Afghanistan: Winding Down

For a country that is 90% illiterate, Afghanistan has written a great deal of recent world history.

Its occupation by Soviet troops in December, 1979, led directly to the largest peacetime buildup of American military force in history. The occupation helped topple a President and contributed to a lapse of 15 years between arms-control agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union. At least 12,000 Soviet troops have died there, trying to protect one puppet government after another from rebel tribesmen whose weapons have come largely from the United States. The occupation has also turned Afghanistan into one of those flash points where a false step could lead to a confrontation between the superpowers that neither would want.

For eight years Moscow insisted that it had not invaded Afghanistan, and that even if it had the Soviet Union was entitled to do what was necessary to maintain a friendly government on its southern border. Suddenly this week Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze made it clear that Moscow wants out.

He did not dwell on the reasons, but it is not hard to guess what they are. Afghanistan has become a world symbol of a brand of Soviet brutality that the new leadership wants to put behind it. However easy Moscow thought it would be during the early days of the occupation to subdue Afghanistan’s guerrilla farmers and herdsmen, it has been obvious for some time that the best that it could hope for was perpetual stalemate--a “bleeding wound,” as Soviet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev called it. Finally, the guerrilla war is a drain on resources that Gorbachev needs to try to rebuild the economy. So the decision was to get out of the Afghan desolation as soon as it can be done without appearing to turn tail.

Shevardnadze’s prediction in an interview with the Afghan press agency that 1988 would be the year of withdrawal was reminiscent of Washington’s decision to start pulling American troops out of Vietnam and to gradually turn over to Saigon the task of keeping Communist North Vietnam at bay. Handing the war over to Saigon--Vietnamization, as it was called--was America’s way of looking as though it was not turning tail. The details in Afghanistan are different, but the basis of the decision apparently is the same--the cutting of losses is the best that Moscow can hope for.

In his book “White House Years,” Henry A. Kissinger, then national-security adviser to President Richard M. Nixon, wrote of the decision concerning Vietnam: “Henceforth, we would be in a race between the decline in our combat capabilities and the improvement of South Vietnamese forces--a race whose outcome was at best uncertain.”

For the Soviets the outcome is even more uncertain. Their man in Afghanistan, Najibullah, tried declaring a cease-fire a year ago this month in hopes of persuading rebel leaders to join with him in a coalition government. The guerrillas said no, and kept on fighting.

Shevardnadze said Moscow hopes the government that takes over when the Soviet troops leave will be at least neutral. Secretary of State George P. Shultz said in a press conference Thursday that Washington wants the same thing--a government that is not aligned in a military sense with the United States or any other bloc. Where that will leave Najibullah is hard to say.

There still is no timetable either for the Soviet withdrawal of troops or for an American withdrawal of aid to the rebels--something that Washington has privately assured Moscow will happen, but without saying exactly when.

As Shultz put it, if Moscow starts pulling its troops out of Afghanistan and all goes smoothly, there would come a time at which it would be obvious to all that the guerrillas no longer needed weapons and the shipments of arms could stop.

Part of any arrangement also would include a fairly short period for getting the 115,000 Soviet troops now in Afghanistan out of the country--thinking that this would prevent Moscow’s letting its best fighting men dawdle, hoping to get a shot at the rebels after their arms shipments stop.

Working out the fine print may not be easy, but with both the United States and the Soviet Union apparently determined to back away from the confrontation, it will be done.

One last detail, again reminiscent of Vietnam: The Soviets may have ached to do so, but they did not gloat publicly over the sight of a superpower calling it quits. It is a good model to follow, particularly inasmuch as nothing would be gained by it. In that way the world may be able to watch Afghanistan’s moment in 20th-Century history come to an end with neither a whimper nor a bang.