Karmal Calls

Trouble amid the bear hugs

As he stepped off the Aeroflot jetliner onto the tarmac of Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, Afghanistan's President Babrak Karmal was given effusive greetings by a phalanx of Soviet officials led by Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev. The Afghan leader was on his first venture outside the Soviet-occupied country since he was installed as Moscow's puppet last December. The sheer number of senior Soviet Politburo members participating in the Moscow welcome demonstrated the Kremlin's obvious desire to shore up Karmal's legitimacy and make a show of his supposed influence with the Kremlin. Mused a Western diplomat who observed the arrival: "There were more bear hugs than at a circus."

No amount of bear hugging, however, could hide frustrations over the inability of the Soviets' 85,000 occupation troops to vanquish the rebel insurgents' continued resistance in Afghanistan. In a propagandistic way, Karmal admitted as much when he complained to his Soviet hosts that bandits and terrorists armed by the U.S. and China "intimidate and loot the population and kill party members and employees of state organizations."

Just 60 miles from Kabul, in fact, in the Ghorband Valley leading to the city of Bamiyan (pop. 47,000), seesaw battles between Soviet troops and bands of insurgents are said to have caused heavy casualties on both sides. In the Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul, the Soviets have apparently given up their attempt to dislodge the fierce mujahidin (Islamic warriors) from their strongholds. Similarly, Soviet troops have been unsuccessful in efforts to reimpose order on the lawless city of Herat in the northwest, and have only managed to maintain a tenuous and frequently interrupted hold on Kandahar in the south. In Kabul, sniper and grenade attacks have forced a progressively longer and stricter curfew, most recently from 10 o'clock in the evening to 5 in the morning.

Simple mismanagement has made a shambles of the economy. Afghanistan's gross national product has dropped 70% to 80% in the past year. As industrial activity has slowed, revenues from government enterprises such as electric-power plants and textile mills have dropped sharply. Toll taxes on highways are being collected, but mostly by the mujahidin, who control many of the roads. A result: severe cuts in public spending, especially in education and welfare.

Persistent food shortages have aroused fears of a possible famine this winter. Nearly 1.5 million head of sheep and goats have been herded into neighboring Pakistan by Afghan refugees, for example. Farmers not working their fields to their fullest potential run the risk of having their lands confiscated by the government. But such draconian rules can hardly be enforced in areas controlled by the mujahidin.

For all its gladhanding, Karmal's sojourn in Moscow was expected to turn up little in the way of hard Soviet aid, at least not enough to pump some life into Afghanistan's hemorrhaging economy. Instead, Karmal and Brezhnev signed a wide-ranging treaty of military cooperation. Said Karmal, with utter slavishness: "Were it not for the Soviet Union, there would be no Afghanistan on the political map of our planet, and all mankind would have been suppressed by the brutal barbarity of fascism and imperialism.

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