‘Yes, I have 6,000 troops in Charikar, and tanks and jets in Mazar-i-Sharif and Bagram [Air Base], which I can use against him. Gulbuddin asked me if I was angry. I said, “No, not as angry as you will be later.”

That ‘later’ would only have to come if Hekmatyar ignored Massoud’s ultimatum. Next morning, we heard on the BBC World Service that a ‘prominent guerrilla leader’, meaning Hekmatyar, was still objecting to the plan for a mujahideen government. It sounded as if confrontation were inevitable.

I sat writing my diary in the garden of the house in Charikar where I was staying – a former KHAD headquarters requisitioned by Massoud’s forces.

It was a beautiful spring morning, and the apricot tree beside me was thickly covered with the tenderest pink blossom. The long, harsh Afghan winter was over; the fragile beauty of spring was all around us. But as I enjoyed the sunshine, I wondered: would the spring bring with it a bloody offensive?

Later, a few miles up the road, in the small town of Jebal Seraj, we were standing outside Massoud’s headquarters when we heard a clatter of rotor blades as several Russian-built Mi-8 helicopters came swooping in from the direction of Bagram. They were empty, and we soon discovered– as we watched a contingent of troops being marched up the hill – that Massoud was about to carry out his threat to Hekmatyar of airlifting troops into Kabul.

Massoud himself appeared shortly afterwards and confirmed that the troops now embarking were indeed destined for Kabul. After a brief word with the crews, he said a prayer, and then the Mi-8s started their engines and took off; they climbed towards the sunlit, snow-covered Hindu Kush mountains before turning south towards Kabul.

To be continued…..