Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Soviet Il-76 cargo plane lifted slowly into the bright morning air over Kabul International Airport last week. As it did, a string of incandescent flares dropped from the aircraft, a necessary defense against Stinger missiles, the U.S.-made, heat-seeking, antiaircraft weapons used by the mujahedin, Afghanistan's resistance. On the airport perimeter, sunburned Soviet soldiers stood around a formidable new stone-and-cement guard post topped by a hammer-and-sickle flag. Their thoughts were turning toward withdrawal from their flinty outpost. "Who wouldn't like to go home?" asked Victor Avershin, a blond, 19-year-old private...
United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar declared the occasion a "major stride in the effort to bring peace to Afghanistan," but his audience looked less than convinced. As diplomats from Pakistan, Afghanistan, the U.S. and the Soviet Union gathered in Geneva's Palais des Nations last week to sign an accord that secured the withdrawal of the 115,000 Soviet troops from Afghanistan beginning May 15, serious questions remained about a pact that had been under negotiation for the past six years...
After the signing, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz gave Perez de Cuellar a statement saying that Washington reserves the right to "provide military assistance to parties in Afghanistan." It added that "should the Soviet Union exercise restraint in providing military assistance to parties in Afghanistan, the U.S. similarly will exercise restraint." Since Moscow seems determined to support its Afghan ally at least for a while, the decision all but guaranteed continued warfare in a struggle that has taken more than a million lives since the Soviet invasion of December...
Though the Geneva accord will fall short of bringing immediate peace to Afghanistan, the signing was a remarkable turning point in the struggle. Much as the U.S. did in South Viet Nam, Moscow has decided to retire from a conflict it cannot win. An estimated 30,000 Soviet troops have died in the eight-year conflict (compared with nearly 50,000 U.S. troops in Viet Nam). The mujahedin denounced the accord last week, largely because they were not invited to participate, but they are nonetheless gleeful over the Soviet retreat. Said Nabi Mohammadi, the leader of Harakat...
...taking of Flight 422 raises tensions and tempers throughout the Middle East. -- Abu Jihad, Yasser Arafat' s second in command, is murdered in Tunis. -- An interview with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. -- Four nations sign an accord securing the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, but peace remains an elusive prospect...