Word: pushtuns
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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Ever since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan last December, one of the most stubborn concentrations of anti-Communist Muslim resistance has been among the clannish Pushtun tribesmen of rugged Kunar province, near the Pakistan border. Six weeks ago, Soviet military commanders made the narrow river valleys and inaccessible mountains the target of their first major field offensive. Seven full combat battalions rolled into the province with the apparent mission of cutting rebel supply lines by sealing the porous border. TIME Correspondent David DeVoss managed to get across the frontier from Peshawar, Pakistan, for five days and linked up with fighting units...
...their tribal cousins in the area, but the countrywide total is expected to reach 1 million by April. This huge population of uprooted peoples represents a threat both to the Soviets and to Zia. The bitterly anti-Communist refugees have no love for the new regime in Kabul; the Pushtun tribesmen in the province have long chafed under Islamabad's callous rule...
...immediate threat of an all-out invasion, although the possibility that Soviet troops might cross the border in hot pursuit of the Afghan rebels could not be ruled out. Some Washington contingency planners feared that the Soviets might use their new base in Afghanistan to encourage unrest among the Pushtun and Baluch peoples who populate the border areas and are openly hostile to the Pakistan government. A major fear was that the Soviets might sponsor a revolt by the Baluch, whose traditional homeland stretches along the Arabian Sea into eastern Iran. Such a breakaway by Baluchistan would give Moscow access...
...Pakistani government of President Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq is tempted to encourage the Afghan tribesmen to fight the Kabul government, with which Pakistan has always had uneasy relations. But the Pushtun (or Pathan) tribesmen, whose homeland is on both sides of the border, also have their differences with Pakistan. So Zia is reluctant to grant the insurgents too much aid lest they use it to fight his government, which has serious problems...