Word: mujahedin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...view from Red Square, however, was different. The Soviet army was bogged down in a no-win war against determined enemies who were fighting for their own land. The Communists' often savage tactics provoked protests around the world, increasing sympathy for the mujahedin. A popular American President had advanced a new, more assertive variant of containment, the so-called Reagan Doctrine of support for anti-Communist insurgents. Moreover, the war was an impediment to Soviet diplomacy. Wherever Moscow's emissaries went, especially in the Arab and Islamic worlds, the first question was "What about Afghanistan...
...month earlier, Michael Pillsbury, an aide to Republican Senator Gordon Humphrey, used similar back-channel methods to influence the Afghanistan peace talks. On a visit to Pakistan, Pillsbury met privately with Maulvi Khalis, the leader of the mujahedin rebels, and reportedly told him that the U.S. and the Soviet Union had signed a "secret protocol" at the rebels' expense. "What Pillsbury did was scandalous," says Under Secretary of State Michael Armacost, who heard the story from Pakistani officials. "If there isn't a law against it, there ought...
...Soviet Il-76 cargo plane lifted slowly into the bright morning air over Kabul International Airport last week. As it did, a string of incandescent flares dropped from the aircraft, a necessary defense against Stinger missiles, the U.S.-made, heat-seeking, antiaircraft weapons used by the mujahedin, Afghanistan's resistance. On the airport perimeter, sunburned Soviet soldiers stood around a formidable new stone-and-cement guard post topped by a hammer-and-sickle flag. Their thoughts were turning toward withdrawal from their flinty outpost. "Who wouldn't like to go home?" asked Victor Avershin, a blond, 19-year-old private...
...contingent from Afghanistan. But it will be a tense nine months before the pullout is complete. Under the terms of the Geneva accords signed by the U.S., the Soviet Union, Pakistan and Afghanistan, there is no cease-fire or promise of safe passage for Moscow's exiting forces. The mujahedin have refused to give any quarter to the Soviets, whose eight-year occupation has left more than 1 million Afghans dead...
...cover its retreat, Moscow is banking on the tenacity of Najibullah, the Afghan Communist leader installed by the Soviets in 1986, and his ragtag 150,000-member security force. Najibullah, the former chief of KHAD, the Afghan secret police, is trying to win over the mujahedin by promoting capitalism and elections and by playing up his adherence to the Muslim faith. His efforts have not impressed the rebels, but he evidently hopes to gain credibility in Western eyes...