Word: khyber
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Other Soviet units moved east from conquered Kabul toward the Khyber Pass and into Paktia province, a center of the Muslim insurgence. The Soviet command post is at Termez, where they have built a satellite communications station to give them a direct link to Moscow. The Soviets now have two airborne divisions and two motorized infantry divisions in Afghanistan, plus support troops, to bring their total strength...
...that defies measure. In January 1842, after an adventure in Afghanistan, the British ordered the withdrawal of 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers from Kabul. A week later, the sole survivor of the march, a field surgeon named Brydon, staggered into Jalalabad on the way to the Khyber Pass. The present generation of rebel tribesmen are hardly equipped to repeat such a feat. But, as a former U.S. Ambassador to Kabul, Robert Neumann, has observed, "Foreign invaders have found it easier to march into Afghanistan than to march...
...passport had just been stamped at the customs house at the Khyber Pass on the border with Pakistan when the shooting began. "It's the Muslim fanatics!" cried the Afghan immigration official, as he dived for cover into a pile of crumpled visa forms. Outside, border guards with flapping puttees, braying donkeys, and assorted smugglers and baggage handlers churned about in confusion. Quiet soon returned, but the rebels had made their point. "Very, very bad this jihad [holy war]," a local tea vendor muttered. "The mujahidin are everywhere...
...reckon that more than 12,000 political prisoners have been jailed. Major intersections in the capital, where an 11 p.m. curfew is in effect, are patrolled by soldiers, and the country's few highways are under heavy guard; eight police checkpoints dot the 115-mile route from the Khyber Pass to Kabul. Where the rebellion really flourishes is in the rugged narrow canyons of rural Afghanistan. There a single rifleman can hold off an infantry battalion...
...that they have seen a map, drawn in Moscow and secured by the Iranian intelligence service, showing a Greater Baluchistan that would connect the U.S.S.R. with the Arabian Sea. Similarly, an Islamabad diplomat refers darkly to the "Moscow-Kabul-Delhi axis." The Russians, he insists, "are now at the Khyber Pass." Certainly this is an exaggeration if not a delusion. It is also self-serving. The Pakistanis would like nothing better than to receive large-scale U.S. aid both to shore up the crumbling southern tier and to bolster their own security...