Critical of U.S. but Admits ‘Mistakes’ by Regime : Afghan Soldier’s Plea: ‘End This War’

The first lieutenant and the wounded boy came together for just a few moments the other day at a military checkpoint north of this capital on the Salang Highway, Afghanistan’s most vital land artery. The encounter provided a graphic glimpse at the human side of the decade-old Afghan war.

When the wounded boy arrived, bundled into the open trunk of a battered taxicab under a soiled blanket covering a bullet wound in his leg, the lieutenant had been discussing the war for nearly an hour with two visiting journalists.

He has been in the Afghan army for 12 years, the lieutenant explained. He has watched his best friends die and seen entire villages leveled. And he, too, has killed, in face-to-face confrontations with the U.S.-backed Muslim guerrillas trying to overthrow the Soviet-backed government of President Najibullah.

Quiet Celebration

Nearly a decade ago, the lieutenant recalled, he watched silently as 115,000 Soviet troops came to Afghanistan, ostensibly to help his army. And he recalled his quiet celebration more than two months ago when the Soviets departed.

And, with anger in his voice, the lieutenant complained bitterly about the government in Washington that has continued to supply the rebels with guns, mines and rockets in a continuing campaign to bring down a pro-Moscow government that Washington sees as little more than a puppet regime.

“Yes, we all make mistakes,” said the burly lieutenant, his blue eyes smiling as if he were telling a joke. “I am an officer, and I have made mistakes, too. The important thing is to correct them when you discover them. The important thing now is to end this war.

“These are defenseless people who need our help,” the lieutenant said, opening his wallet to show a picture of his 3-year-old son. “My family lives in Kabul. Millions of other citizens depend upon this. Is this not our job to protect them?”

Finally, as he stood at the checkpoint on the outermost defense perimeter of the capital, the lieutenant explained the importance of his current assignment.

The Salang Highway is, at the moment, Kabul’s only supply route.

It links the city with the Soviet Union to the north, which remains Najibullah’s key ally. But the rebels have blockaded the Salang about 10 miles north of the lieutenant’s checkpoint, preventing most of the hundreds of supply trucks in waiting convoys from getting through--a tactic one U.S. official described as “squeeze rather than seize,” which ultimately is aimed at bringing Najibullah’s government to its knees.

The result in Kabul’s streets is staggering. There are long and desperate lines for bread, kerosene and other staples.

The United Nations, which has provided the survival-level needs of 20,000 pregnant women, children and others “in extreme need” under an emergency program launched when the siege began, ran out of food and ended its program Tuesday, and Ross Mountain, the U.N. project director here, said that “those who live on the margin are going to be in serious trouble.”

There are at least 370,000 people who fall into that category, he added.

So effective has the rebel blockade been that foreign journalists who visit the checkpoint each day had not seen a large supply convoy for two weeks, until finally, on Wednesday, 450 supply trucks with helicopter escorts punched their way through on the Salang Highway to the capital. But they carried a mere drop in an ocean of need.

Usually, the only traffic has been passenger buses, cars and taxis that the rebels themselves occasionally use to move from village to village.

Sometimes, daring private businessmen do get their trucks through, paying huge wages to truck drivers and bribing rebels along the way. One such group of trucks tried to get through to Kabul on Friday, and the lieutenant handed his field glasses to the visiting journalists to show them the result.

About five miles up the highway, two thick black columns of smoke rose from burning trucks. They had been set afire by a group of rebels who had stopped all traffic on the highway and kidnaped the drivers, the lieutenant later learned.

A bus carrying civilians from the northern city of Haritan to Kabul had tried to get around the burning trucks. The driver and the young boy assisting him got down and approached the rebels, who answered with bullets. One struck the boy in the thigh.

In all, civilian bus and taxi traffic was stopped for about an hour--until two army tanks and several troop trucks from the lieutenant’s unit were sent up the road to chase the rebels away. But by then, the trucks were burned-out hulks.

As the buses and cars finally reached the lieutenant’s checkpoint, a crowd formed around the wounded boy, being transported in the trunk of a cab. The lieutenant chased them away.

“Get away! Get away!” the officer shouted. “The boy is suffering enough. And you, driver, go. Go! Get this boy to the hospital now.”

The lieutenant spoke briefly to the boy. He told him to be strong, to be brave, to be patient while others find ways to stop the war.

As the taxi pulled away, the boy’s face wincing with the pain of each bump on the potholed highway, a bus stopped. A businessmen near tears got off and told the lieutenant he was the owner of one of the burned trucks. He had lost 1.4 million afghanis (about $14,500) worth of goods destined for Kabul. The lieutenant told him the same thing he had told the boy.

“Now you explain to me what these innocent, helpless people have to do with this war,” the lieutenant asked one of the journalists, an American, adding that, unlike 60% of the army, he is not a member of the ruling party.

“Forget the politics of this war for a moment. Now you see why we are fighting, why we must protect these people. Are they not defenseless? You see this boy in the trunk of the taxi. You see this truck owner crying. What do they know about this war, about politics?

“These people do not want war; I don’t want war. Please, you tell your politicians in the United States what happened today on this highway. Tell them the result of their strategies. Are ours any better? I don’t know. But we are all just human beings, aren’t we?”

As he spoke, the last of the buses delayed at the burning barricade pulled up to the checkpoint.

A soldier checked the driver’s papers. And, as the overcrowded bus started up again, an old man sitting on the roof of the bus glanced toward the lieutenant and, without a word, threw him a flower--a red, tulip-like spring bloom the Afghans call lala .

“These flowers are very important to our people,” the lieutenant said, smiling. “They have religious significance, and, in the springtime, boys and girls exchange them for romance. It is a sign of respect to give one of these.”

The American journalist took a Polaroid snapshot of the burly officer holding his red flower with the snowcapped Hindu Kush behind him and handed it to the lieutenant, who stared wide-eyed at the magic of his image appearing before him. “You have given me a gift,” the lieutenant told the American, as he extended the flower out to his visitor on the now-deserted highway. “Please, accept this flower as a gift from me.

“You know, our two countries are like these mountains,” he added, pointing to the towering ranges on either side of his valley checkpoint. “They are so far apart and cannot come any closer together. But we, you and I, can stand together in this valley side by side as friends, as human beings.”

After a pause, the lieutenant added, “I’m afraid, though, that these mountains cannot be moved.”