Afghan Guerrillas Screen Prisoners : ‘We Shoot Communists Quickly’

The teen-age army officer quietly pleaded for his life, unable to stop his hands from shaking as he tried to convince his guerrilla interrogators that he was not a Communist.

“If God helps, I will be released. If I am not, I will be killed,” said the frightened 18-year-old the guerrillas identified as Lt. Nur Mohammed. He had an army crew cut and a smattering of acne.

A guerrilla officer listening to him sneered and said he was lying. The guerrilla maintained that Lt. Mohammed’s claim of deserting to the anti-government Islamic guerrillas was an attempt to save his skin.

The base commander said about 90 prisoners were taken this past summer, but he was deliberately vague about what had happened to them.

Hope to Join Rebels

Many of the ordinary soldiers held at Zhawar said they deserted to the guerrillas and hope to join their ranks. The officers of Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed army, though, spend months in captivity, knowing they may well face a firing squad.

“Some will be killed, some will be released,” said the guerrilla officer, speaking on condition that he not be named.

For several hours on a recent sunny, fall morning, the guerrillas allowed Afghan army prisoners and deserters to describe life in the armed forces of the Communist government in Kabul, the nation’s capital.

The soldiers claimed the army barely existed now, that it was a force whose officers and men had little faith in what they were fighting for and that the army was held together mainly by fear.

“Afghan soldiers do not want to fight, they are not happy, they do not want to fight moujahedeen (the guerrillas),” said a prisoner identified as Lt. Mohammed Sharif of the 466th Commando Brigade. He said he was captured in September.

The strength of the Afghan army is listed officially as 80,000 men. Guerrilla commanders, senior government defectors and Western intelligence sources here and in Pakistan say the force numbers half that at most and its strength is maintained mainly by impressment drives in which young men are recruited at gun point.

As fighting picks up each spring in Afghanistan, thousands of conscripts desert to the guerrillas, whole units sometimes going over to the enemy, these sources say. They add that the soldiers turn their weapons and ammunition over to the guerrillas, and many deserters join the insurgents.

The sources suggest that disintegration of the Afghan army has forced the estimated 115,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan to do more and more of the fighting and bear the brunt of major offensives against the guerrillas.

Conscript’s Story

One soldier identified as Mohammed Kanam, a private from the 25th Division, gave this account of being impressed into the army and said it was typical of others:

After a government raid on his village in northern Afghanistan in April, he was given a few weeks training that consisted of little more than learning to use a gun. His unit was thrown into heavy fighting in September in Paktia province.

The recruits were unhappy and afraid. They were also devout Muslims who detest the Communist regime.

“We were not happy in the army because they were (considered) infidels,” he said.

Abdul Letief, who said he deserted from the 466th Commando Brigade, related that he and his comrades believed it was their religious duty to desert. “They are infidels,” he said of the Communists. “How could we not defect?”

Several of the prisoners said soldiers are watched constantly in the Afghan army and forced to go everywhere in groups of at least five to discourage desertion.

“None of us wanted to fight. All the time we talked about defecting to the moujahedeen,” Letief said. Moujahedeen, which means “holy warriors,” is the general name adopted by the guerrillas.

The army officers also claimed to be Muslims and professed to hate the government, saying they were made to serve against their will.

“I am Muslim, my father is Muslim, my country is Muslim. I am for Islam and the moujahedeen,” pleaded a lieutenant whose name was given as Mohammed Momen.

Communist Youth Group

When his guerrilla guards countered that he was lying, he stared back at them, his eyes wide with fear. He kept saying he supports the guerrillas, insisting he is a devout Muslim. But the guerrillas replied that they knew he had belonged to the youth organization of the Afghan Communist Party.

“If we decide a prisoner is Communist then we shoot him,” one guerrilla said. “We shoot Communists very quickly.”

Momen, like the other captured officers, was unable to explain why he had been made an officer. He stared wordlessly when asked if it was because his superiors trusted him.

Nur Mohammed said he became an officer for a salary that works out to the the equivalent of about $45 a month--a substantial sum by Afghan standards. He added that found himself posted in a besieged government town constantly under attack by the guerrillas.

“We were very afraid of the moujahedeen rockets,” he said. “The soldiers are not happy.”

The common soldiers who are determined to have genuinely deserted to the guerrillas are put to work for several months to see if they should be accepted as recruits.

“We watch them for five, six, seven months to see if they are good,” a guerrilla commander explained. “If they are not good we will send them back to their homes.”

Officers Are Watched

The officers, who also work at tasks ranging from cooking to helping service and repair weapons, are locked in cells when they are not working. The guerrillas said the officers are constantly watched to see if they are lying or hiding their true feelings.

There was no sign that the prisoners were abused or mistreated by the guerrillas.

The guerrillas indicated that the officers’ fate often is determined by word from guerrilla sympathizers in the army on whether or not the prisoners are in fact Communists or were willing supporters of the regime.