TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/88/88capirn.2

Text File | 1990-12-01 | 11KB | 184 lines

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                                            {««Careful Exit from An Endless War

August 29, 1988

As the Soviets split, the government and rebels take over the
battlefield

Skimming over the bone-dry terrain of northwestern Afghanistan at 150
m.p.h., the Soviet pilot of the Mi-8 helicopter gunship hugs the
ground, popping over hills and swooping through narrow ravines in the
hope of surprising rebel units in his path.  The strain of contour
flying less than 100 ft. off the ground shows on the faces of the
intent three-man crew as they scan the hostile terrain for an enemy
who could turn up anywhere:  behind the mud walls of a sprawling
village, among goatherds whose flock scatters at the deafening beat
of the rotors, in a rocky defile just over the next rise.  The
gunner, edgy, fires a burst from a nose-mounted gun into an arid
hillside.  As the chopper passes through a likely ambush site, the
pilot releases a string of flares to divert heat-seeking Stinger
anti-aircraft missiles.  The only time the men's faces relax is when
they pass over homeward-bound Soviet troops, who wave to their
airborne protectors.

The Soviet troops who withdrew from Afghanistan last week spent their
final hours in the war zone rolling along potholed roads through
regions still under the control of the mujahedin.  With half of
Moscow's 115,000-man invasion army now gone, complying with the Aug.
15 deadline, the Islamic insurgents remain a force to be reckoned
with despite the more than eight-year Soviet campaign to wipe them
out.

The Soviets took no chances two weeks ago when a column of 1,500 men
in 300 armored personnel carriers and trucks made its bumpy way 400
miles from Kandahar, a ruin of a city in the southwest, through
Herat, where the Soviets retain a major base, to the Soviet border.
Though officers explained that they had agreed to an informal truce
with Ismael Khan, the most powerful rebel chieftain in the Herat
area, they plainly did not place much stock in the understanding.
The two-mile-long column rarely left the cover of Soviet artillery
set high on ridges or the protection of clattering helicopter
gunships.  The precautions served their purpose:  over a period of
two weeks, the withdrawal convoys suffered no casualties.

Days before the column set out, Fazl Haq Khaleqiar, the governor of
Herat province, told a group of Western journalists that he had made
peace with most of the rebel groups in his region.  But as the column
rolled toward the provincial capital, it became clear that there was
a threat.  Tanks and artillery dug in every few hundred yards covered
the approaches to the city.  Hostile Afghans greeted the soldiers,
and a rock thrown by someone in the crowd caromed off a vehicle.
When journalists tried to walk around the city, armed teenage Afghan
members of the Communist Party youth organization blocked the way.
Just then an embarrassed Governor Fazl Haq appeared to tell the
reporters that they were free to stroll around.  When the newsmen
tried to take him up on his offer, the Afghans rounded them up at
gunpoint.  Their explanation:  rebels prowling the city might mistake
Western journalists for Soviets and kill them.

The next morning the column left Herat for the remaining 3 1/2 -hour
ride to the frontier.  As soon as the vehicles rumbled across the
Soviet border into Kushka, broad smiles spread across the faces of
troopers who had been tense through much of the journey; a few jumped
off their vehicles to dance with local Turkmen women.  For the men in
the convoy and an additional 10,000 withdrawn during the past two
weeks, the war was over.  Asked what the pullback meant to them, the
soldiers generally repeated the official line of having "fulfilled
their internationalist duty," though one lieutenant was more candid.
Said he:  "Obviously, it is time to leave.  Gorbachev himself said
that Afghanistan was something of a mistake."

A mistake?  A cause unworthy of more Soviet blood?  Certainly.  But
Moscow is still determined to stand by its Communist allies in
Afghanistan--at least until a suitable alternative emerges.  In an
interview with TIME, Nikolai Yegorychev, the Soviet Ambassador in
Kabul, reiterated that Moscow saw the only solution as a compromise
government involving both Communists and the mujahedin.  Said he:
"The problems facing Afghanistan cannot be solved militarily.  A
political settlement is essential."

Translated, that means Moscow will continue to help the Najibullah
government avoid military defeat.  Earlier this month the regime's
forces lost two provincial capitals in the northeast:  Taliqan, a
relatively insignificant small city, and Kunduz, a strategic strong
point.  Though Afghan troops, supported by Soviet air power,
subsequently recaptured Kunduz, Moscow apparently regarded the
setbacks as serious enough to quash earlier suggestions that the
50,000 troops still in Afghanistan might be home by the end of the
year, well ahead of the Feb. 14, 1989 deadline established under the
Geneva accords signed by Afghanistan, the Soviet Foreign Ministry
Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov:  "The situation in Afghanistan does not
give grounds to accelerate the withdrawal of Soviet troops."

According to U.S. intelligence sources, in fact, the regime regained
Kunduz only after Soviet fighter-bombers based in the Soviet Union
blasted and strafed rebel positions, reducing portions of the city to
rubble.  Washington considers the sorties a violation of the Geneva
accords, as well as a serious threat to the mujahedin's efforts on
the battlefield.  If the Soviets fear that their Afghan comrades are
not tough enough to fend off the mujahedin, Western analysts and
rebel leaders have quite the opposite concern:  so far, Najibullah's
troops have been showing more gumption than expected.  Around
Jalalabad, a city the Soviets left three months ago, Afghan troops
have thrown back repeated rebel assaults.  So far, the mujahedin are
holding only two dozen small towns.  Concedes a senior aide to
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of a rebel Hezb-e-Islami faction:  "They
[Najibullah's forces] have fought much better than expected."

Nor are their Soviet allies willing to see them beaten in a major
engagement, as they nearly were at Kunduz.  The city of about 40,000,
straddling a main road to the Soviet border 37 miles away, fell to
units of Jamiat-i-Islami and Gulbuddin's Hezb-e-Islami six days after
the 10,000-man Soviet garrison pulled out.  The guerrillas overran
the government defenders and freed the prisoners at the local jail,
but failed to capture the heavily defended airport.  Within two days
government reinforcements closed in, and Soviet aircraft went to
work.  After three days of fighting, the mujahedin withdrew;
according to TASS, twelve Afghan troops and 173 insurgents died (the
latter figure possibly includes civilian casualties).  The Kunduz
affair apparently triggered a shake-up in the Afghan military.  TASS
reported that Najibullah had appointed a new Defense Minister and
army chief of staff.

In the wake of Kunduz and other rebel setbacks, Western analysts'
predictions that major Afghan cities would fall quickly once the
Soviets pulled out look overly optimistic.  Says a Western diplomat
in Kabul:  "The mujahedin are not capable of waging large-scale
conventional warfare.  The regime still has superior fire-power and
transport capacity.

The guerrillas learned that lesson the hard way at Kandahar last week
when insurgents of Jamiat-i-Islami broke off attacks on strategic
high ground around Baba Wali, a heavily fortified point overlooking
the city, after coming under the air and artillery barrages from
entrenched government forces.  An assault by fighters of Yunis
Khalis' Hezb-e-Islami last month on outposts screening Jalalabad was
similarly thrown back at the cost of as many as 50 mujahedin lives.
Such large-scale attacks under heavy fire are something new for the
guerrilla forces.  Says Abdul Qadir, a senior rebel commander with
Khalis:  "The mujahedin are not ready to risk high causalities."

Instead, the resistance has been adopting the Maoist strategy of
controlling the countryside, isolating towns and cities, and
gradually wearing down government morale through rocket barrages.
Earlier this month, a huge munitions dump near Kalagay was blown up,
reportedly claiming hundreds of Soviet lives.  Last week Najibullah's
enemies scored a propaganda coup when his brother Sediqullah Rahi,
37, turned up in Washington to announce his defection and call his
brother "mentally deranged."  Though heavy combat has not touched the
capital, Kabul, the sights and sounds of war intrude almost daily.
At the airport planes follow a narrow corkscrew flight path down to
the runway rather than risk flying in low over hostile territory. Day
in and day out, the crump of outgoing artillery echoes through the
city as government forces try to keep the mujahedin off balance.

Moscow and Kabul's answer to the emerging rebel strategy of slow
strangulation is to dig in at a few strongholds--Kabul, Jalalabad,
Herat, Faizabad, Ghazni, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif--and await a
change in the military or political equation that could give them an
advantage.  Most of the remaining 50,000 Soviet troops are garrisoned
in Kabul and Shindand, the huge air base in western Afghanistan, as
well as in Herat and a few other cities along the main roads to the
Soviet border.  As many as 100,000 Afghan troops are deployed in the
same areas and at dozens of smaller outposts.

If most of the Soviet forces remain in place until late this year or
early 1989, as the Kremlin indicated last week, they will almost
certainly guarantee Najibullah's survival through next winter.
Moscow continues to supply the regime with a bountiful flow of
weapons and ammunition, and has announced long-term aid and economic
agreements.

The Soviets hope to prop up Najibullah long enough to allow a
transition to a more broadly based regime friendly to the Soviet
Union.  Whatever the stripes of the new regime, Moscow aims to have
it seeded with friends open to continued Soviet access to gas fields
and copper and oil deposits that it has developed in the North.  Says
Ambassador Yegorychev:  "There is no doubt that we have our national
interests here.  Our main interest is that Afghanistan be a good
neighbor of the Soviet Union."

--By Edward W. Desmond.
Reported by T.A. Davis/Peshawar, Ross H. Munro/Kabul and Ken
Olsen/Moscow