He had the satisfaction of being chairman of a board, which included Senator ‘Little John’ John Tower, Sam Cummings, Paul Channon, Nathan Adams and the Archduke Otto von Habsburg, amongst many others from Europe, Latin America, the Far East, Asia and even Africa.

From what I could gather, none of these good people felt the urge sufficiently to put in their own money. So far as our story is concerned, the next significant milestone came when Sir John Biggs-Davison, M.P., was invited by a ‘German
Foundation’ to attend an Afghan Conference in Munich in order to meet Afghan leaders. Sir John had asked his old friend Valderano to stand in for him.

In the event, he was not much taken with the ‘wild and woolly’ leaders presented to him. However, he appears to have taken a shine to Kakojan Niazi, who may just have been organising the whole show in the name of the German Afghanistan Foundation, and whom I believed, from the evidence collected in Germany, to have been associated with certain elements of the German fund-raising campaigns.

As to the subject of the conference, Valderano’s lecture to Kakojan Niazi had been along the lines of a highly perceptive
priorities appreciation.

There was no point in attempting to kill every Russian. They would only send more to fill the live training-ground gaps. Anti-tank weapons weren’t going to do the job either. Any tanks knocked out would get replaced with later models. No, their Achilles heel was helicopter gun-ships and, more particularly, their crews. What was needed was ground-to-air missiles, the American-manufactured Stinger and/or the less predictable British Blowpipe. These would tip the scales by reducing Russian air dominance. All this must have been music to Kakojan Niazi’s ears. He found that Valderano was not only the answer to the maiden’s prayer, but that he was also about to have his prayers answered.

In fairness to Valderano, Kakojan Niazi was already well played in. He was highly experienced. After studying Dr Nassery at close quarters, he had moved on to HELP, followed by his German Afghanistan Committee exposure. He had been around for a long time and had become a familiar figure at conferences ever since 1984 at Geneva.