Moscow Urged to Act on Afghan POWs

Arguing that the war in Afghanistan will not be over until all Soviet soldiers have returned home, deputies in the Russian Parliament called Friday for negotiations with Afghan rebels based in Pakistan to free prisoners of war.

Concern for the 308 Soviet soldiers still listed as missing in action from the Afghan war has grown in recent days because of the Kremlin’s decision to halt weapons shipments to the embattled Marxist government that the Soviets helped to install.

The Soviet government believes that about one-third of the MIAs are still alive and being held in prisons controlled by the various factions of the moujahedeen rebels still fighting the Kabul regime of President Najibullah. The rest are thought to have died during their Afghan service or in rebel captivity.

In much the same way that the MIA issue has haunted Americans since their involvement in Vietnam, Soviets see the unresolved question of prisoners as a prolongation of their suffering.

“We cannot consider this war to be behind us if our soldiers are not returned to us,” argued Iona Andronov, a deputy to the Russian Supreme Soviet who has championed stronger efforts to gain freedom for Soviet POWs. “This weighs on our national conscience.”

Soviet and American officials announced last week that the two countries will end arms shipments to the Afghan government and to the rebels by Jan. 1, 1992, a move hailed by Moscow and Washington as resolving another U.S.-Soviet dispute.

But Soviet citizens with relatives and friends still listed as MIAs argue that a halt to the arms deliveries should have been made conditional on a promise by the Afghan resistance to release all prisoners.

The decree proposed by Andronov and approved unanimously calls for talks to be “urgently resumed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the participation of the Soviet Foreign Ministry.”

The Foreign Ministry a day earlier invited leaders of the Afghan resistance to Moscow to work toward an agreement to release any surviving prisoners and to provide information on the fate of other MIAs.

The Kremlin backed a Marxist government that took power in 1978 in Muslim Afghanistan, but it sent in troops in December, 1979, to help put its own candidate in power in Kabul and to defend the hated regime against rebel attack.

During the Soviets’ nine-year involvement, as many as a million people died in fighting in Afghanistan, including about 15,000 Red Army troops, and 5 million took refuge in Pakistan, Iran and other countries.

The last Soviet troops withdrew in February, 1989, but only a handful of POWs have been released.