Four Years in Purgatory

By William E. Smith

AFGHANISTAN

The Soviets have settled in for a long, costly, nasty war

One night last week, Soviet television carried an astonishing news report from the capital of Afghanistan, a broadcast that was totally fitting for the dawn of the Orwellian new year. The film showed hundreds of Afghan demonstrators parading through the streets of Kabul on Christmas Day. The subject of their protest was, of course, not the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which had occurred exactly four years earlier. Instead, the Afghans were demonstrating against the U.S. invasion of Grenada, a military action that had begun in October and effectively ended after eight weeks. In the Soviet news film, the marchers carried a banner demanding U.S. IMPERIALISTS, HANDS OFF GRENADA ISLAND! The banner was in English, which probably reduced its readership in Kabul but certainly suggested something else: the broadcast was intended not so much to persuade Soviet audiences of U.S. perfidy as to distract Western attention from the historic day when nearly 100,000 Soviet troops rolled into Afghanistan to prop up a faltering pro-Soviet regime.

As the fifth year of Soviet occupation of that savagely proud nation begins, the war is a soggy stalemate. As many as 20,000 Soviet troops have been killed in the past four years, according to U.S. estimates, but the Soviets are not about to leave. They still have a force of 105,000 in Afghanistan, enough to hold the cities most of the time but nowhere near enough to dominate the countryside. The Mujahedin guerrillas, whose insurrection precipitated the Soviet invasion in the first place, control some 80% of the Texas-size country. Despite factional differences and a pressing shortage of modern equipment, the rebels fight on with unflagging ferocity, but they are far from defeating the combined force of the Soviet occupation and the army of the Afghan government led by President Babrak Karmal. So the fighting continues, sporadically and inconclusively, while the cost of maintaining the Soviet presence, estimated at $8 million a day, is financed from Afghan exports to the Soviet Union.

One crucial aspect of the Soviets' original occupation plan was to build the Afghan army into an effective force. Nonetheless, that army has dwindled from 100,000 men in 1979 to about 40,000 today, as soldiers have deserted and civilians have done their best to escape forced conscription drives. To restore discipline in the population, the Soviets have relied more and more on the KhAD, the local version of the KGB. They have also vented their frustration by mounting reprisals against the civilian population. When Soviet convoys are attacked by Afghan rebels, Soviet-led squads now retaliate by burning villages, fields and orchards and sometimes by executing the male inhabitants of nearby villages. Last July Soviet forces shot as many as 30 elders in the provincial capital of Ghazni. In October, after a series of raids on convoys outside Kandahar, the Soviets left some 100 civilians dead in nearby settlements. At times over the past year, they have mounted aerial and artillery attacks on Istalif, Herat and other cities, but without destroying the rebels' resiliency. Soon after the Soviet and Afghan government forces announced last August that they had "pacified" Kandahar, the Mujahedin took to the rooftops with loudspeakers and for hours taunted the government soldiers, urging them to defect to the rebel cause.

In Kabul, life is reasonably normal during the daytime. But with nightfall come the sounds of mortar fire and explosions, signs that the Mujahedin are at work. There have been repeated attacks on the city's electric and oil lines, the Soviet-manned fortress of Bala Hissar, the

Soviet embassy and even the presidential palace. Mujahedin assassinations of Communist Party workers, secret police and other security personnel have led to the gibe "Join the party and die."

The Mujahedin have also suffered large losses, perhaps as many as 50,000 dead in the past four years. Operating mainly from bases on the other side of the Khyber Pass in Pakistan, where an esti mated 2.9 million Afghans have taken refuge, the tribally divided Mujahedin have received a modicum of surreptitious military aid from the U.S., but nowhere near as much as they feel they need. Consequently, they have adapted their traditional skills to modern warfare as best they can, using their goats and sheep, for example, to clear mined areas. During the past two months, the rebels have shot down helicopters carrying three Afghan generals and a high-ranking Soviet offi cer. Hearing of the Soviet death, the Afghan Defense Minister, Lieut. General Abdul Qadir, flew from Kabul to Herat to investigate. His helicopter was unable to land at Herat because of heavy rebel fire.

For a while last spring, there were faint hopes that the Soviets might be pre pared to consider a withdrawal of their forces from Afghanistan in return for a Western guarantee not to interfere in that country's affairs. In April, Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov told U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar that the Soviet government was "strongly in favor" of a political settlement. Since then, however, there have been no further indi cations of Soviet flexibility. Andropov's deteriorating health may have served to block any new Soviet initiatives.

Most U.S. experts are convinced that the Soviets have settled in for a long stay in Afghanistan. For the moment, the So viet strategy is to pacify one region of the country at a time, much as the Russians in the 19th century overwhelmed the resistance in the independent entities that have since become the provinces of Soviet Central Asia.

-- -- By William E. Smith.

Reported by Mohammad Aftab/Islamabad and Johanna McGeary/Washington

With reporting by Mohammad Aftab, Johanna McGeary