"Our Weapon Is Our Faith"

For centuries Pakistan's North-West Frontier province capital of Peshawar has served as a trading and hitching post between the rising Himalayas to the north and the flat Asian subcontinent to the south. Camel caravans, Scythians, Alexander the Great's Macedonian legions, Mogul hordes, Britain's empire builders and even high-flying U.S. espionage planes have all, at one time or another, made use of Peshawar's strategic semidesert location at the base of the Khyber Pass. Today Peshawar, which is only 34 miles from the Afghan border, has become the principal bivouac and nerve center for Afghan rebels who have crossed the border to escape the invading Soviet troops. Last week, after a visit to the city--whose population of 300,000 has been swollen by thousands of refugees--TIME Correspondent David DeVoss filed this report: There are at least 60 different rebel factions fighting in Afghanistan. Nearly a dozen of them have headquarters in a reeking slum on the edge of Peshawar's old Afghan colony in the shadow of the old Mogul fortress that still dominates the skyline. On any given night, many of the insurgents traverse the rocky goat paths back into Afghanistan to join 50,000 of their countrymen in trying to gun down Soviet soldiers. Janeb Gul, for example, a 45-year-old wheat farmer, stayed in Peshawar just long enough to buy a rifle and a pocketful of bullets. Carrying a string of prayer beads and joined by three fellow Afghans, he returned to avenge the death of his village mullah at the hands of government cadres from Kabul.

When the bullets run out, he will return to Peshawar to scrape up some more. Men like Janeb Gul are driven by a profound spirit of tribal vengeance that is almost as old as the Hindu Kush. Unfortunately, that same spirit has also kept the rebels from working well together. Liberation fronts and organizations for Afghan unity dissolve as quickly as they are formed. Intertribal conflicts are equally intense. One rebel leader is notorious for eliminating rivals by sending them on deadly undercover missions to Kabul. Complains the Pakistani director of the Commission for Afghan Refugees: "Everyone claims to be in control but there is no authority--only personal enmities." Obviously the formlessness of the rebel organization also makes it difficult for potential backers to know where to channel their assistance.

Still, a few leaders have maintained power. By far the most visible of Peshawar's refugees is Sayad Ahmed Gailani. The 45-year-old Islamic scholar fled Afghanistan with his large family in 1978 and now claims 70,000 soldiers in his National Liberation Front, with another 300,000 Afghans ready to pledge support. Gailani, a past rector of the Islamic Center in Copenhagen who has also taught in Saudi Arabia and Libya, is regarded by his followers asapir (saint), and he claims that his family lineage traces directly to Muhammad. He could become a focus for Western support, although his urbanity offends some ultraorthodox Muslims. Too many of his nephews and cousins--like relatives of Iran's Shah--appear to be dressed by Gucci.

A power grab by Gailani for leadership of the insurgents would be challenged--probably without much success --by at least two other rebel leaders. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, 32, an engineer who studied at Kabul University, is highly regarded for his administrative skills. But his base of support, an organization called Hezb-i-Islami, may be too rigidly Muslim in outlook for some rebels. Another Muslim group, Jamiat-i-Islami, is led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, 40, a former professor of religion at Kabul University. Although Jamiat is considered more tolerant than Hekmatyar's group, Rabbani has no personal following outside of his native Badakhshan province, and his proposed alternative to Communism in Kabul seems woefully quaint: bring deposed King Mohammed Zahir back from exile in Italy.

All three of these groups have had trouble supplying the rebels in the field, who send back tortuously written pleas for help signed with dozens of thumbprints. One of the saddest realities about the battle is the insurgents' inability to cope with equipment. Although rebel groups have captured Soviet-built tanks, howitzers and even some helicopters, the machinery goes unused because most of the tribesmen do not have the training to operate anything more sophisticated than a bolt-action rifle. Nonetheless, the righteous tenacity of a thousand blood feuds persists. "I am just a mountain man who acts according to circumstances," says Janeb Gul. "Allah will help us because ours is a just fight. Our weapon is our faith."

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