Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...muster points in besieged garrison towns around Afghanistan, sentries in camouflage uniforms guard mounds of duffel bags, stripped-down weapons and communications gear. The streets teem with jeeps, armored personnel carriers, trucks, tanks, half-tracks, command cars, vans, ambulances. The vehicles are the beasts of burden for a caravan of retreat and defeat that will begin this week to wend its way through the rugged passes of the Hindu Kush, north toward home along the Salang Highway, which stretches from Kabul to the Soviet border. The road was a "gift" from the U.S.S.R. to the people of Afghanistan...
...weeks ago, in Geneva, Moscow promised to fulfill that wish: starting next month the Soviets will begin to withdraw their 115,000-man contingent from Afghanistan. But it will be a tense nine months before the pullout is complete. Under the terms of the Geneva accords signed by the U.S., the Soviet Union, Pakistan and Afghanistan, there is no cease-fire or promise of safe passage for Moscow's exiting forces. The mujahedin have refused to give any quarter to the Soviets, whose eight-year occupation has left more than 1 million Afghans dead...
...center think tank, paid a private visit to the ravaged country. Robert E. White, a former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, headed the tour. Over the span of a week, the group visited Kabul and Mazar-i- Sharif, a surprisingly peaceful city of more than 100,000 people on Afghanistan's border with the Soviet Union. One stop on the I.C.D.P. tour was a large, blue-tiled mosque, where about 1,500 men listened as a stooped, aged mullah read from the Koran. When several worshipers turned and glared at the intruders, however, the Afghan officials hustled the group...
...more friendly, in the person of Rasul Barat, 31, a dapper entrepreneur who boasted, "Half of Mazar-i-Sharif is mine." Barat welcomed his guests with a poolside barbecue complete with lamb kabob and imported German beer. Elected a short time ago to the Afghan legislature, & Barat claimed that Afghanistan's taxes were so low he had recently been able to import three autos, from Mercedes, Mitsubishi and Ford...
...believe that a fundamental or far-reaching power struggle is under way. Peter Danylow, an analyst of East-West affairs in Bonn, argues that a basic policy consensus must exist. The reason: it would otherwise be hard to imagine the Soviet leadership approving the agreement to withdraw forces from Afghanistan...