Secret talks between the Taliban and MI6 amid the evacuation of Kabul are the latest chapter in the British intelligence agency’s long history of engagement with radical Islamic groups in Afghanistan. Much remains shrouded in secrecy, but one insider is...
In the 1980s, Britain’s psychological operations for Afghanistan were more experimental, with Fullerton having to find suitable cameramen among the maze of mujahideen groups in Peshawar or sometimes crossing the border with them to reinforce his journalistic cover as a freelance foreign correspondent.Spy Game
Surface-to-air missiles and landmines in Afghanistan would later cause the West massive concern, but Carrington had no such hesitations in the early 1980s.: “It seems to me that this, though a tricky area, is one where the Afghan liberation movement deserves a measure of support, and one where the injection of some slight assistance may pay substantial dividends.”
Left-wing Afghans who became disenchanted with the Soviet-backed People’s Democratic Party government in Kabul also came across Fullerton’s radar in Peshawar, but they lived in fear of reprisals from Pashtun religious groups and their principal backers, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence . “I would go to an Afghan commander’s house in Peshawar and I’d see figures darting around inside going in doorways and up staircases,” Fullerton recalled. “I’d learn later that those were Arab volunteers. Then I saw on the corner of the street where I lived in University Town a group of Arabs in white robes and headdresses — it might have been Osama Bin Laden, who knows. He did live in University Town.
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