Afghanistan Careful Exit from An Endless War

By EDWARD W. DESMOND

Skimming over the bone-dry terrain of northwestern Afghanistan at 150 m.p.h., the Soviet pilot of the Mi-8 helicopter gunship hugs the ground, popping over hills and swooping through narrow ravines in the hope of surprising rebel units in his path. The strain of contour flying less than 100 ft. off the ground shows on the faces of the intent three-man crew as they scan the hostile terrain for an enemy who could turn up anywhere: behind the mud walls of a sprawling village, among goatherds whose flock scatters at the deafening beat of the rotors, in a rocky defile just over the next rise. The gunner, edgy, fires a burst from a nose-mounted gun into an arid hillside. As the chopper passes through a likely ambush site, the pilot releases a string of flares to divert heat-seeking Stinger antiaircraft missiles. The only time the men's faces relax is when they pass over homeward-bound Soviet troops, who wave to their airborne protectors.

The Soviet troops who withdrew from Afghanistan last week spent their final hours in the war zone rolling along potholed roads through regions still under the control of the mujahedin. With half of Moscow's 115,000-man invasion army now gone, complying with the Aug. 15 deadline, the Islamic insurgents remain a force to be reckoned with despite the more than eight-year Soviet campaign to wipe them out.

The Soviets took no chances two weeks ago when a column of 1,500 men in 300 armored personnel carriers and trucks made its bumpy way 400 miles from Kandahar, a ruin of a city in the southwest, through Herat, where the Soviets retain a major base, to the Soviet border. Though officers explained that they had agreed to an informal truce with Ismael Khan, the most powerful rebel chieftain in the Herat area, they plainly did not place much stock in the understanding. The two-mile-long column rarely left the cover of Soviet artillery set high on ridges or the protection of clattering helicopter gunships. The precautions served their purpose: over a period of two weeks, the withdrawal convoys suffered no casualties.

Days before the column set out, Fazl Haq Khaleqiar, the governor of Herat province, told a group of Western journalists that he had made peace with most of the rebel groups in his region. But as the column rolled toward the provincial capital, it became clear that there was a threat. Tanks and artillery dug in every few hundred yards covered the approaches to the city. Hostile Afghans greeted the soldiers, and a rock thrown by someone in the crowd caromed off a vehicle. When journalists tried to walk around the city, armed teenage Afghan members of the Communist Party youth organization blocked the way. Just then an embarrassed Governor Fazl Haq appeared to tell the reporters that they were free to stroll around. When the newsmen tried to take him up on his offer, the Afghans rounded them up at gunpoint. Their explanation: rebels prowling the city might mistake Western journalists for Soviets and kill them.

The next morning the column left Herat for the remaining 3 1/2-hour ride to the frontier. As soon as the vehicles rumbled across the Soviet border into Kushka, broad smiles spread across the faces of troopers who had been tense through much of the journey; a few jumped off their vehicles to dance with local Turkmen women. For the men in the convoy and an additional 10,000 withdrawn during the past two weeks, the war was over. Asked what the pullback meant to them, the soldiers generally repeated the official line of having "fulfilled their internationalist duty," though one lieutenant was more candid. Said he: "Obviously, it is time to leave. Gorbachev himself said that Afghanistan was something of a mistake."

A mistake? A cause unworthy of more Soviet blood? Certainly. But Moscow is still determined to stand by its Communist allies in Afghanistan -- at least until a suitable alternative emerges. In an interview with TIME, Nikolai Yegorychev, the Soviet Ambassador in Kabul, reiterated that Moscow saw the only solution as a compromise government involving both Communists and the mujahedin. Said he: "The problems facing Afghanistan cannot be solved militarily. A political settlement is essential."

Translated, that means Moscow will continue to help the Najibullah < government avoid military defeat. Earlier this month the regime's forces lost two provincial capitals in the northeast: Taliqan, a relatively insignificant small city, and Kunduz, a strategic strong point. Though Afghan troops, supported by Soviet air power, subsequently recaptured Kunduz, Moscow apparently regarded the setbacks as serious enough to quash earlier suggestions that the 50,000 troops still in Afghanistan might be home by the end of the year, well ahead of the Feb. 15, 1989, deadline established under the Geneva accords signed by Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, Pakistan and the U.S. Said Soviet Foreign Ministry Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov: "The situation in Afghanistan does not give grounds to accelerate the withdrawal of Soviet troops."

According to U.S. intelligence sources, in fact, the regime regained Kunduz only after Soviet fighter-bombers based in the Soviet Union blasted and strafed rebel positions, reducing portions of the city to rubble. Washington considers the sorties a violation of the Geneva accords, as well as a serious threat to the mujahedin's efforts on the battlefield. If the Soviets fear that their Afghan comrades are not tough enough to fend off the mujahedin, Western analysts and rebel leaders have quite the opposite concern: so far, Najibullah's troops have been showing more gumption than expected. Around Jalalabad, a city the Soviets left three months ago, Afghan troops have thrown back repeated rebel assaults. So far, the mujahedin are holding only two dozen small towns. Concedes a senior aide to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of a rebel Hezb-e-Islami faction: "They ((Najibullah's forces)) have fought much better than expected."

Nor are their Soviet allies willing to see them beaten in a major engagement, as they nearly were at Kunduz. The city of about 40,000, straddling a main road to the Soviet border 37 miles away, fell to units of Jamiat-i-Islami and Gulbuddin's Hezb-e-Islami six days after the 10,000-man Soviet garrison pulled out. The guerrillas overran the government defenders and freed the prisoners at the local jail, but failed to capture the heavily defended airport. Within two days government reinforcements closed in, and Soviet aircraft went to work. After three days of fighting, the mujahedin withdrew; according to TASS, twelve Afghan troops and 173 insurgents died (the latter figure possibly includes civilian casualties). The Kunduz affair apparently triggered a shake-up in the Afghan military. TASS reported that Najibullah had appointed a new Defense Minister and army chief of staff.

In the wake of Kunduz and other rebel setbacks, Western analysts' predictions that major Afghan cities would fall quickly once the Soviets pulled out look overly optimistic. Says a Western diplomat in Kabul: "The mujahedin are not capable of waging large-scale conventional warfare. The regime still has superior firepower and transport capacity.

The guerrillas learned that lesson the hard way at Kandahar last week when insurgents of Jamiat-i-Islami broke off attacks on strategic high ground around Baba Wali, a heavily fortified point overlooking the city, after coming under air and artillery barrages from entrenched government forces. An assault by fighters of Yunis Khalis' Hezb-e-Islami last month on outposts screening Jalalabad was similarly thrown back at the cost of as many as 50 mujahedin lives. Such large-scale attacks under heavy fire are something new for the guerrilla forces. Says Abdul Qadir, a senior rebel commander with Khalis: "The mujahedin are not ready to risk high casualties."

Instead, the resistance has been adopting the Maoist strategy of controlling the countryside, isolating towns and cities, and gradually wearing down government morale through rocket barrages. Earlier this month, a huge munitions dump near Kalagay was blown up, reportedly claiming hundreds of Soviet lives. Last week Najibullah's enemies scored a propaganda coup when his brother Sediqullah Rahi, 37, turned up in Washington to announce his defection and call his brother "mentally deranged." Though heavy combat has not touched the capital, Kabul, the sights and sounds of war intrude almost daily. At the airport planes follow a narrow corkscrew flight path down to the runway rather than risk flying in low over hostile territory. Day in and day out, the crump of outgoing artillery echoes through the city as government forces try to keep the mujahedin off balance.

Moscow and Kabul's answer to the emerging rebel strategy of slow strangulation is to dig in at a few strongholds -- Kabul, Jalalabad, Herat, Faizabad, Ghazni, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif -- and await a change in the military or political equation that could give them an advantage. Most of the remaining 50,000 Soviet troops are garrisoned in Kabul and Shindand, the huge air base in western Afghanistan, as well as in Herat and a few other cities along the main roads to the Soviet border. As many as 100,000 Afghan troops - are deployed in the same areas and at dozens of smaller outposts.

If most of the Soviet forces remain in place until late this year or early 1989, as the Kremlin indicated last week, they will almost certainly guarantee Najibullah's survival through next winter. Moscow continues to supply the regime with a bountiful flow of weapons and ammunition, and has announced long-term aid and economic agreements.

The Soviets hope to prop up Najibullah long enough to allow a transition to a more broadly based regime friendly to the Soviet Union. Whatever the stripes of the new regime, Moscow aims to have it seeded with friends open to continued Soviet access to gas fields and copper and oil deposits that it has developed in the north. Says Ambassador Yegorychev: "There is no doubt that we have our national interests here. Our main interest is that Afghanistan be a good neighbor of the Soviet Union."

With reporting by T.A. Davis/Peshawar, Ross H. Munro/Kabul and Ken Olsen/Moscow