Word: mujahedin
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Only three months ago, the Pakistani border town of Teri Mangal bustled with a busy bazaar and a steady flow of Afghan mujahedin rebels on their way to or from the fighting in Afghanistan. Today Teri Mangal is deserted. On March 23, Soviet-built Afghan MiGs roared across the frontier, demolishing many of the shops that sold arms to the guerrillas and leveling the simple clapboard flophouses where they bedded down for the night. The raid claimed more than 80 lives...
...that time Washington pressured Islamabad to permit the Afghan guerrillas in Pakistan's border province to receive Stinger antiaircraft missiles from the U.S. Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq reluctantly went along, despite a warning from the Soviet Union that Pakistan would pay a high price. By last November, mujahedin equipped with Stingers were shooting down an average of one Soviet or Afghan aircraft a day. Last week, according to Radio Kabul, the rebels struck again, downing an Afghan transport plane and reportedly killing 53 people. Shortly after the weapons began to reach the rebels last fall, Afghan air strikes...
Gorbachev hinted that Moscow might accede to a role for the long-deposed monarch in Afghanistan, where 115,000 Soviet troops have been fighting a war of attrition against mujahedin rebels for the past seven years. Dismissing charges that he would withdraw Soviet troops only if a Moscow-dominated government remained in power, Gorbachev invited the Afghans to seek new leadership "in their own country, among refugees and emigrants abroad, or maybe in . . . Italy." That was an apparent reference to Mohammed Zahir Shah, 72, who served as Afghanistan's monarch from 1933 until he was overthrown...
...border with Pakistan, requires a zigzagging flight of nearly an hour and a half. Taking off from the capital, lumbering Soviet-made An-26 transports climb steadily in defensive spirals. From pods mounted on their fuselages, they trail bright orange flares to divert heat-seeking Stinger missiles that the mujahedin rebels might launch from hidden positions below...
With much bravado, the Kabul government now contends that the seven-year- old mujahedin rebellion will fade away once its support from Pakistan and the U.S. ceases. Explained a Western diplomat in Kabul last week: "The Soviets are going to portray the Pakistanis as aggressive and to justify even more pressure on Islamabad." As part of its reconciliation drive, Kabul has downplayed the threat from the rebels and begun referring to them not as "counterrevolutionar ies" but as "opposition forces...