Word: mujahedin
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...Kabul. From the center of the city, it is easy to spot a series of outposts -- small, mud-walled fortresses -- on the snowy mountaintops that ring the capital. Soviet and Afghan troops man the redoubts around the clock, watching for guerrilla movement in the valleys beyond. As soon as mujahedin activity is spotted, Soviet artillery goes into action, and the boom of outgoing fire echoes through the city...
Then the question will be when, not if, the Soviet-backed regime of President Najibullah will fall. Though all the country's major cities are still under government control, Kandahar and Jalalabad, two of the five largest, have seen their defenses crumble under mujahedin attacks. Moscow insists it is determined to ensure the survival of Najibullah's government, but nearly all diplomats in Kabul believe the regime will collapse within months, perhaps even weeks, of Feb. 15. As the prospect of a bloody siege grew last week, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker ordered the closing of the American embassy...
Though Kabul has not yet come under consistent, heavy military barrage, the city is vulnerable to attacks that may cut the Salang Highway, the 264-mile road that climbs the towering Hindu Kush and crosses long stretches of mujahedin-controlled territory to the Soviet border. In a move to push the guerrilla forces back from the highway, Soviet and Afghan troops last week shelled villages south of the Salang Tunnel, killing hundreds of civilians and refugees...
...Soviet pullback from the capital began about three weeks ago, even as Yuli Vorontsov, the Soviet Ambassador to Afghanistan and a Deputy Foreign Minister, threatened that Moscow would halt the withdrawal if the mujahedin leadership did not accept some participation by Najibullah's People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (P.D.P.A.) in a shura, or council of leaders, that would choose a new government. The mujahedin, smelling a bluff, would not budge, and the pullout from Kabul continued...
...negotiated settlement to 13 years of fighting. In Kabul 500 Soviet soldiers, laden with equipment, lined up before military transport planes to fly home. Meanwhile, the Kremlin's Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, and his deputy, Yuli Vorontsov, met separately with the Afghan regime and the leaders of the mujahedin to discuss what amounted to the terms of the U.S.S.R.'s defeat...