Word: kunduz
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...winter and their recent battlefield successes. The Soviet-Afghan retreat from the valley was triggered when the rebels overran a government stronghold at Tambana last May. Then in August and September, Jamiat fighters expanded their control by sweeping through the northeastern cities of Khanabad, Taliqan, Keshem and most of Kunduz, the provincial capital. That leaves only one town, Faizabad, in government hands in the northeast...
Translated, that means Moscow will continue to help the Najibullah < government avoid military defeat. Earlier this month the regime's forces lost two provincial capitals in the northeast: Taliqan, a relatively insignificant small city, and Kunduz, a strategic strong point. Though Afghan troops, supported by Soviet air power, subsequently recaptured Kunduz, Moscow apparently regarded the setbacks as serious enough to quash earlier suggestions that the 50,000 troops still in Afghanistan might be home by the end of the year, well ahead of the Feb. 15, 1989, deadline established under the Geneva accords signed by Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, Pakistan...
According to U.S. intelligence sources, in fact, the regime regained Kunduz only after Soviet fighter-bombers based in the Soviet Union blasted and strafed rebel positions, reducing portions of the city to rubble. Washington considers the sorties a violation of the Geneva accords, as well as a serious threat to the mujahedin's efforts on the battlefield. If the Soviets fear that their Afghan comrades are not tough enough to fend off the mujahedin, Western analysts and rebel leaders have quite the opposite concern: so far, Najibullah's troops have been showing more gumption than expected. Around Jalalabad, a city...
...their Soviet allies willing to see them beaten in a major engagement, as they nearly were at Kunduz. The city of about 40,000, straddling a main road to the Soviet border 37 miles away, fell to units of Jamiat-i-Islami and Gulbuddin's Hezb-e-Islami six days after the 10,000-man Soviet garrison pulled out. The guerrillas overran the government defenders and freed the prisoners at the local jail, but failed to capture the heavily defended airport. Within two days government reinforcements closed in, and Soviet aircraft went to work. After three days of fighting...
...wake of Kunduz and other rebel setbacks, Western analysts' predictions that major Afghan cities would fall quickly once the Soviets pulled out look overly optimistic. Says a Western diplomat in Kabul: "The mujahedin are not capable of waging large-scale conventional warfare. The regime still has superior firepower and transport capacity...