2RHPZ
06-01-2004, 05:16 PM
FRIENDS OF THE TALIBAN *
AS FIGHTING NEARS KABUL, TWO POWS TELL TIME THAT PAKISTAN SENT SOLDIERS TO HELP THE EXTREME ISLAMISTS
*
By EDWARD BARNES/PANJSHIR VALLEY
*
Nov. 4, 1996 *
*
The 26 men sit in grim isolation, huddled in a darkened cell of a former Soviet-built prison deep in northern Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley. They are sequestered from nearly 600 other prisoners, but even if they were allowed to mingle, they would still stand apart. The style of their clothes, the color of their skin, their very language mark them as outsiders. They are not Afghans. They are Pakistanis, captured while fighting against the forces of the Afghan government that was driven from the capital five weeks ago by the group of Islamic fighters known as the Taliban. The presence of these foreign supporters of the Taliban, claim officials at the prison, is hard proof that Pakistan, a U.S. ally, has arrogated for itself a more extensive role in Afghanistan's war than has ever been acknowledged.
*
Even before the Taliban's victorious drive on Kabul, the ousted government had long insisted that the student-led band of Muslim warriors were actively backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) and by some members of the country's powerful military. The motive: gaining some influence over a neighbor with whom it shares a long and exceedingly porous border. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has denied any involvement, but in late September, Naseerullah Babar, Pakistan's Interior Minister, flew to Afghanistan to work out a settlement between the Taliban and the most powerful of the Afghan warlords. While that seemed to support suspicions, the stories told by several of the prisoners in the Panjshir, if true, would constitute the first direct evidence that Islamabad's involvement with the war-riven nation to the west extends to recruiting Pakistanis and paying them to fight alongside the Taliban.
*
Khalid Mohammed Zai, 22, was a member of an Islamic paramilitary unit, based in Kulty Chawni in Pakistan's Punjab province. He says his unit was under the control of the ISI, and his mission, as it was explained to him and 1,000 other Pakistani fighters he says entered Afghanistan during the past two months, was to "go as a fighter and rise to a high position of influence." He was transported across the border by Pakistani military vehicles and, once in Kabul, received orders and money from the senior Pakistani officer in Kabul, a man named Naser. Zai was in the forefront of the Taliban troops who swept into Kabul on Sept. 27 and pushed the armies of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the former government's army commander, into the hills surrounding the capital. Zai was captured Oct. 13 near the Salang Pass, the high-water mark of the Taliban effort to drive Massoud's forces from the region. The campaign turned disastrous when Massoud retreated until the Taliban had stretched their lines dangerously thin. Then the Lion of Panjshir turned and abruptly struck at their flanks, a tactic he had used many times against the Soviets.
*
The momentum of this counterattack carried Massoud's forces through the village of Charikar, where Mohammed Zahid Pashtun, 26, another Pakistani fighter, was stationed. A devout Muslim and former engineering student, Zahid says he signed up for combat duty with a Pakistani intelligence officer and was given 40 days of training. He eventually reached Charikar, where Afghan civilians, who initially welcomed the Taliban, revolted after just 11 days of repressive rule, outraged by a draconian regime that bars women from working outside the home. Also outlawed are movies, music and chess. Captured, he now says he regrets his role. "I heard and saw how the Taliban treated people. If I get home again, I will tell people that the Taliban are not true Islam."
*
While Massoud is eager to drive them out, the Taliban have sworn they will not leave Kabul. Massoud, an ethnic Tajik, is aided by the Taliban's plummeting popularity, but the key to his offensive is his tenuous alliance with Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful Uzbek warlord, who is with Massoud's forces battling the Taliban near Kabul. The tribal nature of the conflict has always complicated the fighting. Last week the Taliban, mostly ethnic Pashtun, were going house to house in Kabul in search of Tajiks and Uzbeks. Pakistan's meddling can only worsen the hostilities, and the lines of refugees will stretch deep into the winter.
War of A Thousand Skirmishes *
Two TIME reporters look at both sides of the Afghan conflict *
*
By ROBERT SCHULTHEIS, KEN OLSEN
*
May 18, 1987 *
*
Since Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in December 1979, an estimated 500,000 people have been killed in a war that has pitted Soviet and Afghan military units against anti-Communist mujahedin guerrillas. The Soviets say they want to get out, but five years of talks in Geneva have yielded no results. The bloody conflict has largely taken place away from public attention, but two reporters succeeded in visiting the two sides of the conflict for TIME. Robert Schultheis spent two weeks in the field with the mujahedin, and Ken Olsen last week toured the battle zone with Afghan government troops. Their reports:
The Mujahedin Press Hard
*
The MiGs arrived over Spina Bora, some 20 miles from Jalalabad, Afghanistan's fifth largest city, just before 7 a.m. Half a dozen jets flew out of the northwest, dropped parachute flares to deflect heat-seeking missiles, and then began their bombing runs. Mujahedin 12.7-mm and 14.5-mm heavy machine guns opened fire from the surrounding mountains, shooting in wide arcs across the sky. At the guerrilla base, Commander Khan Emir and about 20 of his men stood defiantly on an open knoll, firing at the jets with AK-47 assault rifles and RPG-7 grenade launchers. Other nearby guerrilla bases have small numbers of American-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles, but the mujahedin at Spina Bora have not received any.
*
A few weeks ago, 18 guerrillas died here in a MiG attack, but this time the napalm and high explosives fell wide of the mark, exploding to the north and south of the knoll. The MiGs then turned back toward Kabul, except for one jet that was trailing smoke. It headed toward the nearby airfield at Jalalabad.
*
The conflict in Afghanistan is a war of a thousand skirmishes. The mujahedin from Spina Bora and neighboring bases have in recent weeks been attacking Soviet and Afghan government defensive positions around Jalalabad. The air base there has been virtually shut down because of the threat of Stingers fired from the surrounding hills. During April, five MiGs and several Mi-24 helicopter gunships were shot down in the Jalalabad area by the potent shoulder-fired missiles. Now the Soviets are counterattacking, sending waves of MiGs from the Bagram air base, outside Kabul.
*
This is a bitter war, one without rules or limits. In early April, according to the mujahedin, the Soviets used poison gas in an attack on guerrilla antiaircraft positions. Hoja Inatullah, 19, says he nearly died of asphyxiation, surviving only by wetting his blanket and breathing through it. "For four or five hours afterward, I had trouble breathing," he says. "My friends carried me to the bomb shelter, and I lay there spitting up black fluid." In such a conflict, justice can be harsh for captured invaders. Said a young guerrilla named Ismail: "We won't shoot them. Bullets are too expensive. Maybe we will stone them to death, or cut their throats, or throw them off a cliff." Despite heavy Soviet pressure, the resistance fighters remain confident. "The mujahedin are better organized than before, better unified than before, with better morale than before," says Massood Khalili, a guerrilla political officer. New weapons like surface-to-surface rockets, Oerlikon antiaircraft guns and the Stingers have helped immensely. The Stingers, for example, are potent weapons against the once omnipotent Mi- 24 helicopter gunship. Battlefield communication and coordination among mujahedin groups have also improved with the introduction of field radios and walkie-talkies.
*
The guerrillas say they have even begun striking across the border into the Soviet Union in recent months. Says one commander, who claims to have participated in the cross-border raids: "Uzbek-speaking and Tadzhik-speaking Russians help us, giving us food, shelter and information. After our latest attacks inside Russia, the Soviets executed many Asian Russians for helping us." He claims that some Muslim Russians are now forming their own armed guerrilla groups. Says he: "We are making an increased effort to incite an uprising in Tadzhikistan and Uzbekistan."
*
Popular support for the guerrillas appears to be holding fast. "The Russians have found that it is not just a bunch of mujahedin they are fighting, it is the nation as a whole," says Khalili. "They found that all Afghans are really mujahedin, whether it is a seven-year-old child who gives information about the enemy or an old man of 70 who gives us a piece of bread."
*
Evidence of this solidarity is everywhere. In a seemingly pacified valley in the shadow of a Soviet base, where the crops grow tall and farmers toil in unbombed fields, the walls of the local teahouses are plastered with guerrilla posters and photographs of mujahedin heroes. Bands of guerrillas move about openly by daylight, carrying AK-47s and RPG-7s, on their way to attack Communist positions. In almost every valley a guerrilla base camp is hidden away in some ravine.
*
The Soviets still have an overwhelming advantage in firepower. Their convoys of tanks and armored personnel carriers and their infantry-fighting vehicles patrol widely, and the guerrillas enjoy no secure area. On the other hand, Soviet ground forces cannot occupy and hold the countryside. The resistance fighters are too tenacious and constantly attack convoy supply lines. The Soviets are thus trapped in a war that they will never lose -- but probably can never win.
*
Kabul's Forces Feel the Strain
*
Though the guerrilla war simmered beyond the city limits, Kabul was calm. Traffic filled the streets as Afghans commemorated the monthlong Muslim holiday of Ramadan. In the bazaars, everything from carpets to Coca-Cola was selling briskly. Even so, the mujahedin have forced the government of & Communist Party Chief Najibullah to take precautions within the capital. There are insistent signs of anxiety. Sounds of distant artillery salvos punctuate Kabul evenings like erratic heartbeats. Searchlights rake the surrounding hills in search of rebel infiltrators. In the daytime, armored personnel carriers often clatter through city streets that are patrolled by soldiers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.
*
There may also be a threat from Najibullah's Communist rivals. In downtown Kabul, a series of small bombs exploded last week, damaging a shop and an apartment complex. Western diplomats speculate that the blasts were caused by followers of Najibullah's political opponent, former Party Chief Babrak Karmal, whom the Soviets purged last year. Karmal's followers may have staged the attacks to protest the departure of their leader for the Soviet Union two weeks ago, ostensibly for medical treatment. They fear that Karmal has been forcibly detained.
*
Despite ****ouncements that the war is going its way, Kabul is often forced to concede the effectiveness of the guerrillas. Acknowledging that government forces shot down an intruding Pakistani F-16 recently, officials explained that the pilot had bailed out and was escorted back across the border by rebel forces -- an indication that mujahedin move freely in the border area. The national reconciliation drive launched by Najibullah in January has not fared well either. It has drawn the support of only about 40,000 refugees, a tiny fraction of the estimated 4 million displaced Afghans in Pakistan and Iran who support and often fight in the mujahedin's holy war against Kabul.
*
Even nonmilitary aircraft must take into careful account the presence of the guerrillas and their sophisticated weaponry. The 85 miles between Kabul and the frontier city of Khost, near the border with Pakistan, requires a zigzagging flight of nearly an hour and a half. Taking off from the capital, lumbering Soviet-made An-26 transports climb steadily in defensive spirals. From pods mounted on their fuselages, they trail bright orange flares to divert heat-seeking Stinger missiles that the mujahedin rebels might launch from hidden positions below.
*
The descent to Khost's dirt airstrip is gut wrenching, a series of dizzying circles, jigs and S-turns as once again the planes pop flares in rapid succession. Last week Soviet-built government transports delivered 60 journalists from India, the Soviet bloc and the West on a propaganda tour aimed at dispelling "rumors" of intense fighting in the area. Unfortunately, the tight security around the reporters only betrayed the government's fear of the guerrillas. Soviet-made Mi-24 helicopter gunships whirred protectively overhead, sweeping across the surrounding terrain. From a distance came the echoes of explosions. And a few miles away plumes of smoke snaked into an overcast sky.
*
Pausing at the wreckage of an An-26, General Ghulam Farouq, Khost's Afghan military commander, pointed out that the "passenger plane" was downed three months ago by a U.S.-made Stinger ground-to-air missile. Though the twisted, charred remains retained a coat of green-gray camouflage paint and prominent military markings, the official line was that the craft was a civilian flight ferrying women and children to Kabul for medical treatment. In all, Afghan officials said, 36 civilians died in the attack. The rebels claim the flight carried military personnel and supplies.
*
Last week the government also showed off an undetonated U.S.-made Sidewinder air-to-air missile, embedded in the mud a stone's throw from the walls and huts of the Afghan hamlet of Seluddinkala, ten miles from Pakistan. Army officers claimed it was fired at an Afghan plane by a Pakistani F-16. Missing its target, it fell close to Seluddinkala. The incident became the latest salvo in the stepped-up Soviet-Afghan propaganda war against Islamabad and Washington. An Afghan official warned of "grave consequences" if Pakistan continued its "repeated border instigations and violations." For its part, Kabul denies ever purposely violating Pakistani airspace.
*
With much bravado, the Kabul government now contends that the seven-year- old mujahedin rebellion will fade away once its support from Pakistan and the U.S. ceases. Explained a Western diplomat in Kabul last week: "The Soviets are going to portray the Pakistanis as aggressive and to justify even more pressure on Islamabad." As part of its reconciliation drive, Kabul has downplayed the threat from the rebels and begun referring to them not as "counterrevolutionar ies" but as "opposition forces."
Nonetheless, a war atmosphere suffuses the border regions despite Kabul's insistence that the area is under its control. Propaganda junkets were escorted by armored personnel carriers and half a dozen military jeeps. In Khost, a large wooded park has been discreetly converted into an army camp. "As you can see," General Farouq announced without irony, "people are ! leading their normal lives." If so, it is an extremely harried existence.
Afghanistan When Allah Beckons *
*
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY - June 18, 1990
*
Mohammad Anwar, 13, has fought in seven battles, and during the last one, an assault on a government garrison outside the village of Dara Noor, he killed at close range for the first time. He had followed the fighters through mined fields, running like crazy, and was in the first wave that captured the enemy post. He and a friend came upon three soldiers scrambling down a hill. His friend shot one. Mohammad Anwar shot the other two, thumping the bodies with his rifle butt to make sure they were dead, then calmly removing a revolver from the first corpse.
*
Asked what he thinks about killing, Mohammad Anwar looks puzzled. "I was happy because I killed them," he says. During the attack, Mohammad Anwar's older brother and some other mujahedin seized four soldiers. They bound the prisoners' hands, blindfolded them and marched them to Dara Noor. After the mullah arrived, they lined up the captives and shot them. Mohammad Anwar and his friend watched. How did he feel about that? He lifts an eyebrow and this time answers deliberately, as if talking to a slow-witted child. "I was happy," he says.
*
A goatherd's son, Mohammad Anwar has been fighting since he was ten. He has never been to school and insists that he is glad not to have to go. With his olive-brown eyes and brown curls peeping out from under his wool cap, he looks like any of the thousands of Afghan boys who loiter, energetic and restless, in Pakistani refugee camps. But there is something different about him. It is not in his face, which is babyish, or his hands, callused and blackened. It is the look behind his eyes, the dulled expression of a seasoned grunt.
*
In a jihad, or holy war, there are no age guidelines for combat. If a commander decides a boy is ready, then he fights. Fathers take their sons with them to the front. Orphaned boys go with their brothers or uncles. Mothers who demur are ignored. Forcing boys into battle is rare, since nearly all of them volunteer. It is what their ancestors have done for centuries, it is expected of them, and it is not to be questioned. "I was happy."
*
Islam Dara is a small mujahedin supply base nestled in jagged rocks beneath a circle of mountains, a desert oasis fed by a cold thin stream. Except for the sound of aerial bombing that burns red rings of brush fire above the enclave, Islam Dara seems sheltered. A few canvas tents are pitched amid boulders and mounds of ammunition: RPG-7s, launchers, bazookas. With its cool caves and grassy marshes harboring frogs, Islam Dara is a boy's paradise out of Kipling. But the dozen or so boys who stay there are living an idyll of war.
*
At the slightest sound, the sentries -- rifle-carrying boys in gray or brown robes -- emerge from behind rocks. Under the direction of a handful of older soldiers, they work in the camp, fetching water, cleaning guns, tending the pack mules. Each night two or three of them slip into the desert alongside mules laden with water, food and ammunition and cross past the enemy to the forward posts three hours away. Each boy has his own AK-47, the only valuable object any of them has ever owned.
*
Sahin Shah, 10, a mujahedin with a pretty face and mountain flowers tucked into the brim of his cap, is offended by the notion that life in Islam Dara could be fun. His back stiffens, and he retorts with a frown, "We came here to fight. We don't want to play." As if to prove his point, he yanks the flowers from his cap and strips apart his Kalashnikov. When he cleans it, his - motions are slow, loving. Like most of the others, he comes from a small mountain village. His father was killed in combat two years earlier. He says he has been in a battle twice but isn't afraid of dying. He is fighting the jihad, and in jihad, there are no unhappy endings. "Either we kill them," he says, as if reciting a proverb, "or they martyr us."
*
His best friend, Akbar, also 10, watches Sahin Shah take his rifle apart, then decides to race him and quickly strips his own. Sahin Shah wins. Akbar has a smart-aleck face, a raspy voice, and wears a dirty plaid waistcoat over his robes, a good-luck gift from his father. Unlike many of the boys' fathers, Akbar's is still alive, but he is based at a nearby camp. A week earlier Akbar's father went to visit his wife and five younger children in a refugee camp in Pakistan. He wanted Akbar to go with him, but the son refused. "If I went there," he explains, "then my friends would be alone."
*
Akbar has been shot at and has returned fire at the enemy, but he is not sure if he has killed. Hesitantly, he explains what battle is like. Mostly it is noisy and inconclusive. "I fired," he says. "But I don't know if I hit anybody."
*
The gaunt officer in charge, Mohammad Wali, 30, keeps an eye on which boys show promise for battle. Seven of the dozen are, to his eyes, ready for combat. The youngest is nine, the oldest 13, but Mohammad Wali is content with their abilities. "They are the same as the mujahedin -- better, because they are not afraid." Boys also have more energy than older fighters, but they still have to be watched. "Sometimes they behave like children," Mohammad Wali says, his eyes narrowing accusingly at Sahin Shah, "shooting at stones or teasing the mules." He too shrugs off questions about fear or death. In jihad, he says, "either we kill them, or they martyr us."
*
Jihad is learned at an early age, absorbed by children at home, in the mosque and, for those who can go, in school. There are not many schools in mujahedin-held Afghanistan, but the remaining few, called madrasas and run by mullahs, have a curriculum molded by war. "The madrasa used to be 80% ordinary subjects and 20% Islam," says a former Kabul schoolteacher now doing refugee work in Peshawar. "Today it is 80% about Islam." In the refugee camps in Pakistan, Afghan teachers instruct Afghan children, and the course material is almost entirely about jihad.
*
In a dark, windowless classroom in the Nasserbagh refugee camp in Peshawar, / 25 eighth-graders, heads shaven and obediently bowed, listen to their teacher. An algebra problem on a blackboard shows that Allah is one. History class is about Mohammad and Islam. So is geography. The teacher asks who is ready to fight. Every hand shoots up. Six-year-old Ahmad Zia, tiny but fierce in a black jacket and cap, rises from the floor and, with a pet student's earnest intensity, leads his classmates in a well-practiced chant: "I will not let the foreigner's foot into my country/ Either I will be martyred or I will kill him."
*
Afterward, he marches up to the teacher, salutes and marches back to his place. Ahmad Zia says he wants to go to the front in June, and the teacher doesn't smile. The child is not being cute. "I want to fight the jihad." Asked to define jihad, he replies, "Jihad is to fight Russians."
*
Never mind that Soviet troops left Afghanistan long ago. The mujahedin are now fighting other Afghans and even one another, but the curriculum has not kept up. To schoolboys, "Russians" remains an indelible synonym for enemy.
*
It is recess, and the boys head to the courtyard to perform a drill. Three of them, carrying Kalashnikovs carved of wood, step across imaginary mines, break into an enemy post and surround two "Russian" prisoners. The boys act out the taking and holding of the prisoners, the blindfolding and the stiff parade back to the base. What happens next to the prisoners is not acted out.
*
On the second floor of Kuwait Red Crescent hospital in Peshawar, in the farthest bed next to a window, the sprawled body takes up only a fragment of the cot. Rahmat Hussain, 10, is not the only child on the floor, but he is the most seriously injured. Most of the time, the bandaged wound is covered by a thin, dirty green blanket. With a tentative smile, as if offering a guest a cup of tea, his older brother, Tor Kham, volunteers to pull back the blanket.
*
Tor Kham has been sleeping on the floor next to his brother's bed, waiting, watching and helping the nurses clean the wound twice a day. It is a task he dreads. Tor Kham and the nurse have to tie Rahmat Hussain's wrists to the bedpost with strips of gauze to keep him from reaching down while they remove the bandages. All the skin has been torn from Rahmat Hussain's inner thighs and groin to his stomach, and the pink, raw flesh forms a vast inverted horseshoe two inches deep -- as if he had mounted a burning saddle that seared deep into his body. He was injured during an attack in a village called , Allishir, in the Khost province. The mujahedin were advancing, and the man next to Rahmat Hussain stepped on a mine. The man was blown to bits; when the doctors first treated Rahmat Hussain, they found a piece of the man's flesh lodged inside his wound. His father had died in battle a month before Rahmat Hussain was injured.
*
A cousin, seated on the windowsill, waves a straw whisk broom to keep flies away. As they work, the nurse, the brother and the cousin remain silent, as do the rest of the men lying in nearby beds. Rahmat Hussain moans, "Pain, pain, I feel pain." Once or twice, he calls for his mother, but it is a muted, passive lament.
*
It takes more than half an hour to peel off the gauze, dab antiseptic on the livid flesh, and replace the bandages. Tor Kham, who never says a word, grows paler. When the procedure is over, he takes a moment, really no more than a deep breath, then places a hand on the boy's lips to silence him. His hand falls to the boy's chest and lingers there, an offer of consolation. After another nurse arrives and administers morphine, the boy drifts to sleep. His brother pulls the blanket back over his bandages.
*
Tor Kham explains that he will go back to jihad once his brother recovers. And Rahmat Hussain? He too will want to return to the fight, Tor Kham says. Asked how he knows that, Tor Kham shakes his head. After a long silence, he looks away and says, "There is no jihad for him now. He is in the world of pain."
AS FIGHTING NEARS KABUL, TWO POWS TELL TIME THAT PAKISTAN SENT SOLDIERS TO HELP THE EXTREME ISLAMISTS
*
By EDWARD BARNES/PANJSHIR VALLEY
*
Nov. 4, 1996 *
*
The 26 men sit in grim isolation, huddled in a darkened cell of a former Soviet-built prison deep in northern Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley. They are sequestered from nearly 600 other prisoners, but even if they were allowed to mingle, they would still stand apart. The style of their clothes, the color of their skin, their very language mark them as outsiders. They are not Afghans. They are Pakistanis, captured while fighting against the forces of the Afghan government that was driven from the capital five weeks ago by the group of Islamic fighters known as the Taliban. The presence of these foreign supporters of the Taliban, claim officials at the prison, is hard proof that Pakistan, a U.S. ally, has arrogated for itself a more extensive role in Afghanistan's war than has ever been acknowledged.
*
Even before the Taliban's victorious drive on Kabul, the ousted government had long insisted that the student-led band of Muslim warriors were actively backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) and by some members of the country's powerful military. The motive: gaining some influence over a neighbor with whom it shares a long and exceedingly porous border. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has denied any involvement, but in late September, Naseerullah Babar, Pakistan's Interior Minister, flew to Afghanistan to work out a settlement between the Taliban and the most powerful of the Afghan warlords. While that seemed to support suspicions, the stories told by several of the prisoners in the Panjshir, if true, would constitute the first direct evidence that Islamabad's involvement with the war-riven nation to the west extends to recruiting Pakistanis and paying them to fight alongside the Taliban.
*
Khalid Mohammed Zai, 22, was a member of an Islamic paramilitary unit, based in Kulty Chawni in Pakistan's Punjab province. He says his unit was under the control of the ISI, and his mission, as it was explained to him and 1,000 other Pakistani fighters he says entered Afghanistan during the past two months, was to "go as a fighter and rise to a high position of influence." He was transported across the border by Pakistani military vehicles and, once in Kabul, received orders and money from the senior Pakistani officer in Kabul, a man named Naser. Zai was in the forefront of the Taliban troops who swept into Kabul on Sept. 27 and pushed the armies of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the former government's army commander, into the hills surrounding the capital. Zai was captured Oct. 13 near the Salang Pass, the high-water mark of the Taliban effort to drive Massoud's forces from the region. The campaign turned disastrous when Massoud retreated until the Taliban had stretched their lines dangerously thin. Then the Lion of Panjshir turned and abruptly struck at their flanks, a tactic he had used many times against the Soviets.
*
The momentum of this counterattack carried Massoud's forces through the village of Charikar, where Mohammed Zahid Pashtun, 26, another Pakistani fighter, was stationed. A devout Muslim and former engineering student, Zahid says he signed up for combat duty with a Pakistani intelligence officer and was given 40 days of training. He eventually reached Charikar, where Afghan civilians, who initially welcomed the Taliban, revolted after just 11 days of repressive rule, outraged by a draconian regime that bars women from working outside the home. Also outlawed are movies, music and chess. Captured, he now says he regrets his role. "I heard and saw how the Taliban treated people. If I get home again, I will tell people that the Taliban are not true Islam."
*
While Massoud is eager to drive them out, the Taliban have sworn they will not leave Kabul. Massoud, an ethnic Tajik, is aided by the Taliban's plummeting popularity, but the key to his offensive is his tenuous alliance with Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful Uzbek warlord, who is with Massoud's forces battling the Taliban near Kabul. The tribal nature of the conflict has always complicated the fighting. Last week the Taliban, mostly ethnic Pashtun, were going house to house in Kabul in search of Tajiks and Uzbeks. Pakistan's meddling can only worsen the hostilities, and the lines of refugees will stretch deep into the winter.
War of A Thousand Skirmishes *
Two TIME reporters look at both sides of the Afghan conflict *
*
By ROBERT SCHULTHEIS, KEN OLSEN
*
May 18, 1987 *
*
Since Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in December 1979, an estimated 500,000 people have been killed in a war that has pitted Soviet and Afghan military units against anti-Communist mujahedin guerrillas. The Soviets say they want to get out, but five years of talks in Geneva have yielded no results. The bloody conflict has largely taken place away from public attention, but two reporters succeeded in visiting the two sides of the conflict for TIME. Robert Schultheis spent two weeks in the field with the mujahedin, and Ken Olsen last week toured the battle zone with Afghan government troops. Their reports:
The Mujahedin Press Hard
*
The MiGs arrived over Spina Bora, some 20 miles from Jalalabad, Afghanistan's fifth largest city, just before 7 a.m. Half a dozen jets flew out of the northwest, dropped parachute flares to deflect heat-seeking missiles, and then began their bombing runs. Mujahedin 12.7-mm and 14.5-mm heavy machine guns opened fire from the surrounding mountains, shooting in wide arcs across the sky. At the guerrilla base, Commander Khan Emir and about 20 of his men stood defiantly on an open knoll, firing at the jets with AK-47 assault rifles and RPG-7 grenade launchers. Other nearby guerrilla bases have small numbers of American-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles, but the mujahedin at Spina Bora have not received any.
*
A few weeks ago, 18 guerrillas died here in a MiG attack, but this time the napalm and high explosives fell wide of the mark, exploding to the north and south of the knoll. The MiGs then turned back toward Kabul, except for one jet that was trailing smoke. It headed toward the nearby airfield at Jalalabad.
*
The conflict in Afghanistan is a war of a thousand skirmishes. The mujahedin from Spina Bora and neighboring bases have in recent weeks been attacking Soviet and Afghan government defensive positions around Jalalabad. The air base there has been virtually shut down because of the threat of Stingers fired from the surrounding hills. During April, five MiGs and several Mi-24 helicopter gunships were shot down in the Jalalabad area by the potent shoulder-fired missiles. Now the Soviets are counterattacking, sending waves of MiGs from the Bagram air base, outside Kabul.
*
This is a bitter war, one without rules or limits. In early April, according to the mujahedin, the Soviets used poison gas in an attack on guerrilla antiaircraft positions. Hoja Inatullah, 19, says he nearly died of asphyxiation, surviving only by wetting his blanket and breathing through it. "For four or five hours afterward, I had trouble breathing," he says. "My friends carried me to the bomb shelter, and I lay there spitting up black fluid." In such a conflict, justice can be harsh for captured invaders. Said a young guerrilla named Ismail: "We won't shoot them. Bullets are too expensive. Maybe we will stone them to death, or cut their throats, or throw them off a cliff." Despite heavy Soviet pressure, the resistance fighters remain confident. "The mujahedin are better organized than before, better unified than before, with better morale than before," says Massood Khalili, a guerrilla political officer. New weapons like surface-to-surface rockets, Oerlikon antiaircraft guns and the Stingers have helped immensely. The Stingers, for example, are potent weapons against the once omnipotent Mi- 24 helicopter gunship. Battlefield communication and coordination among mujahedin groups have also improved with the introduction of field radios and walkie-talkies.
*
The guerrillas say they have even begun striking across the border into the Soviet Union in recent months. Says one commander, who claims to have participated in the cross-border raids: "Uzbek-speaking and Tadzhik-speaking Russians help us, giving us food, shelter and information. After our latest attacks inside Russia, the Soviets executed many Asian Russians for helping us." He claims that some Muslim Russians are now forming their own armed guerrilla groups. Says he: "We are making an increased effort to incite an uprising in Tadzhikistan and Uzbekistan."
*
Popular support for the guerrillas appears to be holding fast. "The Russians have found that it is not just a bunch of mujahedin they are fighting, it is the nation as a whole," says Khalili. "They found that all Afghans are really mujahedin, whether it is a seven-year-old child who gives information about the enemy or an old man of 70 who gives us a piece of bread."
*
Evidence of this solidarity is everywhere. In a seemingly pacified valley in the shadow of a Soviet base, where the crops grow tall and farmers toil in unbombed fields, the walls of the local teahouses are plastered with guerrilla posters and photographs of mujahedin heroes. Bands of guerrillas move about openly by daylight, carrying AK-47s and RPG-7s, on their way to attack Communist positions. In almost every valley a guerrilla base camp is hidden away in some ravine.
*
The Soviets still have an overwhelming advantage in firepower. Their convoys of tanks and armored personnel carriers and their infantry-fighting vehicles patrol widely, and the guerrillas enjoy no secure area. On the other hand, Soviet ground forces cannot occupy and hold the countryside. The resistance fighters are too tenacious and constantly attack convoy supply lines. The Soviets are thus trapped in a war that they will never lose -- but probably can never win.
*
Kabul's Forces Feel the Strain
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Though the guerrilla war simmered beyond the city limits, Kabul was calm. Traffic filled the streets as Afghans commemorated the monthlong Muslim holiday of Ramadan. In the bazaars, everything from carpets to Coca-Cola was selling briskly. Even so, the mujahedin have forced the government of & Communist Party Chief Najibullah to take precautions within the capital. There are insistent signs of anxiety. Sounds of distant artillery salvos punctuate Kabul evenings like erratic heartbeats. Searchlights rake the surrounding hills in search of rebel infiltrators. In the daytime, armored personnel carriers often clatter through city streets that are patrolled by soldiers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.
*
There may also be a threat from Najibullah's Communist rivals. In downtown Kabul, a series of small bombs exploded last week, damaging a shop and an apartment complex. Western diplomats speculate that the blasts were caused by followers of Najibullah's political opponent, former Party Chief Babrak Karmal, whom the Soviets purged last year. Karmal's followers may have staged the attacks to protest the departure of their leader for the Soviet Union two weeks ago, ostensibly for medical treatment. They fear that Karmal has been forcibly detained.
*
Despite ****ouncements that the war is going its way, Kabul is often forced to concede the effectiveness of the guerrillas. Acknowledging that government forces shot down an intruding Pakistani F-16 recently, officials explained that the pilot had bailed out and was escorted back across the border by rebel forces -- an indication that mujahedin move freely in the border area. The national reconciliation drive launched by Najibullah in January has not fared well either. It has drawn the support of only about 40,000 refugees, a tiny fraction of the estimated 4 million displaced Afghans in Pakistan and Iran who support and often fight in the mujahedin's holy war against Kabul.
*
Even nonmilitary aircraft must take into careful account the presence of the guerrillas and their sophisticated weaponry. The 85 miles between Kabul and the frontier city of Khost, near the border with Pakistan, requires a zigzagging flight of nearly an hour and a half. Taking off from the capital, lumbering Soviet-made An-26 transports climb steadily in defensive spirals. From pods mounted on their fuselages, they trail bright orange flares to divert heat-seeking Stinger missiles that the mujahedin rebels might launch from hidden positions below.
*
The descent to Khost's dirt airstrip is gut wrenching, a series of dizzying circles, jigs and S-turns as once again the planes pop flares in rapid succession. Last week Soviet-built government transports delivered 60 journalists from India, the Soviet bloc and the West on a propaganda tour aimed at dispelling "rumors" of intense fighting in the area. Unfortunately, the tight security around the reporters only betrayed the government's fear of the guerrillas. Soviet-made Mi-24 helicopter gunships whirred protectively overhead, sweeping across the surrounding terrain. From a distance came the echoes of explosions. And a few miles away plumes of smoke snaked into an overcast sky.
*
Pausing at the wreckage of an An-26, General Ghulam Farouq, Khost's Afghan military commander, pointed out that the "passenger plane" was downed three months ago by a U.S.-made Stinger ground-to-air missile. Though the twisted, charred remains retained a coat of green-gray camouflage paint and prominent military markings, the official line was that the craft was a civilian flight ferrying women and children to Kabul for medical treatment. In all, Afghan officials said, 36 civilians died in the attack. The rebels claim the flight carried military personnel and supplies.
*
Last week the government also showed off an undetonated U.S.-made Sidewinder air-to-air missile, embedded in the mud a stone's throw from the walls and huts of the Afghan hamlet of Seluddinkala, ten miles from Pakistan. Army officers claimed it was fired at an Afghan plane by a Pakistani F-16. Missing its target, it fell close to Seluddinkala. The incident became the latest salvo in the stepped-up Soviet-Afghan propaganda war against Islamabad and Washington. An Afghan official warned of "grave consequences" if Pakistan continued its "repeated border instigations and violations." For its part, Kabul denies ever purposely violating Pakistani airspace.
*
With much bravado, the Kabul government now contends that the seven-year- old mujahedin rebellion will fade away once its support from Pakistan and the U.S. ceases. Explained a Western diplomat in Kabul last week: "The Soviets are going to portray the Pakistanis as aggressive and to justify even more pressure on Islamabad." As part of its reconciliation drive, Kabul has downplayed the threat from the rebels and begun referring to them not as "counterrevolutionar ies" but as "opposition forces."
Nonetheless, a war atmosphere suffuses the border regions despite Kabul's insistence that the area is under its control. Propaganda junkets were escorted by armored personnel carriers and half a dozen military jeeps. In Khost, a large wooded park has been discreetly converted into an army camp. "As you can see," General Farouq announced without irony, "people are ! leading their normal lives." If so, it is an extremely harried existence.
Afghanistan When Allah Beckons *
*
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY - June 18, 1990
*
Mohammad Anwar, 13, has fought in seven battles, and during the last one, an assault on a government garrison outside the village of Dara Noor, he killed at close range for the first time. He had followed the fighters through mined fields, running like crazy, and was in the first wave that captured the enemy post. He and a friend came upon three soldiers scrambling down a hill. His friend shot one. Mohammad Anwar shot the other two, thumping the bodies with his rifle butt to make sure they were dead, then calmly removing a revolver from the first corpse.
*
Asked what he thinks about killing, Mohammad Anwar looks puzzled. "I was happy because I killed them," he says. During the attack, Mohammad Anwar's older brother and some other mujahedin seized four soldiers. They bound the prisoners' hands, blindfolded them and marched them to Dara Noor. After the mullah arrived, they lined up the captives and shot them. Mohammad Anwar and his friend watched. How did he feel about that? He lifts an eyebrow and this time answers deliberately, as if talking to a slow-witted child. "I was happy," he says.
*
A goatherd's son, Mohammad Anwar has been fighting since he was ten. He has never been to school and insists that he is glad not to have to go. With his olive-brown eyes and brown curls peeping out from under his wool cap, he looks like any of the thousands of Afghan boys who loiter, energetic and restless, in Pakistani refugee camps. But there is something different about him. It is not in his face, which is babyish, or his hands, callused and blackened. It is the look behind his eyes, the dulled expression of a seasoned grunt.
*
In a jihad, or holy war, there are no age guidelines for combat. If a commander decides a boy is ready, then he fights. Fathers take their sons with them to the front. Orphaned boys go with their brothers or uncles. Mothers who demur are ignored. Forcing boys into battle is rare, since nearly all of them volunteer. It is what their ancestors have done for centuries, it is expected of them, and it is not to be questioned. "I was happy."
*
Islam Dara is a small mujahedin supply base nestled in jagged rocks beneath a circle of mountains, a desert oasis fed by a cold thin stream. Except for the sound of aerial bombing that burns red rings of brush fire above the enclave, Islam Dara seems sheltered. A few canvas tents are pitched amid boulders and mounds of ammunition: RPG-7s, launchers, bazookas. With its cool caves and grassy marshes harboring frogs, Islam Dara is a boy's paradise out of Kipling. But the dozen or so boys who stay there are living an idyll of war.
*
At the slightest sound, the sentries -- rifle-carrying boys in gray or brown robes -- emerge from behind rocks. Under the direction of a handful of older soldiers, they work in the camp, fetching water, cleaning guns, tending the pack mules. Each night two or three of them slip into the desert alongside mules laden with water, food and ammunition and cross past the enemy to the forward posts three hours away. Each boy has his own AK-47, the only valuable object any of them has ever owned.
*
Sahin Shah, 10, a mujahedin with a pretty face and mountain flowers tucked into the brim of his cap, is offended by the notion that life in Islam Dara could be fun. His back stiffens, and he retorts with a frown, "We came here to fight. We don't want to play." As if to prove his point, he yanks the flowers from his cap and strips apart his Kalashnikov. When he cleans it, his - motions are slow, loving. Like most of the others, he comes from a small mountain village. His father was killed in combat two years earlier. He says he has been in a battle twice but isn't afraid of dying. He is fighting the jihad, and in jihad, there are no unhappy endings. "Either we kill them," he says, as if reciting a proverb, "or they martyr us."
*
His best friend, Akbar, also 10, watches Sahin Shah take his rifle apart, then decides to race him and quickly strips his own. Sahin Shah wins. Akbar has a smart-aleck face, a raspy voice, and wears a dirty plaid waistcoat over his robes, a good-luck gift from his father. Unlike many of the boys' fathers, Akbar's is still alive, but he is based at a nearby camp. A week earlier Akbar's father went to visit his wife and five younger children in a refugee camp in Pakistan. He wanted Akbar to go with him, but the son refused. "If I went there," he explains, "then my friends would be alone."
*
Akbar has been shot at and has returned fire at the enemy, but he is not sure if he has killed. Hesitantly, he explains what battle is like. Mostly it is noisy and inconclusive. "I fired," he says. "But I don't know if I hit anybody."
*
The gaunt officer in charge, Mohammad Wali, 30, keeps an eye on which boys show promise for battle. Seven of the dozen are, to his eyes, ready for combat. The youngest is nine, the oldest 13, but Mohammad Wali is content with their abilities. "They are the same as the mujahedin -- better, because they are not afraid." Boys also have more energy than older fighters, but they still have to be watched. "Sometimes they behave like children," Mohammad Wali says, his eyes narrowing accusingly at Sahin Shah, "shooting at stones or teasing the mules." He too shrugs off questions about fear or death. In jihad, he says, "either we kill them, or they martyr us."
*
Jihad is learned at an early age, absorbed by children at home, in the mosque and, for those who can go, in school. There are not many schools in mujahedin-held Afghanistan, but the remaining few, called madrasas and run by mullahs, have a curriculum molded by war. "The madrasa used to be 80% ordinary subjects and 20% Islam," says a former Kabul schoolteacher now doing refugee work in Peshawar. "Today it is 80% about Islam." In the refugee camps in Pakistan, Afghan teachers instruct Afghan children, and the course material is almost entirely about jihad.
*
In a dark, windowless classroom in the Nasserbagh refugee camp in Peshawar, / 25 eighth-graders, heads shaven and obediently bowed, listen to their teacher. An algebra problem on a blackboard shows that Allah is one. History class is about Mohammad and Islam. So is geography. The teacher asks who is ready to fight. Every hand shoots up. Six-year-old Ahmad Zia, tiny but fierce in a black jacket and cap, rises from the floor and, with a pet student's earnest intensity, leads his classmates in a well-practiced chant: "I will not let the foreigner's foot into my country/ Either I will be martyred or I will kill him."
*
Afterward, he marches up to the teacher, salutes and marches back to his place. Ahmad Zia says he wants to go to the front in June, and the teacher doesn't smile. The child is not being cute. "I want to fight the jihad." Asked to define jihad, he replies, "Jihad is to fight Russians."
*
Never mind that Soviet troops left Afghanistan long ago. The mujahedin are now fighting other Afghans and even one another, but the curriculum has not kept up. To schoolboys, "Russians" remains an indelible synonym for enemy.
*
It is recess, and the boys head to the courtyard to perform a drill. Three of them, carrying Kalashnikovs carved of wood, step across imaginary mines, break into an enemy post and surround two "Russian" prisoners. The boys act out the taking and holding of the prisoners, the blindfolding and the stiff parade back to the base. What happens next to the prisoners is not acted out.
*
On the second floor of Kuwait Red Crescent hospital in Peshawar, in the farthest bed next to a window, the sprawled body takes up only a fragment of the cot. Rahmat Hussain, 10, is not the only child on the floor, but he is the most seriously injured. Most of the time, the bandaged wound is covered by a thin, dirty green blanket. With a tentative smile, as if offering a guest a cup of tea, his older brother, Tor Kham, volunteers to pull back the blanket.
*
Tor Kham has been sleeping on the floor next to his brother's bed, waiting, watching and helping the nurses clean the wound twice a day. It is a task he dreads. Tor Kham and the nurse have to tie Rahmat Hussain's wrists to the bedpost with strips of gauze to keep him from reaching down while they remove the bandages. All the skin has been torn from Rahmat Hussain's inner thighs and groin to his stomach, and the pink, raw flesh forms a vast inverted horseshoe two inches deep -- as if he had mounted a burning saddle that seared deep into his body. He was injured during an attack in a village called , Allishir, in the Khost province. The mujahedin were advancing, and the man next to Rahmat Hussain stepped on a mine. The man was blown to bits; when the doctors first treated Rahmat Hussain, they found a piece of the man's flesh lodged inside his wound. His father had died in battle a month before Rahmat Hussain was injured.
*
A cousin, seated on the windowsill, waves a straw whisk broom to keep flies away. As they work, the nurse, the brother and the cousin remain silent, as do the rest of the men lying in nearby beds. Rahmat Hussain moans, "Pain, pain, I feel pain." Once or twice, he calls for his mother, but it is a muted, passive lament.
*
It takes more than half an hour to peel off the gauze, dab antiseptic on the livid flesh, and replace the bandages. Tor Kham, who never says a word, grows paler. When the procedure is over, he takes a moment, really no more than a deep breath, then places a hand on the boy's lips to silence him. His hand falls to the boy's chest and lingers there, an offer of consolation. After another nurse arrives and administers morphine, the boy drifts to sleep. His brother pulls the blanket back over his bandages.
*
Tor Kham explains that he will go back to jihad once his brother recovers. And Rahmat Hussain? He too will want to return to the fight, Tor Kham says. Asked how he knows that, Tor Kham shakes his head. After a long silence, he looks away and says, "There is no jihad for him now. He is in the world of pain."