War of A Thousand Skirmishes

By Robert Schultheis, Ken Olsen

Since Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in December 1979, an estimated 500,000 people have been killed in a war that has pitted Soviet and Afghan military units against anti-Communist mujahedin guerrillas. The Soviets say they want to get out, but five years of talks in Geneva have yielded no results. The bloody conflict has largely taken place away from public attention, but two reporters succeeded in visiting the two sides of the conflict for TIME. Robert Schultheis spent two weeks in the field with the mujahedin, and Ken Olsen last week toured the battle zone with Afghan government troops. Their reports:

The Mujahedin Press Hard

The MiGs arrived over Spina Bora, some 20 miles from Jalalabad, Afghanistan's fifth largest city, just before 7 a.m. Half a dozen jets flew out of the northwest, dropped parachute flares to deflect heat-seeking missiles, and then began their bombing runs. Mujahedin 12.7-mm and 14.5-mm heavy machine guns opened fire from the surrounding mountains, shooting in wide arcs across the sky. At the guerrilla base, Commander Khan Emir and about 20 of his men stood defiantly on an open knoll, firing at the jets with AK-47 assault rifles and RPG-7 grenade launchers. Other nearby guerrilla bases have small numbers of American-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles, but the mujahedin at Spina Bora have not received any.

A few weeks ago, 18 guerrillas died here in a MiG attack, but this time the napalm and high explosives fell wide of the mark, exploding to the north and south of the knoll. The MiGs then turned back toward Kabul, except for one jet that was trailing smoke. It headed toward the nearby airfield at Jalalabad.

The conflict in Afghanistan is a war of a thousand skirmishes. The mujahedin from Spina Bora and neighboring bases have in recent weeks been attacking Soviet and Afghan government defensive positions around Jalalabad. The air base there has been virtually shut down because of the threat of Stingers fired from the surrounding hills. During April, five MiGs and several Mi-24 helicopter gunships were shot down in the Jalalabad area by the potent shoulder-fired missiles. Now the Soviets are counterattacking, sending waves of MiGs from the Bagram air base, outside Kabul.

This is a bitter war, one without rules or limits. In early April, according to the mujahedin, the Soviets used poison gas in an attack on guerrilla antiaircraft positions. Hoja Inatullah, 19, says he nearly died of asphyxiation, surviving only by wetting his blanket and breathing through it. "For four or five hours afterward, I had trouble breathing," he says. "My friends carried me to the bomb shelter, and I lay there spitting up black fluid." In such a conflict, justice can be harsh for captured invaders. Said a young guerrilla named Ismail: "We won't shoot them. Bullets are too expensive. Maybe we will stone them to death, or cut their throats, or throw them off a cliff." Despite heavy Soviet pressure, the resistance fighters remain confident. "The mujahedin are better organized than before, better unified than before, with better morale than before," says Massood Khalili, a guerrilla political officer. New weapons like surface-to-surface rockets, Oerlikon antiaircraft guns and the Stingers have helped immensely. The Stingers, for example, are potent weapons against the once omnipotent Mi- 24 helicopter gunship. Battlefield communication and coordination among mujahedin groups have also improved with the introduction of field radios and walkie-talkies.

The guerrillas say they have even begun striking across the border into the Soviet Union in recent months. Says one commander, who claims to have participated in the cross-border raids: "Uzbek-speaking and Tadzhik-speaking Russians help us, giving us food, shelter and information. After our latest attacks inside Russia, the Soviets executed many Asian Russians for helping us." He claims that some Muslim Russians are now forming their own armed guerrilla groups. Says he: "We are making an increased effort to incite an uprising in Tadzhikistan and Uzbekistan."

Popular support for the guerrillas appears to be holding fast. "The Russians have found that it is not just a bunch of mujahedin they are fighting, it is the nation as a whole," says Khalili. "They found that all Afghans are really mujahedin, whether it is a seven-year-old child who gives information about the enemy or an old man of 70 who gives us a piece of bread."

Evidence of this solidarity is everywhere. In a seemingly pacified valley in the shadow of a Soviet base, where the crops grow tall and farmers toil in unbombed fields, the walls of the local teahouses are plastered with guerrilla posters and photographs of mujahedin heroes. Bands of guerrillas move about openly by daylight, carrying AK-47s and RPG-7s, on their way to attack Communist positions. In almost every valley a guerrilla base camp is hidden away in some ravine.

The Soviets still have an overwhelming advantage in firepower. Their convoys of tanks and armored personnel carriers and their infantry-fighting vehicles patrol widely, and the guerrillas enjoy no secure area. On the other hand, Soviet ground forces cannot occupy and hold the countryside. The resistance fighters are too tenacious and constantly attack convoy supply lines. The Soviets are thus trapped in a war that they will never lose -- but probably can never win.

Kabul's Forces Feel the Strain

Though the guerrilla war simmered beyond the city limits, Kabul was calm. Traffic filled the streets as Afghans commemorated the monthlong Muslim holiday of Ramadan. In the bazaars, everything from carpets to Coca-Cola was selling briskly. Even so, the mujahedin have forced the government of & Communist Party Chief Najibullah to take precautions within the capital. There are insistent signs of anxiety. Sounds of distant artillery salvos punctuate Kabul evenings like erratic heartbeats. Searchlights rake the surrounding hills in search of rebel infiltrators. In the daytime, armored personnel carriers often clatter through city streets that are patrolled by soldiers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

There may also be a threat from Najibullah's Communist rivals. In downtown Kabul, a series of small bombs exploded last week, damaging a shop and an apartment complex. Western diplomats speculate that the blasts were caused by followers of Najibullah's political opponent, former Party Chief Babrak Karmal, whom the Soviets purged last year. Karmal's followers may have staged the attacks to protest the departure of their leader for the Soviet Union two weeks ago, ostensibly for medical treatment. They fear that Karmal has been forcibly detained.

Despite pronouncements that the war is going its way, Kabul is often forced to concede the effectiveness of the guerrillas. Acknowledging that government forces shot down an intruding Pakistani F-16 recently, officials explained that the pilot had bailed out and was escorted back across the border by rebel forces -- an indication that mujahedin move freely in the border area. The national reconciliation drive launched by Najibullah in January has not fared well either. It has drawn the support of only about 40,000 refugees, a tiny fraction of the estimated 4 million displaced Afghans in Pakistan and Iran who support and often fight in the mujahedin's holy war against Kabul.

Even nonmilitary aircraft must take into careful account the presence of the guerrillas and their sophisticated weaponry. The 85 miles between Kabul and the frontier city of Khost, near the border with Pakistan, requires a zigzagging flight of nearly an hour and a half. Taking off from the capital, lumbering Soviet-made An-26 transports climb steadily in defensive spirals. From pods mounted on their fuselages, they trail bright orange flares to divert heat-seeking Stinger missiles that the mujahedin rebels might launch from hidden positions below.

The descent to Khost's dirt airstrip is gut wrenching, a series of dizzying circles, jigs and S-turns as once again the planes pop flares in rapid succession. Last week Soviet-built government transports delivered 60 journalists from India, the Soviet bloc and the West on a propaganda tour aimed at dispelling "rumors" of intense fighting in the area. Unfortunately, the tight security around the reporters only betrayed the government's fear of the guerrillas. Soviet-made Mi-24 helicopter gunships whirred protectively overhead, sweeping across the surrounding terrain. From a distance came the echoes of explosions. And a few miles away plumes of smoke snaked into an overcast sky.

Pausing at the wreckage of an An-26, General Ghulam Farouq, Khost's Afghan military commander, pointed out that the "passenger plane" was downed three months ago by a U.S.-made Stinger ground-to-air missile. Though the twisted, charred remains retained a coat of green-gray camouflage paint and prominent military markings, the official line was that the craft was a civilian flight ferrying women and children to Kabul for medical treatment. In all, Afghan officials said, 36 civilians died in the attack. The rebels claim the flight carried military personnel and supplies.

Last week the government also showed off an undetonated U.S.-made Sidewinder air-to-air missile, embedded in the mud a stone's throw from the walls and huts of the Afghan hamlet of Seluddinkala, ten miles from Pakistan. Army officers claimed it was fired at an Afghan plane by a Pakistani F-16. Missing its target, it fell close to Seluddinkala. The incident became the latest salvo in the stepped-up Soviet-Afghan propaganda war against Islamabad and Washington. An Afghan official warned of "grave consequences" if Pakistan continued its "repeated border instigations and violations." For its part, Kabul denies ever purposely violating Pakistani airspace.

With much bravado, the Kabul government now contends that the seven-year- old mujahedin rebellion will fade away once its support from Pakistan and the U.S. ceases. Explained a Western diplomat in Kabul last week: "The Soviets are going to portray the Pakistanis as aggressive and to justify even more pressure on Islamabad." As part of its reconciliation drive, Kabul has downplayed the threat from the rebels and begun referring to them not as "counterrevolutionar ies" but as "opposition forces."

Nonetheless, a war atmosphere suffuses the border regions despite Kabul's insistence that the area is under its control. Propaganda junkets were escorted by armored personnel carriers and half a dozen military jeeps. In Khost, a large wooded park has been discreetly converted into an army camp. "As you can see," General Farouq announced without irony, "people are ! leading their normal lives." If so, it is an extremely harried existence.