The World

The Israelis had occupied half of Lebanon and their ally was president, but their successes provoked a reaction that turned their triumphs to ashes: the Assads ordered the assassination of President Gemayel. Furious Christian militias slaughtered Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, watched by Israeli forces, while Hezbollah launched a murderous bombing campaign against the Israelis. Begin fell into depression; Sharon was sacked and condemned; and the Assads’ Shiite ally Hezbollah gradually took over Lebanon, with disastrous consequences.

The Assads had restored their influence in Syria. Then in November 1983 Hafez had a heart attack. Rifaat bid for power, attempting a coup in March 1984, but Hafez recovered, foiled Rifaat, dismissed him from command of the Defence Companies, ‘promoted’ him to vice-president and exiled him. He now turned to his eldest son, Bassel. The Assads were not to be troubled by Islamicists for another twenty-five years.

As the Assads were crushing jihad in Syria, the Americans ironically were investing in holy war in Afghanistan.

MAGGIE AND INDIRA

A new US president, Ronald Reagan, rejected Nixon’s detente with the Soviets and saw an opportunity to hit the ‘empire’ in Afghanistan. Elected at the age of sixty-nine, Reagan shaped a more theatrical, majestic and military presidency. Born in Illinois, a debonair yet folksy son of a boozy, sometimes violent salesman and sunny mother who ‘always expected to find the best in people and often did’, he became a radio announcer, film star, union official and then Californian governor, whose mellifluous voice, athletic figure, instinctive lightness, cowboy swagger, Christian wholesomeness and anti-Communism restored faith and confidence after the Manichaean contrasts of Nixon and Carter. Nicknamed Gipper after a football player he portrayed in a movie, Reagan combined his breezy western appeal with the uptight east coast aristocrat George Bush, who became his vice-president.^* No one could equal his wisecracking suaveness under pressure. Soon after taking office,^*

he was shot by a lunatic but managed to joke to his wife, Nancy, ‘Sorry, honey, I forgot to duck.’ In the ensuing crisis, Bush won his trust by not exploiting his temporary incapacity.

Once the Iranian hostages had returned, Reagan deployed American power to confront what he called the Soviet ‘evil empire’ on all fronts, from Angola and central America to space, where he promised a fantastical high-tech Strategic Defence Initiative which alarmed the Soviets – even though it did not yet work. While Reagan appeared placid, his swashbuckling lieutenants were recklessly cynical in their shenanigans, his presidency almost destroyed by their illegal plot to pay for the release of the Iranian hostages and fund anti-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua, selling Israeli weapons to Iranian ayatollahs in one phantasmagoric conspiracy. Yet nothing seemed to touch the schmaltzy, slick-feathered president who had restored American confidence in their ‘city on a hill’.

Afghanistan quickly proved a quagmire for the Soviets, who struggled to defeat the mujahedin insurgents in the rough Afghan terrain. In the Panjir Valley, the Soviets launched nine offensives, but rarely controlled more than the main cities. Carter had started Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan, but Reagan expanded it, spending $3 billion to bleed the Soviets while challenging them all over the world. The Americans romanticized these ‘freedom fighters’, thinking they shared their anti-Communism; but the jihadists detested any infidel intruders. The money was channelled through President Zia’s ISI, which favoured jihadist groups as an insurance that Afghanistan would never fall under Indian influence.

‘We are neither pro-Russia nor pro-America,’ said Indira Gandhi, back in power and watching the Afghan war. ‘Just pro-India.’ She ruled with her son Sanjay, now MP and general secretary of Congress, and clearly her heir. But on 23 June 1980 he took out an aeroplane from the Delhi Flying Club; looping the loop over his office, his chappal shoes became entangled with the pedals and the plane crashed. Indira rushed to the scene and saw his mutilated body; it took doctors three hours to reconstruct it so that it could be displayed. Her sangfroid was invincible: when a relative wept, Indira said, ‘Now now, puphi, we don’t cry.’

Four days later she was back at her desk, but with Sanjay gone she turned to her eldest son Rajiv as heir. He was happily married to Antonia Maino, a pretty builder’s daughter from near Turin, who, knowing nothing of India, had worked as an au pair in England and then as a flight attendant, which was when she met Rajiv, a pilot. ‘As our eyes met, I could feel my heart pounding,’ she recalled. ‘Love at first sight.’ Taking the name Sonia, she worked as a picture restorer and quickly became Indira’s favourite. ‘I don’t know much about politics,’ Rajiv said. ‘But Mummy had to be helped.’