The Geneva Accords: Historic Achievement or Prelude to Disaster?

In the mid-1980s, when the guerilla operations of Afghan militant religious groups against the Soviet forces invading Afghanistan were at their height, a significant change took place in Moscow.

Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the post of Secretary General of the Communist Party, the main center of power in the Soviet Union. In the following year, in 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. There were voices of reservations when it was safe.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last president of the United Soviet Socialist Republic, focused on internal stability and embarked on a path of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reconstruction) reforms. Agreed with US President Ronald Reagan to limit nuclear proliferation and end the ongoing Cold War between the two world powers.

From here, the idea of ​​ending Russian military intervention in Afghanistan and withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan began to develop. The concerned bodies of the United Nations were working on this idea since the early 80s. In Islamabad as well as in Moscow, Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo tended to be indifferent to the military priorities of the Afghan war, so coordination began in Moscow, Washington, and Islamabad, Moscow seeking a peaceful withdrawal of its forces from Kabul. asked for

April 14, 1988 was the historic day when the agreement on the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan was signed in Geneva, Switzerland. This agreement was reached after six years of tireless efforts. Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Zain Noorani and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kabul Administration in a ceremony held under the chairmanship of United Nations Secretary General Peres Dekoyar at 5:00 PM Pakistani Standard Time at the European Headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva. Abdul Wakil signed the agreement, while Soviet Foreign Minister Edward Sheward Nadze and US Secretary of State George Schulz acted as guarantors, and Perez DeKoyar signed the accord on behalf of the United Nations as Secretary-General.

The historic 38-page agreement stipulated the voluntary return of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, 50 percent of Soviet forces within three months, and its complete withdrawal from Afghanistan within nine months. According to the agreement, the process of withdrawal of Soviet forces was scheduled to begin from May 15, 1988 to February 15, 1989.

It was a bilateral agreement between the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Both countries agreed not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. The mandate to monitor the implementation of the agreement was given to the United Nations. According to this agreement, the determination was made to ensure the participation of the ‘Mujahideen’ by forming a new government in Afghanistan on a broad basis without recognizing the Kabul government.

Unfortunately, the two countries did not comply with the Geneva agreement. In Pakistan, the government of Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo considered the completion of the Geneva Accords as a historic achievement. He rejected the instructions of the absolute military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq and convened an All-Party Conference before the Geneva Accords. Benazir Bhutto, Khan Abdul Wali Khan, Rasul Bakhsh Palijo, various Baloch and Pakhtun nationalist leaders participated in this conference which continued for three days at the Prime Minister’s House and openly spoke against General Zia-ul-Haq. After getting the opinion and support of all of them, Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo called it a ‘national consensus’. After the All-Parties Conference, he left for Geneva and signed the Afghan Peace Agreement by including Pakistan’s conditions.

Some political pundits cite the Geneva Accords as the main reason for the dismissal of the Junejo government on 29 May 1988 by General Zia-ul-Haq under Article 58 (2) B of the Constitution. General Zia-ul-Haq, who described the Geneva Agreement as a miracle, was actually not happy with this agreement, and his ‘historical’ phrase in this regard is also preserved in the pages of history that ‘We put our mouths in the coal mine. Black has been done.’

Due to some of its fundamental flaws, the Geneva Accords did not offer a complete solution to the Afghan problem. Despite this agreement, some jihadi organizations not only continued to be active in Afghanistan, but the consequences of ignoring the establishment of an alternative Afghan government in the Geneva Agreement began to emerge, such that the Pashtuns and the Northern Alliance between the Afghan militant Mujahideen groups resistant to the Russian forces. Uzbek, Tajik groups could not unite.

Soviet-allied Afghan President Muhammad Najibullah ruled Kabul until 1992. After them, power came to the hands of Afghan ‘Mujahideen’. On April 28, 1992, Sibghtaullah Mujadadi was declared the Afghan President, later Burhanuddin Rabbani took over the presidency, the name of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the main commander for the Prime Minister, was finalized on June 17, 1993. In those years, the terrible confrontation of power and authority over Kabul wounded him more than the suffering inflicted by the Soviet forces.

Bloody clashes took place between the forces of the Uzbek commander Abdul Rashid Dostum and the Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Masoud, who were opposed to Pashtun Hekmatyar. Even in the outskirts of the Afghan city of Kandahar, a fighter named Mullah Muhammad Omar rose up in response to a random incident, and soon, Afghans of a militant nature joined his group.

With the weapons left behind by the Soviet forces, local warlords across the country raised their flags of sovereignty, and Afghanistan suffered the worst civil war and crisis in its history. Due to the non-implementation of the Geneva Agreement, the relations between the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan could not improve. If the Geneva agreement had been implemented according to its spirit, it was possible that the Taliban would not have been born in Afghanistan.