Word: badakhshan
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...soldiers in a mountain encampment and destroying 40 tanks. A band of rebels reportedly crossed the border between Afghanistan and the U.S.S.R. and managed to kill 200 Soviet troops. The rebels also claimed to have exploded a newly completed copper mine in the Logar Valley and coal mines in Badakhshan. They have been putting pressure on farmers to cut back on spring planting. Partly for that reason, this year's grain crop will be only 75% of normal. When two grape growers pruned their vines, in violation of the rebels' orders, insurgents cut off the growers' ears...
...occupation force effectively controlled all of Afghanistan's major cities and highways, but still faced considerable resistance in rural areas; perhaps 80% of the barren countryside remained in rebel hands. After a four-day lull, attacks by Muslim insurgents flared again in the northeast provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar. Civil unrest, according to U.S. intelligence reports, erupted repeatedly inside Kandahar, an ancient trading center on the edge of the Desert of Death. Soviet forces also found themselves in confrontation with mutinous units of the crumbling Afghan army; on at least one occasion, at the southern town...
...rigidly Muslim in outlook for some rebels. Another Muslim group, Jamiat-i-Islami, is led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, 40, a former professor of religion at Kabul University. Although Jamiat is considered more tolerant than Hekmatyar's group, Rabbani has no personal following outside of his native Badakhshan province, and his proposed alternative to Communism in Kabul seems woefully quaint: bring deposed King Mohammed Zahir back from exile in Italy...
...stubborn bands of mujahidin (holy warriors), as the guerrillas call themselves, appeared to have concentrated their fighting in two regions: in the desert flats of the southwest, mainly around the city of Kandahar; and in the mountain provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan in the northeast. Last week the Soviets found themselves rushing to the rescue of Afghan units in both sectors...
There were other clashes in widely scattered areas. Afghan rebels claimed to have ambushed and routed a Soviet column in Bamian province northwest of Kabul. Fighting was said to be taking place in Logar province south of the capital, in Badakhshan and Takhar along the northeast frontier with the Soviet Union, in the southern city of Kandahar and in the desert wastes west of Herat and Farah. Concluded a Western observer: "The Soviet plan seems to be to secure the capital and seal the borders. If escape routes to Iran and Pakistan are cut, I am sure they are confident...