Latterly, however, he had become so disgusted with the feuding between the various political parties, the corruption and the inability to get the Afghans to work together, that he had given up all his political activities and wanted to have nothing more to do with them. In future, he would concentrate his energies on becoming a businessman, pure and simple.

Valderano found it difficult to believe that Niazi could have benefited in any way from funds destined for the Afghan Resistance. Although he may well have had his extensive travel bills paid, he was by no means flush.

For the record, he believed Kakojan Niazi to be responsible for sending considerable amounts of medical and other supplies to Afghanistan. However, he had told Valderano that a good deal of this was stolen in transit through Pakistan.

In Valderano’s judgement, therefore, Kakojan Niazi was an honest and honourable man who did his best under well nigh
impossible circumstances. He certainly was able to get some military aid as well as humanitarian aid to the Afghan Resistance.

In closing, Valderano said he was not in the least surprised that some German politicians and perhaps others in Germany and Afghanistan should have helped themselves to relief funds contributed to the Foundation. As he personally had long been convinced of the venality of most politicians, it would have been much more surprising had it been found that nobody had had their hands in the till! Valderano made the gratuitous point that he had had nothing to do with fund-raising himself. Plainly, Valderano was not to be budged in his loyalty to Kakojan Niazi.

I opened up on three initiatives, known to me, which I now supposed embraced Niazi’s current field of business activity. The first was a hotel project in Herat, with his ‘cousin’ Ishmail Khan. I personally regarded this enterprise as unlikely to succeed. The other two were more grandiose still and had been touted round to the British and the Americans. The first was an airfield and, as off-set, there was a promise to discourage the growth of poppies, plus the offer of surveillance facilities to monitor Iran. The other was a dam to control the water supply there. I did add that I had always understood
the waters disappeared into the sand anyway on the border!

To this, Valderano said he could see how Niazi could have been duped by German colleagues. He was to some extent naive in business - not being a professional business man, but having had only some training as a lawyer.