Deeper into the Quagmire

Civilian protests confront the Soviets with a fierce new challenge

We have won a greats victory. We have shown the Russians what the Afghan people think of them." So said a belligerent Kabul merchant, exulting over the mass anti-Soviet protests that rocked the Afghan capital last week, The unrest was reported to have spread to six provinces, from Kandahar in the south to Baghlan in the north, and the Soviets were facing the most serious challenge to their two-month-old occupation of Afghanistan, which has brought them worldwide condemnation.

The floundering Kabul government of Party Boss Babrak Karmal was ordered to clamp martial law and a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the capital. Soviet troop reinforcements were rushed into the city to put down growing disturbances. Nonetheless, firefights that caused at least 50 casualties broke out in several parts of the city. As rebel leaders threatened to mount a full-scale attack on Kabul in March, intelligence officials in Washington could scarcely contain their glee at the Soviets' discomfiture. Said one defense analyst: "They've really got their feet in the quagmire."

The general strike and accompanying demonstrations represented the first time that Afghan civilians had joined the armed rebels in standing up to the Soviets. From Moscow's viewpoint, it was thus an ominous warning that the resistance could develop into a general uprising throughout the country. Moreover, the civilian protests accompanied other intelligence reports that Karmal's dissension-racked puppet regime was on the verge of collapse. Overall, the Soviets appeared to be up against a dismal strategic reality: to suppress both the insurgency and civil disobedience, they might have to remain in the country far longer than they had perhaps intended, and they could be forced to bring in as many as 50,000 more troops to retain control of the cities and highways.

The Kremlin's concern over the fierce new challenge inside Afghanistan was apparent in a policy pronouncement made last week by Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. Accusing Washington of "hysterics" and of "circulating the lie about the war of the Russians against the Afghan people," Brezhnev reiterated Moscow's claim that it had been invited into the country under the terms of a Soviet-Afghan treaty. Said the Soviet President: "The U.S. loudly demands the withdrawal of Soviet troops but in fact is doing everything to put off this possibility; it is continuing to build up its interference in the affairs of Afghanistan." In a direct attack on Jimmy Carter, he declared: "The anti-Soviet hysteria was needed for somebody riding the crest of this wave to win the presidential election in the autumn." But then, in what may have been a subtle deviation from the Kremlin's hitherto intransigent line, Brezhnev made the point that the Soviets would withdraw their troops when outside interference is "permanently terminated."

With MiG-21s buzzing low overhead, and the sound of sporadic gunfire echoing across scattered parts of the city, Kabul was described by foreign residents as being "in the grip of crisis." From the shopping streets of the Shari-i-Nao district to the alleyways of the Shorbazaar in the Old Quarter, thousands of shopkeepers had first closed their doors on Thursday to dramatize their resentment against the Soviet invaders. Shouting anti-Soviet epithets and antigovernment jeers, the merchants repeatedly defied attempts by Afghan police to force them to reopen their shops. When thousands of other citizens poured into the city center to support the merchants, they launched a series of vehement protest marches. Green Islamic banners were unfurled as marchers snaked through the shuttered streets with cries of "God is Great!" and "Death to the Soviets!"

Convoys of Soviet armored personnel carriers, which had been kept discreetly outside the city, rolled into the downtown area. Squads of armed infantrymen, who had been patrolling only at night, stood guard around government buildings during the day. According to the martial-law decree, all residents of Kabul were ordered to surrender firearms to the police within 24 hours; violators would be taken before "military-revolutionary" courts. A TASS dispatch from Kabul explained that the Interior Ministry had ordered the martial law and curfew in response to "plunder and arson" by Muslim insurgents and what it called "foreign agents, mercenaries and stooges."

U.S. intelligence analysts said that the strike apparently resulted from a well-coordinated plan among several different resistance groups, although the identity of the organizers was unknown. The strike had been triggered by the circulation of printed leaflets throughout Kabul, urging shopkeepers to join in a "unanimous condemnation" of the Soviet invasion. Next day, as though by prearranged signal, the strike spread to at least ten cities and towns across the country.

In a stunning turnabout at the United Nations, meanwhile, a Kabul official sent to defend his government before a special meeting of the nonaligned countries defected instead and denounced the Soviet "occupation." The 33-year-old career diplomat, Abdul Rahim Ghafoorzai, dramatically declared his support for his "compatriots in the liberation struggle."

The ferocity of Afghan resistance to Soviet rule was shown in a remarkable pictorial report of a rebel ambush--and the subsequent execution of a hapless Soviet prisoner--that appeared last week in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Richard Ben Cramer, a staff reporter for the Inquirer, and Italian Photographer Salvatore Vitale spent eight days accompanying Muslim rebel units in the mountains near the Pakistan border. They were witnesses when a rebel patrol spotted a Soviet vehicle traveling cautiously through a gully, raked it with automatic weapons fire and killed the driver. His passenger, a lieutenant in his late 20s, was taken prisoner.

The captive was trussed with a gun strap and dragged into the hills along with the patrol. That evening, according to Cramer, the rebels washed themselves, as Islamic ritual requires them to do, and knelt on their blankets and faced southwest toward Mecca to pray. Then, near an outcropping of rock, they shot the prisoner. When asked how the rebel leader had justified the killing, one of his followers explained: "He said this man was not Muslim." -

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