Afghan Coalition Talks Collapse Again : Muslim Rebels Reported Ready to Attack Key City of Jalalabad

Desperate, last-minute attempts to form an interim rebel government for Afghanistan collapsed again in rebel infighting Tuesday amid reports from diplomats and Pakistani intelligence sources that the Afghan resistance plans a massive rocket attack on the strategic city of Jalalabad within the next few days.

The detailed reports of the planned military assault on the city in eastern Afghanistan, which would be a key battle of the bloody, nine-year guerrilla war and would come within days of today’s deadline for the Soviet troop withdrawal, signal that the guerrilla commanders have lost faith in the ability of their political leaders here to compromise.

The latest attempt at unity came Tuesday afternoon, when the seven political parties in the deeply divided rebel alliance reconvened an assembly of 420 delegates at a religious camp here in the Pakistani capital.

The assembly, or shoora , broke up after less than two hours, when it became obvious that no compromise was possible on key issues between the fundamentalist and moderate parties in the alliance.

One of the moderate parties, the Afghan National Liberation Front, boycotted Tuesday’s session on the grounds that the 2 million Afghan refugees and rebels based in Iran were not adequately represented in the council, which is dominated by Pakistan-based groups.

Another session of the shoora is scheduled for today, the date mandated for the last of the 115,000 Soviet occupation troops to leave Afghanistan under U.N.-sponsored accords signed last year. One Western diplomat said “there will be a herculean effort” to form a government by the end of the day.

However, Pakistani military intelligence sources, who have been exerting tremendous pressure for unity among the rebel groups that Pakistan has harbored and helped arm and train, said they have all but abandoned hope for enough political unity among the groups to form an alternative government to the one in Kabul. The Soviet Union sent troops in 1979 to support the Kabul regime.

Psychological Tool

Analysts say such an alternative government is a critical psychological tool needed for future negotiations for a political solution with the Soviet-backed regime.

With hopes for such a solution dimming fast, the sources added that intricate planning has been made for an attempt at a military resolution--the all-out rebel assault on Jalalabad, which they said is expected as soon as this Friday.

Jalalabad is about an hour’s drive from both the Pakistani border and the Afghan capital of Kabul. It is on a main supply route to the beleaguered capital, and it remains one of the last bastions of Afghan President Najibullah’s regime.

Several analysts who know of the planned assault, however, said they fear it could be “sloppy” and set back the rebels’ goal of taking Kabul “by months or even years.” If a rebel assault causes many civilian casualties, it could turn popular sentiment in Kabul against the moujahedeen, as the rebels are known, and make it more difficult for them to bring down Najibullah’s regime.

“There is some hope that if Jalalabad goes easily, Kabul will go,” said one diplomat, who confirmed the planned attack. “But if Jalalabad is messy, it reinforces Kabul’s will to fight.”

Jalalabad is Afghanistan’s third-largest city and is reinforced by at least 2,000 so-called “hard-core” regime troops, members of the Afghan secret police and Najibullah’s trusted presidential guard.

The Pakistani military is known to be in favor of the assault, as are some U.S. government analysts.

There have been independent indications that an attack on Jalalabad is imminent. Western journalists and other observers who have crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan in the past two weeks have seen huge truck and donkey caravans carrying thousands of new rockets and mortars to rebel positions on the city’s perimeter.

Several rebel commanders who were delegates to the shoora hastily left Islamabad for the Jalalabad area Tuesday, and the Soviet news agency Tass has said that the rebels are planning such an attack.

But the commanders’ departure from Islamabad also reflected the deeper problem facing the rebels on the eve of their victory over the world’s largest and most formidable military force: the political bickering and power vacuum after the past week of failed attempts at unity has left little cause for celebration among their ranks.

“I gave this five days,” said prominent rebel commander Abdul Haq, as he left for the Afghan border Tuesday morning. “People see the (political) disaster coming. And there is too much real work to be done inside (Afghanistan).”

AFGHAN PULLOUT

Rebels reportedly are planning attack on Jalalabad

Last Soviet soldiers fly out of Kabul

Last Soviet troop convoy crosses border into Soviet Union via Salang Highway

--Los Angeles Times