What drove Khan Said out of Afghanistan has physically displaced half of Afghanistan`s 15 million people. Five million are now refugees, with more than 3 million living in Pakistan and nearly 2 million in Iran. Another 2 million are displaced inside Afghanistan, forced to leave their homes to find haven in and around the major towns and cities. Still another million, mostly civilians, have been killed.
The Soviet Union, which had maintained an estimated 150,000 soldiers in Afghanistan since it invaded the country in 1979, is withdrawing them. Their main purpose over nine years of war seems to have been to solidify defenses around the capital of Kabul and to pacify the northern provinces bordering the Soviet Union, which contain immense but largely untapped mineral wealth. The rest of the country seems to have been targeted for destruction, with an apparent policy of depopulation for entire regions thought to be too intransigent and too fiercely opposed to the Marxist government installed by the Soviets.
About half of the arable land in Afghanistan, primarily an agricultural nation, is now assumed to be untilled because of the war. The Soviets, moreover, have systematically destroyed the intricate irrigation and drainage systems of much of the abandoned land, which many experts fear is now reverting to desert. An estimated 5 million farm animals have been slaughtered by the Soviets, just as they have systematically destroyed croplands and food supplies in contested areas. The Soviets have practiced a scorched-earth policy in some areas, too, using methodical carpet-bombing raids to pulverize towns and villages.
They also have made wide-scale ground attacks on civilian areas meant as a warning to other civilians to leave their homes, presumably permanently. Captured Soviet troops and documents have attested to specially recruited Soviet ”punitive” units, formed solely to wreak terror on isolated communities suspected of harboring resistance fighters.
These units surround settlements in the dead of night and go from house to house exterminating the entire population, often with knives and bayonets instead of guns. There is substantial evidence of acts especially odious to the religious beliefs of Afghan Moslems. These include raping women before killing them and mutilating bodies (forbidden by Islamic law) with chemicals that cause corpses to decompose rapidly.
The Soviets, too, have targeted Afghan children with small bombs disguised as toys or everyday items such as tiny trucks, dolls, pens, watches and pocketknives scattered on the ground in rebel-controlled areas. The bombs, according to refugee statements to Western medical personnel, have caused countless injuries, including lost limbs and blindness, to children.
The selective use of terror and atrocity has been successful in emptying much of Afghanistan`s rural areas into neighboring countries. The Soviet aim from the outset seems to have been a grinding down of the Afghan peasants`
will to resist through protracted and massive destruction and displacement.
The plan, as the world now knows, has backfired. Instead, it buttressed an already strong resistance. And the resolve of the Afghan Mujahedin has been shored up considerably by outside powers wishing to turn the Soviet invasion into a debacle.
In reports filtering out of the area since the Soviets announced their intended withdrawal, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has been credited with giving the Mujahedin $2 billion in weapons and war materials. Saudi Arabia matched that figure in arms purchases for the rebels, most
significantly American-made, handheld Stinger antiaircraft missiles. President Reagan approved the sale through the Saudis to the Mujahedin in 1986. Introduction of the missile devastated the Soviets, who have since lost more than 270 aircraft, and the Stinger is generally credited with turning the tide of the war in favor of the rebels.
Additional help has come from the Chinese, who used their short common border with Afghanistan to send arms and supplies, and the Egyptians, who have trained the Afghans in guerrilla war. Much of the weaponry supplied to the Mujahedin by the United States is manufactured in Egypt, which copies Soviet weapons, so the rebels can use captured Soviet arms and ammunition.
There has been no shortage of fighters willing to battle the Soviets and Soviet-backed forces against tremendous odds. Since fleeing his hometown six years ago, Khan Said has alternated three months of fighting with three months of rest in Pakistan refugee camps. Like most Afghan men his age, the war has transformed him from a callow schoolboy to a battle-hardened warrior.
What Khan Said most fervently wants is for the war to end so he and his family can return to Kunar province. ”My father is a farmer,” he said, ”but I enjoyed my studies in school. When the war is over, I want to return to school. I don`t want to follow my father into agriculture. What I hope to be eventually is a schoolteacher.”
Nearly all the 5 million Afghans now in exile are poised to leave the hated camps and go home now that the Soviets have vowed to leave Afghanistan by early next year. Unfortunately, their homecoming is likely to take several years, even if the Soviets make good on their promise.
First, even if there is peace in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, only a few may be able to go home initially because of the widespread destruction of Afghanistan`s agricultural system. Those returning earliest will have to begin rebuilding homes and irrigation ditches.
Second, peace may not come to Afghanistan even if the Soviets leave. Afghanistan`s brand of macho culture demands revenge against one`s enemies. Leaders of the resistance have shown little inclination to do anything but exterminate the Marxist Kabul regime after the Soviets leave.
Moreover, there is only a thin veneer of unity among the seven main resistance movements. They fall into two camps, the traditionalists and the religious. Traditionalists (considered moderate by the West) want to go home and restore Afghanistan to what it was before it fell under heavy Soviet influence: a loose coalition of tribal fiefdoms paying only limited allegiance to a central government. Under that system, everybody, including religious leaders, was subordinate to tribal and clan leaders.
But the religious element of the resistance, the best-equipped and probably the most powerful militarily, is determined to establish a new order in Afghanistan: a fundamentalist, totalitarian Islamic dictatorship much the same as Iran`s. As Soviet involvement winds down in Afghanistan, several moderate Afghan leaders have been murdered in Pakistan. The fundamentalists are considered the prime suspects in these murders, giving rise to fears of civil war between the two factions once the Kabul regime is defeated. The continued survival of young warriors such as Khan Said is by no means assured. Friday in Tempo: Is there any hope for the world`s refugees?
