BEATING A FALSE RETREAT
Robert Cranborne warns that
the Russians could still stay in Afghanistan
THE captains and kings depart from Afghanistan. Just in time for his retirement President Reagan can rejoice in a victory against the evil empire, won against its soft underbelly. The high contracting parties have signed the Geneva accords. The guarantors have made their own undertak- ings. The Soviets are going. Najib will fall almost immediately. Isn't it all just the most dutiful bream, as Dr Spooner put it so elegantly?
Up to a point. The trouble with the Geneva accords is that both the Soviets and the Americans needed an agreement. The Soviets were beginning to find the Afghan mire embarrassing internationally at a time when summits and détente had come back into fashion. The Americans, who had been spending at least $800 million a year supporting the Afghan re- sistance directly, and substantially more indirectly through their already substantial military aid to Pakistan, needed a victory to proclaim at the polls. Reagan also needed a successful end to the conflict before conscience would allow him to throw himself into the arms of Gorbachev. However, like so many diplomatic agree- ments, the Geneva accords do not address themselves to the realities — in this case of Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier. They merely satisfy the rules of the dip- lomatic quadrille. The Soviets and the Americans explicitly acknowledged this when both agreed before signing at Gene- va that each party would continue to supply its friends so long as the other did so. Geneva, therefore, marks the begin- ning of a new phase of the current Afghan war, not its end.
Fortunately (for the Afghan resistance and its friends) the Soviets and their Afghan puppets face this new phase on the defensive. However, the resistance, the Pakistanis and the West, particularly the Americans, could rapidly lose their advan- tage unless they agree clearly how to proceed. Since the interests of all three are rather more diverse than perhaps some Americans may think, such agreement would be elusive at the best of times. If the West and the Pakistanis proceed on the assumption that the war is over bar the shouting it might become impossible. They 'Heard the one about the bishop and the actor?' must first recognise that the war will continue for at least another year.
Najibullah is perhaps stronger now than at any time since his accession to power. He has unlimited Soviet • supplies and a Soviet-run air force which is learning to cope with the Stinger threat. More impor- tant, he controls the towns. In Kabul, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, a proportion of the administrative class fear the Muslim fundamentalism of the one resistance lead- er the Pakistanis and the Americans have so far given most support to, Gulbuddin Hekkmatyar. Should Gulbuddin become, with Pakistani and American support, the dominating spirit of the resistance, urban support for Najib will grow.
Equally, the wrong approach to taking the towns will increase Najib's support too. Someone in the last few weeks suggested that the main resistance commanders in the area should surround the town of Jellala- bad and take it by frontal assault. The commanders quite rightly refused, saying that if they failed it would be a tremendous blow to the resistance, while, even if they succeeded, indiscriminate bombardment of the civilian population would feed Najib's support in other towns, making them in turn much tougher nuts to crack. Some commanders claim that the idea for a frontal assault came from the CIA. The Americans deny it. The Pakistanis, too, deny any responsibility. It is devoutly to be hoped that whoever thought of it has been sent to languish among the Soviet and Afghan torturers and assassins who control Kabul's Pol-i-Charki jail. Frontal assault is not the way to begin the urban phase of a guerrilla war, particularly as Pushtun Afghans are individualists.
Before the resistance launches its assault on the towns it needs to determine its military strategy for taking them, and its political strategy for holding them and governing them afterwards. The two ele- ments are closely linked. By all means cut off supplies, by all means intimate that the resistance's victory is only a matter of time, by all means attack power stations and blow up the more hated elements of the regime: but only make the bulk of the population uncomfortable enough for it to be tempted by resistance promises of a more broadly based government, co- operation in rebuilding the country and a general amnesty. Then there is the difficult question of how to treat the Soviets. The conventional wisdom is that they are leaving, so it is unsporting and counterproductive to con- tinue to attack them. As so often the conventional wisdom is bred by self- deception out of a desire for reassurance. If the resistance does not succeed in ejecting Najib, the Soviets in one form or another will stay in Afghanistan and will support him militarily and economically. It makes no difference that the 100,300 Soviet troops may have left. For the last three years most of the fighting by the Soviets, as opposed to the Afghan army, has been undertaken by 20-25,000 special Soviet commando troops based in the Soviet Union and flown in when needed. The great airbases at Baghram and Shindand may nominally be returned to Najib's control on 15 February 1989, but the Soviets have already intimated that they intend to leave several thousand 'advisers' behind when they go.
The political situation is fiendishly com- plicated. Until now the Americans and the Pakistanis have channelled virtually all help inside Afghanistan via the alliance formed three or four years ago by the seven principal parties of the resistance. They hoped thus to unite the resistance political- ly and militarily. It was always a fond hope. It might have been possible to unite the `moderate' parties led by Maulawi Nabi Mahoumedi, Pir Ahmed Gailani and Pro- fessor Mojadidi, but the scheme to unite the four 'fundamentalists', let alone 'fun- damentalists' and 'moderates' was a triumph of hope over experience. The result that is even now becoming evident surprises the State Department, but not most long-term Afghan watchers. The refugees, who initially entertained high hopes of the alliance, now view the seven leaders with resigned cynicism which occasionally erupts into anger. The com- manders inside, who after all are the ones fighting the war, still depend on the seven leaders as a source of money and weapons, but as they capture more Soviet material from Najib's troops their independence increases. Some, indeed, like Ahmed Shah Mahsoud of the Panjshir and Ishmael Khan of Herat, have depended little on the parties in Peshawar for their supplies any- Way and began to establish their own independent administrations long since. However, even those commanders who have relied on the Pakistani-based parties for supplies and have tended to be from the Pushtun south and west of Afghanistan are beginning to consider an ultimatum to the seYe0 parties. At last some of them are beginning tp talk to each other and are agreeing on one thing at least: the inade- quacy of the seven parties in Peshawar. Whether the commanders succeed in persuading the parties to become more effective or whether they increasingly take Power into their own hands would take a brave man to predict. However, there is a good case for arguing that Afghanistan's friends in the West should encourage the latter course, since the first is probably already impossible. There is, then, a clear policy which Pakistan and the West should pursue. A little persuasion in the next week or two might convince the three chief participants, the Pakistanis, the Saudis and the Amer- icans. Who could supply the shove? Well, the British understand the North-West Frontier, and in spite of the recent slight delivered by the Pakistanis when they released the Afghan murderers of a British journalist, are respected in the region.
The difficulty, as so often, is the Prime Minister. She is frightened not to toe the present American line at the very time when the Americans are beginning to look for something more effective. Her rhetoric has supported the Afghan resistance from the beginning and as a result they respect and admire her. What a pity that just when she could be of real help to them she shows neither the inclination nor the understand- ing even to try to come to their aid. As the Soviets shoot her Afghan friends in Pol-i- Charki she is too busy doing business with Mr Gorbachev and sheltering behind the terms of an agreement that meant little even before it was signed.
Lord Cranborne is chairman of The Afghan Information Office.
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