Afghanistan in 1988: Year of Decision

After a protracted political and military stalemate, the Soviet leadership around Mikhail Gorbachev decided in late 1987 to seek a negotiated withdrawal from Afghanistan. The accord signed at Geneva on April 14, 1988, began the process of extracting the Soviets militarily from Afghanistan but did not provide for any resolution of the conflict itself. After withdrawing about 50,000 troops by the August 15 interim deadline, Moscow "suspended" its troop pullout, charging a continued flow of arms aid to the Afghan mujahidin ("warriors for the faith") and other alleged violations of the accord by Pakistan and, by implication, the United States. At the same time, Soviet leaders reiterated their commitment to complete the troop withdrawal by the February 15, 1989, deadline. The Soviet Union appeared at year's end to be seeking some kind of political accord involving the Afghan resistance. Whether Soviet moves represented a serious effort to come to terms with the Afghan resistance or simply a last ditch effort to win acceptance of a political compromise between the fiercely anticommunist mujahidin and Moscow's Afghan clients was unclear. The death of Pakistan's President Zia ul-Haq in an August 17, 1988, plane crash, along with the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, did not lead during 1988 to any apparent diminution of Pakistani support for the resistance. The newly elected leader of Pakistan, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, pledged continuity of policy on the Afghan issue, at least for the time being, and retained as foreign minister one of the main architects of that policy, Sahabzada Yaqub Khan.