"We must fight to the death"

Even without unity, the Muslim insurgency struggles on

They came by the hundreds, picking their way down perilous mountain paths and unmapped trails that wind through the barren border country. Dressed in colored turbans and baggy trousers, the men were indistinguishable from the thousands of other Afghans who have fled into Pakistan as refugees. At night, though, in the amber glow of their charcoal braziers, the bearded faces turned as fierce as their vows of continued "holy war" to rid their homeland of the Soviet invader. "O mujahidin,"shouted a wizened tribal elder across the campfire, "even with only our curved swords, we must fight to the death!"

The mujahidin-- Muslim "holy warriors"--had converged on the Pakistani city of Peshawar last week for a gathering of the clans aimed at solving one obstacle border the success of their insurgency in Afghanistan: disunity. Torn by tribal rivalries going back centuries, the rebels hoped to form an umbrella alliance of their six loose groupings comprising more than 60 different tribes. A united front, it was thought, would not only enable the guerrillas to mount coordinated, large-scale military actions. It could also attract sizable new international backing, especially from sympathetic Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia. Specifically, the tribes men hoped to select a 100-man Revolutionary Council that could unify the fractious movement under the banner of the United Islamic Liberation Front.

But ancient differences proved stronger than the new need for common cause. Negotiations were frustrated from the outset when the tough but relatively small Afghanistan National Liberation Front, led by stern Sigbatullah Mujaddadi, balked at sitting down with the others for fear of having to cede authority to larger groups. Other rebel factions soon fell out over ideological differences.

Beyond a general allegiance to Islam and hostility toward Marxism, there was little agreement over a future political system for Afghanistan. Argued Sayad Ahmed Gailani, 45, the strongly pro-Western chief of the relatively new United Islamic Revolutionary Council: "We believe in democracy and modernization, and the majority of Afghans are with us." Countered Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, 32, the fervently traditionalist "Amir" of the long-established Islamic Party: "A pure Islamic system was established 14 centuries ago, and any regime that differs from that ideal is unacceptable." At the end of the loquacious jirga, as such a gathering of tribes is called, the only agreement the squabbling chieftains could reach was to appoint a delegation of three elderly mullahs for a fund-raising journey to Saudi Arabia.

Discord at the negotiating table did not interrupt the guerrillas' continued hostilities against the Soviets inside Afghanistan. Rebel bands mounted sporadic ambushes against Soviet convoys on the main highways. They tormented Soviet patrols with sniper fire when the invaders ventured into the unsecured countryside. They even managed to launch successful hit-and-run raids into the more vulnerable Soviet-held cities. Near Jalalabad (pop. estimated at 100,000), a market town on the principal highway leading into Pakistan, a squad of rebel commandos blew up pylons supporting the main power lines from the Kajakai dam, thereby blacking out the city for three days. That raid raised questions about the Kabul government's ability to protect its infrastructure. It was the third time since the Soviet invasion that the pylons had been demolished.

The guerrillas were also becoming ruthless in their marauding along the highways. Almost indiscriminately, they terrorized Afghan civilians as well as government officials and soldiers. Last week a passenger bus heading from Kabul to Jalalabad was stopped by a rebel raiding party; the able-bodied men who refused to join the insurgency were executed on the spot. Concluded one Western military attache with dark realism: "It is an unspeakably brutal tactic--and totally necessary if the guerrillas are to maintain their numerical strength."

In another attack just west of Jalalabad, rebels hijacked two West German trucks that were crossing Afghanistan on their way from India to Europe and blew them up. When questioned about the wisdom of attacking Europeans, rebel leaders in Peshawar were unconcerned. "If a truck is stopped by intelligent mujahidin, then passports are examined," one rebel chieftain said. "If they're not so intelligent, then they just shoot."

The guerrilla action posed no real threat to the 76,000 Soviet occupation troops that are now firmly in control of the country's population centers, but it was exacting a toll. Soviet casualties since the invasion are estimated at 1,500. Said a Western diplomat: "The Soviets continue to avoid large-scale skirmishes, but rebel ambushes are picking them off."

The Soviets were sending in fresh troops in a virtually uninterrupted airlift; an estimated 100 Tupolev transports and other troop-carrier aircraft flew in and out of Kabul airport as often as every ten minutes. Contrary to some earlier reports, the Soviets have apparently committed little of their most modern hardware to the Afghan campaign. No ultrasophisticated MiG-25s, and few MiG-21s, have been spotted so far; air units are made up mostly of 25-year-old MiG-19s. The majority of the tanks are 17-year-old T-55s.

Last week U.S. intelligence officials said they were "90% certain" that the Soviets were using nerve gas against the rebels. This ominous charge was reportedly based on testimony by refugees and defecting Afghan soldiers. Other American observers in the area, including TIME Correspondents David DeVoss and Marcia Gauger, could find no hard evidence to document the accusation--although there is some suggestion that Soviet planes were dropping deadly napalm on mountain villages.

Since the invasion, the Soviets have sent an estimated 5,000 civilian administrators and technicians to Afghanistan, in addition to the 4,000 advisers who were already in the country. Each minister in the 20-member Cabinet is now said to have two full-time advisers, and, one Afghan official complained, "no decision at any level of government is taken without them." Said another senior Afghan official: "The Russians are taking over everything--we are being virtually annexed." According to some experts on Afghanistan, that may be a functional necessity: the Cabinet of President Babrak Karmal is as riddled with feuds as the rebel groups are.

The Soviet invasion continued to reverberate across Southwest Asia. In different ways, Pakistan, India and Iran were all being nervously conditioned by the potential threat of further Soviet moves, whether military or diplomatic. Pakistan scrambled to enlist foreign support for its defense. A quick response came from neighboring China. Making the most of a previously scheduled visit, Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua toured Afghan refugee camps and emphasized Peking's three-fold commitment: to support the insurgency, to aid the 440,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan and, most important, to "safeguard Pakistan's national independence and security."

In his State of the Union message, President Carter reiterated that aid to Pakistan should be considered a "first order of business." But U.S. officials indicated that legislation to authorize a military aid package was sure to be delayed because Washington and Islamabad were far from agreement on its size and scope. The Pakistanis continued to belittle a U.S. proposal of $400 million in aid as "peanuts," in General Zia's phrase, and planned to submit a lengthy military shopping list costing in the billions.

The defense package was also being held up at Islamabad's request, in deference to regional political sensitivities. The Pakistanis had asked Washington to delay action until after a special session of the Islamic Foreign Ministers' Conference, which opened in Islamabad over the weekend. Thirty-three Muslim nations, more than two-thirds of the 41-nation conference, responded to the urgings of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other strongly anti-Communist members. Purpose of the special session: to form a common response in protest against the Soviet takeover of a Muslim nation. As Carter told Democratic congressional leaders last week, Zia presumably wanted the opportunity to pressure Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries for as much financial aid as he could squeeze out of them without being inhibited by a big U.S. commitment in advance.

The prospect of military aid for Pakistan roused acute concern in neighboring India. One after another, political leaders converged on New Delhi for talks with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who only three weeks before had swept to an overwhelming comeback victory in parliamentary elections. First to arrive was British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, fresh from two days of talks with Pakistan's President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq. Next Mrs. Gandhi met with Bangladesh's President Ziaur Rahman, U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing; this week Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky and U.S. Special Envoy Clark Clifford are all to meet with Mrs. Gandhi. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko is expected in February.

The caravan of high-level visitors signaled the importance of India's role in shaping a cohesive regional response to the Afghanistan crisis. In the softest possible language, New Delhi had described Moscow's intervention as unjustified and "expressed the hope," as Foreign Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao put it, that the Soviets would withdraw. Mrs. Gandhi's government, however, was equally jittery about the possible creation of a U.S.-Pakistan-China axis, which could push India into an overly close relationship with the Soviet Union, with which it already has a friendship treaty.

The Afghanistan crisis was also softening the hostile face-off between Iran and the U.S. over the 50 American hostages, now in their 13th week of captivity. After vowing to proceed with stern economic sanctions against Iran, the Carter Administration last week made it clear that it was no longer in any real hurry to impose them. Among other things, Washington is waiting for the outcome of Iran's first presidential election, in the hope that it might produce a new leader with enough authority to face down the embassy militants, or otherwise break the deadlock.

Final results in the balloting among 22 million eligible voters around the country were expected early this week. By Saturday, the front runner among the eight candidates approved by Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini seemed to be Finance Minister Abol Hassan Banisadr, who had been sacked as Foreign Minister last November for his reputed willingness to compromise over the hostages. An air of additional uncertainty was cast over the election by the questionable health of Khomeini, who was suddenly hospitalized for what was officially described as "a mild heart attack." Within 48 hours government bulletins said that the 79-year-old leader was recovering "normally" and that he had risen from his hospital bed to cast his own vote in the election. Khomeini issued a recorded get-out-the-vote message stressing that "my illness must not hamper anyone from effective participation in the election." He did not need to remind anyone that whoever wins the presidency, Iran's new constitution gives Khomeini effective power to remove him.

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