Refugees Inside Afghanistan to Get U.S. Aid

The Reagan Administration disclosed Wednesday that it plans to funnel $4 million in humanitarian and medical aid to refugees--including anti-communist guerrillas--inside Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

Under Secretary of State William Schneider Jr. told reporters outside a Senate hearing room that the aid will consist of food, clothing, medical supplies and medical vehicles and that the Administration will seek another $5 million in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

The move marks the first time the Administration has attempted to channel aid openly and directly to refugees inside Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union has been engaged for more than five years in a bloody effort to put down a determined resistance.

Past Aid Covert

The United States has been operating a much larger program of covert military assistance to the anti-communist rebels, known as moujahedeen. That program is estimated to have totaled as much as $600 million since it began during the administration of President Jimmy Carter.

Since early 1980, the United States also has given more than $350 million in refugee aid through the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and other international agencies.

Schneider, who testified at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s foreign operations subcommittee, said the $4 million would come from funds earlier appropriated for Syria.

Other State Department officials said the effort would be an expansion of a $2-million appropriation for Afghan refugees that was drawn from emergency funds last August. However, that aid went for refugees in camps in northwest Pakistan, where more than 3 million Afghans have fled since the Soviet invasion of 1979.

Department officials said it has not been determined how the aid actually will be gotten to the refugees inside Afghanistan, whose borders are closed.

At the Senate hearing, Schneider and Assistant Defense Secretary Richard L. Armitage cited President Reagan’s declaration that “we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives, on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua,” and Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s contention that to cut off support to anti-Communist insurgents “would be conceding the Soviet notion that Communist revolutions are irreversible.”

Aid Policy Described

Both Schneider and Armitage described a cautious policy of weighing U.S. support on a case-by-case basis.

Schneider said the United States intends to “resolve all differences peacefully, using traditional diplomatic means” and would consider sterner measures “only when a regime is unwilling itself to live within . . . norms of non-intervention and instead threatens or attacks its neighbors.”

Armitage stressed that U.S. action should be backed by America’s allies and not run counter to larger U.S. security concerns, including improving relations with the Soviet Union.

Several senators criticized the Administration’s approach. Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) demanded to know why all aid to the Afghan guerrillas is not overt, as Congress has demanded in resolutions during the last two years. Most U.S. military and refugee aid has been sent covertly to the moujahedeen and passes through Pakistan, U.S. officials say.

‘From Crisis to Crisis’

“You refuse overt aid to Afghanistan, then turn around and ask it for Nicaragua. Why?” he demanded. “It’s ridiculous. Your policy is hopping from crisis to crisis. It’s like little kids.”

Armitage said the “views of neighboring countries”--the Soviet Union and Pakistan--made covert aid more advisable. “If you say in public that you are aiding the Afghan resistance, it might make it harder for the Soviets to withdraw,” he said.

Subcommittee Chairman Bob Kasten (R-Wis.) asked why the Administration is seeking $1 million in military aid for the Marxist government in Mozambique, which itself is under attack from an anti-Communist insurgency.

Schneider said the proposal was a “calculated risk” that the State Department hoped would influence the government in Maputo to take a less rigid anti-Western line.