"Afghanistan's Endless War."

[michael pugliese]

   Some #'ers on refugees and casualties, courtesy of a
short book (188 pgs. text, plus about 50 pgs. of
annotated footnotes and bibliography), "Afghanistan's
Endless War, " by Larry P. Goodson, who studied under
Louis Depree [along with Oliver Roy, considered two of
the leading scholars on Afghanistan and political Islam~ Christian
Parenti, son of Michael, the hack, who I had dinner
with the other night, recommends Roy highly.
Christian, btw, is rather scathing about the vagaries
of Northern California radical kultur), published
recently in pb. by Univ. of Washington Press.
  Pg. 5, talkng about the Soviet-Afghan War from '78
to
'89. "Nearly 2 million Afghans have been killed so
far, (as well as 15,000 Soviet soldiers), and 600,000
to 2,000,000 wounded. More than 6 million Afghans fled
to Iran and Pakistan, creating the worlds largest
refugee population since 1981, while 2 million Afghans
were internally displaced. Thus more than 50 % of
Afghanistans indigeous population (estimated at 15-17
million at war's beginning, now estimated to be 22
million) became casulties, killed, wounded or
refugees.
   From the next paragraph, "The Soviet Army and the
Afghan communist government planted an estimated
30,000,000 land mines throughout the country, most of
them completely unmarked and unmarked. Afghanistan's
natural resources, particularly the natural gas
reserves near Shiberghan, flowed north to the Soviet
Union in the 80's and Afghanistan's economy
collapsed."
   Pg. 57, "In the early spring of 1979 war came to
the cities of Afghanistan, In mid-March there was a
general uprising in Herat. More than 100 Soviets were
reportedly hunted down and killed in savage violence
that claimed 3 thousand to 5 thousand lives....The
government in Kabul felt the pressure generated by the
uprisings in the countryside, particularly the savage
fighting in Herat and the defection of its troops in
Jalalabad [previous paragraph said Afghan Army
strength went from 80,000 to 30,000 from late '78 to
spring '79). In April Afghan government troops with
Soviet advisors massacred 1,170 men and boys in Kerala
village in Kunar, near the border with Pakistan."
Michael Pugliese