Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Making his first trip out of his isolated, primitive country since he seized power in a military coup seven months ago, Afghanistan's leftist President Noor Mohammed Taraki naturally headed for Moscow, which was the first foreign capital that recognized his regime. After a warm greeting from Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, Taraki, 61, happily signed a 20-year "treaty of friendship, good neighborliness and cooperation" that is sure to increase concern in the West (as well as in Peking) that Afghanistan has become a new base for Soviet adventurism, one that spells particular trouble for the country...
...Gulf and its international oil fleets, and to fight off any possible Soviet invasion of Iran, until, they hope, reinforcements from the West could arrive. The generals see the current dissent as part of a grand Communist design, linked to Russian moves on the Horn of Africa and in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, a lot of the most sophisticated equipment, including British-made Chieftain tanks and F-4 Phantoms, was deployed around the capital rather than along the Soviet border, obviously to help protect the Shah...
...Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko is to be believed, prefers a stable Iran on its southern border. "You can't say that the Soviet hand isn't there," said a State Department aide about the latest unrest, "but we have no evidence. This isn't Afghanistan [where a military coup brought a pro-Moscow regime to power]. They don't want to contest us on this issue." The Russians, in fact, were suffering more immediately from the oilworkers' strike than the West was. While the Shah's allies worried about the potential future loss...
...government is under pressure to deliver on its reformist pledges and has been forced to turn to Soviet advisers to fill the manpower gap. There are now about 3,000 Russians in Afghanistan. One-third of them are military officers; their numbers have tripled since the coup. Meanwhile, the regime is desperately seeking to broaden its base by courting mass support among the 18 million people in one of the world's poorest and most ungovernable tribal societies...
...Soviet Union is already Afghanistan's largest customer and holds 62% of its $1.75 billion foreign debt. Russian aid deals come readymade on terms that would make even a Yankee trader blush. Repayment is usually in commodities, and price and quantity are renegotiated annually. Orange growers on a Soviet-aided project are whipsawed when the fruit reaches the border, where Soviet inspectors often rate it substandard and lower the price. Afghan natural gas is piped over the border. The Russians have craftily installed the meters on their side and pay for the gas at about one-third the world price...