perm filename AFGHAN.NS[F84,JMC]3 blob sn#787245 filedate 1985-02-22 generic text, type C, neo UTF8
COMMENT āŠ—   VALID 00008 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	A.P. often includes a phrase in stories about Afghanistan "explaining"
C00003 00003	a285  1914  25 Nov 84
C00006 00004	a225  1240  25 Dec 84
C00015 00005	a232  1336  25 Dec 84
C00022 00006	n097  1859  27 Dec 84
C00026 00007	a071  0707  28 Dec 84
C00032 00008	    MOSCOW (AP) - Anti-Marxist rebels detonated a mine in a mosque in an
C00041 ENDMK
CāŠ—;
A.P. often includes a phrase in stories about Afghanistan "explaining"
that the Soviet Union sent troops to Afghanistan "to help the
Communist government oppose the insurgents".  Considering that
they surprised the Afghan government, killed the prime minister
and replaced him by Karmal whom they imported with them, this is
a distortion, introduced with the inadvertent or intentional
object of making an analogy with the American intervention in
Vietnam.

	Not all stories have this editorial distortion.  Where the
distortion or something else appears, I have put an *.
a285  1914  25 Nov 84
AM-Afghan-Attack,0190
Kabul Says Afghan Rebels Launch Rocket Attack on Capital
    ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Anti-Marxist rebels fired rockets at
Kabul, the Afghan capital, killing four people and injuring 17
others, the state-owned radio in Afghanistan said Sunday.
***
    The rebels are fighting both government forces and some 100,000
Soviet soldiers sent into Afghanistan nearly five years ago to help
the Communist government oppose the insurgents.
    In a broadcast monitored in neighboring Pakistan, Radio Kabul said
two sections in the southeast part of the capital, Qalai Zaman Khan
and Cement Khana, were the targets of an attack that began on
Saturday night and lasted into Sunday morning.
    The report claimed the rebels fired Chinese- and American-made
rockets but did not say how many. It said the rockets collapsed
several houses.
    Immediately after the attack, security forces fired ''long-range
rockets'' at the rebels, the broadcast said.
    In another development, Radio Kabul said three rebels were executed
Saturday after being sentenced to death by a special military court
in Ghazni city, southeast of Kabul. It said they belonged to the
Islamic Revolutionary Movement group and had attacked the Ghazni jail
and freed prisoners.
    
AP-NY-11-25-84 2209EST
***************

a225  1240  25 Dec 84
AM-Afghanistan, Bjt,0741
Soviet Troops On Alert For Attacks On Invasion Anniversary
An AP Extra
By MICHAEL GOLDSMITH
Associated Press Writer
    PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - The 115,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan
have been placed on alert for an expected wave of attacks by
Mujahedeen Islamic guerrillas Dec. 27, the fifth anniversary of the
Soviet military intervention.
    Mudjahedeen leaders based in Peshawar, and Western diplomatic
observers who watch the UFHAN WAR FROM THIS Pakistan border city say
the guerrillas are planning attacks on Soviet military installations
and convoys throughout Afghanistan to demonstrate that the
five-year-old Soviet campaign to ''pacify'' Afghanistan has failed.
    ''We intend to drive home to them that they are fighting virtually
the entire Afghan people in a war they can never win,'' said Massoud
Khalili, spokesman for Jamiat Islami, one of the main resistance
movements.
    Western intelligence sources reported that the Soviets have set up
strongpoints in the capital, Kabul, and other major cities and have
intensified their anti-guerrilla sweeps in the countryside in
anticipation of the anniversary attacks.
    In recent weeks, the Mujahedeen have launched almost daily rocket
attacks on Kabul and its strategically vital airport from positions
in the surrounding hills. The guerrillas' Western-made rocket
launchers are highly mobile and have survived carpet-bombing by
high-altitude planes and search-and-destroy operations by airborne
troops.
    The Mujahedeen movement is sharply divided on political, religious,
regional and tribal lines, and all attempts to mold the guerrillas
into a unified fighting force under a single command have collapsed.
The leaders in exile in Pakistan agree that their own divisions are
the Soviets' greatest strength.
    ''To overcome these divisions completely would require obliterating
the memory of centuries of religious and tribal feuds,'' Khalili
said. ''It has not proved possible in five short years, but we are
making progress.
    ''Meanwhile, we are at least united in our determination to get the
Godless invaders out of our country.''
    The Soviets' anti-guerrilla campaign has devastated the mountainous
rural areas, destroyed hundreds of villages and driven millions of
Afghans from their homes.
    International relief officials estimate that one-third of
Afghanistan's 18 million inhabitants have fled from the war, 3
million to camps in Pakistan, 1 million to Iran, and about 2 million
living as ''internal refugees'' under surveillance of the
Soviet-backed Afghan army.
*** Correct 
    Those in Pakistan, by far the largest accumulation of refugees in
the world, are fed and housed by United Nations agencies and other
relief organizations that have collectively spent more than $500
million on aid since Soviet tanks, infantry and paratroopers entered
Afghanistan before dawn on Dec. 27, 1979.
    The ''internal refugees'' remain at the mercy of the Afghan
communist regime of President Babarak Karmal. Lars Nelson, acting
head of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, a private relief
organization, said the Karmal government was making a ''minimum
effort'' to feed them.
    The London-based Afghan Aid Committee reported recently that the
exodus of Afghanistan's rural population and the continuous Soviet
bombing and crop-burning raised a threat of famine for these homeless
Afghans.
    In Pakistan, the refugees mostly live in primitive adobe huts in
hundreds of camps scattered across the Northwest Frontier Province.
Officials of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
estimate that 48 percent of them are children and 28 percent are
women. There are hardly any men under 40 - they live mostly in
privately financed ''bachelor camps,'' a local euphemism for
guerrilla training camps.
    Although the United Nations has strict rules against giving
assistance to the guerrillas, Soviet diplomats have repeatedly
protested to Pakistan authorities that the international relief
operation constitutes ''illegal assistance to bandits.''
    The Mujahedeen receive hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms
and other aid from the oil-rich Islamic states.
    Last month, an overwhelming majority of the U.N. General Assembly
for the sixth time demanded the ''immediate and total withdrawal'' of
Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The pro-Soviet minority included the
delegate of the Karmal regime, who said the Russians were legally
invited to Afghanistan to ''crush criminal, counterrevolutionary
bandit groups armed, trained and controlled by Pakistan and China.''
    Pakistan's military leader, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, sympathizes
with the guerrillas and gives them sanctuary. Nearly 150 Pakistanis
have died this year in border raids by Afghan planes and artillery.
    The Karmal regime has systematically rejected Zia's protests and, in
turn, accused him of launching attacks across the border.
    Four sessions of U.N.-sponsored talks in Geneva between Pakistan and
the Karmal regime to obtain a Soviet withdrawal have come to nothing.
    
 
 
AP-NY-12-25-84 1540EST
***************

a232  1336  25 Dec 84
AM-Soviets-Afghanistan, Bjt,0647
Afghan War Almost Unmentioned By Soviets
An AP Extra
EDITOR'S NOTE - Five years after the Soviet Union intervened on the
side of Afghanistan's government against Moslem rebels, Soviet troops
remain in the rugged, mountainous land. But they are seldom mentioned
publicly.
---
By ALISON SMALE
Associated Press Writer
    MOSCOW (AP) - Five Decembers ago the Soviet Union sent more than
80,000 Red Army troops across the border into Afghanistan in an
intervention that shocked world leaders.
    Five years later, the Kremlin has sent more troops but has failed to
crush the Moslem insurgents battling the the Moscow-supported Afghan
government. And in a country that daily extolls the 20 million
Soviets who died in World War II, the fighting and casualties in
Afghanistan are rarely mentioned in public.
    The Soviet military, among the most secretive institutions in a
society obsessed with secrecy, had kept preparations for the Dec. 27
incursion so quiet that it took Western intelligence by surprise.
    Reports from Afghanistan in the state-controlled Soviet news media
have lately changed in tone. Reports call the fighting there a
''war'' and make plain that Soviet soldiers face fierce resistance
and are getting killed and injured.
    But such reports are few and still are outweighed by stories about
how the ''limited contingent'' of Soviet troops helps Afghans build
schools, form collective farms and learn to read.
    Soviets rarely discuss the war with foreigners, although several
report Afghanistan is often discussed privately - especially by
mothers anxious that their sons will have to fight there.
    A Moscow student in her early 20s recently complained, ''There are
no men around. They are all being sent to the army, to Afghanistan.''
    Soviets and diplomats in Moscow say soldiers from the Moslem
republics of the Soviet Union formed the bulk of the contingent
originally sent to Afghanistan.
    Foreign diplomats and the Soviets willing to talk about the war
spoke on condition they not be identified.
    But an Arab diplomat generally well-informed about the military said
recently commanders now rely on ethnic Russian recruits and raid
northern institutes and colleges to make up manpower quotas.
    The military is even depriving its key Western front of some men, to
send them to Afghanistan, the diplomat said.
    Soviet soldiers who defected and were interviewed by Western
reporters this year said recruits are often not told they will go to
Afghanistan, and know only by the ''280'' code stamped on their draft
papers.
    A defector identified as Vladislav Naumov said he was trained in
house-to-house fighting in Tadzhikistan near the Afghan border. He
said that afterward, on the plane to Afghanistan, recruits were told
they were going to Poland.
    Another defector, Sergei Busov, said he spent 2 1/2 months training in
mountainous terrain in Turkmenia before going to fight in similar
conditions in Afghanistan.
    Such training indicates the Soviet military has been adapting to
fighting its first land war since World War II in the very different
circumstances of Afghanistan, where the tanks beloved by Soviet
commanders on flat European plains are virtually useless.
    Tactics have switched to razing rebel villages and bombing
guerrillas, who have few anti-aircraft missiles and no air power.
    An Asian diplomat says senior Soviet foreign policy officials are
nonetheless ''very worried'' that the sophisticated equipment going
to Afghanistan is not helping the Soviets win the war.
    One reason is the backing the guerrillas receive - from such
countries as Saudi Arabia, China and the United States.
    For many Islamic countries, some of them wealthy from the sale of
oil, it is a religious war and a duty to give the Moslem guerrillas
money.
    The Soviet government newspaper Izvestia in October carried a
detailed report on the organization and financing of the guerrillas.
    Diplomats in Moscow saw the report as an indication the Soviets are
facing the fact that, although a superpower, they confront
well-organized opposition that cannot easily be crushed.
    
AP-NY-12-25-84 1635EST
***************

n097  1859  27 Dec 84
AM-AFGHAN
By GERALD M. BOYD
c.1984 N.Y. Times News Service
    LOS ANGELES - President Reagan, marking five years since Soviet
forces joined the fighting in Afghanistan, said Thursday that the
event was ''a day of infamy'' reminiscent of Pearl Harbor.
    ''There is no legitimate excuse for a great power like the Soviet
Union that is doing what it is doing to the people of Afghanistan,''
Reagan said as he left Washington for five days of vacation here and
at Palm Springs.
    The president, recalling Franklin D. Roosevelt's characterization of
the the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, said:
    ''A president once called a similar day a 'a day of infamy. I guess
that's exactly what this is also, the anniversary of a day of
infamy.''
    The Soviet Union entered the struggle in Afghanistan on Dec. 27,
1979.
    On Wednesday, U.S. assistance to Afghan guerrillas fighting Soviet
troops came under criticism this week. Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey,
R-N.H., charged Wednesday that the covert aid is being lost because
of mismanagment.
    ''It appears most of our aid is being lost in a leaky pipeline,''
Humphrey said. ''It appears there is serious mismanagement of our aid
program, perhaps of scandalous proportions.''
    Reagan, without confirming that such assistance was being provided,
disputed the charge.
    ''We do the best we can in anything of this kind, under very
difficult circumstances,'' he said.
    The president termed the Soviet combat role in Afghanistan ''a
serious impediment to the improvement of our bilateral relations''
and said the American people would continue their support for the
''noble struggle'' of anti-Soviet rebels there.
    The statement came two weeks before Secretary of State George P.
Shultz and the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei A. Gromyko, were
scheduled to meet in Geneva, Switzerland, to talk about how to limit
nuclear weapons, the first such American-Soviet talks in more than a
year.
    Later, the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, while also refusing
to confirm that covert American assistance was being provided, said
that one should ''look at the success of the Afghan rebels'' to
determine if the criticism was valid.
    
nyt-12-27-84 2157est
***************

a071  0707  28 Dec 84
PM-Soviet-China,0487
Soviet Envoy Signs 3 Pacts
By JEFF BRADLEY
Associated Press Writer
    PEKING (AP) - Soviet Deputy Premier Ivan V. Arkhipov, the
highest-ranked Kremlin envoy here since 1969, climaxed a nine-day
visit today by signing three cooperation agreements with China.
    Arkhipov's tour, however, while warmly received, did not resolve
longstanding political differences between the two communist nations,
diplomatic sources indicated.
    ''The visit has given a boost to economic cooperation, but has made
no political progress,'' said one senior diplomat in Peking.
    The three accords call for technological exchanges, scientific
collaboration including the sharing of research, and the
establishment of a joint committee to promote trade and other
cooperation.
    The official Chinese news agency Xinhua said Arkhipov and Vice
Premier Yao Yilin signed the pacts on behalf of their governments.
    Arkhipov also met today with Peng Zhen, 82-year-old chairman of
China's National People's Congress.
    State-run television showed the two men embracing warmly. Peng,
former mayor of Peking, said it had been 25 years since they last saw
each other. ''Of course I wanted to see you,'' he told Arkhipov
through a Russian interpreter.
    Arkhipov, 77, was senior Soviet adviser here in the 1950s when
Moscow poured aid into the newly established People's Republic of
China. He returns home Saturday.
    Despite the two countries' 25-year-long estrangement over strategic
and ideological differences, Arkhipov gave his nod to the texts of
the three agreements within three days of his Dec. 21 arrival.
    Xinhua said the scientific pact calls for exchanges of scholars and
research data, while the technical agreement foresees cooperation on
production technology, industrial renovation and training.
    The two countries also reached agreement on a 1986-1990 trade pact
to be signed in the first half of next year.
    Although the talks have focused on economic issues, the Chinese
reminded Arkhipov of three major political ''obstacles'' to
rapprochement - the massing of Soviet troops on the Chinese border,
Moscow's backing for the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, and the
Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.
    Unlike past years, however, the Chinese media refrained from marking
the Dec. 27 anniversary of the 1979 Soviet-backed coup in
Afghanistan, an occasion which usually draws harsh words from Peking
about superpower hegemony.
    Diplomatic sources said the Soviets raised the possibility of
opening consulates in Shanghai and other major cities, but there was
no Chinese response. Currently, the neighbors have embassies in their
respective capitals but no consulates. The United States runs
consulates in Shanghai, Canton and Shenyang.
    Chinese-Soviet trade has expanded from $300 million in 1982 to at
least $1.05 billion this year with an agreed 35 percent increase next
year. Although far below levels of the 1950s, commercial relations
improved when political normalization talks began in 1982.
    A sixth round of talks is scheduled in Moscow next April.
    According to diplomatic sources, Moscow has been asked to help
renovate about 40 plants designed by Soviet experts before Nikita
Khrushchev abruptly withdrew all aid in 1960.
    
AP-NY-12-28-84 1004EST
***************

    MOSCOW (AP) - Anti-Marxist rebels detonated a mine in a mosque in an
Afghan village, killing five people, the Soviet news agency Tass said
in a dispatch from Afghanistan.
    Tass said in the dispatch from Kabul, the Afghan capital, that the
bombing in the Herat province of Fushfar caused an undisclosed number
of injuries.
    Tass said the rebels, ''encouraged and financed by the Western
secret services,'' also had burned down other mosques in Afghanistan
and killed religious figures. Tass provided no details on other
incidents.
    Soviet soldiers entered Afghanistan in December 1979 to support the
Marxist government of President Babrak Karmal in its fight against
the rebels.