Besieged by American-Backed Rebels : His Training in U.S. No Help to Kabul’s Mayor

Dressed in army camouflage and combat boots, Mayor Mohammed Hakim of Kabul smiled proudly Friday as he recalled his time in the United States and confessed that it did little to prepare him for one of the worst jobs on Earth.

Now a senior officer of Afghanistan’s Soviet-supplied army, Gen. Hakim said he spent four years in the 1970s getting special training at U.S. military institutions in Ft. Bragg, N.C., Ft. Benning, Ga., and Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.

“I was an honors graduate,” he said, speaking in perfect English during a rare moment of tranquility at his office here.

“I enjoyed America very much,” he said. “It is the best country. I like the people of the United States. But the government in Washington--well, that is something else.”

One can hardly blame him.

As mayor and military commander of this battle-torn capital city, Hakim, 48, is charged with the principal task of preventing the fall of Kabul, now the main target of U.S.-backed Islamic rebels who have been fighting against the Soviet-backed Afghan government for years.

In other words, Hakim, who has a brother, two cousins and four brothers-in-law living in the United States, is the keeper of Kabul at a time when U.S. officials have expressed the hope that it will soon fall, and the sooner the better.

Asked if there was not a tinge of irony in that fact, the man who is now a key figure in the regime of President Najibullah and his ruling People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, laughed loudly and shook his head.

“Not at all,” he said. “We are all human beings. We are all members of the intelligentsia, and all intellectuals think the same. Sometimes, there are misunderstandings. That is all.”

U.S. Training Helps Little

Besides, he added, little of what he learned in America more than a decade ago can help him in his present job.

“There’s an old joke around here,” he said. “There are three very, very bad jobs in the world. They are the worst jobs on Earth. One is prime minister of India. The second is mayor of Kabul. And the third, well, I have already forgotten the third.”

Few mayors anywhere can be facing the challenges Hakim does.

Rebel rockets rain on his city every day. Its population, now 2 million, has tripled in the past decade, swollen by impoverished refugees fleeing villages flattened in the fighting. Because of shortages caused by war, Hakim can supply only one-sixth of his city’s daily water needs, even less of its needed power and only a fraction of its normal consumption of such basics as bread, fuel and meat. And most of the city has no sanitary sewerage or garbage disposal.

Schools Nearly Empty

Kabul’s few hospitals lack medicine, food and equipment to treat the city’s many war wounded. Schools are nearly empty because most young men have been drafted. Streets are scarred by cavernous potholes, the result of a harsh winter in a city where tanks occasionally roll through downtown. And the mayor’s budget for the capital of what has long ranked as one of the world’s poorest nations is among the world’s smallest.

Worse, the heavily armed moujahedeen rebels, who are known to hold positions within sight of Kabul, are planning extensive destabilization operations timed to coincide with next Thursday’s anniversary of the coup that brought the ruling party to power.

Hakim fears the city’s situation is likely to grow worse.

“This is all the result of war,” he said. “Do I like my job? No. I do not like this job at all. But somebody must protect this city, and that is my duty.”

Has Kept Kabul Going

In fact, Hakim is largely credited with keeping Kabul together after the withdrawal of the last Soviet troops from Afghanistan two months ago, an event that many Western analysts had predicted would cause Najibullah’s regime to crumble within weeks.

One diplomat here commented the other day, “The most dramatic thing that has happened since the Soviets left Kabul is what has not happened. The expections were so high of the collapse of the regime that the most striking feature at the moment is how little has changed, and that has helped the regime.”

As a result of Najibullah’s apparent staying power, most independent analysts here say, his ruling party, which was fraying badly before the Soviet pullout, is more unified now, if for no other reason than its members’ personal survival.

The government, in part through public statements by Najibullah and Hakim, has also conducted a successful propaganda campaign against the Islamic rebels, whom they have cast as wild-eyed fundamentalists who adhere to sects alien to Afghanistan and as ruthless killers who routinely torture their enemies--especially loyal party members like Hakim.

“In Kabul’s bazaars now, clearly the people are all fed up with war, but they are saying, in spite of everything, we prefer Najib to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,” said a Western observer. He was referring to the fundamentalist rebels’ most radical leader, a chieftain who until recently was the favored recipient of arms and supplies from the United States and Pakistan.

Hakim echoed that observation.

“Maybe the people really don’t like us, either,” he said, “but they like us better than the extremists. This is what the Western countries do not understand.”

For Hakim and other senior members of Najibullah’s party, that misunderstanding accounts for premature predictions of Kabul’s fall.

‘We Are Not Communists’

“We only hope that Mr. Bush and the people of the United States take a good look at us,” the mayor said. “They think we are very fanatic Communists, that we are not human beings. We are not fanatics. We are not even Communists.”

As a symbol for Najibullah’s government in its recent effort to change the regime’s image in the West, Hakim was tailor-made for the part.

He often uses Americanisms in his speech. “It’s not your age that counts, it’s your mileage,” he said to explain a countenance weathered and scarred beyond his 48 years. And his three scars from bullet wounds, one of them in the back of his head, attest to his stature as an authentic war hero.

Hakim speaks glibly of capitalism for his city, of freedom of speech and freedom of movement, and he glosses over Kabul’s long bread lines, caused partly by shortages of fuel for baking but also by the fact that much of the bread and fuel goes to the army and loyal party members.

Palace Heavily Guarded

Clearly, there is another side to Hakim’s city. There is a huge and constant military presence. Najibullah’s palace is heavily guarded by tanks and armored personnel carriers. Soldiers and armed civilian militiamen swarm through the streets, And Hakim himself is something of a martial-law mayor, although he was indirectly elected to the post last year by a popularly elected ruling council.

And despite his U.S. military training, Hakim quickly pointed out that Kabul’s two official sister cities are Moscow and Prague and that his Russian language skills are at least as good as his English.

Hakim insisted, however, that he hopes for a day when a truly democratic and conciliatory condition prevails here--a government “that is neither pro-Soviet nor pro-West”--but he conceded that first there must be peace, and peace now seems to be a long way off.

“I look forward to when the war is over, when everyone, tourists from all over the world, can come to Kabul and see it as a beautiful place,” the mayor said of this breathtaking city, surrounded by the snow-capped ranges of the Hindu Kush. “I hope for the day when the world will help us develop this poor city and our backward country.

“But unless both the big powers . . . help us in a political way instead of sending more war, this war, I’m afraid, will go on a long time.”