Muslim Soldier on a Mission of Mercy : Freedom fighter: <i> Moujahedeen </i> rebel Mirwais Wardak has come to the United States seeking seeds and machinery to rebuild his native Afghanistan.

He is a long way from home, this dark, lanky Afghan in the flowing white clothes and bushy, untrimmed beard. As a devout Muslim, he is nervous to be photographed walking along the boardwalk at Laguna Beach, worried that the background will feature the oiled flesh of half-naked sunbathers, concerned that the photo won’t play well in Peshawar.

That worry, though, is gnat-sized compared to the monstrous problem that brought Mirwais Wardak here from Pakistan. He has not come to California to ride the Matterhorn, or to surf the waves, or to ogle the beach-goers. He has come to the land of the well-fed to ask for food, or rather, for the seeds, fruit tree cuttings, pesticides, irrigation equipment and farm machinery that will enable his people to feed themselves.

Wardak is a moujahedeen , a soldier of Afghanistan’s Islamic resistance, which lost its most visible enemy when the Soviet Union ended its 10-year occupation of the country early last year. His last name--Wardak--is the name of his province. It lies perilously close to the capital of Kabul, where the Soviet-installed government of President Najibullah is still in power. The government was the target of a failed military coup in March, possibly motivated, said some analysts, by Najibullah’s attempts to make peace with the Islamic rebels.

Afghanistan seems gripped by ideological confusion--the moujahedeen are fighting less, the regime has not attempted to expand the mostly urban areas it now controls. Now, after more than a decade of war, the commercial and agricultural life has been so weakened there is barely a pulse.

Wardak, a rebel commander and tribal leader, has come to the United States to talk plowshares, not politics. He wants to make it possible for his people--many of whom have taken refuge in Pakistan--to move home.

Strolling with him on the boardwalk is his unlikely American host, John Kountz, a 55-year-old peripatetic librarian who first saw Afghanistan 31 years ago on a round-the-world trip and was so overwhelmed by the hospitality of its people that he is now repaying an emotional debt by orchestrating Wardak’s three-week trip. In 1959, Kountz had been driving across Asia when he was turned away from India because he had no car insurance. He returned to Afghanistan, and found work at the University of Kabul with a team from the University of Wyoming, installing language labs. “Anything I can do for these people, I will,” Kountz said.

He has offered his time, his telephone line and his home, a Laguna Beach cliff dwelling with a magnificent view of the hills and coastline. He has also offered his cooking, but after experimentation with dishes such as vegetarian pizza led to his guest’s gastronomic distress, the fare has been simplified: beans, noodles, bread and fruit.

This unusual pair met in 1982, when Kountz was hired as a sound man by free-lance filmmaker Mike Hoover, who was shooting the Afghanistan war for CBS News. (Hoover would later be accused of selling staged battle footage to the network.) During the expedition, Wardak was Kountz’s guide and bodyguard.

Last April, Kountz returned to Afghanistan, which, despite the war, allows foreign travelers to enter the country, and was appalled by what he found.

“I went because I wanted to see what had happened since the Russians pulled out,” he said. “When I saw the plight of the people, which is malnutrition, a destroyed country and an inability to go home (from Pakistan) because of all the land mines left by the Soviets in 13 years of occupation, I thought, ‘Something has to be done.’ One night, Mirwais and I were sitting on a water tank in an area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Mirwais said, ‘I want to come to the United States to seek help.’ ”

That is how an Afghan freedom fighter and a senior associate for library development in the California State University chancellor’s office--neither of whom knows a thing about securing tons of grain, let alone shipping them to the other side of the globe--came to be collaborating on what they hope is nothing less than the regeneration of an entire Afghan province.

Wardak, a 35-year-old father of three and scion of an influential Afghan family, has, like an estimated 3 million Afghans, spent the last decade living as a refugee in Pakistan, fighting the Soviets and the Communist-installed government of Najibullah. (An estimated 2 million Afghan refugees live in Iran.) Najibullah was expected to fall after the Soviets pulled out, but, with an estimated $300 million a month in aid from Moscow, he has proven resilient. The moujahedeen joke that when the Soviets withdrew, they sent 200,000 uniforms back to Moscow for dry cleaning. (Actually, the official number of troops withdrawn by the Soviets is about 110,000.)

Now that the situation has degenerated into Afghan fighting Afghan, American support for the rebels--who have received a reported $2 billion in weapons funneled through the CIA--is waning. Many war-fatigued Afghans, such as Wardak, want simply to move home. Without the means to feed themselves, however, that will be impossible, and that is why Wardak has come calling in America. He is by himself, part of no official delegation, no formal tour.

“The Afghan government wants people to be able to return,” said Len Scensny, the State Department’s Country Officer for Afghanistan. “But if there’s fighting going on, it’s a question of being able to restart their lives without interference. There’s a definite mine problem, not just in farmers’ fields, but on roads themselves. The roads are very dangerous. Wardak (Province) is quite close to the capital and fighting has continued there.”

“There are many worries,” said Wardak, through an interpreter, “education, rebuilding the highways. But now, we would just like to have the hope of surviving.”

The Afghan speaks little English--although his vocabulary includes “superpower aggression”--and needs a translator to make his case. Kountz is enthusiastic, but hardly schooled in the ways of what amounts to soliciting corporate charity.

“It is a curious thing,” Kountz says. “Here I am, just a citizen, turning to various places to get assistance.”

He began with politicians. Sen. Pete Wilson’s office put him in touch with the Department of Agriculture, which put him in touch with a grain company in the San Joaquin Valley, which told him what kind of wheat he’d probably need for the 5,000-foot elevation and cold temperatures. Kountz has also phoned the universities of Nebraska, and Iowa, and the departments of agriculture in Minnesota and North Dakota, not only to find out who might donate grain, but to find out how much grain is needed and how it might be shipped. So far, they’ve figured out what kind and how much grain they need, but not much else.

The two flew to Washington last weekend, where they made contact with a network of Afghans, nonprofit development agencies and government officials who might be of help.

One man they saw was Tony Campaigne, founder and president of the Council for International Development. Campaigne’s nonprofit group operates projects in Afghanistan, Kenya, El Salvador and Guatemala. His relief and rehabilitation projects have a single goal: to help the indigenous populations become self-sustaining.

Campaigne was not surprised to hear that Wardak was in town on a mission that sounds close to impossible.

“Let me put it this way,”Campaigne said last Monday, the day before meeting Wardak and Kountz. “I have learned in Afghanistan never to judge what’s feasible and what’s not feasible. The Afghans have a particular talent for making things you think will never work work. If Mirwais is working on it, it’s probably not out of the realm of possibility. I would listen to him very carefully if he came to my office.”

After their meeting last Tuesday, Campaigne was optimistic about helping them. “What they’re talking about to me sounds like a very noble thing. We’re going to help them out as much as we can. Wardak Province is in a terrible state, and I think there is a need that can be satisfied.”

Campaigne said he will intercede with a Peshawar-based United Nations food program on Wardak’s behalf. “And there are other sources in Peshawar we can help him with,” he said.

Then surely Wardak didn’t have to come to Washington to get help in Peshawar?

“There are all different ways to skin a cat,” Campaigne replied. “If he hadn’t come here, he wouldn’t have met me.”

The State Department’s Scensny echoed Campaigne’s optimism: “Oh, he (Wardak) will definitely find a way. The Afghan resistance, and Afghans in general, have developed many imaginative ways to get things done. I’m sure he could get the stuff into the country once he gets it.”

Kountz is convinced he and Wardak will succeed. They have returned to California, where Wardak will spend several days visiting relatives in Mission Hills.

He was going to visit family in Texas and New York on his way home next week, but he was welcomed back to Los Angeles the hard way: as he used a telephone outside the United Airlines terminal, someone stole his briefcase. They got no money, but they’ve robbed him of his ability to go home. In the briefcase, besides his airplane ticket, were his Pakistani refugee registration and his Pakistan-issued passport. His trip home may be delayed for up to two months, Kountz said Friday.

“I don’t think we’ll see anything delivered to Mirwais while he’s here,” Kountz said, gesturing toward the narrow street below his picture window. “At least I hope not. I don’t know what I’d do with 10 tons of grain in my driveway.”

On the Laguna boardwalk, topless young women with gleaming backs, raised themselves on elbows to get a better look at the strange tall man in the long white tunic and pants. Mirwais Wardak looked puzzled. It was hard to tell who was more surprised.

“He is still talking about naked bodies on the beach,” Kountz said. “He is afraid that fundamentalists in the U.S. would clip a photograph and send it back to his area to discredit him.”

It wasn’t just the sunbathers, though, that unsettled the Afghan. “He has been astonished by everything,” said Kountz. “There is such an abundance of things here, he just doesn’t understand it. I sense a sadness in the guy. He’s working from a frame of reference that we have no way of understanding. He’s on the other side of the Earth. What else can you say?”