Battle for Jalalabad a war of credibility

Press, 18 March 1989, Page 18

Battle for Jalalabad a war of credibility

NZPA-Reuter Kabul The battle for Jalalabad that flared into the headlines just over a week ago has a significance far beyond the borders of the city, once the garden of Afghanistan but now a dusty, neglected and largely devastated town of little military worth.

The Kabul government needs to show it can win without its Soviet backers to do its fighting for it. The disparate parties of the armed opposition — the mujahideen — need to prove they can combine to capture a major target, not just hold their separate tracts of the rugged Afghan countryside.

For the Soviet Union, survival of President Najibullah’s ruling People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan is the last best hope of a friendly government on its southern flank and a consolation for nine years of unsuccessful warfare.

Fob the United States, an dnti-communist government in Kabul friendly to its client Pakistan would swing south Asian politics sharply in its favour after the debacle of Iran.

In the second row of spectators, India eyes suspiciously the prospect of a Pakistan-Afghanistan connection if the mujahideen win. Iran and Saudi Arabia, in their separate ways, look hopefully towards another Islamic government to the east.

All this and more is at stake as the rockets crash onto Jalalabad and the

civilians flee, adding more to the five or six million Afghan refugees who already make up more than half the displaced persons in the world. The Soviet forces left behind a reasonably welltrained, excellently equipped force of perhaps 100,000 men including paramilitaries. There is little doubt the Afghan forces could resist the mujahideen — if they have the will to do so.

For the mujahideen, who have thrown perhaps 15,000 men into the fight for Jalalabad, the problem is whether they can get their act together. Helped by some SUS7OO million ($l.l billion) worth of United States aid since the war began, they won renown as the irrepressible resistance fighters who forced the Russians to go home. The next steps, according to their own propaganda and that freely put about in the west, were going to be easy. They would form an interim government, brush aside Najibullah’s administration and with thousands of government troops deserting and flocking to their side, they would be in power in

Kabul in a matter of weeks. But last month’s Shura, or council, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, showed up what many people had believed all along. The seven Pak-istan-based parties of the mujahideen alliance, plus Iran-based groups, had little , in common but hatred for the Russians.

The first requirement of the fragile coalition the rebels managed to form was a base on Afghan soil. And the target, just across the Khyber Pass from Pakistan, was the eastern city of Jalalabad. The battle began on Sunday March 5, and according to Afghan government intelligence, the mujahideen planned to raise their flag over the city the following Wednesday and hold their first cabinet meeting there oh Friday, March 10. This would ensure them the credibility they needed for recognition first by the Islamic Conference Organisation meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 13, and soon after by Pakistan and the United States. The mujahideen softened Jalalabad with shells and rockets, but they then appear to have tried to take it with at-

tacks by small groups rather than a combined assault.

Military analysts here say this shows they could not agree to work together under a common leadership. The Afghan army, facing conventional rather than guerrilla tactics, held them and claims to have thrown them back with heavy losses. Lacking the city, the best the mujahideen cabinet could manage was a hasty and ill-attended meeting in a village just inside Afghan territory. "They ran to a cave like robbers and then they ran back again,” sneered a spokesman in Kabul. Many Afghan soldiers have deserted, but far more, well fed and clothed by the government, are sticking with the devil they know. And so far only Saudi Arabia has recognised the interim government, with even the United States and Pakistan preferring to bide their time.

The struggle for Afghanistan has only just begun. But after a week of fighting for Jalalabad the government of Najibullah is ahead in the credibility war. And that may be the one that counts.