‘½M Afghans have died’

Press, 28 April 1981, Page 8

‘½M Afghans have died’

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi A former economic adviser to President Babrak Karmal of Afghanistan said yesterday that half a million Afghans were estimated to have died by execution or in fighting under three years of Marxist rule./mlMohammad Siddiq Farhang, who was a Deputy Minister of Planning in Afghanistan in. the 1960 s and later adviser to Mr Karmal,. left his countrythree months ago and went into exile. He told a press conference in New Delhi that under Marxist Governments since the overthrow of President Mohammad Daoud in 1978. Afghanistan had lost so many of its intellectuals and professional people that it would

take 10 to 12 years to return to normal. Mr Farhang said that more than two million Afghan refugees were now spread around the world, mostly in Pakistan and Iran, and an estimated 500,000 people had died violently. He told reporters that rebels battling Afghan and Soviet troops u’ould keep up their fight against the Kremlin presence in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future "with or without foreign help." Mr Farhang said that the land-reform system introduced by the Marxists in Afghanistan had almost totally broken down, because of the arbitrary way it was introduced and because it

had been denounced as antiIslam by the mullahs. A literacy drive had also failed and many schools had been destroyed by the rebels. He said that former President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown in the Soviet-backed coup of December. 1979, had himself admitted 12,000 executions in Kabul's Pul-E-Charki prison. Mr Farhang described the reported annexation by the Russians of Wahan Strip adjacent to China in north-east Afghanistan as a serious development. Meanwhile. diplomatic sources in New Delhi said that six Soviet soldiers were reported killed in Kabul when three taxis boxed in their two jeeps and gunmen

opened fire on April 16. They added that there had been about 40 deaths from, rebel attacks and fightingbet ween rival factions of the ruling People’s Democratic Party over the past two weeks. Heavy fighting continued in and around the southern city of Kandahar, where Soviet armoured patrols controlled the streets during daylight but rebels took over after dark, the sources said. Three members of the Afghan Army defected yesterday . with their Soviet-built MIB helicopter to Quetta, capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province; and immediately requested political asylum, a Pakistani Government spokesman has said.