Afghanistan

Press, 13 September 1982, Page 20

Afghanistan

Sir.—Susan Taylor (September 8) fdrgot to mention the “fraternal" bullets and bombs among the benefits of Soviet good neighbourliness in ■ Afghanistan. I can hear the Afghan farmer saying to his family those famous last words of warfare, “It’s all right. They are some of ours.” I hope the facts she gives about the Communist factions in Afghanistan are correct because she slipped up on the Korean War. In her letter of May 8 she quoted Gittings and McCormack's “Crisis in Korea" in support of

her case that the South attacked the North. I have now read the book. Nowhere does it say the South Started the war. That was the North’s version of the facts but on page 30 John Gittings says the rapid North Korean victory (at the beginning) was caused by superior fire-power and surprise.— Yours, etc..

H. F. NEWMAN September 9. 1982.

Sir, — Why does Professor Gibson (September 4) emphasise that the more than half of Soviet territories lost “through world war, revolution, foreign intervention and civil war,” had been regained by 1945, “primarily by force of arms with no plebiscites on self-determination"? Does he expect the Soviet Union to recover lost territories by plebiscites when those territories were separated from it by force of arms by the Western powers? The Baltic republics were such territories recovered, not by “seizure by the Red Army in collusion with Nazi Germany” but at the request of the Baltic peoples after overthrowing the fascist governments imposed on them by the Western powers. Is it eagerness to portray the .U.S.S.R. in the worst possible light that Professor Gibson omits to mention that the Soviet occupation of northern Iran was in co-operation with a British occupation of southern Iran? Finland, by mutual agreement, seceded from the Soviet Republic in 1918. —

Yours, etc., M. CREEL. September 6, 1982.