Moscow's Military Deadlock

By Jordan Bonfante

After eight months, the Kremlin faces a no-win dilemma

Celebrating the end of the month-long Ramadan fast, President Babrak Karmal appeared at Kabul's Salam Khana Palace mosque last week and delivered some words of warning to his fellow Afghans. "Brothers and sisters, foreign powers want to exploit your Islamic sentiments," he declared. "They send their agents, mercenaries and other bought servants to kill your men, women and children; to blow up your schools, mosques and hospitals, and to burn your wheat stocks, houses, shops and commodities."

Karmal's speech was the most forthright public admission so far that all is not well under the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In fact, the insurgency by fierce Muslim mujahidin (holy warriors) is not only going strong but in some parts of the country has spread and intensified. Eight months after their Christmas invasion, the Soviets have still not been able to gain control over much of the rugged countryside. Despite the presence of 80,000 troops inside the country, the Kremlin has gained nothing more than a humiliating military deadlock. Says former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Neumann: "On the one hand, the Soviets can hang on for as long as they want. On the other hand, they can't win. The people of Afghanistan are not going to let them win." At week's end a high-ranking team of Soviet experts had arrived in Kabul for what diplomats said was to be a major review of the bogged-down war effort.

Recent visitors to Kabul report an un easy siege atmosphere. After months of trying to keep a low profile, Soviet armored personnel carriers have reappeared at street corners and in front of public buildings. The city's outskirts are ringed with Soviet heavy armor. After dark, Kabul police stop all taxis for thorough identification and weapons searches. Reason for the precautions: Soviet fears about Afghan army mutinies, guerrilla infiltrators and even possible rebel attacks on the capital.

Hit-and-run raids by bands of insurgents have become bigger and bolder. Radio Kabul described the pursuit and capture of what it called 62 "subversive elements" near Kholm, northwest of the capital. Clashes have also been reported in Ghazni, Lowgar and Vardak provinces, which lie southwest of Kabul. The village of Mohammad Za'i, just six miles south of the capital, has been the scene of two successive mujahidin assaults. First the rebels set fire to the local hospital and school; a few weeks later they returned and blew up the power station. The Soviets hit back with a series of aerial strikes by MiG-21s and Mi-24 helicopter gunships, which have become their most successful anti-insurgency weapon.

The Soviets have suffered their worst setback in Herat (pop. 160,000), an ancient trading center at the western edge of the country. There the government's control has all but collapsed, and much of the city has turned into a lawless no man's land. Bands of armed rebels fight Afghan troops day and night. Bandits roam freely, robbing people of money and food at gunpoint. One of the city's well-known medical facilities, the Nur Eye Clinic, was closed, and its staff, including foreign physicians, was evacuated to Kabul. Soviet forces have stayed outside the city, apparently for fear of becoming embroiled in a major, costly battle.

The Afghan army, which once totaled grated," 100,000 according troops, to has a "largely British disinte expert.

Wholesale desertions have reduced its strength to an estimated 30,000, despite a conscription campaign that is more dragnet than draft call. Recruits have been virtually dragooned. Selected areas of Kabul are cordoned off, usually at night, while military police sift through the neighborhood on a house-to-house search for prospective soldiers.

On the political front, Karmal has had little luck in forming a more broadly based government that might make him look less of a Soviet puppet. He has attempted to purge the hard-line Khalq faction of the ruling People's Democratic Party in favor of his own relatively more pragamtic Parcham faction. But the campaign has only compounded the fractious resentments of the bureaucracy. The purge also provoked at least one major mutiny in the Afghan army, 80% of whose officers are Khalqs. Two units, at least 400 men, of the 14th armored division in Ghazni province suddenly defected to the rebels after their commander was sacked and replaced by a Parcham officer. In response, the Soviets sent in two troop lifts from the airbase at Bagram to blast the defectors out of the hill side villages where they had fled.

For all "temporary" their nature of their protestations about presence the in the country, the Soviets show every sign of turning Afghanistan into a satellite.

They call the shots in almost every ministry, usually by means of an adviser who has the title of Deputy Minister. By decree, Russian has become the second language in the schools. Currently, a team of Soviet specialists is drafting a new economic plan for Afghanistan that will be carefully tailored to fit into the general scheme of Comecon, the Soviet-dominated trade association. The preparation of the plan, however, has been delayed be cause Soviet officials outside Kabul.

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