Frightened City Under the Gun

An eyewitness account of hatred and terror in Kabul

The capital of Afghanistan has gradually become a closed city to Western reporters, as the Soviets seek to crush a widespread rebellion that makes mock of their claim that last December's invasion was merely an attempt to help a neighbor in need. The reality is that despite an awesome military presence, resistance goes on even inside Kabul--a curfewed, frightened and sullen city under the gun. John Shaw, an Australian journalist and former TIME correspondent, spent a week in its tank-guarded streets and markets, often under the surveillance of Afghanistan's dreaded secret police. His report:

Every morning, as the weak spring sunshine breaks through the mists and low clouds swathing the jagged snowcapped mountains ringing Kabul, flocks of Soviet helicopters--Mi-24 "Flying Tank" gunships and Mi-8 troop and supply carriers--lift off from the airport and roar across the city on flight paths calculated to inspire fear and respect. Thus begins the daily ritual of checking and opening the highways through Kabul Gorge, Sarobi and Jalalabad to the Khyber Pass (the east); to Ghazni and Kandahar (the south); and to the Salang Pass and the Soviet frontier (the north). Other helicopter forces--sky caravans in what was once a land of camel caravans --fly farther, on missions and reinforcement flights to the eastern provinces of Paktia and Kunar, where a spring offensive against the mujahidin, the anti-Communist guerrillas, is under way.

Kabul Airport is a massive Soviet military base. Tanks guard key city intersections. Cannons are trained on the main bazaar. Armored personnel carriers rumble through the streets. Heavily armed soldiers guard all public buildings. A curfew begins at 10 p.m., but the streets are empty between 7 p.m. and 8 a.m. It is forbidden for more than four people to assemble without permission in a public place.

The atmosphere of the city fluctuates between acute tension and chronic fear. In the tea houses all heads lift from sipped cups when anyone enters. A slammed door, an auto exhaust backfiring, the passing of a military vehicle, a ringing phone, the clumsy crash of trays or pots in a cafe --any of these sounds turns eyes nervously, stops conversations. People do not loiter in the streets, except at bus stops and around food stores.

Kabul is waiting for something to happen--riots, guerrilla action, a tightening of curfew, the replacement of Moscow's puppet party boss Babrak Karmal, army or police mutiny, perhaps an even more overt Soviet takeover. However ill founded, however paranoid, the constant rumors have a reality of their own in shaping the war psychosis of the occupied city. The men seen in the streets with guns, the fac,ade of power, are Afghans. The real occupiers, the Soviets, are invisible, except for their helicopters, the jet contrails, the daily barrage of Pravda-phrased media propaganda, the Cyrillic script that is replacing English, German and French signs in some store windows, and the guarded busloads of anxious-looking Russian civilians, mainly women on escorted shopping trips.

A month ago, Kabul erupted in violent anti-Soviet demonstrations. These were savagely put down by armor, helicopter gunships and Soviet-directed Afghan troops. First reports said that some 400 civilians had been killed, and hundreds wounded, in the crushing of the uprising, which began with cries of "God is great!" and "Down with the Russians!" around the 18th century Pul-i-Hesti mosque and in the nearby Chahr Chatta (four arcades) bazaar in the old section of the city. Rumors in the capital now have it that as many as 1,500 people were killed. Most casualties reportedly occurred in a two-pronged move by the Soviets across the Pul-i-Hesti bridge over the Kabul River. Thousands of protesters were trapped in the narrow streets surrounding the bazaar. According to witnesses, the Soviet vehicles fired into the demonstrators, leaving hundreds dead. Later, Kabul residents say, Soviet soldiers looted fruit, sacks of flour, canned goods and clothing from the bazaar, shooting off the locks of shuttered stores.

By the government's own count, which was published in the official English-language Kabul New Times two weeks ago, thousands of demonstrators were arrested. So far, says the government, it has released more than 2,000, many of them teenagers. Untold others are still detained in Kabul's grim Pul-i-Charki prison.*

The Soviets have withdrawn to the outskirts of the city, leaving Afghan-manned tanks and Afghan troops with fixed bayonets and automatic rifles in ostensible charge. But Kabul is not yet quiet, or beaten. There is nightly gunfire on the outskirts, and there were two major military incidents during the week. Precisely at noon one day, there was a considerable Shootout a few blocks from the mosque of Haji Yaqub, known as the blue mosque. A house-to-house search by Afghan soldiers and police had been going on in residential streets behind the mosque, long a "suspect" neighborhood, when the shooting broke out between troops and the inhabitants of one house. After the incident, troops cordoned off the entire area while soldiers using metal detectors continued their search--a familiar scene in Kabul.

The principal source of news in Kabul is the "night letter." These hand-printed single-sheet leaflets circulate frequently, if sporadically. One distributed last week told of Soviet soldiers killing villagers in Paktia and Kunar provinces and claimed mujahidin success against Soviet and Afghan troops. The letters are scattered in streets, thrown over courtyard walls, stuffed under doors, but most commonly circulated from food bazaars and stalls by wrapping them around bread or fruit sold to housewives and children.

The illegal letters show the persistence and daring of guerrilla and anti-Soviet cells. Politically they are probably no more than a symbol, since there is no sign of the emergence of a Vietnamese-style liberation front among Afghanistan's disparate and so far uncoordinated rebels. But the letters have far more credibility than the government and its enormous press, radio and TV propaganda machine. Indeed, Karmal is seen as a puppet and a traitor. He is commonly referred to as a saq (dog)--an unclean animal to Muslims.

A young Kabul souvenir-stall holder, when asked if he is a native Afghan, replies: "I don't have a native country any more. The Russians have taken it." The Soviets are nearly always referred to as "they" and "them." It is widely believed, no matter how erroneously, that the Kabul museum is closed because the Soviets are shipping its treasures to Moscow, including famed hand-carved statues from Nuristan and gold coins from the Greco-Bactrian period. In Kabul, no belief is too wild to hold if it is anti-Soviet.

The most dangerous thing for a foreigner in Kabul today, apart from being picked up as an alleged spy by the secret police, is the risk of being mistaken for a Russian. All non-Soviet embassies, including some representing East bloc nations, have issued to their staffs and citizens what are wryly called "I am not a

Russian" cards, "identity" papers stating the bearer's nationality.

Europeans taking cabs in Kabul carefully state their nationality to the driver before giving their destination or even asking what the fare will be. In shops, bazaars, cafes, storekeepers and waiters ask the few Westerners still in the city, "What is your country? Where are you from?" Even the most casual Afghan contacts warn foreigners to stay out of the bazaar for fear that they will be taken for Soviets and shot or knifed by Afghans seeking to avenge the killings in February.

Kabulis are cautious about what they say to anyone. Plainclothes police are busy. One of the few political jokes heard in the city reflected its fear and suspicion: "We have only 40,000 phones in Kabul. That's not many for a population of more than half a million, but at least we can say they are all tapped."

Because phones are often tapped, or may be, embassies, missions and the few remaining individual foreigners in Kabul use code words to pass daily signals of the estimated danger level. Some of the phrases, on an ascending scale of warning, are "Phase One," "Phase Two," "Ground Fog," "Fog," "Bad Weather" --meaning, roughly, take care, stay at home, likely trouble, emergency.

It was in this atmosphere that Kabulis marked Nawroz, the Afghan new year, on March 21. Usually it is an occasion for jovial family gatherings, but there was nothing to celebrate and much to mourn. The occasion was as bleak as the weather --a day of low cloud and cold rain.

One Afghan family, gathered in a Kabul house that Friday night, suddenly had to snap out of their gloom. An acquaintance arrived with a man whom the family suspected of being a member of Parcham, Karmal's Communist-inspired party. Fearing that pessimism might seem suspiciously unpatriotic, the family put on a smiling show for the visitor. "For two hours we pretended to be happy. We made jokes and talked of a bright new year to come," said one of the guests.

The minute the party member left, the phony high spirits ended.

There is much talk now about how to get out of the country and where to go. This is a special preoccupation of middle-class Kabulis, the technically trained, the businessmen, those with some Western-style education or language ability. In addition to the 600,000 staunchly Muslim rural Afghans who have voted with their feet in the past 18 months by crossing the mountains into Pakistan, there is a new and growing exodus by Kabulis and other urbanized Afghans.

Leaving the country is not easy. Every Afghan passport issued has to be personally signed by the Minister or Deputy Minister of the Interior and costs the equivalent of $500. But by exploiting connections, or by bribery, many middle-class Afghans are getting passports. After that hurdle, they have to explain to their employers why they want to leave. Feigned illness of a spouse requiring treatment abroad (particularly in Pakistan or India) is one ploy. Others who have dependents without passports have escaped in more daring ways. Taxis with cramped, hidden compartments built under back seats have smuggled some from Jalalabad or Kandahar to the Pakistani frontier.

Those staying in Kabul face a future even more uncertain than the exiles queuing up in front of Western consulates or living in refugee camps in Pakistan. Although Kabul stores are packed with goods--intended for a $100 million tourist trade that has fallen to nothing --the economy is near collapse.

Kabul does retain some scraps of its former character. Donkeys laden with wicker panniers of fruit plod along the muddy side streets. Women beggars, their faces concealed completely by hoods with mesh eye holes, wail for baksheesh outside rug stores. Turbaned tribesmen from the mountains stride along shouldering huge bundles. Boys offer sticks of lamb shashlik grilled over charcoal at street corners. Outside moviehouses there are garish posters of Afghan-made westerns in which ersatz Omar Sharifs twirl six-shooters in each hand. But the cinemas are open only in the afternoons, and ticket sales are slow because, it is said, people fear grenade throwing. Next to the movie posters are government placards showing a turbaned official Afghan hero thrusting his bayonet at a Chinese "hegemonist" and at a terrified Uncle Sam.

Outside the airport a large billboard says, in English and French, THANK YOU FOR YOUR VISIT. The latest and biggest package tour to arrive at Kabul Airport looks set for a long visit. The Soviet army has pitched a tent city there. Its equipment includes hundreds of helicopters, scores of giant Antonov and Ilyushin transport aircraft, spotter planes, radar trucks, tanks, artillery, antiaircraft batteries, radio rigs, armored personnel carriers, lines of trucks, gasoline tankers, innumerable smaller vehicles. Huge transports, some in Aeroflot's blue and white paint, others in military silver, come and go. The view from the departure lounge and the airport tearoom is like Red Square in Moscow on the anniversary of the October Revolution. About the only weapon missing from this panoply of Soviet military might is an ICBM.

In the land of the Afghan hound, dogs are also a casualty of war. Many departing Westerners had to leave their prized pets behind. Some had them destroyed. A few left them with Afghan friends--after carefully removing their identification collars. Others simply turned them loose to survive as best they could through a Kabul winter. Near the airport the other day an Afghan family rescued a starving, sad purebred basset hound, plodding through the icy slush. Times are bad in Afghanistan for dogs too.

*U.S. officials believe that there are 15,000 political prisoners in Afghanistan.

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