It would confuse Rambo

Press, 11 October 1988, Page 20

It would confuse Rambo

From a special correspondent of “The Economist,” in Kabul.

FOR an hour or two each week Americans and their friends in Kabul are able to escape the realities of the war by watching a film at the American embassy. Recently the film was "Rambo III,” which is set in Afghanistan. It turned out to be even more escapist than intended. Rambo’s anti-Russian heroics now look out of date as well as larger than life. Today’s realities are the departure of the Russians (Rambo fans themselves, judging by the inquiries of Russian journalists eager to get a video of the film) and a feeling among some resistance fighters that peace in their valleys matters more than squeezing local communists to the final pip. Afghanistan has always been a collection of fiefs rather than a unified country. The single-mind-edness fostered by the Russian occupation is less evident now that half the 115,000 or so Soviet soldiers have left, with the rest due to go by February 15. A string of deals between resistance leaders and the Russians

suggests that old interests are resurfacing. The most influential maker of deals' is Mr Ahmad Shah Massoud, “Lion of the Panjshir” and chief warlord in the northeast. The Panjshir is a valley that opens out on to the Salang highway, the main road to the Soviet Union, along which most of the Russian soldiers are withdrawing (see map). Most of Afghanistan’s imports, including the Russian fuel vital to Kabul, also enter the country along this road.

Although no public announcement has been made about a Panjshir deal, a two-day trip to the Salang pass, with a Russian military convoy, convinced your correspondent not only that this pact exists but that similar deals govern much of the highway. Soldiers guarding the route said that in recent months there had been a sudden drop in guerrilla attacks in areas controlled by Mr Massoud. An attack on a fuel convoy two weeks earlier was blamed on guerrillas loyal to Mr Massoud’s rival, Mr Gulbuddin

Heckmatyar. For all this, Mr Massoud remains a formidable fighter with a record of capturing welldefended positions. In August he j oined forces with Mr Heckmatyar for the first time in a successful assault on Kunduz, although they retreated from the town several days later. In a siege of Kabul his help could be decisive. Yet as a member of Afghanistan’s Tadzhik minority Mr Massoud is unlikely ever to hold sway in the capital, a bastion of the Pathans.

So, after his decade-long fight against communism, he may wash his hands of national politics in return for control of his own territory. He is forging ahead with reconstruction in the Panjshir valley, to which refugees, mainly from Kabul, are moving in large numbers. Mr Massoud is said to be ready to accept international aid channelled through the Afghan Government; a United Nations official in Kabul has been assured that the Government would co-operate.

Another regional leader, Mr Ismail Khan, the chief commander in the north-west, has agreed not to attack Russian soldiers, but continues to fight the Afghan Government’s army. The city of Ghazni, near Pakistan, seems to have arranged a truce: the Government controls it but guerrillas supposedly besieging it enter unhindered. The town of Kaldar, close to the Soviet border, has done the opposite: its Turkoman minority reportedly fought off guerrillas hoping to use it as a base for attacks on Soviet territory, but then closed the door to Afghan Government soldiers.

Many guerrillas believe they are winning the civil war as well as the one against the Russians. They can move more freely about the country, now by truck rather than mule. But they have taken only two or three of Afghanistan’s 31 provincial capitals, towns of a few thousand people. Kabul still looks likely to fall to the guerrillas, but that now seems less certain than it did. The Afghan peasant has a fierce attachment to his own plot and not much interest in what goes on in the capital. ' . If Kabul holds out until next spring, refugees trekking home from Pakistan and Iran may be distracted from the war by the planting season. If the Afghan communists can last a few months longer they may have some faint hope of striking a deal. Unthinkable a short time ago, it would be a typically Afghan outcome. It would, however, be preceded by a military test. People who live in Kabul are anxiously wondering what form this will take. Their nerves are frayed by the constant artillery fire and the daily barrage of rocket attacks that have been directed at the city since the guerrillas moved closer to it in the early summer.

How important are such arrangements? The communists tried to haul Afghan peasants into the modern age by redistributing land, educating boys and girls together and undermining the mullahs’ influence. These policies, which affected the most sensitive parts of villagers’ lives, were clumsily carried out. Islam provided a rallying cry against the intruders, but the real issue was local autonomy. That is why no unified opposition — let alone an Afghan Khomeini — has emerged despite deep hostility both to the Soviet invaders and to communism in general.

A rocket that landed in central Kabul on September 28 killed 35 people. But, ill-equipped for conventional warfare, the guerrillas will have difficulty taking the capital in an assault. It may be mmore vulnerable to a psychological collapse, set off by the capture of another major city such as Kandahar or Jalalabad. The guerrillas may try to achieve the same result by blocking the Salang and Jalalabad roads, and so cutting off food and fuel supplies: prices are already rising as Kabulis stock up in anticipation.

The Russians hope rivalries among thfe guerrillas will prevent such an embarrassment. If they prove wrong, they reckon Afghanistan’s economic self-in-terest will (anyway keep it a good neighbour! After three decades of aid, the Afghan econorriy fits in well with that of Soviet Central Asia. As a Soviet analyst in Kabul put it, “Who else would sell them patrol, whq else would buy their natural gag?” Few have done more than; Mr Abdul Haq, the chief guerrilla commander in the Kabul areaj to get the Russians out — and yet on this he agrees with the enemy. Rambo would not understand it at all.

Copyright, “The Economist.”