Can the Afghan Rebels Win?

Abdul Razique—a seasoned warrior at the age of 18—was badly wounded during an attack on a Soviet military post three miles outside Kabul. Nine bullets from an AK-47 ripped through his belly, but Abdul kept charging the enemy, until at last his comrades dragged him to safety. Medical help lay two hundred miles away, an agonizing journey on foot over the towering peaks of the Hindu Kush to the safety of Peshawar, Pakistan. Eight operations later, the doctors had patched Abdul up and released him. When I met Abdul Razique a few weeks later, he needed a ninth operation: His wounds had reopened. But this was no ordinary post-operative mishap. Abdul suffered his relapse, not while convalescing in a refugee camp, but at the front, attacking another Soviet post.

This kind of courage is one reason why, after six years, the Soviet-Afghan war is in stalemate. Indeed, the one constant of the conflict is the tenacity of the Afghan resistance. But whether the Afghans ultimately prevail depends less on the constant of their courage than on the war’s three variables: the Soviet Union, Pakistan, and the United States.

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Abdul Razique—a seasoned warrior at the age of 18—was badly wounded during an attack on a Soviet military post three miles outside Kabul. Nine bullets from an AK-47 ripped through his belly, but Abdul kept charging the enemy, until at last his comrades dragged him to safety. Medical help lay two hundred miles away, an agonizing journey on foot over the towering peaks of the Hindu Kush to the safety of Peshawar, Pakistan. Eight operations later, the doctors had patched Abdul up and released him. When I met Abdul Razique a few weeks later, he needed a ninth operation: His wounds had reopened. But this was no ordinary post-operative mishap. Abdul suffered his relapse, not while convalescing in a refugee camp, but at the front, attacking another Soviet post.

This kind of courage is one reason why, after six years, the Soviet-Afghan war is in stalemate. Indeed, the one constant of the conflict is the tenacity of the Afghan resistance. But whether the Afghans ultimately prevail depends less on the constant of their courage than on the war’s three variables: the Soviet Union, Pakistan, and the United States.