Afghanistan Another Dagger Aimed at the Heart

By EDWARD W. DESMOND

Buffeted by a chilling wind that funneled down the gorges of the Panjshir Valley in northeast Afghanistan, three horsemen urged their mounts up a rocky defile at a punishing trot. Traders and refugees walking the same path late last month could tell by the men's heavy field jackets and Soviet-made automatic rifles that they were officers of the mujahedin, the Afghan resistance fighters who now control the once fiercely contested valley. Few of the walkers bothered to look carefully at the sparsely bearded, intense face of the lead rider as he passed. Had they done so, they would have recognized a man who has become a legend across Afghanistan, the "Lion of the Panjshir."

Ahmad Shah Massoud, 35, a onetime engineering student at the Soviet Polytechnic Institute in Kabul, has spent the past nine years molding the mujahedin in Afghanistan's northeast into what is widely considered the country's most effective guerrilla formation. Last May Massoud's men, who owe allegiance to Jamiat-i-Islami, one of the seven mujahedin parties based across the border in Pakistan, watched in triumph as the last Soviet and Afghan government troops retreated from the Panjshir.

After nine years of fighting, mujahedin can drive their few vehicles through the valley in daylight with little worry of attack. The government withdrawal from the Panjshir has prompted hopes in Kabul that Massoud might be coaxed into a cease-fire or even a coalition. According to Massoud, President Najibullah has even offered him a choice of top government posts in exchange for peace.

In a mud-walled farmhouse three days' ride from the Panjshir Valley, Massoud is asked if he would consider dealing with Najibullah. Amid interruptions from aides bringing intelligence reports scribbled on scraps of paper, the guerrilla chief declares, "There is no possibility of coexistence with the Communists."

Never staying in the same house for more than a few hours, Massoud lives in constant motion. Several assassination attempts by government agents and Soviet commandos have forced him to behave like a hunted man. Beyond that, overseeing an estimated 50,000 rebel fighters demands constant meetings with his commanders. Not only must the mujahedin adapt their military tactics if they are to oust the government, but they must also position themselves to determine which among the main insurgent groups will predominate once the government in Kabul falls. Though it is impossible to predict which group will be the most influential, Massoud obviously intends Jamiat-i-Islami to play a key role.

In the military area, Massoud believes that the mujahedin must strike a decisive blow soon, before Najibullah can adjust to the departure of the Soviets, who are scheduled to complete their troop withdrawal by Feb. 15. The government has 150,000 troops dug in around major cities. To face them in a final showdown, Massoud is training 10,000 men, initial units of an "Islamic army," to fight like a conventional force, rather than as hit-and-run marauders. Training, in camps spread along the rugged northern flanks of the Hindu Kush, includes the use of U.S.-supplied Stinger antiaircraft missiles as well as heavy artillery, rockets and a few highly treasured tanks. "But," Massoud concedes, "we have to prepare, and that will take time."

His forces should get some breathing space because of approaching winter and their recent battlefield successes. The Soviet-Afghan retreat from the valley was triggered when the rebels overran a government stronghold at Tambana last May. Then in August and September, Jamiat fighters expanded their control by sweeping through the northeastern cities of Khanabad, Taliqan, Keshem and most of Kunduz, the provincial capital. That leaves only one town, Faizabad, in government hands in the northeast.

During the current pause, the Panjshir is alive with conflicting evidence of a coming peace and continued war. Substantial numbers of refugees, some from as far away as Pakistan, are returning to their homes in villages along the valley. The Council of the North, a local body organized by Massoud, continues ; to set up schools and clinics and to broaden basic administration for the region.

The mujahedin will need all their reserves next spring, when the end of winter will signal the final push on Kabul. Massoud told TIME he intends to cut off major highways into the capital, then take on outlying garrisons. At the same time, he plans to launch a campaign of disruption inside Kabul in an effort to spark a popular uprising as food grows scarce. "We have put considerable effort into organizing the resistance inside the cities," he explains, "and we now have an extensive underground network." In the meantime, Jamiat and other resistance groups are keeping up the pressure on Kabul through rocket attacks, including one last week that briefly shut down the capital's airport. That pressure is beginning to tell on Najibullah's Communist government; turmoil within the party last week led to the expulsion of two Politburo members.

Assuming that victory is within reach, Massoud has been devoting time to his second major concern, the maneuvering for advantage among the seven mujahedin parties. All members of the Peshawar alliance are fighting for a country under an Islamic dispensation, but the political shape of that concept is something on which they differ sharply.

One major disagreement is the possible return to Afghanistan by the former monarch, King Zahir Shah, to serve as an interim ruler. Jamiat leaders reject the suggestion outright because they regard the King as a feudal holdover as well as accountable for the steady growth of Soviet involvement in the country until his ouster in 1973. "Free elections will have their limits," says Massoud. "Even if one of the other mujahedin parties were to propose it, we would not agree to people who have betrayed this country having a chance to participate."

To discuss military strategy and the internal politicking with Massoud, the leader of Jamiat-i-Islami, Burhanuddin Rabbani, 53, in September made his first trip to Afghanistan's northeast since the war began. Accompanied by an escort equipped with Stinger missiles, the former Kabul University theology professor met with Jamiat commanders in Panjshir's bomb-scarred villages. Rabbani told TIME that he thought it unlikely that elections could be held soon after Kabul falls. "It is important to establish a government on the basis of the vote of the common people of Afghanistan," he said in a bow to principle, "but under these conditions an election is not simple. It may even & be impossible. If so, I see another solution, namely military administrative units strong enough to establish order and bring about the conditions for elections." Last week Rabbani assumed the rotating leadership of the mujahedin alliance.

Massoud and Rabbani, both fundamentalist Muslims, are careful to distance Jamiat from radical visions of an Islamic state; specifically, asserts Massoud, "the position adopted by Iran is not laid down by Islam." Massoud also jabs sharply at one of Rabbani's chief rivals, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the head of Hezb-i-Islami, calling him the "extremist" among the conservative Islamic resistance leaders in Peshawar. Throughout the war, armed clashes have flared between Hekmatyar's men and other mujahedin parties -- Jamiat, in particular -- and a personal rivalry between Massoud and Hekmatyar dates back to their university days in Kabul. "Hekmatyar has always put personal power before the interests of the nation," says Massoud. "In ten years of war, he has never yet managed to achieve one solid accomplishment for the jihad."

Massoud and Rabbani insist that they hope to build a common platform with other mujahedin parties and have invited their help in building a more broadly based national "Islamic army." Says Rabbani: "We believe that all other parties should join in, and we are working hard toward this end." If unity proves as difficult to achieve in victory as it has been up to now, Jamiat's leaders may look on their army as more than a dagger aimed at Najibullah's heart: the force may prove to be what one Jamiat official calls an "insurance policy" for a postwar future in which peace is far from certain.

With reporting by T.A. Davis/Panjshir