Soviet Pullout Leaves Afghanistan in Murk

May 15 is the day the Soviet Union officially begins removing military forces from Afghanistan--a historic day, Secretary of State George P. Shultz called it in Geneva when he signed for the United States as guarantor of the agreement. On that day the door is open for the roughly 5 million Afghan refugees to return from Pakistan and Iran. United Nations personnel are already in place to investigate any breaches of obligations assumed by Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Historic? Certainly. Mikhail S. Gorbachev is liquidating a major military enterprise. The cost in lives, money and political prestige after eight bloody years is obviously more than the Kremlin remains willing to pay. The Afghan people who have been fighting invaders since Alexander the Great have beaten another, at least to a standstill. The Reagan Administration, paying decent respect to this crucial fact, can take credit for the support it has given the resistance, the moujahedeen. However, it is inclined, beyond that, to crow over getting the Soviet forces or even “the Russians” out of Afghanistan, and that is open to serious question.

The Geneva agreements are as vague and limited as they are complex, a pattern of ambiguity and paradox held together by hope. Gorbachev had months earlier announced the decision to withdraw Soviet troops whether or not the agreements were signed. And to conclude that “the Russians” would be leaving Afghanistan even remotely in the sense that the United States left Vietnam would be to disregard reality. Afghanistan is the Soviet Union’s neighbor and a strategic factor of prime importance. The two have been and will remain connected by many ties of cross-border interest. Soviet soldiers will now go but thousands of technical experts and advisers--guesses go as high as 20,000-- may remain. The Geneva agreements do not cover them.

Moscow can hardly have abandoned its stake in Afghanistan. On the contrary, it keeps emphasizing its support of the government which it established in Kabul as the only legitimate authority and keeps reaffirming the hundreds of intergovernmental agreements that have amplified their relations since the first Soviet-Afghan treaty of the 1920s.

The Soviet Union dismisses the moujahedeen as “a group engaged in armed struggle against a lawful government.” The “mouj” and their field commanders are not parties to the Geneva accords. The Soviets refused to recognize or negotiate with them. Moscow offers them no choice but to accept its man Najibullah’s offer of national reconciliation on his terms. Secretary Shultz was speaking rather hopefully when he said that the U.N. official who mediated the Geneva accords “has agreed to continue towards an interim government.”

The Geneva package, referred to as instruments, explicitly provides that the United Nations “must not interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.” And there is no doubt that the Soviet Union will provide President Najibullah the weapons he needs to meet the moujahedeen assaults. This is permitted under a bilateral compact between Washington and Moscow that each will continue to arm its client if the other does. Who will check the resupply? No one. This Soviet-American arrangement is outside the Geneva package and therefore not subject to any U.N. inspection. It stands or falls on U.S./Soviet intelligence reports which each party may act upon as it chooses.

Shultz’s reliance on the U.N.’s “genuine engagement on monitoring conformance to the accords” is also shaky. The Geneva instruments do not envisage monitoring. They provide for a token contingent of 10 officers in two teams, one based in Kabul, the other in Islamabad, expandable to a group of 50 men, to investigate violations of the agreements and nothing more. From there on, the Geneva accords descend into political, military and semantic murk.

The inescapable core of the Afghan tragedy is the moujahedeen’s war against the regime in Kabul. It will almost certainly continue unabated until the mouj win or the United States allows them to run out of weapons and ammunition. The Geneva package does not so much as mention this war, except in one perverse way: An Afghan-Pakistani agreement on non-interference and nonintervention forbids either country to encourage or support direct or indirect rebellion or cessation activities, or to allow its territory to be used against the other. But Pakistan does not recognize the regime in Kabul with which it has signed this pact (neither does the United States which guarantees it). Pakistan has no intention of curbing mouj operations and has declared officially that if the United States continues to arm the rebels, it will be done, as before, through Pakistan.

The U.N. people (described not as observers or monitors but as personnel) have no mandate to look into, let alone end, this war. They would enter that picture only if the fighting delayed Soviet troop withdrawal. Then their investigation would likely back up the Soviets’ explanation. No one except Moscow knows the exact Soviet troop strength in Afghanistan. Half of this unknown number is to be withdrawn by Aug. 15. Western officials simply count on the Kremlin abiding by its own schedule. Compliance or non-compliance, they say, will be evident soon enough.

One of the oddest aspects of the Geneva instruments is the time frame. Eighteen months are allocated for repatriation of the 5 million refugees. Two months after that, on Jan. 15, 1990, the implementation-assistance arrangements automatically end. The timing is quite arbitrary, not worked out with the refugees or with Iran, which harbors about 40% of them. In Pakistan, refugees cannot be sent home before they are ready to go. This will not be before it is safe--although when that will be is anyone’s guess.

The Western hope of settlement and ultimate peace rests on the conviction that removal of Soviet troops will doom the Kabul regime. The moujahedeen would then establish a new order, drawing refugees back to an independent country. Set against that is the Soviet reality; despite their clear defeat, they are not behaving like people looking for a decent interval before chickening out. Kipling’s great Afghan game goes on; it would be wise to count on continued active Soviet participation.