Afghanistan an Abrupt Shuffle of Puppets

By Pico Iyer.

; The storm had been gathering around Party Chief Babrak Karmal for months. In February, at the 27th Communist Party congress in Moscow, the Afghan leader, who first came to power when Soviet troops stormed Kabul in December 1979, was denied a private audience by Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The following month Karmal abruptly disappeared from view, even failing to show up at his country's Revolutionary Day parade--the equivalent, noted a Western diplomat in Islamabad, of "staying away from one's own birthday party." Meanwhile, the Soviet newspaper Pravda ran a front-page story attacking Karmal's failure to build a stable base of support for his Communist regime. Rumors had it that the Afghan chieftain was visiting the Soviet Union for treatment of a lung problem or leukemia. But many observers suspected that his problems were more than medical.

Three days after he returned from Moscow, their suspicions proved correct: Radio Kabul announced that Karmal was stepping down to assume the ceremonial position of President. His successor as General Secretary is Major General Mohammed Najibullah, 39, a doctor known for his hard-line fidelity to Moscow and his ruthless efficiency for the past five years as head of Khad, the dread Afghan secret police. Although the transition was managed peacefully--the previous three Afghan leaders had been killed during transfers of power --Soviet tanks took up positions in the hills outside Kabul, and armored units patrolled the city to prevent a violent backlash from Karmal loyalists. The leadership change seems to have been timed to highlight a major Soviet military offensive in the eastern part of the country and coincide with the opening of the seventh and last round of the Afghan-Pakistani peace talks in Geneva.

Some Western analysts were inclined to downplay the shift. As one Washington official joked, "The puppeteer now has a new puppet." Certainly Najibullah, a loyal protege of Karmal's, seems unlikely to lead his country in any radically new directions. However, having built the secret police into a disciplined, KGB-style network of 60,000 agents, the major general may bring a new intensity to the civil war with the mujahedin rebels. Najibullah is, says a European diplomat in Islamabad, "an efficient killer."

Unlike Karmal, who is a member of the small, Dari-speaking elite, Najibullah has the advantage of belonging to the country's dominant Pushtu tribe. The new leader is therefore well placed to get fellow Pushtuns in Pakistan to cut guerrilla supply lines and unify the ranks of a regime so sharply divided that it is sometimes referred to as an example of "two-party Communism." If Najibullah can consolidate a solid and loyal Soviet-style government, Moscow may feel secure enough to withdraw its 120,000 troops from Afghanistan.

That the Soviets are eager to pull out is generally agreed. At the February party congress, Gorbachev described Afghanistan as a "bleeding wound" and expressed his desire to see Soviet troops return home "in the nearest future." This is hardly surprising, given the up to 30,000 Soviet lives already lost in the Afghan adventure. "A lot of coffins are going back to the Soviet Union, and there's starting to be some muted opposition," says one State Department official. "Previously, reports in the Soviet press emphasized 'Ivan' romantically going off to help his country cousin fight off American imperialism. Now it's 'Ivan' going off to risk his life in a very dangerous place."

Recently, however, Soviet forces have only intensified their attacks on mujahedin and civilians alike. Three weeks ago, they dealt the insurgents their worst defeat this year when Soviet air and ground forces demolished a critical rebel stronghold and supply point at Jawar, just 20 miles from Pakistan. According to Kabul, 2,000 rebels died in the attack. For their part, the insurgents have by no means lost their will to fight. Last month they set off more than 40 explosions in Kabul on a single day, and in a typical attack in Ghazni, south of the capital, they picked off roughly 100 government soldiers.

As the war drags on without any sign of resolution, so too do the "proximity talks." Because Pakistani officials refuse to meet their Afghan counterparts face to face, U.N. Under Secretary-General Diego Cordovez has had to shuttle back and forth between two rooms in Geneva's Palais des Nations. Despite those unpromising conditions, Cordovez has managed to bring the two sides close to agreement on three major points: an end to interference from abroad, an international guarantee of Afghan neutrality and an arrangement that would allow refugees to return.

Any final agreement, however, hinges upon the date and duration of a Soviet pullout. Those issues, so far, remain unresolved. The Pakistanis are continuing to call for a troop withdrawal within the next six months, while the Afghan government anticipates a delay of at least 18 months. The mujahedin scorn all political solutions on the ground that their interests are not represented in Geneva. In the meantime, the number of Afghans forced out of their homeland by the war amounts to almost 5 million, or nearly half the world's entire refugee population, and the number is mounting each day.

With reporting by Mohammed Aftab/Islamabad and Ricardo Chavira/Washington