Word: kandahar
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...Afghan rebels, Soviet-led squads now retaliate by burning villages, fields and orchards and sometimes by executing the male inhabitants of nearby villages. Last July Soviet forces shot as many as 30 elders in the provincial capital of Ghazni. In October, after a series of raids on convoys outside Kandahar, the Soviets left some 100 civilians dead in nearby settlements. At times over the past year, they have mounted aerial and artillery attacks on Istalif, Herat and other cities, but without destroying the rebels' resiliency. Soon after the Soviet and Afghan government forces announced last August that they...
...region. Their objective, presumably, was to obliterate guerrilla strength around the crucial 50-mile stretch of highway leading from Kabul toward the Soviet border, along which the invaders transport their supplies. Meantime, according to Western intelligence reports, Soviet bombers were attacking targets near Herat in the west and around Kandahar in the south. They apparently hope that by demolishing villages they can devastate local agriculture and drive the residents from areas that might otherwise lend support to the insurgents. As Abdul Haq, a guerrilla commander interviewed in Pakistan, points out, "Every kind of supply for the mujahedin [warriors] comes from...
...stem the challenge posed by the stepped-up tempo of the insurgency, the Soviets last week sent reinforcements into Kandahar, a city of 125,000 in southern Afghanistan, and to the five provinces that border Pakistan and Iran. In part at least, the new Soviet operations, spearheaded by tanks and armored personnel carriers, were in response to the assassination last month of four Soviet advisers in Kandahar's main bazaar...
...have apparently given up their attempt to dislodge the fierce mujahidin (Islamic warriors) from their strongholds. Similarly, Soviet troops have been unsuccessful in efforts to reimpose order on the lawless city of Herat in the northwest, and have only managed to maintain a tenuous and frequently interrupted hold on Kandahar in the south. In Kabul, sniper and grenade attacks have forced a progressively longer and stricter curfew, most recently from 10 o'clock in the evening to 5 in the morning...
...while later the rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire could be heard in the distance, then the ka-boom of tank guns. The shooting continued sporadically through the afternoon and into the night. We slept fitfully and the next morning boarded the bus for the return journey to Kandahar. Not surprisingly, the bus was full...