Lynn Walsh: Afghanistan – Can the guerrillas ever win?

[Militant No. 607, 25th June 1982, p. 11]

First part of a two-part article by Lynn Walsh

“Russians fight losing battle in Afghanistan.”

This recent headline in The Times is typical of the capitalist press of the West, which has been predicting the imminent downfall of the Barbrak Karmal regime ever since the Russian forces invaded the country in December 1979.

Many of the press stories, supposedly based on “refugee sources” in Pakistan, bear all the hallmarks of CIA black propaganda.

However, more realistic reports in serious journals, including some reports in The Times itself, confirm the prognosis made by Militant at the time of the invasion: that the guerrillas, despite US backing, would not defeat the Russian and Afghan forces; and that the Karmal regime, stepping back from the excesses of the previous Amin leadership, would gradually consolidate its position through the implementation of economic and social reforms.

One of the most outrageous propaganda stories, publicly announced by the US deputy secretary of state, Walter Stoessel, in March this year was that the Russian forces were using chemical weapons. He claimed that 3,042 people had died in 47 chemical attacks, which involved the use of irritants, nerve gas, and other lethal, toxic agents.

However, as one of The Times’s more reliable journalists, Trevor Fishlock, reported, “western journalists have interviewed hundreds of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and exiles in India without hearing any reliable reports of chemical attacks.” (15 March) Fishlock also said that a number of reporters had also made clandestine journeys into Afghanistan with the Mujahidin guerrillas, but had found no remnants of gas attacks. Nor had any border-area hospitals which have been treating Afghan sick and wounded found any such evidence.

Commenting on Stoessel’s figures, Fishlock wrote: “reporters and other observers have learned that among the Mujahidin and other Afghans there is a penchant for exaggeration and a willingness to tell a questioner what he wants to hear. It is also characteristic of Afghan testimonial that figures are precise as well as exaggerated, so that the figure of 3,042 dead has a rather Afghan ring to it.”

Another favourite propaganda story is that Russian soldiers are so beleaguered that they hardly dare step out of their barracks: “No Russian,” claimed another Times correspondent, Karan Thatpar, “is welcome in Kabul, and they know it. For them almost every Afghan is in turn suspect. That is why the Russians live in special housing complexes, behind barbed wire and protected by their own security and armour. When they venture out, they prefer to do so in groups seeking the safety of their own number.” (The Times, 3 March)

This kind of story was commented on by David Lomax (Listener, 18 March, 1982) who visited Afghanistan earlier in the year to make a film report for Panorama (BBC 1, 22 March): “There have been repeated stories in the West that Russians off duty in Kabul are so frightened of having their throats cut in some dark corner of the bazaar that they either do not shop at all or else disguise their identity with glaring T-shirts bearing legends like University of California. This story is a particular favourite on the Western diplomatic cocktail circuit. To test it, I managed to escape my guide one day, and spent many hours wandering all over the back streets of the city. I was taken for a Russian everywhere, but never once encountered the slightest hostility.” (Our emphasis – LW)

Apart from the enforcement of the 10pm-4am curfew, Lomax commented that “otherwise the presence of the military is not obvious, and the streets and the bazaars are bursting with noise, dirt and activity of every kind.” He remarked; “The atmosphere in the city itself was far more relaxed than I had expected.”

All the signs are, that despite massive US backing, the guerrillas are no nearer to success than early in 1980. Under Carter, the US administration allocated $20-$30 million, and Reagan has undoubtedly stepped this up. Arms, paid for by the US, have been sent from Egypt and a number of other ‘Islamic’ countries.

Yet amidst numerous reports of guerrilla ‘successes’ and Russian problems, The Times (28 December 1981) carried an unsigned article which boldly admitted that the guerrillas “can never win. That is they can never be instrumental in driving the Russians out.” They could harass the regime’s forces, but “they can never be much more than Geronimos.”

Contradicting even their own reports on the Russians’ inability to “control the country,” The Times admits that “much depends on the meaning of control. The hinterland …has always been outside law and government, the provinces of chieftains living by ancient codes of guns, feud, revenge and hospitality.”

The Mujahidin are, in any case, divided into rival groups, which reportedly spend as much time in settling internal disputes as they do in fighting the Russians. Clearly, they are used as the cat’s paw of reaction, manipulated both by the landlords and regional chiefs within the country and by the United States and its client regimes outside.