Afghanistan Ferocious Fight

By George Russell

The message was tapped out on an old-fashioned Morse telegraph key. It came from the province of Paktia in eastern Afghanistan and was received by a guerrilla listening post on the Pakistani border. "We have been without sleep for 48 hours," the report read. "It is the biggest battle of the war. We have lost many men, but we will not lose the war." The terse communication was signed by Maulana Jalaluddin Haqani, commander of an Afghan partisan group known as Hesbi Islam, or Islamic Party.

The accuracy of that assessment is difficult to verify, but one thing was clear last week: ferocious fighting was taking place in Afghanistan, some of it within a few miles of the Pakistani border. About 20,000 Soviet paratroopers, backed by Mi-24 helicopter gunships, artillery and armor, blasted the Afghan border provinces of Paktia and Nangarhar. They were resisted, at times in bitter hand-to-hand fighting, by an estimated 5,000 Afghan rebels known as mujahedin. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed on both sides. At least 300 rebel casualties were carried into refugee camps on the Pakistani side of the border. In the Afghan capital of Kabul, eyewitnesses reported that military and civilian hospitals were filled with wounded Soviet soldiers.

The campaign showed that the Soviets are apparently determined to shut down the clandestine CIA arms pipeline from Pakistan that feeds the Afghan guerrillas. They also probably intended the assault as intimidation against the government of Pakistan's President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who has provided staging areas for guerrilla forces.

The Soviet assault apparently began last month with a massive helicopter airlift of paratroopers into the Afghan town of Gardez, 65 miles south of Kabul. For nearly a month, the small Soviet garrison at Khost, 22 miles from the Pakistani border, had been under siege by the Afghan mujahedin.

By the time Soviet relief forces moved on Khost, some 5,000 guerrillas were dug in outside the town. A first assault, which began on Aug. 25, lasted for two days and nights and was finally repulsed. On Sept. 1, the Soviets began their second attack and initially broke through mujahedin lines, after troops on both sides had fought with bayonets and daggers. For a while, the mujahedin were able to hold the Soviet advance. But that night the Soviets brought forward fresh troops, and the guerrillas melted into the surrounding countryside. If nothing else, the campaign showed that Moscow was willing to risk heavy losses to stop the flow of CIA arms. But Western diplomatic and intelligence sources insisted that the arms supply had suffered a temporary crimp at worst.

While the Afghan fighting waxed and waned, the latest round of talks between Pakistan and the Soviet-backed government of Afghan President Babrak Karmal ended inconclusively in Geneva. The United Nations-sponsored talks are the main hope for a political solution to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As the latest Soviet offensive shows, that possibility seems as far off as ever.

With reporting by Dean Brelis/New Delhi