Word: najibullah
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...Soviet television program International Panorama startled some viewers. Remarked veteran correspondent Mikhail Leshchinsky: "It may be said that the People's Democratic Party is not actually the ruling party in Afghanistan." Official leak or not, that represented another public step away from the Soviet-backed regime of Afghan President Najibullah. For months the ruling P.D.P. has been riven by a bitter internecine war over the correctness of Moscow and Najibullah's policy of "national reconciliation...
Leshchinsky's commentary seemed to reflect deepening Soviet pessimism about Najibullah's survival amid the outcome of the nine-year struggle against mujahedin insurgents. In Kabul the Kremlin appeared to be laying the groundwork for a negotiated change of government. Two weeks ago Sayed Mohammed Gulabzoi, the once powerful Interior Minister, was suddenly posted to Moscow as ambassador, a kind of exile. His apparent problem: opposition to compromise with the mujahedin. Last week another sympathizer of the hard-line Khalqi faction, Deputy Foreign Minister Abdul Ghaffer Lakanwal, defected to the U.S. while in New York to attend the U.N. General...
...State Department charged that the buildup called into question Moscow's commitment to a "genuine political settlement." The fact is, neither superpower has halted military aid to its ally in the Afghan conflict. Now the Soviets want to buy time for President Najibullah's government, which seems to be losing the war. The Soviet pullout will likely resume, but if Soviet combat aircraft remain in the skies, the mujahedin will have to postpone victory celebrations...
...cities," he explains, "and we now have an extensive underground network." In the meantime, Jamiat and other resistance groups are keeping up the pressure on Kabul through rocket attacks, including one last week that briefly shut down the capital's airport. That pressure is beginning to tell on Najibullah's Communist government; turmoil within the party last week led to the expulsion of two Politburo members...
...Rabbani: "We believe that all other parties should join in, and we are working hard toward this end." If unity proves as difficult to achieve in victory as it has been up to now, Jamiat's leaders may look on their army as more than a dagger aimed at Najibullah's heart: the force may prove to be what one Jamiat official calls an "insurance policy" for a postwar future in which peace is far from certain...