Word: kabul
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Entering the U.S. embassy in Kabul, for example, a visitor is scrutinized at a dozen different fallback layers of security. First he has to sign in, have his passport checked and business verified at a gatehouse. Searchlights sometimes follow him across the courtyard, closed-circuit TV cameras beam his image to half a dozen screens inside. Behind the electronically controlled door, credentials are checked again, cameras and tape recorders yielded. An electronic detection booth checks further for hidden weapons; Marines stand ready to frisk thoroughly. Finally, when a member of the embassy staff emerges to provide a personal escort...
...results of the violent anti-Communist convulsion that swept the city were apparent in Kabul, cabled TIME'S Pearl Marshall, one of the few Western correspondents who managed to move freely in the capital. "Soviet infantrymen with Kalashnikov automatic rifles stand guard near the door of the Inter-Continental Hotel, where most Western journalists have been confined. Soviet tanks are still deployed near public buildings and key intersections. Other armored vehicles have effectively divided the city in two by blocking the bridges across the Kabul River. It is an apparent attempt to thwart any renewed threats of attack against...
Other reports said that a major battle took place near the central blue-domed Pul-i-Hesti mosque, where Muslim worshipers coursed through the streets waving Islamic banners. At least 15 students were said to have been killed when the anti-Soviet demonstrations spread to Kabul University. Hundreds of women and children were reported to have taken to the streets and taunted Afghan security forces to "Kill us! Kill us!" Radio Kabul broadcasts that urged shopkeepers and civil servants to return to their jobs also instructed parents to come to the "west entrance of Government House" to pick...
...Police cars with mounted loudspeakers toured commercial areas urging stores to reopen. Behind them along the same routes came other, private vehicles; their drivers and passengers shook their heads as a signal to the shopkeepers to ignore the appeals. Still, by week's end an estimated 85% of Kabul's shops had reopened, most government workers were reluctantly back at their jobs, and the city warily came back to life...
...first time, Moscow publicly acknowledged that all was not well. Pravda admitted on its front page that Kabul was beset by "unrest" and "insurgency." In the frankest admission of all, the official news agency TASS indicated that the Karmal government was in disfavor with a large part of the population. Another surprising admission was attributed by the Italian magazine Panorama to a Soviet general identified as Mikhail Kirian. He publicly conceded that "in the Afghan army, there have been deser tions," and that "the Afghans will have to work hard to put the army in order...