khan Noon (“I translated them from English …into English.” explained Faiz modestly). [EXTRACT] |
Published in THE NATION 6 August 1992, and reprinted in THE ARMLESS QUEEN (1994). |
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