The bloody upheaval in Kabul has settled several debatable points. It has proved that the Afghan people hate the Soviet occupation forces almost to a man, that thousands of them are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in their desperate bid to regain their freedom, that the Russians have failed to cow them down with the massive display of their military prowess, and that Mr. Babrak Karmal has failed to make himself and his Soviet allies even faintly acceptable to his countrymen. Thus, if the Kremlin had calculated that it had only to eliminate the dreadfully cruel Amin, establish its military presence in major towns and secure the main highways in order to stabilise a communist regime headed by one of its nominees, it must already be deeply regretting the decision to move into Afghanistan. If it had convinced itself that it can by and large absolve itself of responsibility of governing the country and fighting against the guerillas, it cannot now avoid the conclusion that it has made a grave blunder. The Afghan bureaucracy is in sympathy with the people. It has demonstrated that sympathy by staying away from work as the shopkeepers in Kabul put down their shutters last week-end. The Soviet-trained Afghan army has virtually disintegrated. Units which have not melted away into the hills partly to join the guerillas have on all accounts no appetite for a fight against their fellow tribesmen. The Russians have been compelled to take on the job of enforcing the martial law. They shall not be able to lay it down for a long time. For, it is difficult to believe that they can raise a reliable new force. Mr. Babrak Karmal has not been seen for some days. During the upheaval in Kabul, it was announced that he would be addressing the nation on television. He failed to appear. Instead, an old broadcast by him was put out. He may not have been replaced. Indeed, he may even be not on his way out. But he has become irrelevant. The Russians have had to take over the reins off government and they cannot hand it back to him or, for that matter, to someone else.
The US administration is clearly delighted. It has quickly and gladly revised its earlier “pessimistic” assessment and concluded that the Soviet rulers face a Vietnam in Afghanistan. A US spokesman has said that they need to put another 300,000 to 400,000 troops into Afghanistan if they are even to try to secure a firm hold on the country. This view may turn out to be unduly “optimistic”. But it is pertinent in that it is bound to encourage Washington to step up its assistance to the guerillas and, therefore, to Pakistan. And needless to add, the Chinese will follow suit. The Russians are not going to take these “provocations” lying down. They are going to respond to them with their traditional ruthlessness. They have hinted at the possibility of a pre-emptive strike at China’s nuclear installations. That is too dreadful a prospect to discuss calmly and objectively. The men in the Kremlin, too, cannot be anxious to rush into a catastrophe of such dimensions. But there cannot be the slightest doubt that they will use the full panoply of their conventional military power to crush the resistance within Afghanistan – tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships, napalm and perhaps even poisonous gas.
While it is premature to say that they will, if necessary, pursue the insurgents across the Khyber into Pakistan or bomb the guerilla camps inside that country as the Americans did in Indochina, this possibility cannot be dismissed out of hand. This is enough to indicate that a crisis of unknown proportions is rapidly developing and unless immediate steps are taken to control it, the international community may lose the capacity to do so. India under Mrs. Gandhi’s leadership has been struggling hard to persuade the interested parties to see the perils ahead. While it has not put forward a specific plan, its efforts can perhaps be married with the EEC proposal for the neutralisation of Afghanistan. The proposal is at present nebulous. But it can be developed and made more concrete if the Russians are genuinely willing to withdraw their forces. Mr. Brezhnev has repeated his earlier statement that he is so prepared if the US and China end their support to the insurgents. Washington is sceptical. Or so at least it says. But the discussions have to begin somehow somewhere. It may be worthwhile for New Delhi to find out if it and the EEC countries can co-ordinate their efforts.