Word: najibullah
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...misplaced. Some experts are worried that the mujahedin leader who has received the lion's share of U.S. support, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a fanatic Muslim who might turn out to be Afghanistan's version of the Ayatullah Khomeini. Others wonder whether the mujahedin coalition, linked by hatred of the Najibullah regime, could stay together long enough to form an effective government...
Mustering his defenses from Kabul, Najibullah, a former head of the Afghan secret police who in 1986 succeeded another Soviet puppet, Babrak Karmal, has proved to be surprisingly resourceful. He has concentrated his formerly scattered troops in strategically important towns where they could dig in and count on some support from the urban middle class. He has played on the war weariness of the Afghan people with a series of peace-and-prosperity initiatives. "Najibullah is well organized and intelligent," one of the few diplomats still in Kabul told TIME's Paul Hofheinz, "which is more than...
Perhaps his most effective tactic, however, is to paint the mujahedin as pawns of a foreign power. Afghans abhor foreign invaders, and now that the Soviet army has gone, Najibullah has begun harping on how much the rebels are run by Pakistan and the U.S. His case has been helped by recent news accounts that Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had ordered Lieut. General Hamid Gul, head of Pakistan's military intelligence organization (ISI) to launch the bloody Jalalabad assault. Gul and the ISI are unmistakably doing their best to direct the mujahedin operations, but it seems likely that...
...mujahedin would almost certainly refuse a power-sharing deal anyway. The official rebel position is that Najibullah can have an amnesty but his surrender of power is a precondition to peace talks. In their view, he is the enemy, and Afghans have little inclination to forgive foes. "How can you expect the people to forget the blood loss of families, the destruction of entire villages?" asks a guerrilla leader in Peshawar. "How can you expect them to give up that feeling and say, 'Fine, let's sit down and talk'? It is like asking the Jews to pardon the Nazis...
Though Shevardnadze is smoother than Gromyko, he can be just as tough as his predecessor. It was Shevardnadze, after all, who forced an unhappy President Najibullah to accept the fact that the Soviets were leaving Afghanistan. In February he told Oliver Tambo, leader of the African National Congress, that the Soviet Union would no longer support the A.N.C.'s "war of national liberation" in southern Africa. And, when necessary, Shevardnadze will blatantly lie, as British officials believe he did when he told Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe last month that the Soviet Union possessed only a fraction of the chemical...