Border Raids Threaten Afghan Pact : Both Soviets and Pakistanis Allege Violations of Accords

At 7:59 p.m. on Aug. 4, thousands of feet above one of the world’s most rugged borders, a Pakistani air force F-16 fighter plane opened fire on a Soviet SU-25 fighter-bomber that had penetrated Pakistani airspace.

The encounter was brief: A single missile from the F-16 scored a direct hit. The Soviet plane, which Pakistan alleges was carrying cluster bombs meant for Pakistani villagers, crashed 15 miles inside Pakistan.

The pilot, Col. Alexander V. Rudskoi, bailed out and tried to make it back to Afghanistan on foot. But he was captured two days later near the border by Pakistani tribesmen, who traded him to officials in Islamabad, the capital, for $5,000 and the promise of two new roads in their area.

For nearly two weeks, the incident was kept under wraps. Then, on Aug. 16, at the height of publicity marking the midpoint of the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the government of Pakistan went public, releasing Rudskoi to Soviet authorities--but not before displaying him to foreign journalists and accusing Moscow of “frequent” air raids on Pakistan in which scores of people have been killed by “indiscriminate bombing.”

Incident One of Hundreds

The incident was just one of hundreds of alleged violations by the four countries that signed last April’s Geneva accords providing for the withdrawal of 115,000 Soviet troops from Afghanistan before February.

The agreement was designed to help bring peace to Afghanistan after nine years of war between the Marxist Afghan government, aided by the Soviets, and various resistance groups known collectively as the moujahedeen.

But with the Soviet and Afghan governments charging that Pakistan and its ally, the United States, are continuing to provide arms, training camps and safe haven for the moujahedeen , and Pakistan alleging that Soviet and Afghan planes are bombing its border villages, the road to peace has been strewn with wreckage and death.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, charged that there had been “a non-stop production line of violations” of the Geneva accords. Because of the violations, he suggested, Moscow might have second thoughts about proceeding with the troop withdrawal.

On Thursday, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov expanded on Shevardnadze’s remarks by listing a series of alleged violations and accusing the U.N. group monitoring the accords of ignoring the incidents.

At the same time, the United States has accused the Soviet Union of violating the accords, saying warplanes based in Soviet territory were used recently to support Afghan government troops fighting for control of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz.

The Soviet Union admitted bombing the moujahedeen around Kunduz but argued that such actions are allowed under the agreement.

Pakistan Lists Statistics

Pakistani authorities cited the following statistics to support their own diplomatic protests: more than 50 Pakistani border villagers and Afghan refugees dead from bombing and artillery barrages; entire border villages evacuated, turning thousands of Pakistanis into refugees in their own country, and hundreds more wounded from terrorist bombings in the border area’s provincial capital of Peshawar, attacks that Pakistani authorities have blamed on Afghan saboteurs.

Indeed, many Pakistanis still suspect that their late military ruler, President Zia ul-Haq, may well have been a casualty of the conflict. Zia died Aug. 17 in a plane crash that also killed U.S. Ambassador Arnold L. Raphel, the U.S. military attache and two key Pakistani generals who had helped Zia run the moujahedeen assistance program.

Pakistani intelligence sources have suggested that the Afghan secret police, perhaps in collusion with the Soviet KGB, were the most likely suspects. Moscow dismissed the notion as groundless.

One Pakistani source went so far as to claim it was Zia’s involvement in aiding the moujahedeen that provoked the tragedy, and as evidence, he pointed to a statement by the Soviet news agency Tass two days before Zia’s death.

“The Soviet government most resolutely declares that the continuation by Pakistan of its obstructionist policy vis-a-vis the Geneva accords on Afghanistan cannot be further tolerated,” the Tass statement said. “The Soviet Union reserves for itself, in that case, the right to take such measures as are necessitated by the situation.”

The Afghan charge d’affaires in Islamabad, Qudratullah Ahmadi, said in an interview that his government believes Pakistan has consistently and deliberately violated the Geneva agreement. Those violations, he said, have indirectly caused hundreds of deaths.

He added that the moujahedeen have used rockets and missiles supplied by the United States and smuggled through Pakistan. And like Shevardnadze, he hinted that the Soviet troop pullout might be slowed if the violations continue.

An extensive tour of the border area and interviews with independent observers there seemed to corroborate many of the allegations on both sides.

$2 Billion in U.S. Arms

Since soon after the Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in December, 1979, the principal supplier of arms to the moujahedeen has been the United States. As much as $2 billion worth of machine guns, rockets, grenades, mortars and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles have been funneled to the resistance by the CIA through an intricate supply line that relies heavily on the Pakistani military and intelligence networks.

Secret ammunition depots were placed at strategic points along the 1,000-mile Afghan-Pakistani border, and the Pakistani military ensured safe passage for the resistance fighters, who have been operating from bases in or near the hundreds of refugee camps on the Pakistani side of the border.

Pakistani and U.S. officials insist that they are trying to dismantle the weapons depots, but they assert that, under the accords, they are permitted to continue supplying weapons to the moujahedeen as long as the Soviets continue to arm and supply the government troops.

“If you look, I think you will find most of these depots have been moved across into the liberated areas inside Afghanistan,” a senior Pakistani official said.

But Afghan officials insist that there are still many depots and training camps for the moujahedeen in Pakistan, and they hinted that these were the principal targets of recent Soviet cross-border bombing sorties. Neither Moscow nor Kabul has admitted such raids.

In the Aug. 4 incident, which occurred over the Pakistani border town of Miram Shah, Soviet officials said the pilot accidentally strayed into Pakistani airspace.

Meanwhile, the U.N. monitoring group here has remains tight-lipped on possible violations. The agency, the U.N. Good Offices Mission for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has no official spokesmen.

The agency’s staff members, military officers from half a dozen neutral countries, have been taken on tours of the sites of the alleged violations.

None of the agency’s reports have been made public, but one staff member privately complained that investigating teams are shown only what escorts from the host government want them to see.

No Surprise Inspections

“We have no power to compel Pakistan, for example, to allow us to make surprise inspections,” said one officer who asked not to be identified by name.

Similarly, staff officers who have gone to Kabul to investigate allegations said they are sometimes barred from visiting the sites because the Afghan government concedes that it cannot guarantee their safety in the largely moujahedeen- controlled border areas.

The officer confirmed that the U.N. mission here will be expanded dramatically in the coming months, opening permanent offices in the Pakistani border cities of Peshawar and Quetta, because of the huge number of protests over violations.

For now, the Waziri tribesmen who dominate the mountainous and forbidding border region may have benefited most from the SU-25 incident.

“It is the Waziris who gained the most,” said a senior Pakistani Foreign Ministry official in Islamabad. “They will have their new roads. They will get their money. And $5,000 goes a long way in the tribal areas. Call it the spoils of war.”