Faisal Aijaz: What was the greatest achievement of ISI at that time?
Col (R) Abid: ISI achieved so many things militarily during my time but the greatest to me was and will always be ‘Soviet-Afghan War’. When It was all over, the ISI was on top of the world and even the American CIA acknowledged this several times. Let me tell you something very interesting, Soviet Red Army came to Afghanistan with their almost 300 transport & attack helicopters carrying thousands of soviet airborne soldiers and spetsnaz, ammunitions and other stuff, bomber aircrafts and jets such as Su-25, Mig-21, Su-17, Mig-23. When President Amin was assassinated by the Russian GRU Spetsnaz, that was the time when our ISI moved in. CIA funded us and provided us soviet-made weapons bought from the black market which was then transported from Pakistan to Afghanistan for Afghan Mujahideen. The entire process was under the control of General Akhtar Abdur Rehman who was the DG ISI at that time. We were even provided with United Kingdom’s Blowpipe MANPADS which came out to be a total failure when we gave it to Afghan Mujahideen because It was ineffective and then only United States decided to gave us their US made Stinger missiles which came out to be a huge success when Afghan Mujahideen gunned down several Soviet Hind assault helicopters and aircrafts. Only a handful of ISI officers went to Afghanistan for the training and assistance of Mujahideen and It was our ISI who single handedly mastered the proxy war in Afghanistan which resulted in a huge blow for the Soviet Union. It was indeed a nostalgic dive for us.