Word: kabul
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...huge, balloon-like fuel depots. In the early days, Russian soldiers patrolled the snow-covered streets and manned checkpoints throughout the city. By night they cruised the area in armored cars, sporadically firing into the starry sky. "The object of the shooting," said a traveler who managed to leave Kabul on the daily bus to Pakistan, "was to keep people frightened and inside their homes...
...Kabul had already become an armed camp after 20 months of rising civil war throughout the country; now it is a Soviet garrison town as well. The Afghan police force has, for the most part, been disarmed; Afghan army units, when visible at all, can occasionally be seen squatting along the roads outside town, always in the company of heavily armed Soviet troops. Roadblocks prevent the populace from moving about the city...
...Western journalists who had even a fleeting glance of the Afghan capital last week was Dutch Photographer Hubert Van Es, on assignment for TIME. On his way into town from the airport, Van Es saw Soviet tanks and troop carriers everywhere. After two nights of house arrest at the Kabul Inter-Continental Hotel, he managed to slip away for a look at downtown Kabul on New Year's Day. He found surprisingly few Soviet soldiers on the streets except in front of Radio Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry and the post office. Back at the hotel, an employee told...
...week, a steady stream of MiGs and Su-17 attack aircraft arrived at Kabul airport to support the Soviet forces in the countryside. Just five miles east of the capital, resistance was continuing at the Pule-Charkhi army headquarters. Instead of opening the gates of the fort, as the Soviets had ordered them to do, the Afghan troops stationed there had killed their Russian advisers and prepared for a siege. The Soviet forces were reluctant to storm the base, lest this lead to a massacre, but they quickly surrounded it. Their solution was to position 20 tanks, their gun barrels...
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...