The Bear Trap (Afghanistan’s Untold Story)

This highly controversial book reveals, for the first time, one of the greatest military, political and financial secrets of recent times. It is nothing less than the true, if fantastic, account of how Pakistan and the USA covertly controlled the largest guerrilla war of this century, dealing to the Soviet Russian presence in Afghanistan a military defeat that has come to be called ‘Russia’s Vietnam’. From 1983 to 1987 Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf was the head of the Afghan Bureau of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI – akin to the CIA), and as such was effectively the Mujahideen’s commander-in-chief; he is, in fact, as the book demonstrates, the only general since the Second World War to have directed troops in action within the Soviet Union’s own borders. He controlled the flow of thousands of tons of arms across Pakistan and into its occupied neighbour, arms bought with CIA and Saudi Arabian funds from the USA, Britain, China, Egypt and Turkey, among others. He organised and directed the training of the Mujahideen in secret camps within his own country, and covertly sent Pakistan Army teams inside Afghanistan to assist the guerrillas in their campaign of ambushes, assassinations, raids and rocket attacks, a campaign that forced the Soviets to realise that they could never win. He saw that the Mujahideen were fed, cared for, and supplied with every necessity; he organised recruiting from among the thousands of refugees; he negotiated with the leaders of various guerrilla groups (a task requiring the skills, patience, and strength of character of several saints); and he co-ordinated the ultra-secret Mujahideen raids deep inside what was then still the USSR. There are many in authority in the USA and Pakistan who would still prefer that Brigadier Yousaf’s revelations were not made public...