Word: mujahedine
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...process, Gorbachev has thrown Washington, Pakistan and the rebel mujahedin off balance. "Gorbachev has taken the initiative," said a U.S. observer close to the Geneva talks. "If there is no peace agreement, people will blame us." The Reagan Administration seems unsure whether to trust Soviet intentions and the outcome of the Geneva talks. "Right now," said an Administration official, "there are loopholes big enough to drive a truck through...
Just after Gorbachev took office in 1985, the Soviets intensified the war and appeared to gain ground. Deadly Mi-24 helicopters and elite Spetsnaz commando units regularly ambushed rebel units and supply caravans with devastating effect: mujahedin casualties rose to all-time highs. Then the Reagan Administration began shipping Stingers, those compact but lethal antiaircraft missiles, to the guerrillas. Soon the air war turned around. By one conservative estimate, the Soviets last year alone lost 270 aircraft worth about $2.2 billion...
Today the mujahedin have all but rid the skies of Mi-24s and MiG and Sukhoi jet fighter-bombers. Last week TIME's Robert Schultheis visited Jaji, an area in eastern Afghanistan where helicopter ambushes once forced the rebels to live like hunted hares. Resistance trucks now move through the area in daylight, and the guerrillas have built a rudimentary hospital. "When we were weak," says Commander Anwar, a local leader, "the Soviets didn't want to talk at all. They are only talking now because we are strong...
Khalis, however, was not speaking with the full backing of his alliance's membership. Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, leader of the most important moderate guerrilla faction, criticized Khalis for failing to clear his statement with other mujahedin leaders. Gailani told TIME he favored talking with Cordovez. That way, he said, "at least he will know what our position is and pass it on" to the Soviets. Gailani's rebuff of a fellow rebel may be part of the jockeying for position in a post-Soviet power structure...
...Soviets have so far refused to fix a firm timetable for their withdrawal. The rebels, meanwhile, seemed determined to keep up the pressure, as they demonstrated late last week at the funeral of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a onetime disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and in later years an anti-mujahedin leftist. Khan died in Pakistan at age 98 and was buried in the Afghan city of Jalalabad. Afghan and Pakistani authorities allowed a funeral procession of some 2,000 vehicles to enter Afghanistan under Soviet military escort for the burial, which was attended by Najibullah. Just as Khan's body...