Word: rebels
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Neither side in Afghanistan's nine-year-old civil war wasted much time last week in attempting to fill the country's power vacuum. Just three days after the departure of the last Soviet troops based in Afghanistan, as major cities became the target of sporadic but deadly rebel rocket attacks, the government of President Najibullah abruptly slapped a state-of-emergency decree on the country. The mujahedin, meanwhile, after two weeks of paralyzing delays, managed to reach at least tentative agreement on the leadership of a rival government-in-exile...
...their "interim" government Ahmat Shah, 44, a U.S.-trained engineer and hard- line fundamentalist. Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi, 68, a former member of Afghanistan's parliament, was named to fill the largely ceremonial office of President. The shura thus managed to bridge, for the moment, the principal issue dividing the rebel side: whether post-Soviet Afghanistan should be governed as an Islamic revolutionary state, on the Iranian model, or as one that is moderate and secular. Shah strongly advocates the fundamentalist approach, and Muhammadi heads one of the moderate factions...
Despite the fractious relations among the rebel leaders, most observers still look to them to make the next move in the Afghan showdown. There are seven factions altogether, all rooted in Islam, Afghanistan's universal faith. The four fundamentalist leaders...
...Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, 63, presides over the Afghan National Liberation Front, the smallest and weakest militarily of the resistance parties. Mojaddedi, who speaks five languages, is currently chairman of the rebel alliance, but he wields limited power...
...Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, 41, best-organized and most ruthless of the rebel leaders, heads a faction of the Hezb-e-Islami (Islamic Party). Despite his outspokenly anti-Western views, he is reportedly allotted 25% of the total U.S. weapon supply by the Pakistanis, more even than Rabbani. An engineer by training, Hekmatyar is a religious extremist who would keep Afghan women in purdah...