Word: najibullah
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Increasingly, the signs seemed to point to a Soviet exit from Afghanistan before the end of 1988. Kremlin officials made no secret of their desire to bring home their 115,000 troops. Both the Soviet-backed regime of Afghan Leader Najibullah and the government of Pakistan, which supports the mujahedin rebels, predicted that the Geneva negotiations expected to resume in March under United Nations auspices would be the "last round" leading to a final agreement. But a sharply worded declaration from the guerrillas, blasting the Geneva talks and casting serious doubt on their willingness to accept a compromise settlement, dimmed...
Shevardnadze apparently had no better luck in Kabul. Najibullah, a former Afghan secret-police chief installed as Afghanistan's Communist leader 20 months ago, has been angling to ensure his own domination of any future government. Shevardnadze appears to be growing impatient, and he issued a thinly veiled warning to Afghans who place "personal aspirations above the interests of the nation." Or, more to the point, above Moscow's determination to bring Ivan home...
...time frame for getting out, then there are perhaps ways in which we can help," said Michael Armacost, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. U.S. negotiators fear, however, that a deal will falter because of two Soviet preconditions for withdrawal: the formation of an interim government that includes Najibullah's People's Democratic Party, and the end of U.S., Chinese and other foreign military support of the rebel mujahedin. U.S. aid alone has been estimated at $600 million a year...
...Najibullah has tried to deny the rebels new recruits by offering refugees land and jobs if they will return to their farms and villages. But barely 80,000 have taken him up on the offer, and no more than 10,000 rebels have given up the insurgency. Moreover, animosity lingers between some of the returned rebels and government forces. One day last week the morning calm in Kabul was shattered by bursts of machine-gun fire. It seems a tribal leader, a former rebel who is now a general in the Afghan army, took exception when security troops refused...
Though it is by no means certain that a Soviet pullout is imminent, Najibullah was hard at work last week trying to legitimize his regime in the eyes of his overwhelmingly Islamic countrymen. He billed the National Assembly meeting as a loya jirgah, an Afghan Muslim tradition in which village elders and religious leaders gather to consult in times of national crisis. Though the Afghan leader, who joined the Communist Party in 1965, has never been notably religious, he opened all his speeches with the Islamic preamble, "In the name of Allah, the beneficent and merciful . . ." To downplay his connections...