THE CAPTURED MI-24S

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890054-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: July 31, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890054-5
WASHINGTON POST
31 July 1985
ARTICLE AP=.
ON PAGE
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
The Captured MI-24s
President Reagan's intercession to
end the U.S. ban on new anti-aircraft
weapons for Pakistan has placed the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan high on
the list of possible summit topics when
he meets Mikhail Gorbachev.
That is not according to the gospel of
Secretary of State George Shultz. Even
some Pentagon officials have shown un-
seemly caution about closer collabora-
tion with Pakistan's courageous Presi-
dent Zia ul Haq, despite his secret
agreement giving the United States full
access to the glamorous Soviet weapon
of "liberation wars"?the MI-24 Hind
helicopter gunship. Tin invited U.S. in-
spection as soon as two gunships were
flown across the border by defecting Af-
ghan pilots several weeks ago.
Reagan's recent decision to arm Zia
with land-based Stinger missiles and the
airborne AIM-9L (Sidewinder) suggests
that he is listening to advisers who insist
that the summit on Nov. 19 deal fron-
tally with Afghanistan. In opposition to
that, Shultz's aides were satisfied with a
ban on new weapons for Zia on grounds
that "diplomacy" could handle the
bloody Afghan war. In keeping with this,
Shultz's summit framework is said by
some administration officials to be more
concerned with arms control and trade
than with such troubling regional issues
as Afghanistan.
Thus the sudden tightening of
Soviet problems in Afghanistan, epito-
mized by the defection of Afghan MI-
24 pilots and Zia's acquiescence to
U.S. inspection, has far-reaching impli-
cations for U.S.-Soviet relations.
What makes the MI-24 gunship
such a symbolic conquest for the West
is its utility worldwide as the weapon
of Soviet "wars of liberation." The
first MI-24s reached Nicaragua earlier
this year; they are a major weapon in
the anti-Cambodian arsenal of Mos-
cow's major Asian ally, Vietnam, and
they have been the staple of Soviet
depredations and brutal liquidation of
hamlets and villages in Afghanistan.
At about the same time those two
Soviet-trained Afghan Air Force de-
fectors delivered their valuables to the
Pakistan government, nearly one-
fourth of Afghanistan's entire comple-
ment of about 100 Soviet MiG fighters
was eliminated in a solo sabotage at-
tack at Shindand, near the Iranian bor-
der. That was Moscow's worst single
disaster in the ruthless effort to subju-
gate Afghanistan.
For strategists in Moscow in charge
of the nearly six-year war these twin
events?MI-24s falling into U.S.
hands and MiG fighters blowing up?
are punishment in the extreme. Yet
they are only the most dramatic of
Soviet setbacks now becoming known
and which Reagan administration real-
ists insist make Afghanistan a must for
full treatment at the summit.
The most surprising of these set-
backs is the steady military escalation
along the Afghan border with Iran.
Soviet forces there are now finding
themselves squeezed by Afghan free-
dom-fighters backed more and more
openly by the fanatical leader of Is-
lamic fundamentalism, the Ayatollah
Khomeini. Khomeini was described by
one official to us as "up to his eye-
balls" in what he, even more than Zia,
regards as a Soviet war against Islam.
That explains why a large portion of
the newly deployed Soviet "Spetsnaz"
units?named for their elite training
as special units?have been placed
along the Afghan-Iranian border.
In the far Northeast, surreptitious
foreign aid for the Afghan freedom
fighters is now centered in nearly 200
small, separate training camps operated
by the Chinese communists. Thus the
Soviet effort to pacify Afghanistan con-
fronts three centers of opposition be-
yond the Afghan borders, all of which
are showing indications of growth.
Certainly that is the conclusion to
be drawn from Reagan's personal in-
volvement in the decision authorizing
new types of anti-aircraft weapons to
give Pakistan more protection against
cross-border raids: 100 in 1984, 60 so
far this year.
With risks to world peace rising
from this Soviet-sponsored raiding be-
yond Afganistan's borders, coupled
with the nonstop killings of civilians on
a mass scale inside, realistic Reagan
aides cannot believe that in his first
summit talk with the Soviet leader the
president could fail to give Afghani-
stan a prominent, perhaps even
preeminent spot on the agenda.
These advisers are convinced that,
however important arms control may
be, it is dwarfed in the U.S.-Soviet
relationship by Afghanistan. Reagan's
decision to assert his own style of di-
plomacy suggests that he is beginning
to sing the same tune.
519Ik Nm America Syndicate
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890054-5