A Taunt: "Kill Us! Kill Us!"

Strikes, violence sweep Kabul and other cities, challenging Soviet rule

The Afghan people have a centuries-old history of resisting conquerors. Last week they turned in fury on their latest foreign overlords, totally discrediting Moscow's claim that its armed forces had invaded Afghanistan in response to popular demand. Civilian shopkeepers and government employees stretched mass protests into a six-day general strike that effectively paralyzed economic life in Kabul and six other cities. The capital was gripped by fear and suspicion after rioting and gunfire left at least 400 dead and several hundred wounded. Soviet and Afghan security forces sealed off two residential districts in Kabul and swept through them making mass arrests, especially among the country's Shi'ite Muslim minority, who were suspected of having been the wellspring of protest.

At week's end active mass resistance appeared to have been suppressed. But Soviet forces in the major cities remained on full alert as rebel leaders threatened a new round of guerrilla attacks. Rumors of an outright reign of terror, with summary executions of suspected Muslim instigators, seemed certain to compound seething popular resentment. Said a Western diplomat: "The Soviets may have succeeded in subduing the population in this first round, but that is not the end of the affair, knowing these hot-blooded Afghans." Added another: "The quagmire Moscow has created for itself is getting deeper and deeper."

The furious resistance was not a serious threat to the Soviet military occupation, but it was a devastating political humiliation for Moscow. First of all, it gave the Muslim insurgency a new dimension of credibility: the Kabul general strike demonstrated exactly the kind of organized resistance that had been conspicuously absent from the disunited guer rilla campaign the mujahidin (as the Muslim "holy warriors" call themselves) have been conducting in the countryside. At the same time, the civilian rage gave the He to the Kremlin's arguments that in the name of reciprocal friendship its forces had run to the rescue of the Afghan people and their legitimate government.

The puppet government of Babrak Karmal, which the U.S.S.R. had forcibly installed at the time of the Christmas invasion, appeared to be on the verge of collapse. It was not only shown up as ineffective, it was practically invisible as well. A proclamation that imposed martial law on Kabul effectively gave ultimate civil as well as military authority to Moscow's army commander. With this tacit admission by the Soviets that they were the only real authority in the country, some diplomatic observers predicted they might also soon do away altogether with the fiction of an indigenous government and replace Karmal with a Kremlin-appointed proconsul. Karmal himself was believed to have holed up inside the Soviet embassy; even at the height of the crisis last week, he was seen only once, on television, and then only in a rerun of an agriculture program.

One possible explanation for the Karmal government's ineffectiveness was the fact that the Cabinet was riddled with dissension and palace intrigue. Despite official Afghan denials, for instance, there were persistent reports that Karmal's Vice President, Sultan Ali Kishtmand, had perhaps died in Moscow, where he was supposedly flown for medical treatment following a Shootout among members of the Revolutionary Council. Another rumor, that Karmal's own younger brother and adviser Mahmoud Baryalai, had also died of bullet wounds, was squelched only after he popped up on Soviet television with assurances that "I am alive and well."

The results of the violent anti-Communist convulsion that swept the city were apparent in Kabul, cabled TIME'S Pearl Marshall, one of the few Western correspondents who managed to move freely in the capital. "Soviet infantrymen with Kalashnikov automatic rifles stand guard near the door of the Inter-Continental Hotel, where most Western journalists have been confined. Soviet tanks are still deployed near public buildings and key intersections. Other armored vehicles have effectively divided the city in two by blocking the bridges across the Kabul River. It is an apparent attempt to thwart any renewed threats of attack against the Soviet embassy or the modern housing compound where many Russian families live.

"What turned a peaceful citywide protest demonstration into prolonged violence was the availability of clandestine weapons. They had been smuggled into the city during the previous four weeks, or seized in a series of insurgent raids against at least three police stations. One of these preliminary attacks, according to a Western diplomat who witnessed it, was launched by people in a housing complex uphill from a station in the Jam-almena area in the southwest part of the city. A number of the residents started shooting down at the building. As the police ran out to see what was happening, they were picked off one by one; at least five policemen were killed and 40 injured.

"Nearly everyone is acquainted with, or related to, some victim or other of the orgy of rioting and shooting that grew out of the general strike. A European businessman told me that his cook lost two members of his family in shooting incidents. A friend of his lost a close relative and saw an uncle wounded. Nearly everyone also has kin in either the police or army. Many of the injured in the old bazaar, where some of the most vicious fighting went on, literally bled to death from leg wounds; their Afghan soldier brothers had aimed low in order to maim rather than kill. In the northwest part of the city, a group of protesters wielding sticks and captured guns marched on the Kharga military barracks and urged the Afghan unit there to disband. According to witnesses, at least 200 Afghan army personnel defected and joined the throng."

Other reports said that a major battle took place near the central blue-domed Pul-i-Hesti mosque, where Muslim worshipers coursed through the streets waving Islamic banners. At least 15 students were said to have been killed when the anti-Soviet demonstrations spread to Kabul University. Hundreds of women and children were reported to have taken to the streets and taunted Afghan security forces to "Kill us! Kill us!" Radio Kabul broadcasts that urged shopkeepers and civil servants to return to their jobs also instructed parents to come to the "west entrance of Government House" to pick up the children arrested during the riots; some were as young as eight.

In the mopping-up that followed, MiG 21s swooped low over the city, and helicopter gunships hovered over the rooftops to prevent new crowds from gathering. Police cars with mounted loudspeakers toured commercial areas urging stores to reopen. Behind them along the same routes came other, private vehicles; their drivers and passengers shook their heads as a signal to the shopkeepers to ignore the appeals. Still, by week's end an estimated 85% of Kabul's shops had reopened, most government workers were reluctantly back at their jobs, and the city warily came back to life.

For the first time, Moscow publicly acknowledged that all was not well. Pravda admitted on its front page that Kabul was beset by "unrest" and "insurgency." In the frankest admission of all, the official news agency TASS indicated that the Karmal government was in disfavor with a large part of the population. Another surprising admission was attributed by the Italian magazine Panorama to a Soviet general identified as Mikhail Kirian. He publicly conceded that "in the Afghan army, there have been deser tions," and that "the Afghans will have to work hard to put the army in order."

In an apparent effort to extricate itself from the international hot seat, the Kremlin launched a diplomatic campaign that contained hints of compromise. President Leonid Brezhnev, in a policy speech before a Kremlin political gathering, said Soviet troops could be withdrawn from Afghanistan if the U.S. and other offending countries offered "guarantees" that all "external aggression" would be halted.* An even more conciliatory overture appeared to come from a meeting between Brezhnev and Occidental Petroleum Corp. Chairman Armand Hammer.

For his part, President Carter declared that the U.S. would be willing to help guarantee Afghanistan's neutrality, along with other nations including the Soviet Union, if the troop withdrawal came first. The gesture came in a cable to President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia; despite his grave illness, Tito had written both Carter and Brezhnev and implored them to preserve detente. The prevailing view in the Carter Administration, however, was that the Kremlin's campaign was a "propaganda exercise" aimed at dividing Western ranks and blunting Washington's anti-Soviet retaliation. Other countries, meanwhile, were getting into the peacemaking act. At week's end, with the support of the other European Community nations, Britain put forth a formal proposal to call an international conference that would negotiate Afghanistan's neutrality.

* Testifying before Congress last week, Defense Secretary Harold Brown said that the insurgents may well be getting arms from Pakistan. Brown refused to confirm or deny that the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in that traffic, as Moscow has charged. The Administration instead pointed out at week's end that the much publicized Soviet brigade in Cuba had resumed training exercises; a State Department spokesman said that the brigade "remains a serious source of concern to us."

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