How the Soviet Army Crushed Afghanistan

But rebels may find ways to fight back

When you are wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

And go to your God like a soldier.

That was Rudyard Kipling's tribute to Afghanistan, a barren moonscape of a land at the "crossroads of the world," and to its proud and savage people. Conquered by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C. and by Genghis Khan in the 13th century A.D., Afghanistan in the Victorian era served as a buffer between Imperial Russia and the British raj. The Afghans accepted it all, but they exacted a bloody price. For generations, the Hindus of India prayed for deliverance from "the venom of the cobra, the teeth of the tiger and the vengeance of the Afghan."

Today the target of the Afghans' anger is the Soviet force of 50,000 troops who have invaded and seized control of their land. "Shoravi Padar Lanath!"cried beggars and shopkeepers alike in the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan's shabby, snow-covered capital. The curse ("Goddamn the Russians!") replaced morning pleasantries in the city's ancient bazaar. "Afghanistan is no more," lamented a bootblack in the shopping district of Share Nau. "We have lost everything."

And so it seemed. A week earlier, in a lightning invasion, four Soviet divisions moved into Afghanistan, the iron fist behind a coup that ended the three-month-old regime of President Hafizullah Amin. The unfortunate Amin, 50, who had turned out to be a more independent-minded nationalist than Moscow wanted, thus became the third leader of Afghanistan to be overthrown and killed within the past 20 months. In his place the Soviets installed Babrak Karmal, 50, a former Deputy Prime Minister who had long been considered a Russian protege.

The Soviet seizure had apparently been taking shape for several months. Moscow had disliked the truculent Amin ever since he had replaced a Soviet favorite, Noor Mohammed Taraki, in the coup of Sept. 15. As the Muslim insurgency kept gaining strength in the countryside, Moscow proposed to Amin that Soviet combat forces be brought in to put down the rebellion. Amin refused.

On Dec. 24, the Soviets made a last attempt to persuade Amin to cooperate, but again he said no. Apparently seeking to protect himself, or perhaps on Soviet orders, he moved from the People's House in central Kabul to the Darulaman Palace, seven miles away, taking his elite guard and eight tanks along with him. It was too late, and the defense was too weak. That same night, the Soviets began their airlift of troops into Kabul.

Between Dec. 24 and 27, at least 350 Soviet aircraft landed at Kabul International Airport and at Bagram airbase, 25 miles north of the capital. The planes had been mustered from bases throughout the Soviet Union; they carried an airborne division from near Moscow and support troops from Turkestan. On Dec. 27, Russian airborne troops stormed the Darulaman Palace. Amin was captured and shot, along with some of his relatives. The only other serious clash was a skirmish outside Radio Afghanistan, just across from the U.S. embassy. In both fights, Afghan troops loyal to Amin resisted as best they could and inflicted about 250 casualties, but they were no match for the Soviets. By the next day, Dec. 28, the capital was entirely in Soviet hands. Amin, whom the Soviet press had treated with respect until only a few days earlier, was now being described as "a man who was in the service of the CIA" and a "usurper" who condemned former President Taraki to death.

The second phase of the onslaught, the invasion by Soviet ground forces, took place between Dec. 29 and 31. One Soviet motorized rifle division, with at least 12,000 men, rolled down the western route from Kushka, in the Soviet Union, to Kandahar. Another streamed in from the Soviet city of Termez over the road that passes through the Salang Pass to Bagram and Kabul. At the time the Soviets built this second route about 15 years ago, some Afghans had noted that the highway seemed strong and wide enough to accommodate tanks and troop carriers.

Other Soviet units moved east from conquered Kabul toward the Khyber Pass and into Paktia province, a center of the Muslim insurgence. The Soviet command post is at Termez, where they have built a satellite communications station to give them a direct link to Moscow. The Soviets now have two airborne divisions and two motorized infantry divisions in Afghanistan, plus support troops, to bring their total strength to 50,000 men.

In the capital all resistance appears to have been crushed. Some Soviet units have set up their headquarters near the airport, with mess tents, field hospitals and huge, balloon-like fuel depots. In the early days, Russian soldiers patrolled the snow-covered streets and manned checkpoints throughout the city. By night they cruised the area in armored cars, sporadically firing into the starry sky. "The object of the shooting," said a traveler who managed to leave Kabul on the daily bus to Pakistan, "was to keep people frightened and inside their homes."

Kabul had already become an armed camp after 20 months of rising civil war throughout the country; now it is a Soviet garrison town as well. The Afghan police force has, for the most part, been disarmed; Afghan army units, when visible at all, can occasionally be seen squatting along the roads outside town, always in the company of heavily armed Soviet troops. Roadblocks prevent the populace from moving about the city.

One of the few Western journalists who had even a fleeting glance of the Afghan capital last week was Dutch Photographer Hubert Van Es, on assignment for TIME. On his way into town from the airport, Van Es saw Soviet tanks and troop carriers everywhere. After two nights of house arrest at the Kabul Inter-Continental Hotel, he managed to slip away for a look at downtown Kabul on New Year's Day. He found surprisingly few Soviet soldiers on the streets except in front of Radio Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry and the post office. Back at the hotel, an employee told him: "Did you see many 'others' in town? There are tens of thousands. They are like a steel ring around the city."

One of the mysteries of the week was what had happened to newly appointed President Karmal, who failed to show up for four days after the coup. As it turned out, his first radio address was beamed to Afghanistan from a Russian station, lending credence to the notion that he remained out of the country until his Soviet mentors decided it was safe for him to come home. Finally, on Tuesday evening, he appeared with several members of his new Cabinet at a televised rally, where he called on his countrymen to "come together and support our glorious revolution."

All week, a steady stream of MiGs and Su-17 attack aircraft arrived at Kabul airport to support the Soviet forces in the countryside. Just five miles east of the capital, resistance was continuing at the Pule-Charkhi army headquarters. Instead of opening the gates of the fort, as the Soviets had ordered them to do, the Afghan troops stationed there had killed their Russian advisers and prepared for a siege. The Soviet forces were reluctant to storm the base, lest this lead to a massacre, but they quickly surrounded it. Their solution was to position 20 tanks, their gun barrels pointed downward, on the surrounding hills and wait.

There were other clashes in widely scattered areas. Afghan rebels claimed to have ambushed and routed a Soviet column in Bamian province northwest of Kabul. Fighting was said to be taking place in Logar province south of the capital, in Badakhshan and Takhar along the northeast frontier with the Soviet Union, in the southern city of Kandahar and in the desert wastes west of Herat and Farah. Concluded a Western observer: "The Soviet plan seems to be to secure the capital and seal the borders. If escape routes to Iran and Pakistan are cut, I am sure they are confident that eventually they will prevail over the insurgents through superior force of arms."

In addition to the divisions that have invaded Afghanistan, the Soviets have 40,000 to 60,000 troops within their own border who could be rushed into combat if necessary. U.S. analysts believe it will take all of them, perhaps 100,000 strong, to subdue the country, hold all the important towns and keep the roads open. With the force now in Afghanistan, U.S. analysts believe, the Soviets can hold Kabul and most provincial capitals, but nothing more. The Soviets also control many units of the Afghan army, but the army's ranks are depleted (down to an estimated 50,000 from as many as 150,000) and its loyalties bitterly divided.

Fighting the Soviet military machine is a disorganized and leaderless army of insurgents known as mujahidin. They are believed to number 15,000 to 20,000 in summer and as many as 60,000 in winter. Says a U.S. expert: "Winter is the killing season, when there is nothing to do but go out and shoot." The tribes are hopelessly disunited and fight constantly among themselves. But for the most part they dislike central authority, they distrust foreigners--particularly Russians --and they have fought with rising fervor against the Kabul government ever since the Soviet-backed regime of President Taraki came to power in April 1978.

The rebels were doing well until the Soviet takeover. They had virtually surrounded Kabul and controlled as many as 22 of the country's 28 provinces. Not even armored-car escorts could ensure safe passage for trucks on the highway between Kabul and Kandahar. As a result of the disruption of the transportation system, prices of essential commodities soared in Kabul--rice by 100%, firewood by 500%, and diesel fuel was nearly unobtainable.

Now, at least for the moment, the insurgents are on the run. Dozens of Afghan camel caravans crossed the border into Pakistan from Paktia province last week. Explained Alip Jon, 41: "There are too many tanks, and planes are always coming. For every one of us here, two or three are still fighting, but I fear Paktia is done for." Others talked as truculently as ever. Said Gul Amir, 36: "The Russians can't stay in Afghanistan. They are so alien that even the animals hate them."

During the past year of unrest, the number of Afghan refugees camped on the Pakistani side of the border has soared from 13,000 to about 400,000. Last week TIME Correspondent David DeVoss visited the village of Dara Adam Khail, which lies to the south of the Pakistani city of Peshawar. Dara has long been famous for its handmade rifles, mortars and land mines, and the insurgency in Afghanistan has turned the place into a boomtown. Reports DeVoss: "Mud-hut arms factories are busy 24 hours a day. A handcrafted Kalashnikov rifle sells for $1,700. For just under $1,000, Chicago-style tommy guns are a bargain. The preferred weapon is the Enfield; its bullets cost $1 apiece, as compared with $2.20 for a Kalashnikov round. But Dara's craftsmen will produce any weapon requested. A man polishing the barrel of a Sten gun told me: 'We will do all we can to help the Afghan people. At our factory, all mujahidin receive a 20% discount.' "

The Pakistani government of President Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq is tempted to encourage the Afghan tribesmen to fight the Kabul government, with which Pakistan has always had uneasy relations. But the Pushtun (or Pathan) tribesmen, whose homeland is on both sides of the border, also have their differences with Pakistan. So Zia is reluctant to grant the insurgents too much aid lest they use it to fight his government, which has serious problems of its own.

One tragedy of Afghanistan is simply its geography: it lies along the eastern tier of the "crescent of crisis," which in an oil-short world has become strategically vital to both the West and the Soviet Union. Can the Soviets subjugate the Afghans indefinitely? Pentagon experts doubt that Afghanistan ever could become Moscow's "Viet Nam," pointing out that Soviet supply lines to Afghanistan are short and the local population relatively small: 14 million to 18 million.

But some historians argue that the traditional fierceness of the Afghans is a quality that defies measure. In January 1842, after an adventure in Afghanistan, the British ordered the withdrawal of 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers from Kabul. A week later, the sole survivor of the march, a field surgeon named Brydon, staggered into Jalalabad on the way to the Khyber Pass. The present generation of rebel tribesmen are hardly equipped to repeat such a feat. But, as a former U.S. Ambassador to Kabul, Robert Neumann, has observed, "Foreign invaders have found it easier to march into Afghanistan than to march out.''

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