Two-Way Stretch

Whenever a foreign visitor sits down in the Kabul office of His Royal Highness Sardar Mohammed Daoud of Afghanistan, he invariably gets a lecture. Its subject: the $700 million in foreign aid Daoud needs for his ambitious five-year economIc plan for mountainous, feudal Afghanistan. "We hope all our friends will participate and that we will get assistance from everywhere," he smiles, lighting an American cigarette with a Russian match, "But if it is not forthcoming in one quarter, we will get it in another."

In the eight years since he took over as Prime Minister and shrewd strongman of Afghanistan, Daoud had played the neutralist role cannily enough to keep the money rolling in from both quarters. The Russians built a military and jet airport near Kabul, the capital. The U.S. is just finishing a huge, 10,500-ft. jetport near Kandahar, has started work on other civil airports at Herat, Kunduz and Jalalabad. Russian and U.S. highway gangs compete, in trying to outbuild one another.

Who's Ahead? Aid to Afghanistan (estimated population: 13,260,000) rates a high priority for both the U.S. and Russia. Only India, Indonesia and the U.A.R. have received more Soviet help. The U.S. has contributed nearly $15 per Afghan in economic aid. The Russians have used their money to build their customary eye-catching projects--a giant silo and a bakery in Kabul, a quick-surfacing job on Kabul's streets--while the U.S. has invested some $50 million in the long-term Helmand Valley irrigation project, where results will come more slowly but ultimately will be of more value to Afghanistan's economy. The U.S. has 355 technicians working in Afghanistan, while the Russians have some 2,000--their largest force in any non-Communist country.

But the U.S. is at least holding its own. Russian workmanship has disillusioned many Afghans, e.g., the surfacing on Kabul's streets proved so shoddy that the Afghans had to redo them all. In contrast, the U.S. has made a big effort in the education field and seen it pay off. Some $14.8 million has been spent on school building and scholarships; 460 bright Afghan students have been sent to

U.S. universities to study. Result: English has become Afghanistan's unofficial third language, after Persian and Pushtu.

Border Squabble. Though all this activity is altering the faqade of Afghanistan, it has had little effect on the nation's creaking social and political structure. Afghanistan is still ruled by a feudal family, despite the forms of Cabinet and Parliament. Hard-eyed, tough-minded Daoud is the cousin of Afghanistan's retiring King Mohammed Zahir Shah; Daoud's brother is Afghanistan's Foreign Minister. His power rests on the support of the army and his fellow aristocrats (when he took power, he was careful to assemble the tribal chiefs and get their endorsement). In a country where more than 90% of the population are nomads or farmers, Daoud and his oligarchy are well aware that they must keep ahead of the growing demand for social development if they are to survive. "If development is slow, poverty itself is a hotbed where Communism or socialism might grow and prosper," says Daoud. Thus, in a curious process of reasoning, Daoud's aristocrats are willing to accept Russian aid to save themselves from Communism. "They have concluded that it is just as dangerous to themselves to let this country sit still as it is to mortgage themselves to Russia," explains one Western observer.

The other issue that might tilt Afghans into the Russian camp is their prickly relations with Pakistan. The rugged mountain terrain between the two nations is inhabited by wild Pushtu-speaking Pathan tribesmen--some 9,000,000 on the Pakistan side of the border alone. The Pathans love to shoot, make their own guns by hand, admit allegiance to neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan. (But once assimilated, the tall, tough Pathans make natural leaders: both the Afghan royal family and Pakistan President Ayub Khan are of Pathan stock.) The Afghans have piously encouraged the Pathans' demand for an autonomous state of their own. A series of border shootings since September has rubbed Pakistan's nerves raw. If Pakistan's big army should make serious trouble, Daoud might conceivably invite Russian aid.

The Afghan army, Soviet-trained and equipped after the U.S. consistently turned down the Afghan's requests to arm them, throws its weight on the Russian side in the scales of Daoud's studied neutrality. But as long as Daoud feels he is getting a fair share of U.S. aid, he is likely to continue teetering along the neutral's profitable middle way.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.