The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Afghanistan -- War Continues

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ROBERT MacNEIL [voice-over]: Are the Soviets getting tired of the war in Afghanistan? Tonight, an insider's look at the fighting.

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MacNEIL: Good evening. Tonight we have a new look at Afghanistan, where resistance forces have been battling Soviet invaders for nearly three years. The 100,000 Soviet soldiers with tanks, jets and helicopter gunships have been unable to crush the resistance offered by thousands of Afghan tribesmen moved by equally fierce nationalism and Islamic faith. Western reporters who have returned recently from long trips with the rebel forces have brought back a picture of increasing military stalemate. On the official level, the U.S. State Department says there's no evidence to indicate that the Soviets have changed their position on Afghanistan, yet other Western observers have picked up faint hints that the Soviets might like to find a face-saving way out of a situation many have likened to the U.S. quagmire in Vietnam. Tonight, with fresh eyewitness accounts of the fighting, are the Soviets wearying of the Afghan struggle? Jim Lehrer is off tonight; Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in Washington. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Robin, in May the Soviets launched another offensive against one of the toughest centers of rebel resistance, the Panjshir Valley, a fertile farming center 40 miles north of Kabul. Their daily attacks were witnessed by two American reporters who had walked over the mountains with rebel forces. Edward Girardet is a special correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. This was his fourth trip inside Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in December, 1979. He was accompanied by Bill Dowell, a radio correspondent and writer, who has covered the wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as well as the revolution in Iran. He is now ABC radio news correspondent in Paris. First, Bill Dowell reports what he saw of the Soviet offensive.

WILLIAM DOWELL [voice-over]: Like countless invaders before them, the Soviets have run into Afghanistan's two classic defenses -- its people and its terrain. The Soviets have made ingenious use of helicopters, particularly heavily-armored MI-24 gunships. But Afghanistan's mountains are so high, the helicopters have to fly at their maximum altitude. Even then, an increasing number are being shot down by guerrilla machine guns on mountain peaks. The Soviets have not been able to get beyond their love of heavy armor and massive deployments of tanks.But in Afghanistan, where the rebels move swiftly over steep mountain passes, armored vehicles are often relatively useless. Weapons such as these Katusha rocket launchers are some of the most awesome in the Soviet arsenal. Each launcher can fire 40 rockets simultaneously. In theory, a launcher can wipe out an entire village in less than 30 seconds, but Afghanistan's tall mountains and deep valleys provide natural protection, blocking the rockets. The launcher, like many other Soviet weapons, looks good; it just doesn't work in Afghanistan.

Few events underscore the pitfalls of fighting a war in Afghanistan more than the recent Soviet offensive against guerrillas in the Panjshir Valley, 40 miles north of Kabul. On May 17th, after intensive bombing, Soviet helicopters landed Russian and Afghan commandoes at key points along the length of the 70-mile valley. While the commandoes tried to secure the valley floor, Afghan tanks followed by Soviet tanks tried to enter the valley from the south. The guerrillas waited until the Afghan tanks had passed a narrow gorge, then they set off explosives triggering a landslide that buried dozens of Soviet armored vehicles. Hundreds of Afghan troops who found themselves trapped alone inside the valley defected to the guerrillas. They brought nine tanks with them. The Soviet and Afghan troops, who outnumbered the guerrillas nearly 10 to one, were eventually able to take the floor of the valley by sheer force of numbers, but when they did, the guerrillas simply moved into the side valleys and onto the surrounding mountaintops. The Soviets stayed in the valley a little more than a month, fighting a curious kind of routine war. At 5 in the morning, MIGs and helicopters would fly out to bomb. They would return for lunch at around noon, fly out again an hour later to bomb in the afternoon, and then return for supper. Villagers, who would go to shelters like these during the daytime, would go back to their houses at night. Towards the end of June, the Soviets began pulling out most of their troops, leaving a few Afghan troops behind. Radio Kabul and Radio Moscow claimed that the offensive was a complete victory. It clearly had disrupted the economic life of the valley, but the guerrillas had also managed to destroy scores of armored vehicles, and to shoot down more than a dozen helicopters. They managed to capture new weapons, like this Soviet grenade-firing mini-gun, and hundreds of the latest Soviet assault rifles.

Even if the guerrillas had not fired a shot, the offensive, with its deployment of tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of helicopters and armored vehicles, would have cost the Soviets heavily. More discouraging from a Russian point of view, this was the fifth offensive the Soviets had launched against the Panjshir Valley in less than three years. In the end, it was not clear that they had come any closer to wiping out Afghan resistance.

HUNTER-GAULT: Now Edward Girardet reports on how the rebels are organized and how they withstood the Soviet attacks. Following that report, Robin talked with Girardet and Dowell just before they left the United States.

EDWARD GIRARDET [voice-over]: The Soviet offensive was aimed at crushing one of Afghanistan's most influential resistance centers. The Russians were particularly determined to destroy Akmed Sha Massud, the well-organized resistance commander who has built himself a nationwide reputation as "the Lion of Panjshir." Nowhere else has the guerrilla movement shown itself to be stronger and more effective than in this fertile, high mountain valley. The Soviet and Afghan government forces failed to defeat the Panjshir guerrillas. They have, however, made their presence felt. Attacks against the valley forced hundreds of families to seek refuge amid stone shelters and caves in the narrow side valleys. Many of them lost their homes. In Afghanistan, mud and stone houses can be easily rebuilt -- no more than a week or two.

But the prolonged Communist occupation threatens to have a lingering impact on the valley's economy. Farmers have been prevented from returning to irrigate their fields and fruit orchards. Resistance leaders also fear that the Soviets will use chemical defoliants to prevent the soil from being cultivated for years to come. Food supplies in the Panjshir are desperately short. Wheat, sugar and tea have dribbled through from neighboring areas. Guerrillas have been sharing their rations, hidden months earlier in secret mountain caches, with local inhabitants. Massud warns that unless adequate outside aid can be brought in the valley's 80,000 residents will face severe hardiship. If food supplies fail, the resistance would face two equally dismal choices: either force the Panjshiris to seek help from the Communists, or send them to Pakistan as refugees. In both cases the Soviet-backed Kabul regime would enjoy a propaganda victory.

Resistance in Afghanistan continues to be a vast patchwork of independently run groups, but there are increasing signs that the Panjshir resistance model is spreading. New local commanders, many of them young, are emerging as potential future leaders.Pushing out the older traditional chiefs and mullahs, they are challenging the exiled political organizations in Pakistan.The past year or two has seen an increasingly sophisticated resistance structure. During the Panjshir offensive, hundreds of fighters from regions as far away as central Afghanistan and the Soviet border walked down to help. Another sign of improved guerrilla organization are horse and camel caravans. Carrying weapons ranging from Chinese mines to the occasional antiaircraft gun, they are now a common sight along the old nomad trails. So are the resistance-operated chai khanas, or tea houses. Normally used as rest hostels and restaurants, they also serve as local resistance headquarters. They have become part of the simple but effective communications system. Archaic as it may seem, news bulletins with the latest on ambushes, bombings or offensives are read aloud to both guerrillas and villagers alike. Copies are made, and the news is then whisked away by messengers on foot to other parts of the country.

The guerrillas still complain about the lack of anti-aircraft weapons. Most arms have to be captured; those that come from the outside must be purchased. Nothing is free. Many mujahedeen see their dependence on the Pakistani-based political organizations as a means for the exiled leaders to maintain control of their fighting compatriots inside. Islam, however, remains the greatest strength of the resistance. They also harbor a bitter hatred for the Soviets. Once or twice, I had been momentarily mistaken for a Russian. It was not just an uncomfortable feeling; it was an ugly one. The Afghans are willing to defend their homeland and willing to die for it.

MacNEIL: Those two reporters are with us now in New York, Edward Girardet and Bill Dowell. Ed, what is the net effect of what you've seen over the three years in your four trips to Afghanistan?Is the situation stalemated, or can you say that one side gradually appears to be gaining an advantage?

Mr. GIRARDET: Well, I think the guerrillas have definitely begun to improve. I think now we're beginning to see a situation whereby guerrilla groups are improving in certain areas. It's still very much the situation of a patchwork of resistance groups, but you are finding a lot of these young leaders who are beginning to emerge. Weapons have improved greatly, and one is really beginning to see more -- you know, more tactics, and I think particularly now the Panjshir has become such a prominent area and is spreading. For example, it spread up to the north to Badakhsham Province. It's spreading a bit to the south. There are groups now penetrating Kabul with urban guerrilla attacks. And I think the Soviets are really beginning to have more problems now than before, and I think this is proved by the Panjshir offensive, which was really an attempt to try and crush finally this resistance area.

MacNEIL: Which failed.

Mr. GIRARDET: Which failed.

MacNEIL: Are the losses -- in any way you can measure them -- relatively equal on both sides? If you can't see one significantly winning, can you at least see the things they are losing and count that up?

Mr. DOWELL: Well, we talked with doctors who were in the Panjshir Valley from the first day of the offensive, and they said there were practically no guerrilla losses at all.

MacNEIL: That's amazing.

Mr. DOWELL: The guerrillas knew that the Soviets were going to attack. They knew where the bombing was going to take place. They warned the villagers, and most of them had already left for the mountains by the time the fighting took place.

MacNEIL: So you would say very few losses on the part of the guerrillas, and the losses that you reported on the part of the Soviets?

Mr. GIRARDET: Yeah. I think more with civilians. For example, Massud received news beforehand, of course, that the invasion would take place, and therefore he was able to move his troops outside.

MacNEIL: Do you have now an opinion -- I remember we asked you this a couple of years ago, when you first went in, but do you now have an opinion, with your added experience, on whether the Soviets can defeat the rebels militarily?

Mr. GIRARDET: I think certainly with the present number of troops in Afghanistan, there's no way. No way. They'd have to bring in more, and even then I think it'd be really an impossible situation because, as last year, you know, we walked in, and you really felt you were not in a war situation. And I think whenever we sawa helicopter, it would fly over us and we just hid. And it's virtually impossible to see men walking around the desert in the rocks from, you know, 2,000 feet. It's virtually impossible. They would have to really move in many more troops. They'd have to move out to the countryside, sustain more casualties -- which they're not doing, and which I'm not sure they really want to do.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with that?

Mr. DOWELL: Yes.

MacNEIL: That without a much greater commitment they could not defeat these rebels?

Mr. DOWELL: It would take a tremendous commitment, probably the size of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam, to really get into these valleys and trap the guerrillas. The Russians didn't appear to me to be trying to really control the countryside. We walked 150 miles through four different provinces, and every single village we passed through was under a guerrilla administration, and we saw no sign whatsoever of any Kabul government presence or of any Soviet presence.

MacNEIL: Well, if the Soviets can't wipe out this resistance without a significantly commitment there, can the rebels drive the Soviets out and force the Soviets go get out, do you think?

Mr. GIRARDET: Well, I doubt that very much. For example, the mention before concerning the Russians -- they really have not got the support of the Afghan forces. I mean, we walked by a number of Afghan forts, and these forts have made agreements with the rebels not to attack. So we walked by; we shook hands with them. And there was really a somewhat absurd situation. I think the guerrillas themselves, until they can organize themselves better -- I mean, you have areas which are very, very good.You have other areas which are really totally incompetent.I mean, the guerrilla fighters have no idea about real guerrilla warfare. For example, one group fired mortars without taking the pins out of the mortars, and they have no tactics whatsoever in attacking Afghan or Soviet forts.

MacNEIL: Have there been significant defections of the Afghan army; that is, the Soviet-backed army of the Soviet puppet regime there? Have there been significant defections of those troops?

Mr. DOWELL: I think there have been very significant defections and defections in place, because the doctors we talked to said that Massud, the guerrilla commander in the valley, had brought them Soviet battle plans, and asked them if they could recognize what the symbols meant. And they had been given by members of the Kabul government. So I said, "Well, how is that possible?" And they said, "Well, some of the officials in the Kabul government are not sure the Soviets are going to make it, and they want to cover their bets on both sides."

MacNEILL: You mentioned Vietnam, and of course you were in Vietnam as a correspondent. What are the Soviet tactics like and their strategy of trying to combat this, and what's going wrong for them?

Mr. GIRARDET: Well, I was amazed. There was no effort whatsoever by any of the Soviet forces to interdict supply routes. We were moving in broad daylight with tremendous caravans. I mean, sometimes 50 men, maybe 20-30 horses. Helicopters would pass overhead.They would make no effort to stop us.

MacNEIL: Those would be easy to see from the air.

Mr. DOWELL: They certainly were, and it looked to me as though the Soviets weren't -- the Soviet soldiers on the ground were not really trying to win the war. We passed by Bagram, the major Soviet airbase, in broad daylight. There were no patrols out. As far as we could tell, there is no evidence that Soviets go out on the ground at all. Now, if this had been in Vietnam with the American army, there would have been constant patrolling and very tight security. So I was really very shocked at the --

MacNEIL: What do the rebels expect is going to happen in the end? Do they think that the Soviets are just going to get tired and find a way out of this, or are they going to be beaten, or what's going to happen?

Mr. GIRARDET: Well, last year Massud told me that he was going to step up attacks, and in fact, they had planned more attacks against Kabul before this recent attack, and now they're beginning to do that again. In fact, they have planned quite a few operations, which I think will really hit rather hard against the Russians and Kabul. They realize they have to make a counteroffensive because, for one thing, they want to impress the local population, and, secondly, they want to really make the situation totally insecure for both the Afghan government and the Soviets. But I think they're realistic enough, you know, to realize that they cannot throw the Soviets out; it's going to have to be a political solution eventually. But I think they're just going to keep trying, keep hitting as hard as they can, and I think one particular point is that their weapons are improving and so are their tactics, and the guerrillas can only improve. I think that's the major thing.

Mr. DOWELL: I think time is definitely on the side of the guerrillas, and April 25th the guerrillas from the Panjshir and Gulbahar, just south of the Panjshir, attacked Bagram airbase, cut through the perimeter, destroyed 25 helicopters, machine-gunned the barracks, and the base installations.And the effect of that on the Soviets -- this was the first really major attack, I think, of its kind -- was really very traumatic.

MacNEIL: So you think time is on the guerrillas' side?Well, Bill Dowell and Ed Girardet, thank you very much.

HUNTER-GAULT: The fighting in Afghanistan has prompted diplomatic efforts to seek a negotiated settlement. The United Nations is taking the lead role. Its undersecretary general, Diego Cordovez, recently met with the Afghan and Pakistani foreign ministers for a round of talks in Geneva. The U.N. official is reportedly planning a series of visits this fall to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to continue the discussions. The U.S. State Department also reported that it has held talks with the Soviets aimed at convincing them to withdraw from Afghanistan. For more on the diplomatic efforts and their prospects, we turn to Selig Harrison, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also the author of the book, In Afghanistan's Shadow. Mr. Harrison, why do you think the Soviets seem willing to talk now? Are they getting tired and feeling trapped?

SELIG HARRISON: Well, we should be quite clear that at this stage it's too early in the negotiating process to be sure how serious they are. It could be that they're trying to make some propaganda, and draw the Pakistanis into a negotiation which would give implicit recognition to their regime in Kabul.But when we look at the situation described so forcefully by Ed Girardet and Mr. Dowell, we don't -- it's easy to see that the Soviets can well be having an agonizing reappraisal. They're trying to see what kind of a deal they might be able to get. And they -- certainly, when they got into Afghanistan, they never expected it to be as difficult as it has turned out to be, either militarily or politically. First of all, at the political level, they thought they could get together a unified Communist party, and they thought that they would find more support for the more moderate wing of the Communist Party that they were installing when they brought their troops in, and that hasn't proved to be true. They don't have a solid political base, and the resistance, with some useful help from the outside, has been able to make the military costs of their occupation increasingly great. So what they see is, rather, a situation in which they cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel.

HUNTER-GAULT: So that they cannot see the light, for example, of a military victory?

Mr. HARRISON: No, that's right. They can't be forced out, but neither can they see a situation in which they might consolidate a regime that they could keep in power without the suppression of the people in a very, very bloody way.And every time they are seen suppressing people in the way that they have had to do in this tragic episode in the Panjshir Valley -- the Islamic world is extremely upset; Iran, in particular, right next door, where they have important political stakes; Pakistan and non-aligned countries -- India, in particular, where they've put a lot of their political emphasis. Even among the Communist parties -- Mexico and France -- they've had a very outraged reaction, and world public opinion in general still has them on the defensive.So they're paying a very high political and diplomatic price, but we shouldn't be under the impression that that is enough, or that the military costs are enough to force them to surrender or retreat and leave Afghanistan with their tail between their legs.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, well, in that case, and based on the talks that have proceeded so far, do you get the impression that there are concessions that they would be willing to make in order to extricate themselves from this whole thing "with honor?"

Mr. HARRISON: Well, they made some concessions to get these talks going, and that's what's interesting, and that's what's important.

HUNTER-GAULT: You mean just the fact that the talks have begun is a concession?

Mr. HARRISON: They've dropped their demand that the government in Kabul be recognized by Pakistan. They have agreed to the U.N. taking a very active role, an initiating role, instead of a mere ceremonial role. And I think that they -- you can't approach this at the superpower level because if the United States goes to the Soviet Union and says, "You should get out of Afghanistan," we're trying to make them the defendant at the bar. They won't leave, it seems to me, under those circumstances, but they're trying to see whether, in a more face-saving way, through the U.N. framework, they might be able to strike a deal that would gradually make it possible to withdraw by stages with the reciprocal cessation of what they call foreign interference from Pakistan and Iran with the help of the Western and Middle Eastern countries that are helping the resistance.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: We have another view now from a woman who has been studying Afghanistan since the early '50s since she lived and worked there. Rosanne Klass is director of the Afghan Information Center at Freedom House, a non-governmental organization which monitors political, civil and human rights around the world. Ms. Klass is the author of a book and many magazine articles on Afghanistan. Ms. Klass, do you see signs that the Soviets may be looking for a way out?

ROSANNE KLASS: I think that they are looking to solve certain of their problems, but I don't think they arethat anxious to get out of Afghanistan at this time. I would agree that it's proved more costly than they expected, but since Moscow has spent almost 200 years trying to gain control of Afghanistan, I don't really think that three years of trouble are enough to change their minds.

MacNEIL: In other words, this isn't just the present Soviet regime; this goes back into czarist times?

Ms. KLASS: Oh, yes. I mean, 1838, at least, they began active efforts, and reportedly, I believe, the first Russian plans on Afghanistan are attributed to Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.

MacNEIL: Well, what would you divine the present Soviet motivation might be?

Ms. KLASS: I think they are looking for ways to diffuse the international price they've had to pay. They have not had to pay a very heavy price; nevertheless, in the Third World and the U.N., and in terms of propaganda, it has presented a problem for them.

MacNEIL: Well, they had the most unanimous opposition that they've ever had in terms of world opinion in U.N. resolutions over the Afghan --

Ms. KLASS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. No question about that. I think that what they are looking for is a cosmetic solution that the world will accept, and perhaps a regime that will be recognized internationally that will nevertheless leave them in power. I've seen signs for more than a year now that they are looking for a way to put together a sort of popular-front government involving nationalist figures who are not Communists. Their problem has been that they have only been able to find one turncoat, and I suspect that we may see a few carefully selected defectors planted as potential returnees who might form part of a government which, if it were accepted by the outside world, could then turn around and, on the basis of various treaties, ask the Soviet army to stay or ask Cubans to come in as surrogates. The Cubans have been in; the Vietnamese have been in Afghanistan. They are signing all kinds of treaties with the Bulgarians. But, in any case, set up a situation in which the Russians could maintain effective control. And once such a government was recognized by the international community, the international community could not protest their inviting in, or agreeing to certain things.

MacNEIL: There is some speculation I've seem reported that the former Afghan king, Zahir Shah, who is now living in exile in Italy, might be the person who could both unify Afghanistan and be acceptable to the Soviets. What's your reaction to that?

Ms. KLASS: If the King were to become involved -- at present he has declined to become involved. I should say that most of the Afghan leadership, the experienced leadership, was murdered since 1978. I mean, about 25-to 50,000 people -- an entire educated class wiped out. There are surviving experienced political figures, of whom the Kind is one. And there might be a point at which he would have a role to play, but he is a very cautious man, and it is not likely that he would initiate something. He might come in on something if it was going.

MacNEIL: Finally, let me ask each of you -- we just have a short time -- would you guess that there will be in the next year or so a political solution to this, or are we going to go on with this military situation for a long time?

Mr. HARRISON: Well, I think that when you say a year or two, you're talking about the kind of timeframe that this negotiating process will have to take. And what the U.N. is trying to do is not going to be accomplished in six months or even eight months. It's going to stretch out over a period of time during which time I think assistance to the resistance should continue, but if the Soviets get the feeling --

MacNEIL: Including the presumed U.S. assistance to the resistance?

Mr. HARRISON: Yes, that's right. I think both military and diplomatic options and diplomatic pressure and military pressure have to be put on the Soviets, but if they're given some realistic options for negotiations through this U.N framework, we'll find out what's possible. And I think that a year, 18 months, whil be the timeframe within which this has to unfold.

MacNEIL: Would you expect there to be a political settlement?

Mr. KLASS: If you mean a political settlement that would give Afghanistan back some control of its own destiny, which is what the resistance is fighting for, then I would say we're a long way from it. The resistance will have to up the price a good deal. The international political price will have to be upped a great deal, and the resistance will have to get significant aid from outside, which it has not been getting, in order, over a long, long haul, to bring the Soviets to the table.

MacNEIL: Thank you. We have to end it there. Ms. Klass, Mr. Harrison, we thank you very much for joining us. Good night, Charlayne.

HUNTER-GAULT: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That's all for tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.