Afghans holding out: doctors

Press, 26 July 1984, Page 8

Afghans holding out: doctors

NZPA-Reuter Paris Afghan rebels are claiming success in fighting off a Soviet offensive in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, says a group of European doctors recently returned from the area. The group, comprising a French and a British doctor and two French nurses, spent five months in Afghanistan working for Aide Medicale Internationale, a French organisation. They had met the Afghan rebel commander, Ahmad Shah Masood, in May, when unconfirmed reprots said that he had been captured, they said yesterday. Dr Denis Ovadia told a news conference in Paris that Masood appeared to have succeeded in co-ordi-nating rival factions more effectively than in past campaigns. The rebels had seemed well organised and provisioned and in good spirits. The group said that it had found many towns in the Panjshir Valley after Masood had moved some 100,009 inhabitants with their livestock to neighbouring regions. They quoted the guerrilla leadw as saying that rebel losses bad been few since

Soviet and Afghan Government troops attacked the valley at the end of April. “The geographical conditions, the rebels’ extreme motivation and will to win are all helping them to fight off a Soviet advance which is slow and methodical,” Dr Ovadia said. Western diplomats have put the number of Soviet and Afghan Government troops in the Panjshir Valley at up to 19,000. Dr Ovadia quoted Makood as saying that between 120 and

200 Soviet soldiers had been killed in the latest offensive. The group said that Soviet forces were using high-level saturation bombing, gas, and helicopters. Their main tactic was to make sporadic surprise attacks on towns lasting from an hour to a whole day and destroying the homes of pro-rebel tribesmen. Three million refugees are now in Pakistan. The doctors said that food for civilians was running

low because crops were being left to rot in the Helds and supplies from outside the valley were blocked. Inhabitants of the valley were likely to face a harsh winter, they said. In Washington an American doctor who recently returned from Afghanistan said that Soviet troops were torturing Afghans and attacking their villages. “I saw a 12-year-old boy whose arms were set on fire byh Soviet troops,” Dr Robert Simon, of Los

Angeles, told a group of Congressional staff aides. Dr Simon said that the Russians had tortured the boy because his parents would not reveal the location of Afghan resistance forces. He also said that elderly men had been forced to stand barefoot in the snow for hours because they would not co-operate with the Soviet troops. Dr Simon said that he had been the first American to go to Afghanistan to treat civilians and members of the resistance forces. His trip was sponsored by the Washington-based Committee for a Free Afghanistan, a private group. Dr Simon, who is trying to raise money to finance surgical teams for Afghanistan, said that medical conditions in the countryside were bad. Malaria and tuberculosis were on the increase and malnutrition was also a serious problem. It would cost SUS4O,OOO to equip and set up one surgical team but he hoped to raise enough money to set up seven or eight teams. “It’s hard for me to believe as an American that we can’t help he said.