A Shroud of Insecurity

AFGHANISTAN

After 16 months, the Soviets are still mired in stalemate

Moscow indicated last week that all is not going so well for its forces in Afghanistan. In an unusually candid article, the Soviet party daily, Pravda, reported that episodes of major sabotage, roadblocks and ambushes of supply convoys had been carried out by rebel forces against Soviet and Afghan troops. Most worrisome to the Soviets was a new kind of nonmetallic mine that is not detectable by ordinary means. The rebels have been successfully planting the mines along major highways to blow up Soviet tanks and trucks. "Such a mine said Pravda, "can be passed over by 40 trucks but the 41st will be blown up. After 16 months in Afghanistan, in fact, the 85,000 Soviet occupation troops still control only the capital of Kabul. Last week Indian Journalist Rajendra Sareen, editor of New Delhi's POT Analysis and News Service, returned from an eleven-day visit to Afghanistan, where he interviewed President Babrak Karmal, head of the Soviet-installed regime in Kabul. He gave TIME this report:

For the capital of a country at war with itself, Kabul still has a surprising appearance of normality. Its shops are fall its currency (the afghani) reasonably sound, its merchants eager to do business. The bazaars, in fact, are fall of consumer goods from around the world: tape recorders and calculators from Japan, jeans from the U.S., Harris Tweeds and Swiss chocolates from Europe. Fruit and vegetables and other foodstuffs are also plentiful. Soviet families, however do not venture into public markets for fear of being attacked.

A shroud of insecurity hangs over the capital. It has been underscored by several alarming incidents in recent weeks. The first occurred in late January, when a group of pistol-packing youths forced their way into the United Nations staff house in the diplomatic section of Kabul, where a Saudi Arabian reception was taking place. The intruders locked up all the diplomats present, then made off with the building's sophisticated radio equipment, television sets and other valuables. The Saudis severed relations with Afghanistan after the incident, but the robbers have never been apprehended.

A few weeks later, bandits again launched a brazen operation, this time during the nightly curfew. They smashed locks and shutters on a number of prosperous shops in the Pushtun Market, and made off with more than $1 million worth of cash and jewelry. Functionaries of the ruling People's Democratic Party were quick to blame the crime on insurgents, who were said to be trying to embarrass the government. The rebels denied responsibility, insisting that only the official cadres could have acted with such impunity during the curfew.

In the wake of the incidents, other recent travelers report, the Soviets have taken over more responsibility for security in the city from the undermanned Afghan army. At 30,000, the army is less than half the strength of two years ago. Efforts to lure new recruits and persuade regulars to extend their tours of duty have not been very successful last year, informed sources say, policemen rioted in Kabul when they were told that they would not be released from the force after two years of compulsory service. In the fracas, windows of the Soviet library and bookshop were broken. There have also been numerous instances of Afghan soldiers defecting to the rebels.

The insurgents, meanwhile, continue to operate throughout the countryside with near impunity. Indeed the rebels seem to be better armed and equipped than they were a year ago. Their methods of operation are also increasingly sophisticated. About a third of the estimated 50,000 men that make up the various rebel groups launch their cross-border forays from tribal territories in Pakistan.

In a bid to stem the challenge posed by the stepped-up tempo of the insurgency, the Soviets last week sent reinforcements into Kandahar, a city of 125,000 in southern Afghanistan, and to the five provinces that border Pakistan and Iran. In part at least, the new Soviet operations, spearheaded by tanks and armored personnel carriers, were in response to the assassination last month of four Soviet advisers in Kandahar's main bazaar.

President Karmal, 51, whose political career has been checkered by purges, imprisonment and exile, comes across as a moderate who has little stomach for the intrigue that characterized the regimes of his two predecessors, Noor Mohammed Taraki and Hafizullah Amin. He said that his government would "warmly welcome" the scheduled visit of U.N. Special Representative Javier Perez de Cuellar, who was due in Kabul as part of an ongoing search for a possible international settlement of the Afghanistan crisis. In that regard, Karmal also said that he was interested in bilateral talks with Pakistan, but, he added bitterly, "the governing military junta in Islamabad has no free will of its own." Pakistan, he said, was being used as a "tool and means of aggression against Afghanistan in an undeclared war by U.S. imperialists and Chinese hegemomsts.

Karmal seems to realize that his regime cannot win support by military means. Recently, for instance, orders have gone out to government functionaries to try to encourage hostile villagers to remain in their homes and till their crops. But Karmal's credibility as a leader has been irreparably damaged by the fact that he rode to power on the strength of Soviet guns. Aside from a few men at the top, in fact, the only issue that seems to unite the Afghan people is their determination to send the Soviets home. The Soviets surely realize the depth of popular sentiment against them. As one Russian staying in the Kabul Hotel admitted: "We have got into a bad thing."

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