Humor a Casualty : Kabul Copes Under Soviet Occupation

Old-timers remember this as a lively, playfully irreverent city.

Once, street urchins had a standard greeting for Westerners strolling down the market lanes: “Hey, Mr. Katchalu, “ they would shout.

That means “Mr. Potato” in the local Dari language. The nickname dates back two centuries to the Europeans who introduced potatoes to this remote Central Asian land ringed with mountains. But it is no longer heard on the streets of Kabul.

Once, government parades, or any other display of self-importance, were ridiculed by impromptu street theater. A goose-stepping soldier would inspire a ragamuffin army of imitators on the sidewalks. An over-pious mullah--Muslim religious leader--might spark a few curb-side one-liners about his paternal origins.

No Longer a Tolerant City

“They used to taunt authority,” said an American diplomat who also lived here 10 years ago.

Once, this was a place with a sense of humor where no one got respect. That enabled it to be tolerant. All religions, languages, tribes and nationalities were welcome, and all were mocked in equal measure so that none could feel slighted.

“Of all the cities in Asia,” said one European resident who has lasted 25 years in Kabul, “this one was the most tolerant, the least xenophobic.”

But that was “before the revolution,” as they say here, referring to the 1978 coup that brought the leftist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan to power. And it was before the arrival in 1979-80 of more than 100,000 Soviet troops, brought in ostensibly as temporary support for the struggling pro-Soviet regime.

Stewing in Its Unhappiness

Today, Soviet military police patrol “Chicken Street,” where Western hippies used to congregate and smoke cheap hashish in the 1960s. The drone of Soviet aircraft, from lumbering Il-76 cargo jets to darting MI-24 helicopter gunships, provides a background to daily life now.

The hashish has been replaced by Stolichnaya vodka, cheaper here than in Moscow. The popular Horseman and Marco Polo nightclubs are closed. The Khyber restaurant, where travelers used to linger over a cup of green tea to watch the parade of European “freaks” in Pushtunistan Square, is now a hangout for party apparatchiks spouting rhetoric about “the new phase of the revolution” and “warmongering circles” and “socialist peace-loving nations.”

In short, Kabul is an occupied city--occupied physically by the blond Soviet soldiers in ill-fitting brown uniforms and Aussie-style bush hats; intellectually by hundreds of Soviet advisers who inhabit every ministry and direct every government program.

So the irreverent city with a sense of humor has become a sullen place, stewing in its unhappiness. No more Mr. Potato. The smart-talking cool that was Kabul’s trademark has become a rage of xenophobia, divided along East-West lines.

Those who oppose the Soviet-backed regime hiss their hatred in the bazaars, muttering “bloodsuckers” or “donkeys” under their breath as Soviets or ruling party members walk past.

Others are more subtle. One shopkeeper on Chicken Street sells traditional hand-woven rugs from Herat, an ancient city famous for its carpets, in northwest Afghanistan near the Iran border. In a back room, however, he keeps some that feature Soviet helicopters carefully woven into the pattern.

“Do you want to see the helicopters?” he asks when a European or American customer walks into his store. The carpet displayed is a carefully woven document of an occupation, an artistic rendering of the changed Afghanistan landscape.

The few Americans here, mostly with the skeleton diplomatic mission that the United States has maintained here since the Soviet invasion began in December, 1979, find that they are welcomed warmly once their nationality is revealed. In many shops, there is one price for Russians and one for Americans. The American price is lower.

To distinguish himself from Soviet diplomats, the American charge d’affaires here, Maurice Eelam, wears a cowboy hat and a Western string tie and drives a Cadillac.

On the other hand, those who support the regime save their venom for the United States and Pakistan, both of which back moujahedeen rebels in their 7 1/2-year battle against government and Soviet forces.

Last year alone, the United States sent more than $400 million in weapons to the moujahedeen, the largest covert CIA operation since Vietnam.

These government supporters are mostly members of the People’s Democratic Party, which has about 180,000 nationwide, government workers, military and security officers and their families. The government also finds adherents among the 30,000 families who live alongside Soviet civilians in the sprawling, Soviet-style “Micro-Rayon” housing projects.

The prefabricated concrete, five-story walk-up apartment complexes, exactly like those of the same name found by the dozens in Moscow, would be classified as substandard public housing in the West. But for the Kabuli, after living for centuries in mud homes near open, running sewers, they are as upscale as Park Avenue. Even Najib, the general secretary of the People’s Democratic Party and the leader of the government, who uses only the single name, lives there.

“This is a quiet place and all the facilities of life are here,” said Yulda Saidi, 29, who is very proud of her two-bedroom apartment with its hot-and-cold running water and dependable electricity. She works as a clerk for the Afghan-Soviet Transportation Corporation. Her husband is an officer in the government militia, the Defenders of the Revolution.

Her four children are kept in a nursery in the complex.

In most Afghani families, the women would cook outside or in the main room of the home, over coals. But Saidi is able to boast of a separate kitchen--”just like in Europe,” she said. The apartments in Micro-Rayon come supplied with a Soviet-made gas range.

Not surprisingly, the government that provides such luxuries, with the help of Soviet aid that accounts for 40% of the country’s development budget, finds some devoted followers in Micro-Rayon.

Anti-U.S. Demonstrations

“I hope the day will come when all Afghanistan will live in Micro-Rayon,” said Ali Mohammed, 18, a trainee in the Afghan Security Information Ministry whose father is member of the Central Committee of the ruling party.

Residents of Micro-Rayon are encouraged to demonstrate their support for the government. A banner on the wall of a police station in the complex proclaims: “Long live the ninth anniversary of the revolution--all members of the party please attend the parade to show solidarity of the people.”

The parade, on April 27, drew more than 200,000 marchers and featured some of the most vitriolic anti-American demonstrations ever seen here, including a skit showing a wicked-looking Uncle Sam whipping Afghan refugees “imprisoned” in Pakistan.

It is not true, as some Western diplomats have contended, that the People’s Democratic Party and its Soviet ally have no support here. Especially here in Kabul, the Afghanistan capital and the country’s largest city, there is a solid base of support, made up of people with ideological or employment links to the regime.

Still, after a two-week stay, an American reporter, who was relatively free to visit the bazaars and talk with the people, leaves with the impression that most of the people in Kabul oppose the regime and resent the Soviet presence. On several occasions the reporter was embraced after making his nationality known.

A taxi driver complained that the government had threatened to punish his children in school if they did not attend the April 27 parade. He had kept them home.

“I do not believe in this regime,” he said, “But if they heard me talking this way they would put me in jail.”

A businessman, speaking English in staccato bursts, expressed his hatred for the Russians.

“I was in government but I quit seven years ago when the Russians came. We hate the Russians. They are sitting on us and they will not go away.

“We will kill them,” he said, drawing a forefinger across his throat.

The businessman, like many others here, was delighted that the United States is supplying the rebels with ground-to-air Stinger missiles. The very word “stinger”--pronounced here as steen-gahr --has become a common password among those who despise the regime. Even the government appears preoccupied with the Stinger, mentioning it so often in television and radio broadcasts that it has contributed to the weapon’s reputation.

Likewise, the names of the rebel commanders, especially those who operate in the Kabul area--Abdul Haq of the Hezb-i-Islami Khalis (Islamic Party-Khalis faction) for instance--are whispered reverently in the streets.

“Abdul Haq, he is a good man,” confided a government militiaman in nearby Paghman City.

In many respects, Kabul looks pretty much the way it did more than a century ago. Many of the old landmarks still stand. The medieval citadel, Bala Hissar, has been converted into a training center for the Afghan army. The tomb and magnificent garden of Baber, the founder of the Mogul dynasty of India, still survive from the 16th Century.

And the dirty brown Kabul River still snakes its way through the old markets, with all their commerce and intrigue. It is in these old markets that a shopper can find Yugoslav hams, Russian caviar at only $2 an ounce, Polish pork sausage, Dutch orange soda, French cigarettes and Bango Yellow Hybrid Popcorn from Schaller, Iowa.

In the used clothing stalls--they call it the “Reagan Market” here--Afghans can find discarded U.S. Air Force uniforms and Pittsburgh Steeler warm-up jackets.

“The Afghanis are born traders. This is the capital of laissez faire in a Marxist-Leninist state,” one astonished diplomat said. “Where else can you find bearded Pathans walking around in American high school band uniforms?”

There is also an open money market, called Shazada, where the mostly Hindu and Sikh traders will change any kind of currency and accept checks from hometown banks in California or Tuscany, Soviet Georgia or American Georgia--all without asking for a driver’s license and a “major credit card.”

Shazada also trades in rumor and information. It is often said here that “A rumor in Shazada market will always come true.” Like the bazaaris of Tehran, who played an important role in the Islamic revolution in that country, the money-changers of Shazada have their finger to the pulse of their beleaguered country.

Word Travels Fast

The American reporter discovered the efficiency and accuracy of the market’s grapevine one afternoon. A money-changer whom he had met once before sidled up to him in the multi-tiered open market two days after the reporter had returned from Herat, 400 miles away, on a government-sponsored and supervised trip.

“I know you went to Herat,” the money-changer said. “But you should know that before you went into town, more than 1,000 soldiers swept the bazaar. Otherwise you would not have been able to go. And they didn’t show the part of town that had been destroyed.”

The market of Herat had indeed been busy but subdued on the day that the reporter was taken there. And the authorities had refused to take the reporter to one part of the city, near a large Shia Muslim area, claiming the road there was mined.

Kabul remains a beautiful and wild city. Many of its hillsides are planted with the famous Kabuli grapevines and fruit trees, producing dried fruit and nuts that are legendary throughout Asia. The air is clean and crisp. The city lights sparkle like the stars above the magnificent mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush.

But it is also a deeply troubled place. Since the war began 7 1/2 years ago, its population has jumped from 500,000 to more than 2 million.

Since it is one of the few relatively safe places left in the country, people have flocked here for protection. So much of the countryside has been devastated by the war that Afghanistan has folded its population into this city-state-- Kabulistan , the natives call it. With more than 4 million Afghans living as refugees in Pakistan and Iran, and up to 1 million killed in the war, Kabul’s current population may amount to one-third of Afghanistan’s remaining people.

Soviet armor and artillery, the so-called “rings of steel” defense, are positioned in concentric circles around the city and its immediate suburbs. Trips to other cities by road take days and are very dangerous.

So Kabul has become a fortress town, connected to the rest of the world by infrequent commercial airline flights and to the Soviet Union by the military air umbilical cord. Diplomats have counted more than 50 Soviet military cargo flights in one day. Kabul has become like blockaded Berlin during the 1948 airlift.

Some here who loved the old Kabul and its playful, irreverent ways, fear that this city will never smile again.

“History is contradicting itself in Kabul,” said one longtime European resident, who expresses heartbreak over the changes. “The city that never gave up is now giving up. We are in the advanced colonial stage.”