After eight years of bogged-down, bloody conflict, of bodies shipped home in metal caskets, of domestic disillusionment with the war and unprecedented public protest, the Soviet Union appears on the verge of ”declaring victory, washing its hands and calling it quits” in Afghanistan, as one diplomat here put it.
Moscow seems ready to take this step even though the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the war-torn, neighboring nation could touch off a spasm of revenge bloodletting against members of the Kremlin`s client regime in Kabul- as even Soviet officials concede.
This country reportedly has given the Marxist Afghan government, which it installed by force in 1979 and has propped up with arms ever since, one final chance to strike a bargain with the insurgents to ward off factional violence after a Soviet departure.
Western analysts, however, are skeptical that the Islamic rebels, who for the last eight years have frustrated Kremlin efforts to set up an effective regime, will now be willing to come to terms with Afghan leader Najib at a time when the Soviets look to be maneuvering for a quick retreat.
”It could be another Beirut,” one analyst said, referring to the bloody civil war that has been shredding Lebanon for more than a decade.
Until last week, when Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze visited Kabul and indicated that Moscow was no longer hinging a troop withdrawal on the creation of an acceptible interim regime, the issue of retaining Marxist influence in Afghanistan-and protecting the Soviet Union`s supporters there-had loomed as perhaps the largest obstacle to a pullout.
The Kremlin hopes to have its estimated 115,000 troops out of Afghanistan by the end of this year, and conditions seem favorable for meeting that goal, Shevardnadze told the Afghan news agency Bakhtar last week.
”We would like 1988 to be the last year of the presence of Soviet troops in your country,” Shevardnadze said in the interview.
Foreign analysts believe the goal of the Soviet leadership is an orderly withdrawal of troops in a way that will allow the Kremlin to blame the current Afghan government if-or when-things fall apart.
”It is important for the Soviet Union to be able to say it walked out and was not kicked out,” a veteran Afghan-watcher at a Western embassy here said.
”They need the fig leaf of leaving behind a government in power, even if that government falls one minute after the last Soviet soldier is on his helicopter home,” the diplomat explained.
Yuri Alexeyev, chief of the Soviet Foreign Ministry`s Near East Department, gave further indication of how far the Kremlin has shifted in recent months.
Asked for an assessment of how the Afghan government will maintain public order without the assistance of Soviet troops, Alexeyev said, ”We act under the assumption that these are internal affairs of the Afghans themselves.”
Withdrawal from Afghanistan could also entail serious risks for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose efforts to bring about sweeping economic and political reforms are already encountering resistance-and provoking criticism from other Politburo members.
Chaos in Afghanistan-part of what has been called the Soviet Union`s
”soft underbelly” in Central Asia-or, worse yet, the emergence of a fiercely anti-Soviet or militantly Islamic regime could only add to Gorbachev`s problems as he maneuvers to impose his new policies at home.
Still, the dangers of leaving, even ingloriously, at this time are apparently outweighed by the risks of remaining indefinitely.
”It is not yet time to uncork the champagne and say the Soviets are on the way out,` a senior Western diplomat cautioned.
But a colleague at another NATO-nation embassy here was more positive about recent developments, saying: ”If the Soviet Union is willing to show the necessary realism-and every sign indicates it is-then the solution is in sight.”
Realizing their options are narrowing with each passing day, Soviet authorities recently ordered the state-run media here to embark on an unusual campaign portraying the Afghan army as now capable of standing on its own after lifting, with Soviet assistance, a rebel seige at Khost near the border with Pakistan.
Although comparisons to Vietnam are made with hesitation, some diplomats say the media spin on the battle for Khost echoes American praise for the South Vietnamese army in the months before U.S. forces flew home-and communists overran the south.
By raising hopes for a quick settlement, the Kremlin leadership is creating a dynamic that likely will make it even harder to delay a withdrawal with the use of a convenient excuse, such as arms shipments to rebels from the United States or via Pakistan.
Of critical importance, diplomats agree, was Shevardnadze`s statement last week that the Soviet Politburo is no longer setting as a condition of withdrawal the type of government that would be left to govern Afghanistan.
And in a not-so-veiled warning to Najib to prepare now for the time when Soviet troops are no longer propping up his government, Sheverdnadze called for a ”coalition government on the broadest of bases.”
”We believe that a constructive political dialogue in which no one will claim the monopoly to power is indispensable to internal political settlement in Afghanistan,” the foreign minister said.
The Kremlin reportedly is unhappy with the leadership style of Najib, a former secret police chief who chairs the People`s Democratic Party of Afghanistan.
Sources in Moscow said Najib made a political blunder when he assumed the additional title of President of Afghanistan at a time when he was wooing other factions to join in a program of national reconciliation, judged by most analysts to have been a total failure.
By Kabul`s own estimates, only 100,000 of the 5 million Afghan refugees huddled in camps in Pakistan and Iran have felt confident enough of peace to return home under the year-old national reconciliation program.
Not a single important opposition leader from either the Islamic priesthood, the rebel commanders or those loyal to exiled King Zahir Shah signed on to the coalition.
From Moscow`s point of view, the best course Afghanistan could follow after withdrawal would be to revert to the sort of nonaligned status that existed before the original Marxist uprising in April, 1978. The faction that prevailed after that uprising never got a firm grip on the country and was displaced by another Marxist group at the time of the Soviet invasion.
Some diplomatic experts hold out the prospect of a transition period in which several rebel captains, hoping for a role in shaping Afghanistan`s future, join with less onerous Marxist politicians in an interim government. The exiled king has been mentioned as a temporary, compromise head of state.
But if factional fighting breaks out, diplomats conjecture, Najib will be lucky to escape to Moscow, as will the more than 10,000 other government officials, military officers, technicians and their families who could find themselves the target of an old custom in their country-relatives and tribesmen of the dead exacting blood revenge against those responsible.
THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN – April 27, 1978: President Mohammed Daoud is killed in a military coup. He is replaced by Marxist Nur Mohammed Taraki.
– Feb. 14, 1979: Moslem extremists kidnap and kill U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs.
– Sept. 16: Taraki is deposed by Soviet-backed forces and replaced by Hafizullah Amin.
– Dec. 27: Soviet troops invade Afghanistan. During the invasion, Amin is killed in a coup and replaced by Babrak Karmal.
– April 5, 1980: Soviet Union and Afghanistan conclude treaty on temporary presence of an estimated 85,000 Soviet troops.
– March 21, 1982: Soviets say their troops will stay in Afghanistan until the government is secure, despite Western aid for Moslem guerrillas.
– July, 1984: Afghan and Soviet troops suffer heavy losses in a battle over a strategic river valley; hundreds of rebels and civilians are killed.
– May 4, 1986: Karmal resigns and is replaced by former secret police chief Najibullah.
– July 28: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announces plan to withdraw from Afghanistan between 7,000 and 10,000 of the estimated 115,000 Soviet troops.
– Dec. 30: Najibullah says he is prepared to discuss peace with the Moslem rebels.
– Jan. 5, 1987: Soviets confer with Afghan officials on ways of ending the war.
– Jan. 15: Afghan guerrillas reject a government cease-fire as a political ploy; Najibullah says he has an agreement with the Soviets for a withdrawal after ”aggressions” end.
– Oct. 15: American industrialist Armand Hammer says he has been shuttling between the Soviet Union, Pakistan and Afghanistan in an attempt to mediate the Afghan war.
– Dec. 5: A United Nations envoy reportedly meets in Europe with guerrilla leaders and the exiled king of Afghanistan to discuss forming a transitional government in the event that the Soviets withdraw.
– Dec. 27: Afghan and Soviet forces say they have broken a long siege of the southeastern town of Khost and have opened a road that had been held by rebels since 1980.
– Jan. 6, 1988: Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze says the Soviet Union hopes its troops will leave Afghanistan in 1988 and that the withdrawal will not be contingent on formation of an acceptable transition government.
Chicago Tribune Graphic.
