U.S. Embassy Closure Seen as Strategic Ploy

The Bush Administration’s decision to close the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, a key listening post in the bloody, nine-year conflict there, already has had a far-reaching impact on a war that has relied as heavily on propaganda and perception as it has on arms and artillery, Western, Afghan and Soviet diplomats said here Saturday.

The move, which touched off a mass diplomatic exodus Friday from the embattled Afghan capital of Kabul, came at the most critical stage of the war--just two weeks before the Soviet Union is to withdraw the last of the troops it sent into its southern neighbor in the winter of 1979.

Shortages of Food

America’s allies and opponents alike acknowledge that the embassy closures have contributed to the growing fear and instability in a city already beset by severe food shortages and recurring rocket attacks from nearby rebel positions. News agencies reported from Kabul that truck convoys carrying food and fuel reached the city Friday and Saturday in the wake of heavy Soviet and Afghan air and artillery attacks on guerrillas, as well as civilian villages, along the highway from the Soviet border.

President Bush said Friday that the decision to close the embassy in Kabul--the first official act Thursday by Secretary of State James A. Baker III--was based on “uncertainty” about the city’s future, and that withdrawal of U.S. diplomats is “a prudent policy to protect a handful of American lives.”

Asked at a news conference what role he sees for the United States after the Soviet withdrawal, Bush replied, “Catalytic--a catalytic role for helping bring about stability, hopefully in a government where the people have a lot of say.” He did not spell out steps that Washington might take as contending Afghan factions battle for control.

State Department spokesman Charles Redman stressed that the embassy had been closed “solely on security grounds--with a deteriorating situation and growing uncertainty that the regime can provide any sort of security in the coming days.” He added, “We would hope to have our people back in there as soon as the security situation would permit.”

Western diplomats here said the announcement of the closing caught them by surprise. “Just two weeks ago, we were told this would never happen,” said one diplomat, who asked not to be named.

At best, they said, the move was an attempt by the new Administration to avoid an early embarrassment if the U.S.-backed moujahedeen rebels miscalculate in anticipated attacks on key government installations located next door to the embassy--among them the state-run Afghan television station.

State Department security analysts reportedly fear that chaos may erupt when Soviet control over the capital is lifted, and most commercial flights on which the eight remaining American diplomats would be evacuated from Kabul already have been suspended, they said.

Yet even the diplomats interviewed here conceded that the embassy closures are certain to fuel insecurity among the 2 million residents of the Afghan capital and help the rebels in their stated strategy of bringing down the Soviet-backed regime of President Najibullah from within.

Humanitarian Decision

“The decision was principally a humanitarian one,” one said. “But, of course, everyone is well aware of the political impact as well.”

So is the Afghan government.

At an Indian-sponsored public debate Saturday in New Delhi on the Afghan crisis, Soviet and Afghan officials charged that the embassy closure was politically motivated and unwarranted.

“Their aim is to demoralize the people in Afghanistan--especially in Kabul,” said Abdul Samad Azhar, Afghanistan’s ambassador to India. “They want to show the people that there will be a blood bath after the Soviet withdrawal and scare them into leaving their homes.

“But for us, it is also a warning. Because experience has shown in other parts of the world that when the United States decided to close its mission, either there was an attack by the U.S. itself or something similar.”

Illustrating the depth of the Afghan government’s concern over the diplomatic moves, state-run Kabul Radio devoted its entire Friday evening broadcast to minimizing the psychological effects of the rapid-fire embassy closures, which now include not only the Americans, but the British, Japanese, West Germans, French, Italians and Austrians.

“The government of Afghanistan is capable of defending peace in the entire country, including Kabul,” one such broadcast asserted.

Asked whether Kabul actually is safe, Ambassador Azhar said, “Of course, the situation in Kabul is not like any peaceful capital. But I don’t see any change. In fact, it is better than it was before. Why didn’t the Americans pull out several months ago at the peak of the (rebel) rocket attacks? Obviously, the time was not right for them.”

Another Afghan official, presidential assistant Farid Zarif, said, “The Americans have played their last card” in a prolonged propaganda campaign by closing the embassy, a move that other Western governments conceded influenced their decision to follow suit.

“We are at the very decisive stage in this war,” Zarif said. “The Americans no longer find it in their political interest to continue the war. So, in the final days of the presence of Soviet troops, they would like to give it one very big try--psychological and military--to topple the government.”

The closing of the Western and Japanese embassies, though, clearly takes away a primary weapon in that Western propaganda offensive--a campaign that no Western diplomat denies. In fact, several diplomatic sources cited the loss of that weapon as proof that the decision to close the embassy was principally to protect the eight diplomats still posted there.

Almost since the war in Afghanistan began, the Western diplomatic presence in Kabul has been used to further the rebels’ cause, as well as the U.S. effort to drive out the Soviet troops, which were estimated to number 115,000 before the withdrawal began last May 15.

Until the signing last spring in Geneva of the agreement requiring the Soviet withdrawal, the Afghan government generally refused entry to Western journalists. In the absence of firsthand reporting, every week for the past nine years reports on rebel activity in Kabul and throughout the country--usually critical of the Soviets and the Kabul regime--have been published worldwide, all of them attributed to “Western diplomatic sources in Kabul.”

A Sure Sign Seen

From the blatant to the bizarre, those sources have reported everything from major moujahedeen victories to recent airlifting of Soviet prostitutes, a sure sign, the Western diplomatic sources said, that the fall of the Soviet-backed government was imminent.

Last Thursday, for example, the day Baker announced the embassy was closing, newspapers worldwide also carried detailed wire service reports on a Soviet and Afghan offensive that killed hundreds of civilians north of Kabul. Quoting from “a report received from Western diplomats in Kabul,” the stories said, “Witnesses saw Soviet tanks rolling over dead bodies of victims.”

Asked whether the absence of a Western diplomatic presence in Kabul will hurt the propaganda war, one of those Western diplomatic sources said, “Of course. Nothing will be coming out at all now.

“That’s why I think the decision really is humanitarian rather than Machiavellian--at least the first consideration was humanitarian. If that was compatible with Machiavellian, well, so much the better.”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story from Washington.