In the Capital of a Quagmire

Moscow conducts an open-ended battle against a resilient insurgency

For nearly two years a Soviet expeditionary force of 85,000 troops has propped up Afghanistan's Communist regime against a motley but tenacious resistance movement. Soviet intervention in Afghanistan has become a chronic irritant in East-West relations: Secretary of State Alexander Haig reiterated U.S. outrage in his talks with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at the United Nations a month ago, and the Afghanistan issue will probably be debated in the U.N. General Assembly next month. Most Western press coverage of the conflict has come from listening posts in Pakistan and India and from reporters who have slipped into rebel-held territory. TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott received a rare visa from the Afghan government and last week sent this report from Kabul:

During daylight, Kabul seems almost like a city at peace. Almost, but not quite. There are reminders, some constant and subtle, others sudden and dramatic, that this is a land at war with itself and with its giant neighbor to the north, and that the war is closing in on the capital.

At a dusty park, children frolic on a makeshift wooden Ferris wheel, seemingly oblivious of the armored personnel carrier at an intersection near by, a searchlight mounted on its turret. The younger children cluster around a foreigner, taking him for a Soviet, chanting "Khorosho! Khorosho!" (good). Older youths, approaching or just over the compulsory military draft age of 15, withdraw sullenly.

At the main mosque on the bank of the Kabul River, the faithful gather for midday prayers. Most are old men, many of them crippled. In the midst of their worship, the droning incantations from the loudspeakers on the minarets are momentarily drowned out by the roar of two camouflaged MiG-21s streaking toward targets upcountry. Outside, a truck goes by with two Soviet soldiers in the back. They wear wide-brimmed khaki ranger hats and olive-drab bulletproof vests, and they hold their Kalashnikov assault rifles at the ready, barrels upright, on their knees.

Commercial air traffic, what little is still operating, moves in and out of Kabul airport normally, but the Soviet Ilyushin and Antonov military transports that use the same runway bank sharply after takeoff and climb to a safe altitude in a tight spiral. There is rising concern that rebels armed with hand-held SA-7 antiaircraft missiles may be hiding in the hills around the capital.

In the densely populated old part of Kabul, numerous houses are flying red banners. There is nothing ideological about them. It is an Afghan custom to hoist a green or blue flag if someone in a household has died, a red one if death occurred by unnatural causes, "such as murder or in war," as a resident explains.

Trade in the bazaars is brisk. It includes a thriving black market in which Soviet soldiers barter vodka, clothing, even ammunition for hashish. Here and there, turbaned vendors beckon for customers to examine straw baskets filled with lethal-looking daggers with 6-to 8-in. blades. A pair of passing Soviet privates, their Kalashnikovs at their sides, eye the knives nervously.

A European agricultural aid specialist says that the radius in which he is allowed to operate around Kabul has narrowed to just beyond the capital's suburbs. The price of tea has recently doubled, the cost of firewood, the principal heating fuel, tripled. Winter in this ruggedly beautiful mountainous country can be very harsh; this year it will be especially hard, and expensive, for Kabul's citizens.

Seven miles north of the city lies the Kabul Golf and Country Club. Its 18 holes are perhaps the most challenging in the world, not just because goats graze on the fairways and the "greens" are made of oiled-down sand, but because the course is often a no man's land in shootouts between government troops and the mujahedin (holy warriors). The guerrillas let alone the foreign diplomats who play there: the Soviets, after all, are known not to be golfers. The mujahedin concentrate instead on sniping at Afghan sentries stationed near by atop a dam at the base of Kargha Lake, a reservoir for the capital. The guerrillas have also ambushed parties of Soviet soldiers and nurses from the military hospital in town who come to swim and fish in the lake. Recently six Soviets were fishing with hand grenades, lobbing them into the water like depth charges and swimming out to collect the fish that floated belly-up to the surface. Then a band of mujahedin on a hillside opened fire, a lethal variation of the same game. Two of the Soviets were killed, two wounded, and two escaped.

But the lesson of Afghanistan may be that the Soviets do not give up easily: last week there was another Soviet swimming off the pier at Kargha Lake, while his wife and small daughter gathered stones on the beach. They had formidable lifeguards: a dozen Afghan soldiers, a patrol boat and an armored vehicle.

The reservoir basin frequently reverberates with the thud of bombs exploding near by and with the rumble overhead of Mi-24 "Hind" helicopter gunships. They are the nemesis of the mujahedin. The choppers' main targets nowadays lie another ten miles northwest, around the town of Paghman, which has been the fulcrum of a seesaw struggle between government forces and insurgents. Two weeks ago the mujahedin's green banners of Islam were flying over Paghman. Last week they had been replaced by the black, red and green flags of the government. Next week, or the week after, Paghman might be in rebel hands again.

It is after nightfall that the war comes to Kabul itself. By dusk the crowds have thinned out in front of the Ariana Cinema on Pushtunistan Square after the last showing of Guilty, an Indian-made "drama of underworld crime, lust and sin." Afghan-manned tanks and armored personnel carriers take up their positions at every traffic circle. Armed patrols fan out. Soviet troops replace the Afghan youths who have been checking documents and searching cars at roadblocks during the day. At 10 p.m. the curfew goes into effect. Violators can be shot on the spot. So can the enforcers. Bursts of gunfire punctuate the night. Mujahedin who have infiltrated the city, sometimes with the connivance of sympathetic Afghan army officers, wage hit-and-run attacks on the homes of government officials, fire rifle-propelled grenades at Soviet staff cars, and assault police stations. In one such raid recently, the rebels killed six policemen and persuaded 17 survivors to desert.

Defections have been the government's principal curse. Before the 1978 coup that brought the Communists to power, Afghan army strength stood at over 100,000. That figure had dropped to 50,000 to 70,000 by the time Moscow invaded and installed the regime of Babrak Karmal in December 1979. It is now down to about 30,000 men. Draconian attempts to solve the problem have only exacerbated it. During the summer, teen-age cadets from the Kabul military academy were suddenly rounded up and thrown into the ongoing battle for the mountains around Paghman. At least 70 died, many of them the sons of men who run the regime.

Last month the government announced a new draft law calling up all males between 15 and 35 who had not yet served, and extending the tours of those who had already been conscripted. Many young men promptly disappeared into the countryside, some to join the mujahedin. Yet others did report to their draft boards, only to do two weeks' basic training, receive their government-issue weapons and then defect to the guerrillas.

any shopkeepers in Kabul closed their doors in protest against the new law. The khad, the government security force that is largely a creature of the KGB, came around in trucks with bullhorns broadcasting a mixture of threats and patriotic exhortations to get the shops to reopen. Eventually the police broke the locks on the stores, often to find that the owners had fled to the hills, taking their inventories with them. Public demonstrations against the draft have usually been conducted by young women, on the theory that they are less likely to be fired on.

The most frustrating military operation for the Afghan and Soviet forces has been the battle for the Panjshir Valley, 40 miles north of Kabul. Four times they have tried to drive the mujahedin out; four times they have failed. The most recent offensive petered out two weeks ago, and there were signs that the insurgency was becoming less of a free-for-all in which rival guerrilla groups quarrel with one another almost as fiercely as they fight Kabul. During the latest Panjshir campaign, for example, rebel units normally operating south of the capital trekked north to join the mujahedin in the valley.

But the insurgents still face a host of problems, some of them self-inflicted. Despite the late Anwar Sadat's revelation that Egypt has served as a channel for the U.S. to infiltrate Soviet-designed weapons to the rebels, the mujahedin insist that they still rely primarily on what they can capture from their fallen or routed enemies. They have acquired from the outside, mainly the U.S., China and Egypt, some antiaircraft guns and antitank weapons, but not in sufficient quantity to neutralize the MiGs, helicopter gunships and heavy armor that throw such devastating firepower against rebel encampments and villages.

When a rebel band does get hold of a modern Kalashnikov, the weapon is likely to end up as a status symbol in the hands of the tribal elder, while the younger warriors, men with better eyesight and surer footing, are left to fight with bolt-action British Lee-Enfield rifles.

In one sense the lack of unified leadership is an advantage for the insurgents: the Soviets cannot end the rebellion simply by decapitating the movement. But while mujahedin may be learning to cooperate on limited operations, their very diversity makes it difficult for them to close ranks behind a sustained, coherent military strategy or political program. Some are Muslim fundamentalists, even Khomeini-esque fanatics.

Others are disgruntled leftists, while still others are perennially recalcitrant tribal chiefs nostalgic for the bad old days of the feudal monarchy that was overthrown in 1973.

Afghans have been fighting one another at least as long as they have been resisting foreign invaders. The mujahedin have the rallying point of a common enemy, the Soviets, and any regime unmistakably identified as Moscow's puppet may be doomed. But that does not mean that even with heavy increases in outside assistance, the rebels can defeat and expel the Soviets.

With their huge military wherewithal, the logistical advantage of a common 1,050-mile border, and few or no political repercussions to worry about on the home front (the Kremlin need not fear that Moscow State University undergraduates will start burning their draft cards), the Soviets can hunker down for a long time in Afghanistan, fortifying enclaves and forgetting about pacifying the countryside. As the Afghan army continues to hemorrhage, the Soviets may feel that they have no choice but to take over more and more of the burden of the fighting. Thus the day recedes when they can pull out under a policy of "Afghanization."

Indeed, Soviet diplomats, including Foreign Minister Gromyko, have indicated recently that the Kremlin is prepared to hold on in Afghanistan and wage a war of attrition against the insurgents as long as necessary to assure the survival of a pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. That could mean forever.

Such stubborn determination leaves Moscow faced with the prospect of an open-ended drain on its resources and ongoing embarrassment in its foreign policy. It also presents the U.S. with a dilemma. Should the U.S., in exchange for a Soviet pullout, press for a diplomatic settlement that might involve the formal recognition of Karmal's puppet regime and an end to outside support for the mujahedin? Or should Washington keep the covert military heat on and insist on unconditional withdrawal?

"It's a tough call," says former CIA Director William Colby. "Is there a chance of [the rebels'] actually winning? It doesn't look very promising." Adds a former senior official of the Carter Administration: "If you help Afghan insurgents who have no hope of winning, then are you sending them to slaughter? On the other hand, if you get over that moral hurdle, you can go all out and really bleed the Soviets, even if you can't beat them."

The Reagan Administration is definitely attracted to the second option. Unfortunately, that course risks antagonizing Western European allies and some Islamic countries that reject the Soviet presence in Afghanistan but are wary of Washington's bellicose anti-Moscow rhetoric. Yet even with the best of will in Washington, it is difficult to imagine what a compromise would look like, given Soviet and Afghan refusal to negotiate with the mujahedin and the rebels' rejection of a Moscow-imposed regime.

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