John Birch Leo Cherne

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o FIRinG Line GUESTS: JOHN BIRCH LEO CHERNE

SUBJECT: "SOVIET WORDS AND DEEDS: AFGHANISTAN"

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SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION SECA PRESENTS ~ FIRinG Line

HOST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

GUESTS: JOHN BIRCH The FIRING LINE television series is a production of the Southern Educational LEO CHERNE Communications Association, PO Box 5966, Columbia, SC 29250 and is transmitted through the facilities of the Public Broadcasting Service. FIRING SUBJECT: ·SOVIET WORDS AND DEEDS: AFGHANISTAN. LINE can be seen and heard each week through public television and radio stations throughout the country. Check your local newspapers for channel and time in your area. FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL This is a transcript of the Firing Line program taped in New York City on December 3, 1987, and telecast later by PBS. SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

© Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. MR. BUCKLEY: On November 10 of this year the General Assembly of the United Nations, no less, voted to condemn the continuing Soviet occupation of Afghanistan by a vote of 123 to 19, with 11 abstentions, including India, Iraq, Nicaragua and Uganda. And toward the end of November it was hinted that the Soviet Union's losses in its war against the peasantry of Afghanistan were driving Mr. Gorbachev to such desperation as actually to consider withdrawing from a genocidal eight-year war that has killed 1.5 million Afghans and driven one third of the population to exile. On the other hand, Mr. Gorbachev, in his recent interview with Tom Brokaw, derided the notion that the .Soviet Union was engaged in Afghanistan in anything more than to answer fraternally the call of a friendly government for help against reactionary fascist forces. Although in 1985 Gorbachev spoke of the "bleeding wound~ of the Afghan engagement, he has made no credible offer to stop his ingenious war characterized by airdropping toys for Afghan children to play With, Which toys contain hand grenades.

We have two animate and one inanimate guest here today. Leo Cherne is among the most distinguished Americans. His accomplishments as a lawyer, economist and in art is Widely heralded, but he is here today as chairman of the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee, founded in 1933 at the suggestion of Albert Einstein. No man knows more about, nor has done more to aid, political refugees.

@ 1'987 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL And Ambassador John Birch from Great Britain, deputy permanent COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION representative to the UN. The British delegation, by the way, played a prominent role in the motion to condemn the Soviet bloodbath. Mr. Birch has served the British Foreign Service since 1959, and has served in Kabul, where for three years he was deputy chief of mission before returning to London to serve as undersecretary of state.

After a preliminary conversation, we will show a British documentary on Afghanistan never before shown to an American audience. It is a 23-minute film depicting the Afghan story since the movement into that country of 110,000 Soviet troops.

Mr. Cherne, the sUbject of this hour is "What are our responsibilities to Afghanistan?" I begin by asking this: How is it possible to provide for refugees When they number three to five million?

MR. CHERNE: Well, it really is not possible to provide for refugees in that number. It is possible to make a massive effort to reach as many as one can. In the case of the International Rescue Committee, we are reaching What we would estimate to be at times up to a half million people and rather regularly at least 300,000. We have 12 mobile medical teams and 12 health clinics along the northern Afghan border, all of these in Pakistan, and almost all of these efforts being conducted either by Afghans whom we have trained or had the skills previously or Pakistanis, in order not to further inflame a delicate political position. Other organizations are

1 © Board of Trustees of the leland Stanford Jr. University. undertaking to aid in other areas, but one would have to very that burden of looking after the refugees. reasonably say that even with the efforts additionally of the MR. BUCKLEY: Incidentally, before I forget to ask you, why United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, that a would India, though India is freakish in these matters, why substantial number of the three million who have fled from would they have voted not to condemn the Soviet Union? Is it Afghanistan into the area along the border of Pakistan are not because they don't like anything which Pakistan is involved in in fact receiving more than occasional or marginal help. I on the other side? never have understood, in fact, why the American people, who do, it seems to me, feel so strongly about Afghanistan, have AMB. BIRCH: I think it's partly that. It's a feeling of not responded to this lead more actively and more generously difficulty in their relations with pakistan, but also they have than they have. very close relations, political and economic, with the SOViet Union, and I think that that is the explanation of their vote. MR. BUCKLEY: Could it be because the average American really thinks that refugee aid is really a paramilitary operation and MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, I remember Nehru refused to condemn the that we are here up against an extra-territorial Soviet salient Hungary suppression, remember? and that the entire theatrical response is one that calls for everything from providing Stingers to Afghan patriots to MR. CHERNE: Yes, I do. providing bandaids and hot soup for refugees, and therefore they simply assume that they don't need even the rock singers MR. BUCKLEY: That great patron of humankind. to mobilize our philosophic sentiments? MR. CHERNE: Yes. MR. CHERNE: I feel absolutely certain that you have identified one of the elements-- MR. BUCKLEY: Well, did you use any muscle on India?

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. AMB. BIRCH: We conducted a very strong campaign in the General Assembly for the vote on the resolution on Afghanistan, but I MR. CHERNE: --and it may even be the critical element. think the fact that, you know, the vast majority, year after year, of the nations of the world have voted to condemn Soviet MR. BUCKLEY: Ambassador Birch, is your country cooperating in action really speaks for itself. And it's against that the actual aid to the refugees movements? background that the Indian vote in this matter sticks out like a sore thumb. AMB. BIRCH: We have indeed. We have given a very considerable amount of aid to the refugees. But of course the best solution MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I should know the answer to this, but I for the refugees is a settlement in Afghanistan that permits don't. Is there an organization within the United Nations that them to go back to Afghanistan. devotes itself to helping out such projects as Mr. Cherne is engaged in? Specific aid to refugees? MR. CHERNE: That's correct. AMB. BIRCH: There is indeed, yes. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I think that's obvious, yes. But meanwhile they've got to eat, and if I understand Mr. Cherne, people are MR. BUCKLEY: Which one is that? not living up to what we think of as our conventional responsibilities to look after our brothers in need. MR. CHERNE: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

AMB. BIRCH: Well, I think that-- MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, yes, the one. that the Aga Khan was head of.

MR. CHERNE: Insufficiently. AMB. BIRCH: Sadruddin Aga Khan.

MR. BUCKLEY: Insufficiently, yes. MR. CHERNE: That's correct.

AMB. BIRCH: But there is a good deal of aid anyway given from MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, right. And they collect money via the UN Britain, where the Afghan cause is very strongly supported. or--

MR. BUCKLEY: Is it privately given or pUblicly given? AMB. BIRCH: They get voluntary contributions from member states, and the contributors in fact to that fund are the AMB. BIRCH: A mixture of both. I think it's more or less Western world and not the cdmmunist countries. evenly matched between government and the private sector, and of course the government of Pakistan bear an enormous part of MR. BUCKLEY: Right. Well, let's crank up a little bird's eye

2 3 © Board of Trustees ofthe lefand Stanford Jr. University. view of what's been happening there. This film was made by the Russians decided to overcome their resistance by force, and the British Information Office, and as I said, has never been seen war has been going on ever since. For the first five years in America, and tells us a story, including some of the there was no sign that the Russians would withdraw. But by chronology. I think we have to dim the lights. 1985 there was new leadership in the Soviet Union and with the coming to power of Mr. Gorbachev, things at long last seemed to be changing. In February 1986, in his speech to the party Congress in Moscow, Mr. Gorbachev said: "Counter-revolution AFGHANISTAN: WORDS AND DEEDS and imperialism have turned Afghanistan into a bleeding wound. We would like, in the nearest future to withdraw the Soviet NARRATOR: Afghanistan. A land of barren fields. Shattered troops stationed in Afghanistan as soon as a political houses. Deserted villages. A Third World country that has settlement is reached." Mr. Gorbachev proposed, in effect, been devastated by one of the most powerful nations on earth- that the Afghan resistance must lay down its arms and agree to the Soviet Union. And the purpose of all this destruction? To accept the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. The very aims, in force an independent Islamic people to accept a regime imposed fact, that the Russians had held from the outset. But there upon them by foreign troops. seemed to be no way at all that this could happen unless Mr. Gorbachev could perform a miracle and somehow transform the Now, after eight years of slaughter, the Soviet Union is communist regime in Kabul so that it became much more talking peace. There are promises of reconciliation, of troop acceptable to the Afghan people as a whole. If this could be Withdrawals, of political solutions. But while the diplomats done, Mr. Gorbachev might yet succeed in overcoming the talk in faraway conference rooms, inside Afghanistan throughout resistance fighters by political, rather than military means. 1987, the Soviet air attacks on the Afghan villages are The first moves in this Soviet campaign followed at once. continuing. These refugees are eyewitnesses. They came from Kunduz, close to the Soviet border in northern Afghanistan. President Babrak Karmal, who had been installed by the Russians They all fled to Pakistan in the summer of 1987. to run the Kabul regime during the years of military repression was now a political liability to them, so in May 1986, he was MOHAMED SHAH: I was sitting in my home When it was bombed. replaced by a much younger man, General Najibullah, or Najib, The walls crashed down on top of me and I was knocked as he preferred to be known. Before then, General Najib had unconscious. They could even see the bones sticking out when been the director-general of the Afghan secret police, the they pulled the rubble away from my leg. Hundreds of people in KHAD, Which is closely modeled on the Soviet KGB. As such, his our community--men, women and children--were all massacred, not loyalty to Moscow was unquestioned. to mention all our farm animals as well. And the bombing went on for five days. Everything I had in my house was bombed and With their new leader installed in Kabul, the next major SOViet all my cattle were killed, and everything was burnt, and I came move came in JUly, 1986, when during a visit to Vladivostok, away Without anything, stripped of everything. Mr. Gorbachev announced that the SOViet government was ready to begin pulling some of its troops out of Afghanistan. As a NUR MOHAMMAD: My name is Nur Mohammad. I come from Dasht-i start, six regiments were to leave by the end of the year. Archi. The Russians started bombing us in April, this year. Our homes were bombed, our animals were bombed, our houses were The Soviets made sure that this Withdrawal received maximum burnt, our children were killed. If we left our hiding places publicity. Special arrangements were made for the world's in the caves, they bombed us. And when our animals went press and TV cameras to film the departing soldiers being outside they killed them, too. Our homes were blown to bits. garlanded With flowers by beautiful girls. Some escaped, but many more were buried beneath the ruins and we had no chance even to look for them. In purely military terms, the withdrawal meant very little. Three of the six regiments were anti-aircraft units Who were NARRATOR: Six months before it bombed these Villagers out of not needed in Afghanistan, as the resistance had no aircraft. their homes, the Soviet Union had been talking about And over 110,000 SOViet troops still remained in the country, Withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan. There had been a with thousands more in reserve just across the Soviet border. flurry of political activity, and words like "peace" and "reconciliation" were constantly being mentioned. Were they Still, it was a gesture, and was plainly intended to show the only words, or do they mean that Soviet plans really are being world that a complete withdrawal of Soviet troops might not be altered? Or, despite all the speeches and publicity, is their far off, if only the right terms could be obtained. And did basic policy for Afghanistan still unchanged? those terms really matter all that much to the Afghan people, so long as they produced peace? The Russians have been fighting in Afghanistan since Christmas, 1979 When they invaded the country and set up a Soviet-backed PROFESSOR DR. MAJROOH (director, Afghan Information Center, regime in Kabul. When the Afghans refused to accept it, the ex-dean of faCUlty, University of Kabul): I think the Afghan

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people~ also the mujahedin, are interested to restore peace in Afghan1stan and to end all this massive destruction which is COMMANDER ANWAR: National Reconciliation is nothing but the still going on; all the people desire to have peace, and the latest piece of subterfuge by the Russians. In all these refugees are ready to go back when the country is at peace. matters, the Kabul regime has no power at all. The whole thing But peace, not at any price. The peace is when the refugees is dictated to them by the Russians. And the Russians are ~re sure that they will be safe when they are going back. Safe deliberately trying to deceive people and to disinform world 1S when there are no Soviet troops, not an anti-Islamic, an public opinion. anti-national regime in Kabul. NARRATOR: The Afghan refugees feel the same. OMAR SHERDIL (Jamiat Islamic party, Alliance representative designate for the United Nations for Afghanistan): If the AFGHAN REFUGEE: There's no such thing as National Soviets are ready next week to sit down and to negotiate with Reconciliation. It's just a propaganda trick by the Russians. the resistance, we are ready to negotiation the withdrawal of We've heard and read the history of Bokhara. In Bokhara the their forces from Afghanistan and the return of the country to Russians used exactly the same tricks. a normal, non-aligned independent Islamic country. Until the time we reach this goal, we will continue to fight. AFGHAN REFUGEE: They spread all these lies about National Reconciliation, but they've killed so many people. You can't NARRATOR: One of the leaders of the resistance alliance is Pir imagine how many. Gailani. NARRATOR: Anders Fange, from the Swedish Committee for PIR GAILANI (leader, National Islamic Front of Afghanistan): Afghanistan, has been watching these events. The Russian soldiers should leave Afghanistan. The communist regime in Kabul should be brought to an end. And the people of ANDERS FANGE: I think that with this talk of national Afghanistan should be given the right to choose their own reconciliation from the Najib government and from the Russians, government for themselves and to decide their own future. the whole political game around Afghanistan has entered into a new phase. There is a political offensive from the Soviet NARRATOR: The Soviet Union, however, would like t~ preserve a Union and the Afghan government in those matters; it's a sign communist-led regime in Kabul, even though only one percent of of weakness. They're trying to reach in the political arena the Afghans belong to the communist party, the PDPA. what has not been possible for them to reach in the military arena. So in an effort to try and make his regime appear more acceptable to the remaining 99 percent of Afghans, in the NARRATOR: Abdul Haq, the Hizb-i-Islami commander for Kabul autumn of 1986 General Najib launched his program of .National Province, has similar views. Reconciliation. Plans were proposed to broaden the base of the government and to include opposition parties who were willing ABDUL HAQ: I think the Soviets know they cannot win this war to collaborate with the regime. by force, but they will go to win it by the negotiate. But we don't know, this negotiate will take how long? 20 years? 25 But General Najib made it clear that all the important posts, years? 50 years? Because it has continued for four years, but the ~resident, prime minister, the ministries of foreign one day the whole of Afghanistan will be completely finished, a affa1rs, defense, national security and the interior, would desert, and what will we negotiate for? :em~in in c?m~unist hands. The opposition parties were being 1nv1ted to J01n a coalition government, but must be content NARRATOR: The idea that the SOViets might be pinning their with a minority role; the real power would still be held by the hopes on negotiations to win them the war seemed confirmed when PDPA. they announce a unilateral ceasefire, to take effect early in 1987. Soviet and Afghan regime troops, it was said, would stop General Najib also appealed to the resistance groups to attacking the resistance forces for a limited period, provided surrender their arms and to the Afghan refugees abroad to that certain conditions were met. return home. Among these conditions was that all military supplies to the How would the people react to this "reconciliation program"? resistance must be stopped. They must not be allowed to get Was it a genuine offer to modify the communist policies and to any more weapons or ammunition for as long as the ceasefire bring.in reforms? Or did they see it as an elaborate attempt lasted. Naturally no such restrictions were to be placed on to pa1nt a false face onto the regime, to make its outward the Soviet forces; their military convoys would continue to appearance seem much more attractive while leaVing its true supply them with everything they needed. Plainly a ceasefire nature unaltered? The Afghan resistance leaders at the front on such terms would have soon put the SOViet troops in a have no doubts about their views. This is Commander Anwar. dominant military position and the Russians knew very well that

6 7 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. the mujahedin could never accept it. But at the same time, the offer of a ceasefire would improve the Soviet image, and would day, in Geneva, delegates from the Soviet-backed regime in create a favorable impression on world opinion. In fact, the Kabul were busily talking about peace. And yet the war goes ceasefire had a negligible effect and the Russian attacks on. continued even more fiercely than before. ANDERS FANGE: The Russians, they are attacking the civilians AFGHAN REFUGEE: When Najib declared his ceasefire, we thought even more intensely than they have been doing before. So it is that there would be peace, but on the contrary, he bombed our still very much a fact that villages are being bombed, that the area, he killed our children. fields are being burnt, that people are getting killed and wounded. And the most clear symptom of that is that the PROFESSOR DR. MAJROOH: The war is going on in Afghanistan. refugees, they are still coming out over the border; and there despite all declarations of a ceasefire, and about are still thousands of refugees every month coming out over the reconciliations, the biggest offensives were recorded and border here. reported this year. NARRATOR: Throughout 1987 an average of between five and six DR. MOHAMED HAIDER REZA (medical coordinator, Swedish Committee thousand new refugees each month were arriving from for Afghanistan): As they have announced the ceasefire, the Afghanistan. war has increased tremendously, especially in Paktia in the southern region, and also in Kandahar and Herat. I mean AFGHAN REFUGEE: I was wounded in an attack by the Soviets; for throughout Afghanistan, but especially in these areas and one and a half days I was left lying there, until at last I was especially in Paktia, the intensity and the war has increased rescued and brought here to Pakistan. tremendously. NARRATOR: It's estimated that about seven million Afghans have NARRATOR: For although the Russians are talking peace, they lost their homes, virtually half the population. Five million are also trying to conduct their war as efficiently as of them have fled abroad, over three million of them to possible, by committing some of their most highly trained units Pakistan. Here they dwell in camps, with only the basic to the front line in Afghanistan. necessities of life. Some families have been here for eight or nine years; others for only a few days. Because the stream of MOHAMMAD GAILANI (NIFA military leader): What has happened refugees leaving Afghanistan goes on, and every day more people recently is that the Soviets are using their commando forces, come to swell the flood of homeless families who wait in the their special forces, by methods of ambushes towards the camps, dependent on international aid and the assistance given mujahedin, trying to have a surprise attack on us. We have to them by Pakistan. managed to maneuver against this successfully, and learned their way of attacking us, and we attack them before they In 1986 General Najib had publicly appealed to the refugees to attack us. This is one of the changes that has happened. return home, and promised that the communist regime would welcome them back. But the refugees have seen for themselves NARRATOR: Omar Sherdil has seen what the Soviets are doing to What things are like in Afghanistan, and they have all learnt the civilians in Afghanistan. to tell the difference between words and de~ds.

OMAR SHERDIL: They are not only bombing the villages and A year later the Kabul regime were claiming that 60,000 destroying the farms, but at the same time they are undertaking refugees had responded to Najib's call to return, but as a new policy, which is the starvation of the citizens, to force Pravda, the Soviet newspaper, conceded, it is a disappointingly them to leave the country, to become refugees--this small figure when compared with the millions of refugees who depopulation policy of the Soviets--so the women, the children have stayed abroad. and the elderly people are suffering the most. And When the Soviets are talking about National Reconciliation and we see So the Soviets took some pictures of people peering through what they are doing to the civilians at the same time, even barbed Wire and claimed that the Afghan refugees were being bombing some Villages in Pakistan and Afghan refugees are even stopped from coming home by Pakistan. A real refugee replies: not safe in Pakistan, how can they talk about a National Reconciliation? . AFGHAN REFUGEE: It's quite clearly a complete lie. For the past seven or eight years, we Afghans have been coming to this NARRATOR: It was early in 1987, just after their much country as refugees and nobody has gone back yet, except maybe publicized ceasefire had begun, that Soviet planes crossed into a few communist agents whom they sent here. The Pakistan Pakistan and bombed Pakistani villages near the border. This government has not made us leave and it doesn't prevent us from raid in March 1987 devastated the Pakistani village of Lwarai leaVing either, if we want to. But where would we gO? After all, the real question is, who forced us to become refugees in Mandi and left hundreds dead and wounded.' On the very same the first place?

8 9 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. ZARGHOUN GUL (refugee from Kunduz): My name is Zarghoun Gul. We come from Kunduz, and there has been so much bombing there UZBEK AFGHAN REFUGEE: When the Russian soldiers have left that life became unbearable. Our people were being killed, so Afghanistan, that's when we'll go home. Pakistan has never we escaped, and it took us two months to get here. It was stopped us from going back. That story is just rubbish. dreadful. Now we've been in Pakistan for two months. We had to leave our homes and all we have managed to save is just NARRATOR: For the people left inside Afghanistan, what are ourselves. conditions like in a country devastated by war? INTERVIEWER: What did the Russians do in Kunduz? ANDERS FANGE: The medical care which actually existed before the war in the countryside, it is now totally in ruins, as all ZARGHOUN GUL: They kept bombing us so that many of our Muslim other infrastructures on the countryside are in ruins. And you people were buried inside their homes. Their houses were all have epidemic diseases--child diseases, other epidemic on fire and the survivors had to run into the streams to try diseases, Which were under control before the war, but which to save themselves. The stacks of corn outside were all on now are spreading very much: tuberculosis, malaria, child fire and even the grain stores inside were burning. Everyone diseases like the measles and other things. And then of course just'tried to save themselves. When they started the.b?mbing, you have the whole question of people getting wounded in war we did not know how to escape. And we found a tlny Wlnaow and actions and so on. Up to around seven million people are squeezed through, carrying our children with us! and then we living in those areas which are controlled by the resistance. ran away along the bed of the stream while the bombing was We estimate that there are about 30 to 40 graduate doctors still going on all around us. working for these people. INTERVIEWER: When do you think you can return home again? NARRATOR: Aid organizations are doing what they can, but the number of people requiring their help is constantly increasing. ZARGHOUN GUL: When it is God's will to make it a peaceful Most of the women in this camp near Haripur left Afghanistan in Islamic country once more, then I will go back. Who wants to the summer of 1987, several months after the so-called leave their native land? We all left our homes on fire, and we ceasefire had been announced by the Kabul regime. Most of them could bring nothing at all with us. Just the clothes we were come from the Kunduz area in northern Afghanistan, because wearing. We will only go back to an Islamic country. We won't their villages were being intensively bombed by the Soviet air go Where the Soviets are. force. NARRATOR: What are the chances of Zarghoun Gul and all the INTERVIEWER: How were your children killed? millions of other Afghan refugees returning to the kind of free Islamic country that they want? The talks go on and on! NUR BIBI: By bombs, because of the bombs. It was late but ~o far they are just words, not deeds. Timetables for a afternoon when the planes came apd started bombing. Sometimes Russian withdrawal are discussed, but the Russians have not they used to come in the mornings, sometimes at night. The withdrawn. In September 1987 the Geneva talks resumed yet bombs--the buried our children--they buried everything we had. again. The delegates from the Kabul regime seemed in good They destroyed our houses. That's why we left. humor, but had brought no fresh proposals with them! and nothing was decided at all. SHAREEN (refugee from Kunduz): I come from Dasht-i-Archi and my name is Shareen. My husband was killed in the Jihad. I And so in Afghanistan the destruction of the towns and Villages have an ll-year-old son, who is active in the Jihad, and three goes on. But recently a new factor has influenced the sons and a daughter with me. When the soldiers came, they battlefield. For years the Soviet aircraft had ruled the started firing mortar bombs at us and my two-year-old daughter skies, virtually unchallenged. The mujahedin had fought back was killed When their mortar bombs hit our house. as best they could, but their wornout weapons were of Ilttle use against the armored helicopters. But now at last the .. KHAN BIBI: My name is Khan Bibi. We have 12 people in the mujahedin began to get a small ~upply of missiles and could hlt family, and one of my sons was killed after Najib took over. back at the Soviet pilots who had bombed thelr people for so I've lost my home! my money, my food and grain! everything. I many years. So the helicopter gunships are no longer the practically crawled all the way here. And they've killed my masters of the skies. And at home! some Sovlet cltlzens began son. to ask questions about the war and wonder why their sons are fighting in Afghanistan. And perhaps many of the Soviet INTERVIEWER: Couldn't you bring anything with you? . soldiers in the country are also wondering the same thlng.

KHAN BIBI: No, nothing at all. We didn't have anything left OMAR SHERDIL: After what they have done in Afghanistan for the to bring. last eight years or nine years in killing more than 500,000

11 10 © Board of Trustees of the leland Stanford Jr. University. people, in forcing one third of the population of this poor MR. BUCKLEY: Well, he's done those, hasn't he? neighboring country to leave their homeland, the Soviet soldier, even if he is a communist, I think as a human being, MR. CHERNE: Yes, but I think he must now make a new one. I he could not fight with a clear conscience. won't speculate about the contents, but one must recall even as that is done that only within the last month--and this is part ANDERS FANGE: The most important issue is to get the Soviets of their strategic intention--of literally obliterating the to withdraw and to let the Afghans decide their own future, no population. That is why virtually every human rights matter what that future will be, as long as it is their own organization has called this a genocidal war now. It's within future. the last month they have introduced, because the helicopter gunships are now vulnerable, they have sent six new Soviet bombers, which have arrived in Kabul, the SU-25s which are useful for close-in bombing and not as vulnerable to the MR. BUCKLEY: That would have made interesting after dinner weapons which are bringing down the helicopters at precisely entertainment after the Gorbachev-Reagan dinner, wouldn't it? the moment that Najib has made a new proposal for The question not touched on in that film anywhere is one that reconciliation, followed by his assuming also new powers as has to be asked before we answer intelligently the question of president and commander in chief of the armed forces. what are our obligations. What are the strategic intentions of the Soviet Union by continuing this effort, Mr. Ambassador? MR. BUCKLEY: Do we have an anti-SU-25 Stinger?

AMB. BIRCH: I think that there has sometimes been the MR. CHERNE: If I knew, I wouldn't answer it. [laughter] suggestion that what they want to do is to find a warm water port on the Indian Ocean, that they have expansionist designs MR. BUCKLEY: Why did it take so long to get around to sending southwards. I don't think in fact that is the case. Stingers there? I mean, it was after all in 1986 that Congress Strategically Afghanistan is a border state and therefore, of· voted $470 million in aid. It seems to me that seems to me in course, important to them. But I think that they would be terms of human rights to have been a critical-- satisfied in the long run with the situation that they had before the war, some years before they invaded, in which MR. CHERNE: Let me answer it obliquely. It took us longer Afghanistan was a neutral, non-aligned state but having than it should have. reasonable relations with them. I don't think there is any strategic purpose being served for them now by being in MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. Things always do, don't they? occupation of Afghanistan. MR. CHERNE: I don't feel free to speculate on the reasons why MR. BUCKLEY: Would you count it a strategic purpose not to that is so. But it is very clear that many lives were lost, have been recorded historically as having been driven out as and at a time the mujahedin hopes of achieving any kind of the result of a failure of Russian military presence? result were quite dim until these new weapons did in fact arrive. AMB. BIRCH: I think that there is certainly an element of pride, and I think one of the important things is that in MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Ambassador, recently a poll was pUblished trying to get them out of Afghanistan, it shouldn't be seen as about European sentiment which instructs us that twice as many a military humiliation for them. This will make the whole task Europeans think of Mr. Reagan as a threat to the peace over too difficult, and in fact that is not what we seek. We seek a against Mr. Gorbachev. Is this to suggest that documentaries graceful, rapid withdrawal. such as this one produced by your own country are incapable of moving sentiment that is ideologically set on these questions? MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Cherne, you were head of the president's Foreign Service Intelligence Board there for qUite a while. Is AMB. BIRCH: I think that films like this are very helpful. In there anything that you can tell us that doesn't naturally fact, the poll, which was taken some while ago, wasn't twice as occur to us on that subject of the strategic intentions? many Europeans, it was about equal numbers of Europeans thought Mr. Gorbachev was as peace loving as President Reagan. MR. CHERNE: Well, it is very clear that the Soviet Union will not withdraw from Afghanistan in a manner which makes them MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it depends on the country, yes. In France appear weak. It seems to me equally clear with Gorbachev it was about equal. As a matter of fact, I think we won in coming to the United States, and some may be seeing this France. program perhaps after he has already been here. I'd be very surprised if he does not use the occasion to make a rather AMB. BIRCH: You won in France. I find that very disturbing, dramatic peaceful-sounding and withdrawal-sounding proposal-- because the facts, in fact, are absolutely to the contrary when you see that these so-called peace-loving Soviet tanks and

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© Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. aircraft are bombing a country like Afghanistan and destroying many of the women and children. can't have a military victory in Afghanistan, and this is in fact~ putting.g:eat pressure on the Russians, I think, to' try MR. BUCKLEY: Well, in the British election in which Mr. to flnd a polltlcal settlement. I am personally convinced that Kinnock challenged Mrs. Thatcher, did the subject of they wish to withdraw. The problem is, they want to leave Afghanistan arise at all, or was it sort of like our Cambodia behind in Kabul a client communist regime that is viable, and in '72? they are unable to do that, because everyone knows that if the Sc;>viet.troops left tomorrow, the Kabul regime would only last AMB. BIRCH: No, I think in fact that on issues like that, Mr. flve mlnutes. And so this is why they have become involved in Kinnock and Mrs. Thatcher have identical views--on the need for an attempt to build together, to try to fuse together, all of the Soviet Union to withdraw immediately and a very fierce the different parts of the Afghan society into what they call a condemnation of their behavior over the last eight years in government of National Reconciliation. that country. MR. BUCKLEY: It seems to me that if I were the general of the MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, but that's a pretty platonic response, isn't armies in the Soviet Union and I killed one and a half million it? To say that the Soviet Union should withdraw is-- Afghans and succeeded in exiling one third of the entire population, I would say little by little I'm getting there. AMB. BIRCH: Well, I think our response is more than platonic. Just you know, keep it up and kill a few more million and then In fact, it's not a direct support for the resistance, but we it's allover. believe that the pressure should be kept on the Russians both through the activities of the resistance and through political AMB. BIRCH: It's, "We've won the war and created a desert." It pressure, for example, the pressure there is in the United isn't a solution. Nations-::the pressure I am sure that Mrs. Thatcher will out on Mr. Gorbachev when they meet next week in England and wh~n your MR. BUCKLEY: Well-- president meets him. Those are the pressures that-- MR. CHERNE: I think-- I do not agree with that, Bill. I MR. CHERNE: I want to join Ambassador Birch in reinforcing th~nk the Soviet Union is aware of the fact that it's paying a that view, especially because of h~s own very substantial prlce not only abroad but at home, that increases substantially efforts to bring about the result. This extraordinary vote in as knowledge of how poorly they've done radiates. The Soviet the General Assembly, a vote of 125 versus 19, as I recall has Union has great difficulty in bringing its bodies home, the a very substantial influence. Now, there were those bodies of those who've died in this war. neutralists or pro-Soviet portions of the European popUlation that will not be affected by that vote. But there are many who MR. BUCKLEY: Twenty thousand, yes. simply do not expect from the United Nations that kind of a result and cannot help but question previous attitudes of MR. CHERNE: The Soviet Union has difficulty explaining, and as theirs in the face of it. the numbero increase, explanations are unavoidabl~. Why do some Russian soldiers, young men, fighting with the Soviet MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I am obviously delighted by the vote, but I troops in Afghanistan defect and literally risk their lives to would remind you that it is simply a reiteration of votes in find refuge with the mujahedin? The reason they're risking years gone by. It's one of the few votes that we've won over a their lives is because the mujahedin are fighting in the hills period of years, the one on Afghanistan, and we've just and really do not have the facilities to take prisoners of war. finished documenting, courtesy of the British Information I am rather astonished and very grateful, in fact, that they Service, that no progress whatsoever has been-- When I say have done so. I think the Soviet Union knows that it has lost their concern is platonic, granted a Stinger is less than a this war. You know that I'm not given to optimism. I wish I platonic concern with the resistance, but I should think if I were. I would be very depressed if I thought we would be were a mujahedin there facing the ninth year of the war coming sitting here a year from now facing this situation-- up, one more pronouncement by the British government or the West German government or the French government which isn't AMB. BIRCH: Well, I wonder whether we may not. I wouldn't backed concretely would strike me as cynical. agree that they have lost the war. They haven't won it, that's the problem, and they can't win it, and they've paid an AMB. BIRCH: Well, I think in fact some progress has been made, enormous penalty-- as the film showed. The invasion took place under Mr. Brezhnev and there is now a different person in charge. I think that MR. CHERNE: I must yield to that correction. the Russians have come to realize after all these years and the bravery of the Afghan resistance, they have learnt a lesson AMB. BIRCH: In international standing, their attempts to be on that we in fact learnt in the last century, which is that you terms, they've lost the sympathy of a large number of Muslim countries and undoubtedly--

14 15 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it was on account of that that they didn't MR. BUCKLEY: Why was the sympathy there in the first place? ratify SALT II, right? That's one of the historical--

AMB. BIRCH: Of Muslim countries? AMB. BIRCH: I don't think the issue in fact is whether we are anti-Soviet. What we want to have, and what I'm sure that this MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. country wants to have is to have a relationshio--to have a relationship based on mutual advantage with th~ Soviet Union. AMB. BIRCH: Well, they had a relationship with them anyway-- And the fact that Soviet behavior in Afghanistan does make it more difficult for Western Europe and certainly for this MR. BUCKLEY: Well, why do they have sympathy with the Soviet country to have that relationship with the Soviet Union. Union, which is about to celebrate its 70th year of systematic carnage? MR. BUCKLEY: But you've just finished acquiescing the surrender of the only theater weapons that can reach the Soviet AMB. BIRCH: I don't think that they have-- I'm talking about Union. I should think that at this rate, the Soviet Union previously, I don't think that' they had an ideological sympathy would argue, "Well, a few more Afghanistans and there is no with them at all, because in fact-- Western Alliance left to worry about."

MR. BUCKLEY: What makes them have sympathy now? AMB. BIRCH: I don't think the two things are related, with respect. The reason that we have signed an INF or that you are AMB. BIRCH: --communism and the Muslim religion don't go about to sign an INF agreement with the Soviet Union is not together. related at all to any considerations of Afghanistan. But the situation in Afghanistan does not help the relations, MR. BUCKLEY: I know. confidence, trust, between Moscow and Washington, which are the sort of things you have to have if we're going to build arms AMB. BIRCH: But they had a commercial relationship, an control agreements. economic relationship, that was of importance to them. MR. CHERNE: I would add to that a comment which will, I am MR. BUCKLEY: Has that been damaged? afraid, have a very cruel sound. If the present genocide in Afghanistan continues, it is that much more difficult for the AMB. BIRCH: I think that it has been, yes. Soviet Union to achieve one of the objectives which it has among its purposes in the nuclear, the INF nuclear agreement, MR. BUCKLEY: Well, as the result of convulsions in Iran and that is to leave in the West a feeling, which Gorbachev perhaps, but I am not aware of any effective boycotts that have obviously tried to radiate in his television interview some been organized by the Muslim community-- days ago, that the Soviet Union and the Soviet people and the Soviet leadership are just like us, their purposes are benign, AMB. BIRCH: On the Soviet Union. friendly. He remarked that colonialism is at an end--

MR. BUCKLEY: On the Soviet Union, yes. MR. BUCKLEY: How many times are we going to go through this? I think you and I have been through this about eight times, AMB. BIRCH: It's turned, I think, the whole mood of the Muslim haven't we, in the last 30 years. Lord Home was on this world to make it much more suspicious of the Soviet Union's program. He had just come back from Helsinki, where he said, claims to be a peace-loving nation when they behave as they do "Now, this time we mean it. We're going to have freedom, and in Afghanistan. it's wonderful that the Soviet Union has agreed to have freedom of movement and freedom of the press," et cetera, et cetera. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, the Afghan population is more predominantly And on this program he said, "This time the Soviet Union has Sunnite and so the kind of flamboyance associated with Shiite too much to lose by violating the Helsinki agreements," which Muslimism is not visible there, so there are all kinds of of course they proceeded to ignore. And I would like to know distracting cleavages that prevent anything like a unified what there is in Mr. Birch's or in your opinion that suggests Muslim force. And incidentally, if we're talking. about that the trauma of Afghanistan is going to give us an unifying, why doesn't it unify Western Europe? I don't see ideological lobotomy that no other disruption has brought that Western Europe after eight years of Afghanistan is more about? Staunchly and irrevocably anti-Soviet than it was before, do you? MR. CHERNE: Oh, I would not suggest that at all, and when you ask me how many additional times do I expect to go through this MR. CHERNE: I would say more staunchly-- false hope that we're now seeing the sudden spring, I'm afraid my honest answer is, "Yes, I expect to go through it many more

16 17 © Board of Trustees of the leland Stanford Jr. University. times." TRANSCRIPT ORDER FORM MR. BUCKLEY: So a year from how it may turn out to have been a false hope, as Mr. Birch predicts. Transcripts of most programs from the current season and the immediate past season are available at the standard price of MR. CHERNE: It may turn out to be a false hope, but I do e~ch believe that the Soviet Union is reading of its own reality as $3.00 or $4.50 for a two-part program. Copies of archive such as to suggest that because it has other fish to fry and transcrIpts of older programs are available for $10.00 each. some of them involve nuclear weapons, the negotiation following the one that is occurring now, that it, for its reasons, will If you would like to order a back issue of a FIRING LINE see the advantage of a resolution of the Afghan situation on transcript, please complete the order form and mail it to the terms less impossible to accept than those which had previously address below with your check or money order made payable to been offered. Now, that may be unwarranted optimism. FIRING LINE. MR. BUCKLEY: In 30 seconds, do you want to agree or disagree A complete listing of all FIRING LINE programs since 1971 is with that or qualify it? available upon request. AMB. BIRCH: Well, I'm not sure that I really understood your Information'on ordering audio and/or video cassettes of FIRING LINE programs and subscribing to FIRING LINE Transcripts can be question. found on the following page. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it has to do with grounds for strategic optimism. NAME _ AMB. BIRCH: I basically am optimistic that it is possible to have a working relationship with the Soviet Union. Afghanistan ADDRESS, _ is clearly a great problem in our relationship and we want to see their troops withdraw and this would be a litmus test of CITY, STATE, ZIP _ their good faith, their good intentions and the good faith in which we should deal with them. TELEPHONE,-->..( .f..- _ MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you, Ambassador John Birch of the British delegation to the United Nations; and thank you, Mr. Leo Cherne, head of the IRC; and thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Please send me copies of the following FIRING LINE Transcripts (list the program number, title, or guest):

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