Soviets launch push in key valley — Afghans

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 10

Soviets launch push in key valley — Afghans

NZPA-Reuter Islamabad

Soviet troops had launched a big offensive against the strategic Panjshir Valley, one of the main strongholds of Afhanistan’s Muslim guerrillas, a leading resistance group in Peshawar, Pakistan, said yesterday. Quoting a letter from the Panjshir commander, Ahmad Shah Masood, a spokesman for his Jamiat-i-Islamic group said that Soviet commandos had landed from 120 MilB transport helicopters at Najrab village on February 28. The Soviets also had sent 300 light tanks to the village, which controls the main supply route into the Panjshir, he said.

The Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul, overlooks the main highway between the Afghan capital and the Soviet Union.

“This attack is the introduction to a big attack on the Panjshir,” the spokesman, Abdul Rahim, quoted Masood as saying in his letter, dated March 2. It had arrived at Peshawar on I

Sunday night.

Mr Masood, aged 30, an engineering school dropout, became a resistance folk hero by fighting off. six heavy Soviet offensives against the Panjshir, which juts into ' the Hindu Kush mountain range just 90km north of Kabul.

He accepted a controversial six-month truce offered by the Soviet Union early last year but refused to renew it.

Mr Masood, who used the truce to rebuild his forces and help co-ordinate other resistance groups in the north, had said in a letter that arrived at Peshawar last month that he expected an attack around April 20, Mr Rahim said. His latest letter, written on a scrap of paper, had said that residents of the valley were now preparing for a sustained attack.

“The process of vacating families from the Panjshir Valley is going on at high speed,” Mr Masood said. He had appealed to the Jamiat headquarters in Peshawar for shoes, clothing, and money to help the refugees.

He did not say how many Soviet troops were in Najrab, a tiny village south of the Panjshir. Each of the 120 MilB helicopters he mentioned can cany up to 36 soldiers.

The Soviet Army, which invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, to prop up a faltering Communist Govei nment, has sent thousands of troops into the Panjshir in previous campaigns. It has between 105,000 and 130,000 soldiers in Afghanistan.

Mr Masood said that he expected the Soviets to attack next in the Andarab Valley, a northern offshoot of the Panjshir which acts as the stronghold’s second main supply route. The mouth of the Panjshir Valley has been closed to the rebels by a recently reinforced Soviet garrison at Anawa, while passes at the far north-eastern end are blocked by snow and a Government military post

“The Soviets want to attack from the front and from all sides of the Panjshir,” Mr Masood’s letter was quoted as saying.