REMAKING AFGHANISTAN IN THE SOVIET IMAGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100490020-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: March 24, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
24 March, 1985
NO
INTfffi
SOVIff IMAGE
B B~ttlSte111 route from the capital, Kabul, to the
By Pakistan border. Because the village
was his birthplace, Mr. Yusufi paid a
PESHAWAR. A DUSTY, FRONTIER final visit to it on his way into exile.
city in northern Pakistan, lying just "If you go to my village," he said,
down the road from the Khyber Pass, evoking the difference between re-
is a place full of terrible stories these ality and the propaganda image,
days. There is, for example, the tale "you will see that it has been de-
of Mohammed Qasim Yusufi, a soft- stroyed. You won't find more than
spoken, 33-year-old former professor five families there. The village has
of agriculture at Kabul University, in been terribly bombed."
neighboring Afghanistan, whose ex- Behsoud's condition is shared by
perience aptly sums up the disastrous many, perhaps most, villages in At-
events in his country since the Soviet ghanistan; Mr. Yusufi and other Af-
Union invaded it on Dec. 27,1979. ghan refugees contend. The Soviet
Mr. Yusufi felt, after several years Union, in its efforts to weaken support
of life under what the Afghans offi- for the mujahedeen, the anti-Soviet
cially call the Saur, or April, Revolu- resistance fighters, has started in-
tion that life had become untenable, tense aerial bombardments of rural
so he decided to get out. Shortly be- areas. The United Nations Human
fore he left, he saw on Afghanistan's Rights Commission said in a recent
state-run television a news program report that the Soviet strategy is
about his native village, a place aimed apparently at forcibly evacu-
called Behsoud, once a collection of ating large stretches of countryside.
mud-brick houses with about 100 Refugees say that entire areas, such
farming families. The television pro- as the Panjshir Valley, northwest of
gram showed Behsoud as a happy Kabul, have been virtually aban-
place: land reform was progressing, doned. The policy has left an unknown
feudalism was being wiped out, sup-
port for the Communist revolution
was growing among the villagers.
Bebsoud lies, it happens, near the
Richard Bernstein is a correspondent
in the Paris bureau of The New York
Times.
continued
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number dead or displaced and
created havoc in Afghan agriculture.
A study prepared by Azam Gul, like
Mr. Yusufi a former professor of agri-
culture at Kabul University, found
that the output of wheat, corn and rice
fell by 1982 to roughly one-quarter the
levels of 1978. A study by some British
doctors, based on information col-
lected by Afghan refugees dispatched
secretly to all parts of the country,
concluded that malnutrition among
children is prevalent and that famine
threatens thousands of people. Yet,
the Soviet-inspired news media, re-
porting on Behsoud?and other villages
in Afghanistan, routinely profess land
reform and rural progress.
"In Behsoud village there is land
and there is water, but there is no
agriculture," Mr. Yusufi said. "The
irrigation system has been destroyed.
There are no farmers to cultivate the
land."
TAKEN INDIVIDUALLY, PER-
haps, stories like that of Mohammed
Qasim Yusufi are not of staggering
dimensions, not by the standards of
our bloody century. Taken together,
however, and added to the informa-
tion that has leaked from an Afghani-
stan that the Soviet Union has at-
tempted to seal off from independent
outside observation, the stories sug-
gest that Soviet policy in Afghanistan
is as audacious and ruthless as any
the Russians have ever carried out in
their satellite states. The Afghanistan
that emerges in the refugees' ac-
counts is a country not simply being
subdued militarily by the Soviet
Union but being remade in the Rus-
sians' own totalitarian image.
Several years ago, the way Afghan
refugees tell it, the country's pro-
Soviet leaders said that there only
needed to be one million Afghans left
in the country. They were quoted by
refugees as saying that a revolution-
ary society could be constructed on
that slender basis, even if the rest of
the prewar population of 16 million
were to flee or be destroyed. In fact,
there is no absolute proof available in
the West that the Afghan leaders
made precisely that grim, bleak for-
mulation. But the statement is consis-
tent with what seems to be the guid-
ing principle of the two complemen-
tary sides of the Soviet and Afghan
Communist undertaking.
The first element is to strip away
those who are troublesome, to sweep
away the old and the inconvenient -
and, in Afghanistan's crusty, feudal
society, there is much that is old and
inconvenient. The vast depopulation
that has already occurred - one of
history's great migrations - seems to
be a result of this effort. One-third of
the prewar population has already
fled to Pakistan, Iran and other coun-
tries. Many others - nobody knows
exactly how many - have left their
homes in the countryside for the rela-
tively safe cities, fleeing the bom-
bardments that have become a regu-
lar part of the Soviet strategy.
The second, and less conspicuous,
element suggested by Mr. Yusufi's
evocation of the propaganda machin-
ery now operating in Afghanistan, is
an attempt to transfer onto Afghan
soil the methods and institutions of
the Soviet Union itself. This, as the
Russians are finding out, will take
some doing outside the urban areas.
The people of the Afghan countryside,
fiercely traditional, deeply religious,
have always resisted control by any
kind of central government, particu-
larly any foreign government. None-
theless, the Russians are striving to
create, from a kind of ground zero if
necessary, a new and more malleable
society, one whose basic character
harks back to the structures invented
by Lenin and which have been im-
planted in such places as Eastern Eu-
rope and Indochina. "They are not
that much concerned with the amount
of territory controlled by the mujahe-
deen," Abdul Majid Mangal, a former
diplomat in the Afghan Communist
government and now a refugee in
Peshawar, said. "Their strategy is to
create nuclei of Sovietized society in
the cities they control and to spread
outward from them to the rest of the
country."
There has been much speculation
on why the Soviet Union is persisting
in these policies in Afghanistan in the
face of the huge financial burden an
occupation force of 115,000 troops en-
tails, not to mention the 10,000 Soviet
soldiers killed in the war so far and
the enormous propaganda loss Mos-
cow has suffered elsewhere in the
world. For its part, the Soviet Union
says its aim is to protect the balance
of power on its own borders by sup-
porting Afghanistan's socialist revo-
lution against "imperialist" coun-
tries, by which it means the United
States, Pakistan and China. The Rus-
sians also stress that they are promot-
ing "progressive" changes, providing
scientific education, bringing about
the equality of women and ending the
reign of the old "exploiting classes."
The most widespread view in the
West of the Soviet objectives is that
the Russians are pushing southward,
as they have throughout their history,
seeking strategic advantage in South
Asia and in the area of the Persian
Gulf. Some commentators in the
United States have argued that the
Russians, in seeking this objective,
will try to absorb Afghanistan as a
new republic of the Soviet Union in
much the same fashion as it absorbed
Kazakhstan, Tadzhikistan and the
other Central Asian domains after the
1917 Revolution. Whatever the ulti-
mate geopolitical objective, however,
the actions undertaken in Afghani-
stan - and the ruthlessness with
which they are being pursued - have
their own inner logic. The Communist
Party, in order to maintain its power
in Moscow, must project an image of
infallibility. That is what justifies its
denial of the right of any opposition.
The party portrays itself as arising
out of historic inevitability, as the em-
bodiment of progress, thereby justify-
ing its use of virtually any means, no
matter how brutal. Now, in its cur-
rent conflict, the Soviet Union cannot
allow itself to be bested in a country
on its very border. It is will-
ing to pay the price and to
take the actions necessary to
prevail.
D ESPITE THE
Soviet effort to control
all information com-
ing from inside Afghanistan,
the war in that country is not
without its witnesses. Doctors
belonging to medical relief
organizations have worked at
length inside guerrilla-con-
trolled areas. Diplomats in
Kabul have sent out dis-
patches. But the Afghans who
have experienced Soviet con-
trol and have since escaped
the country are the prime wit-
nesses to events there. Last
month, I spent 10 days inter-
viewing such people in Pesha-
war, where there are more
than two million Afghan refu-
gees. Many of them, particu-
larly the ordinary farmers
and villagers, live in camps
of tents and mud-brick houses
outside of the city; others,
professional people, former
journalists, university profes-
sors, former government offi-
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dais, members of the old Af-
ghan elite, have managed to
settle in stucco and concrete
homes inside Peshawar it-
self, where many participate
in one of the dozen resistance
groups based in the city. All
of the Afghans I met were
men; women in Afghani-
stan's traditional society in
exile are not often of the seen by
strangers. Many
spoke English; they wore the
traditional Afghan costume
of long, flowing tunics, baggy
pants and sandals.
Admittedly, the testimony
of any one of them - like the
testimony of refugees any-
place - is subject to some
question. These people are,
after all, opponents of the
Soviet-supported Kabul Gov-
ernment or they would,
presumably, not have fled
their country. Nonetheless,
the stories they told, the de-
scriptions and details they
provided, proved so consis-
tent that the exiles acquired,
in my mind, a powerful de-
gree of credibility.
stay for a decade. It is esti-
mated that some 12.000 Af-
ghans are now studying at
various universities and
training institutes in the
Soviet Union.
A strapping man, fluent in
fairs in the Foreign Ministry "This is true of the state-
in Kabul, had been scheduled rnents made by Afghanistan
to take up a new post in New at the meetings of the non-
Delhi when the Soviet inva- aligned conference," he said,
sion took place. He ended up speaking of the group of 101
in Moscow instead; other non- countries that claim to be
Communist professionals neutral in the East-West con-
were sent to Poland, Hungary flict? "Each communique,
and Czechoslovakia; all of each statement issued by the
them, Mr. Mangal said, even- Foreign Ministry in Kabul is
tually finding their way to prepared, drafted and final-
exile in Pakistan or the West. ized in Moscow," Mr. Mangal
said.
At the same time, the Rus-
sians began to build a cadre Wardak, formerly an official
of new diplomats trained in in the secretariat of the At-
what was called by the Rus- Prime Minister's office,
sian advisers "Communist di- g Soviet control Minister's extends office,
plomacy." Students, often
drawn from the families of virtually all of the business of
prominent Afghan Commu- the government. Mr. Wardak
nists, were selected for left his post in Kabul in 1983 to
th Soviet Union. live alongside a noisy com-
English, Mr. Mangal grew a
thick black beard after arriv-
ing in Peshawar. He illus-
trated the extent of control di-
rectly exercised by Soviet of-
ficials in running the affairs
of the Afghan Government by
recounting the changes im-
posed on Afghanistan's For-
eign Ministry. He said that
Soviet influence at the For-
eign Ministry grew in steps
following the major stages of
Soviet involvement itself,
beginning with the Saur revo-
lution of 1978, when the Com-
munist Party, officially
known as the People's Demo-
cratic Party of Afghanistan,
took power in a coup, install-
ing Noor Mohammad Taraki
as prime Minister. "At that
time, there were three cate-
gories of Soviet advisers in
the Foreign Ministry who
stayed for more than one
year," Mr. Mangal said.
--They had their own offices,
with portraits of Lenin in
every room. There were
legal, political and economic
advisers.-..
A BDUL MAJID MAN-
gal is a former career
diplomat in the Kabul
Government whose last post
was as the second-ranking of-
ficial in the Afghan Embassy
in the Soviet Union. Like Mr.
Yusufi, he left for Pakistan in
1983. Be said that in Kabul,
Jalalabad, Herat, Kandahar
and the other major urban
areas of the country, Soviet-
style institutions are already
well established. He has a
long list of them: the propa-
ganda machinery, the state-
controlled newspapers, the
professional associations, the
branches of the Communist
Parry in every neighborhood,
office and school. There is
also, of course, the secret po-
lice, or, as it is called after its
Afghan initials, Khad, mod-
eled on the K.G.B., the Soviet
Union's own tentacular se-
curity apparatus. Soviet ad-
visers have been placed at
every level of government,
where they control even the
routine exercises of adminis-
tration. The school system,
from kindergartens to univer-
sities, has been revamped.
Thousands of young people
are sent to the Soviet Union
for their educations, includ-
ing children as young as 5 or 6
years old who are destined to
Mr. Taraki was overthrown
and executed in 1979 by Hafi-
zullab Amin, the leader of a
rival, and apparently less
pro-Soviet, faction of the
Communist Party, thus set-
ting the stage for the Soviet
invasion - and Amin's mur-
der - at the end of that year.
Within months, according to
Western intelligence experts.
more than 100,000 Soviet
troops were in the country to
back a new government led
by Babrak Karmai. who had
flown in to take power in the
wake of the arrival of Soviet -1
inside the Foreign Minis-
try, according to Mr. Mangal,
the influence of the Soviet ad-
visers then rapidly increased.
Their first step was to order
that all the professional diplo-
mats in the Foreign Ministry
who were not members of the
Communist Party be sent to
posts in the Soviet Union or
other Eastern-bloc countries,
apparently to keep them
under control. Mr. Mangal,
who was for five years the di-
rector of United Nations af-
education in
'There were 15 of them in mercial street on the edge of
1982," Mr. Mangal said. Peshawar in a house in which
"They were at the Moscow members of the Afghan
State University." In Kabul resistance, wearing turbans
itself, Foreign Ministry offi- and robes, frequently come to
cials were encouraged to drink tea and to talk. Once,
study Russian. A diplomatic Mr. Wardak recalled, the At-
institute was formed inside ghan Government concluded
the ministry to train diplo- an agreement with Bulgaria,
mats who were not selected to approved by the Afghan
l
b
u
,
go to Moscow, the teachers Council of Ministers in Ka
coming from the Soviet Union for the large-scale purchase
for periods of one to several of shoes and uniforms. Then
months. the Soviet advisers in the In-
Meanwhile, Mr Mangal tenor Ministry and in the
said, foreign policy was en- Prime Minister's office
tirely taken into the hands of learned of the arrangement.
the Soviet Union. "The top "They were very angry that
Soviet adviser in foreign they had not been told about it
policy is Vasily Safronchuk," in advance," Mr. Wardak
Mr. Mangal said, "the head said. "They ordered that the
of the Middle East depart- direct purchase be canceled.
ment of the Soviet Foreign instead, they arranged it so
Ministry. He is the real for- that the shoes were pur-
eign minister of the Kabul re- chased from Bulgaria, but
gime. Formerly, at the time the cash payment went to
of the first Communist coup, Moscow, which transferred
he was the No. 2 in the Soviet some barter goods to Bulgar-
Embassy in Kabul. Now, ia."
from Moscow, he sends in- Baten Shah Safi, a former
structions to the Soviet Em- professor of pharmacology at
bassy, which then conveys 11 Kabul University, said that
in
them to the Foreign Ministry I Soviet advisers began,
rib
e reaching
dist
ut
Illustrating the tightness of materials that had_ been
Soviet control, Mr. Mangal translated directly from Rus-
said that when Afghanistan's sian texts, replacing West
Foreign Minister, Shah Mc- German materials that had
hammad Dost, goes to the been used earlier. Mr. Man-
United Nations, "he without gal, the former diplomat, tes-
exception passes through titled that a history of the new
Moscow to pick up the state- Afghanistan was drafted by
ments that he will make. No Soviet scholars in Moscow
Afghan drafts a single for- and then translated into the
eign-policy Position on his Afghan languages. "When I
own.,, was in Moscow, I knew about
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this work," Mr Mangal said.
"It was done by a panel of
Soviet historians led by a Pro-
fessor Akramovich, the head
of Moscow's Institute for
Oriental Studies." Mr. Man-
gal said the new history
stressed two themes: that Af-
ghanistan's history is domi-
nated by the struggle of the
working classes against "im-
perialism," especially Brit-
ish imperialism in the 19th
century; and that the coun-
try's independence is largely
owed to the "fraternal assist-
ance" of the Soviet Union. "It
gets to the very ethical and
moral base of the character
of Afghanistan," Mr. Mangal
said. "The Soviets are trying
to convey the message that
each Afghan is patriotic only
if he is a friend of the Soviet
Union." Kabul radio pro-
grams mention the Soviet
the secret police. "Girls were
sent to Moscow and trained to
type in Persian," he said.
'They are sent, after they
come back to Kabul, to work
in government offices. These
girls are sent directly by the
prime ministry. You have no
choice in whether you want a
particular girl to work for you
or not. You just get a letter
from the secretary or the
assistant of the Prime Minis-
ter assigning a typist.
"Every day," Mr. Wardak
said, '-the typists had meet-
ings between 2 and 4 P.M. My
typist always locked her desk
drawer when she left, but one
day she left her key in the
lock. I told a friend to stand
watch at the door, and I
opened the drawer. There
was a small tape recorder
and a pistol inside. She was
be 15 or 16
ma
y
very young,
years old."
"The Prime Ministry had
three gates," Mr. Wardak
said. "The Prime Minister's
office was in the center of the
compound. The two sides
were for the exclusive use of
the Khad. Near one gate was
the Khad political office. At
another gate there was a very
strong guard; the gate was
only for Khad members. The
people who worked in the
Prime Minister's office were
not allowed to go into the
Khad areas. The personnel
were warned that when they
went in and out of the court-
yard they should not look to
either side, but should just go
directly in and out. When the
Government sent students to
the Soviet Union, the young
that existed before the revo-
lution have been transformed
into propaganda organs,
4.
many of them named after
their counterparts in the
Soviet Union. There are also
the professional associations,
the unions of writers, musi-
cians and artists. For an indi-
vidual to make a living at
those activities, membership
is required. There are unions
of farmers and religious lead-
ers and party-controlled
trade unions. Each, the Af-
ghan exiles say, has a Soviet
adviser and issues member-
ship cards. At the apex of the
system is an organization
called the Fatherland Front.
It publishes its own newspa-
per, organizes assemblies
and encourages the notion, as
Mr. Mangal put it, that to be
Union incessantly, "at least
200 times in 24 hours," ac-
cording to Mr. Mangal.
Meanwhile, American im-
perialism is denounced al-
most as frequently as the
Soviet contributions to Af-
ghan society are extolled.
Several Afghan refugees in
Peshawar talked of officially
organized anti-American
demonstrations held in Kabul
and filmed by television
crews for news broadcasts
both in the Soviet Union and
in Kabul itself.
"Sometimes, letters are
brought over to government
offices announcing a demon-
stration," Aminullah War-
dak, formerly of the Prime
Minister's office, recalled.
"For example, there was one
held at the United States Em-
bassy when the Voice of
America began Persian-lan-
guage programs. This was a
big demonstration. The Com-
munist Party member who
brought the letter made you
sign it to prove that you knew
of the demonstration. Every-
body has to gather at a cer-
tain spot. People make ban-
ners. Members of the party
are there to watch, because
sometimes people want to get
away and go home. They
force you to carry banners.
You can't refuse."
Mr. Wardak remembers
that in Kabul government of-
fices, the typists worked for
E VER SINCE ITS
founding in 1965, the
people's Democratic
Party of Afghanistan, the na-
tion's Communist Party, has
been composed of two hostile
groups, called the Khalq and
Parcham factions. Their
bloody feuding has been the
principal motor of political
events in the country. Two
party chairmen have been
murdered since the initial
Communist coup of 1978,
which in itself led to the ex-
ecution of the pre-coup lead-
er, Mohammad Daud Khan.
The factions have exchanged
bitter accusations; one is
charged with murdering
15,000 political prisoners, the
other with killing 17,000 politi-
cal enemies.
In fact, these numbers, like
much in present-day Afghani-
stan, are impossible to verify.
It is not possible, either, to
confirm independently Mr.
Wardak's suspicion that his
typist worked for the secret
police. But the evidence sup-
plied by exiles is that, since
the 1978 coup, Afghanistan
has been swept by a mood of
fear even as the secret police,
the Khad, has surrounded it-
self with an aura of power
and mystery.
people first had to register Communist and pro-Soviet is
with the Khad at the political to be patriotic.
office. Sometimes, I looked I Several children's organi-
out at them from my window. zations have been created,
It was very crowded every
day. They put them into buses
and took them directly to the
airport."
Accompanying the appara-
tus of the Khad, the refugees
say, are the seeds of the same
system of ranking and privi-
lege that exists in the Soviet
Union. Within every institu-
tion there are powerful indi-
viduals who belong to the
party committee, known in
Afghanistan as the Sazman
Iwalia, or the First Organiza-
tion. Mr. Yusufi described
how the process worked at
Kabul University. "It was an
assembly of students and fac-
ulty that made all decisions
about teaching at the univer-
sity," he said. "Gradually,
the number of people who
could attend the meetings
was reduced until only two or
three party members made
all decisions - teacher
promotions, scholarships,
seminars to be taught, sports
and social activities, re-
search projects." The old fac-
ulty, he said, used the deri-
sive term "machine-made
faculty" to refer to the flood
of new teaching staff.
For the masses of people, a
one of the most interesting
being Parwareshgah Watan,
or the Fatherland Orphan-
ages. It exists presumably for
children whose parents have
been killed in the war. Last
November, Kabul radio an-
nounced that 870 children
from the orphanages would
be sent to the Central Asian
republics of the Soviet Union
for 10 years of education.
Some Afghan exiles in Pesha-
war say that not all of these
children are orphans. They
say some have merely been
separated from their parents
and put under the control of
the state.
TO READ THE HIS-
of such Soviet So-
cialtoist Republics as
Uzbekistan and Tadzhikistan
is to see close parallels to
what is happening in Afghani-
stan. Turkic or Persian-
speaking Moslem domains in
Central Asia were conquered
toward the end of the 19th
century as Russia expanded
inexorably southward and
eastward. The czars were
content to leave the local pat-
tern of lives untouched, but
after the triumph of Leninism
host of institutions has been in 1917, the new Communist
created, again mimicking rulers tried to install Commu-
Soviet society. Newspapers
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ktist parties in Central Asia.
This provoked a bitter war. In
Uzbekistan, one Soviet writer
complained that the guerril-
las were men on horseback
who "dissolved in the neigh-
boring villages literally be-
fore the eyes of our troops."
In Tadzhikistan, it took the
Soviet armies five years to
crush the opposition and an-
other five years to quell peas-
ant resistance to such Stalin-
ist initiatives as forced collec-
tivization.
In Afghanistan today there
are differences, one being
that Moscow does not claim it
as a part of the Soviet Union.
But the greatest difference
may, in fact, be the extent of
the opposition from within the
country and, corresponding-
ly, the degree of brutality
being used to stamp it out. In
Peshawar, guerrilla com-
manders, who make occa-
sional visits to Pakistan and,
increasingly, to the West, tes-
tify that, in its early stages,
the Soviet war was more lim-
ited and classical than it is to-
day. The fight was for control
of territory; it was directed
against the mujahedeen
themselves. But, despite re-
peated offensives, the failure
of the Soviet to gain firm con-
trol of territory outside of the
major cities led to an intensi-
fication of the military effort
and the turn to what appears
to be an intentional effort to
depopulate the countryside.
Abdul Haq, the chief resist-
ance leader in Kabul Prov-
ince, the area around the Af-
ghan capital, says the altered
military policy began roughly
a year ago. Mr. Haq, a man of
great physical presence,
stout, bearded, and gruff,
was interviewed in Pesha-
war, where he had stopped off
front inside Afghanistan be-
fore traveling to Europe. He
and other members of the
resistance spoke specifically
of three new Soviet tactics.
One is the intense bombing of
villages and agricultural land
by planes and helicopters.
Second is the use of com-
mando parties to enter vil-
lages and guerrilla areas in
an effort to destroy resist-
ance fighters. Third is a
policy of quick and immedi-
ate retaliation against civil-
ian populations for mujahe-
deen assaults on Soviet tar-
gets. ---
-'Our problem is that they
are fighting with our chil-
dren, with our people, with
our farm animals," Mr. Haq
said. "Around Kabul Prov-
ince, some 90 percent of the
villages have been cleared. In
the last 2 or 3 months, 5,000 to
6,000 people only from Kabul
Province have come to Paki-
stan as refugees."
According to Pakistani
refugee officials, three rela-
tively new camps near Pesha-
war alone have received
heavy influxes of new resi-
dents. This does not mean
that the overall refugee flow
has increased. Officials at the
United Nations High Com-
mission for Refugees say that
the greatest number of esca-
pees from Afghanistan came
in the first two years after the
Soviet invasion, when tribal
leaders made essentially
political decisions not to live
under Soviet domination. But
both Pakistani and Western
officials agree that many of
the new refugees - who are
flowing into Pakistan at an
estimated rate of 3,000 to
5,000 a month - are escaping
the violence of the war itself,
particularly the bombing.
At the Red Cross Hospital
in Peshawar, some 3,000 vic-
tims of the war are- treated
every year. Over the last five
years, the organization has
repeatedly asked both the
Karmal regime and the
Soviet Union to be allowed to
set up hospitals inside Af-
ghanistan itself to treat war
victims, but it has so far been
refused permission. It takes
about 7 to 10 days for a
wounded person to be
brought, usually by mule or
camel, or even on the backs of
relatives, from Afghanistan
to Pakistan. Dr. Bjarne Ran-
heim, a Norwegian who is
medical director at the hospi-
tal, said that the most com-
mon wounds were caused by
bombings, mines and burns.
T HE REFUGEES AND
the leaders of the
resistance express
great confidence that they
will prevail in their war,
against the Soviet invaders.
They have a certain religious
faith in this, believing that
God is on their side. They
have faith, too, in the Afghan
national identity and the Af-
ghan stubbornness. People
subjected to constant propa-
ganda barrages often turn
into skeptics. Students who
study in the Soviet union may
become cynical about the
Soviet system rather than
turning into compliant and
enthusiastic Marxists.
But, the precedents of the
Soviet Central Asian repub-
lics indicate the existence of a
formula that has Proved ef-
fective in the past. In the
1920's, the Tadzhik rebels -
who were called "bandits" by
the Soviet press just as the
Afghan mujahedeen are to-
w ere, over the years,
wo down by Soviet persist-
ence, ruthlessness and fire-
power. Even if the Afghan
resistance is stronger - and
there are signs that its power
is considerable - eventually
the mountain war of attrition
can be expected to take a
heavy toll. At the same time,
the otner Soviet effort in the
war, the awesome weight of
the organized state, presses
against the spirit of independ-
ence. The result in the past
has been satellite states. The
Soviet aim, over the long run,
is to bring this about in Af-
ghanistan. ^
5
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100490020-9