Word: mujahedin
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...most punishing cross-border assault on Pakistan since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Pakistani officials speculated that the raids were a direct response to an earlier mujahedin attack on targets inside the Soviet Union. That too was news last week. Since Western correspondents are rarely allowed inside Afghanistan, battle accounts are slow to emerge and cannot be verified. According to rebel leaders and Western diplomats in Islamabad, guerrillas based in northern Afghanistan fired rockets across the Soviet border three weeks ago, killing twelve. It was the first report in several years of a mujahedin attack on Soviet territory...
...Antonov An-26 troop transport had just lumbered down the runway and taken off from Khost, near the Pakistan border, when it was blasted from the sky by mujahedin rebels. The incident, in which 37 Afghan soldiers and six crew members were killed, marked a coming of age of sorts for the mujahedin. Military analysts say the plane was the biggest prize yet claimed by the rebels' new arsenal of U.S.-made Stinger missiles...
Opposition forces, though, were unimpressed. The mujahedin guerrillas launched fresh attacks in eastern Afghanistan. In Washington, the Reagan Administration dispatched an envoy to Pakistan to discuss a Western response to the peace plan...
Rebel spokesmen were quick to reject the bid as a "deception," noting that Najibullah had not indicated whether the 115,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan would stay in their barracks. Said Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi, spokesman for the Islamic Alliance of Afghan Mujahedin: "We should have direct negotiations with the Soviets, and they should stop hiding behind the puppets in Kabul...
...interests of the rebels and the West, insists on no more than three or four months. "If the Soviets are as serious about seeking settlement as they have claimed," says U.S. State Department Spokesman Charles Redman, "then they should agree to a short timetable." In the meantime, the mujahedin no doubt plan to hold on to their rifles...