Kabul Regime Ineffective : Soviet Hopes for Afghan Pullout Beset by Troubles

On the tarmac of the civilian airport here recently, a Soviet aircraft was being loaded with an unusual cargo.

As blond Russian airmen stood guard with AK-47 assault rifles, a ragged bunch of Afghan peasants, mostly Hazara tribesmen from the mountainous heartland of this Texas-size country, were climbing into a four-engined Soviet Antonov 12 cargo plane.

It was obvious that most of the Hazaras had never been on an airplane before. Some backed up the loading ramp reluctantly, like goats on a tether. To the frustration of the Soviet flight crew, no sooner would one Hazara board than another would walk off. Most carried bulky bundles containing cloth, tea, Persian carpets, sacks of sugar and bread.

The Hazaras were Afghan refugees returning from neighboring Iran, where they had fled after the Soviet military invasion of their country in 1979. They, and a few thousand others here, were attracted home by an Afghan government program of “reconciliation” announced four months ago in an attempt to lure back the estimated 4 million refugees in Iran and Pakistan with offers of land, jobs and a political role in a “government of reconciliation.”

The proposed new government would ostensibly have a place for refugee leaders, including moujahedeen guerrillas who have been battling Afghan and Soviet troops here for seven years. That a Soviet cargo plane had been flown 400 miles here from Kabul for this bedraggled bunch of peasants was an indication of just how much the Soviets want the reconciliation plan to work and how far they are willing to go to help it.

The return of the refugees is seen as the first stage of a peace process that would theoretically end with the withdrawal of the more than 100,000 Soviet troops still in Afghanistan.

By most indications here and abroad, including informal interviews with Soviet civilians, the Soviets sincerely want out of Afghanistan. Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev set the tone, describing his country’s predicament in Afghanistan as a “bleeding wound.” To some extent, Western diplomats say, Gorbachev has tied his own credibility to a successful departure from Afghanistan.

But as the United States discovered 15 years ago in Vietnam, getting out is more difficult than getting in.

Obstacles to Soviet Pullout

“It is quite clear that the Soviet Union would like to withdraw,” British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Parliament on April 2, after meeting with Gorbachev in Moscow. “It is also clear that it does not know quite how to go about it or what to do.”

Despite clear progress at U.N.-sponsored peace negotiations--both sides are reportedly only 11 months apart on the time needed to withdraw Soviet forces--there are many factors here working against an early Soviet disengagement.

“I am much more pessimistic about a settlement than I was when I first came here two years ago,” said a senior diplomat here who has contacts within the government of Najib, the general secretary of the ruling People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan.

The main hurdles include the extremely poor results of the “reconciliation” program announced by Najib; disunity and factionalism within the Soviet-backed regime; continuing ineffectiveness of the regime’s own military forces; increasing dependence on Soviet technical aid, and the development of a large class of government workers and party members whose lives would be in jeopardy with any radical change in the Afghan political structure.

U.S. Backs Rebels

Another key factor is the continuing solidarity of a United States-led alliance with Pakistan in support of the Afghan rebels based in Pakistan. This support was emphasized by recent congressional approval of an expanded covert military aid program to the rebels, at more than $400 million a year the largest such U.S. operation since the Vietnam War.

Finally, there is the inertia generated by the large Soviet military contingent and technical advisory staff, whose morale and interest in the first direct Soviet military campaign since World War II appears to be building.

Even by the Afghan government’s own reckoning, the ambitious “national reconciliation” program announced by Najib in January is not working. In a press conference in Kabul this month, Afghan Foreign Minister Abdul Wakil announced that only 44,000 refugees have returned.

By conservative estimates, this number is no more than 2% of the refugee population. Also, there is some indication that in the four months since the reconciliation program was announced, more people have left Afghanistan as new refugees than have come back in.

‘Net Flow Outward’

“I think the net flow is still outward,” said one Western diplomat in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

Wakil also said that 21,000 of those who have returned were former moujahedeen rebels. However, during a recent two-week visit by several Western journalists, the government did not produce a single former moujahedeen who had come back after the reconciliation offer was made.

In the village of Cheld-Dukhtran about 15 miles south of Kabul, the reporters met with an Afghan army deserter named Mir Hasan, 35, who claimed to have come back because he was “homesick.” But Hasan said he had worked as a bricklayer in Pakistan during his time as a refugee and had nothing to do with a rebel group.

Later, a government guide provided to the journalists admitted that the same man had been presented to a previous group of visiting journalists.

Other returning refugees were interviewed at the Herat airport and in a hotel set aside for returnees in the city itself. However, the reasons given by most of them for returning appeared to be more economic than political.

Conditions Hard in Iran

Iran, where most of the Herat returnees had been living, was a tough place for Afghans. They said they were discriminated against in wages and pursued by authorities for induction into the Iranian army to fight in that country’s war with Iraq.

“Tehran was a kind of life where you barely eat and you don’t die,” said Barat Ali, 23, who said he had been a refugee in the Iranian capital for six years. “Everyone was bored and hungry.”

Ali said he would return to his parents’ home in Kabul and then enlist in the Afghan army.

Since it took power here in a 1978 coup, the ruling People’s Democratic Party has never been a stable, united entity.

The party claims to be a “national democratic party,” but organizationally it mirrors the Soviet Communist Party, even to the extent that its Politburo meets Thursday as its Soviet counterpart does. It is composed of two main factions, the Khalq (Masses) and the Parcham (Flag) which, since a temporary truce in 1977, have never resolved their differences.

There are also loyalties built around the personalities of leaders in both factions. It was the chaos that resulted from internal divisions in 1979 that led the Soviet Union to intervene militarily and install a Parcham leader, Babrak Karmal, to replace the two previous Khalq leaders, both of whom had been assassinated.

Had Headed Secret Police

A year ago in May, Karmal was himself replaced by Najib, 40, a medical doctor and major general in the army who had previously headed the Afghan secret police agency. Najib, who is built like a football linebacker, was apparently chosen because he is a Pushtun, like most of the population of Afghanistan living on the critical border with Pakistan. Most of the refugees and the majority of the moujahedeen are also Pushtun.

However, Western diplomatic sources in Kabul now believe that Najib is in political difficulty after the early failure of his reconciliation program. In addition, some elements of the Parcham faction remained loyal to Karmal, 56, who, stripped of his last party title in November, remained under virtual house arrest in Kabul.

With Karmal and his followers around, Najib was unable to call a party conference, or plenum. This month, the problem was at least temporarily solved when Karmal, for what the government announced were health reasons, was removed to the Soviet Union.

Opinion varies in Kabul about Najib’s standing within the party and with his Soviet advisers. However, it is apparent that he, like Karmal, has been unable to unify the party.

In the end, the instability of the ruling party could be the biggest impediment in obtaining a negotiated settlement to the Afghan conflict.

At a press conference in New Delhi last November, Gorbachev stressed that the Soviet Union stood for a “nonaligned, independent, sovereign Afghanistan.” He said the Soviet Union had worked with Afghan monarchies and pre-revolutionary governments.

“What kind of regime will be there is up to the Afghan people,” he said.

Insist on Friendly Regime

However, few Afghan political observers feel that the Soviet Union, after seven years of fighting in which thousands of Soviet soldiers had died, would be willing to cede power to any government that even had the potential of being hostile to Soviet interests.

“Afghanistan will never be allowed to do anything that is inimical to the interests of the Soviet Union--just as Mexico would never be allowed to do anything inimical to the interests of the United States,” one Western diplomat in Kabul said.

One distant possibility for a political solution in Afghanistan, and the one most often rumored in Kabul bazaars, is the return of former King Mohammed Zahir Shah to power. Zahir, 74, who has lived in exile in Rome since he was ousted in a coup in 1973, has said he is willing.

“Any reconciliation can materialize only in the framework of a political solution that is acceptable to the Afghan nation and guarantees their legitimate rights,” the former monarch told an interviewer from Der Spiegel, the West German news magazine. “On those terms I am ready to serve my country without any conditions.”

However, the aging king faces opposition not only from the leftist government but also from the largest and most powerful of the several moujahedeen groups, the fundamentalist and fiercely anti-royalist Islamic Party under the leadership of engineer Gulbuddin Hektmatyar.

The refugee situation and the political atmosphere are the biggest blocks to a political settlement here but they are not the only ones.

Afghan Army Inadequate

Although the Afghan government claims to have 500,000 men and women under arms, the true army strength is estimated by observers at only about 40,000, and all key military operations and defense are still managed by Soviet troops.

In Herat, for example, the entire defensive ring around the city is Soviet-manned. Even the bridges leading into town are guarded by Soviet troops. Despite a 30% pay increase recently given the Afghan troops to boost morale, they are far from ready to take over the nation’s defenses.

Also, the seven-year-old war has taken its toll on the thin Afghan professional and technical ranks, many of whom have fled the country. A Western diplomat complained recently in Kabul that every year his office makes a list of seven consulting physicians in the Afghan community. “And every year three or four are gone to Pakistan,” he said.

Even the tiny state-run Bakhtar Airlines is forced to employ Soviet pilots, paying them more than 10 times what it pays Afghan crews.

“We used to have 45 Afghan pilots; now we have only eight,” said one remaining, American-trained pilot. “The others left to fly in other countries.”

So proud, remote Afghanistan, for most of its history the very symbol of obscurity until it was thrust into the limelight by the Soviet invasion of December, 1979, finds itself sapped of energy and brainpower, less able than ever before to stand on its own.

Viewed as Collaborators

And the seven-year Soviet occupation has created a class of people that the rebels see as collaborators. These are government employees, soldiers and police--people who, whatever their feelings about the ruling party and its Soviet sponsors, would likely be branded as traitors and killed if the Soviet forces ever withdrew.

Already, one rebel commander in Peshawar, Pakistan, where most of the rebel groups keep their headquarters, has said that 30,000 throats would be slit if the Russians ever leave.

This is a group that the Soviets cannot abandon. Before they can consider leaving, they must first ensure that a blood bath will not ensue.

Finally, there are the Soviets themselves--not the political leaders mouthing words of peace in Moscow, but the men and women on the ground in Afghanistan. Western diplomats in Kabul say they have never seen as many cargo aircraft landing at the Kabul airport, more than 50 planes a day during good weather, each laden with materials that will make any withdrawal that much more difficult.

Afghanistan is the Soviet Union’s first military venture outside the Warsaw Pact countries since World War II. In the early stages of the war there was much talk about the sagging spirits and moral anxiety of the Soviet troops. But in Kabul and the few other cities visited recently by several Western journalists, the soldiers appeared confident and secure. Soldiers on leave posed with their girls, probably nurses in the large Soviet hospital, on the hill next to the Intercontinental Hotel.

The girls in their summer cotton dresses and the young soldiers with their caps tucked into their belts looked like a postcard from 1942, from another army and another war.

They looked like they were here to stay.