The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1988 (11. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1988-01-01 / 1. szám
A Super-Power "Responsible for Terrorism in Pakistan" strong protest against terrorist bomb »Stacks carried out in Pakistan by agents of the Soviet-controlled Afghan regime has been made to the Soviet Government by 2,000 prominent Pakistanis. In a memorandum presented to the Soviet Embassy in Islamabad recently, the writers, journalists, poets, academics and trade union ists said that the attacks were causing "untold suffering to innocent civilians through the death and mutilation of breadwinners.” Soviet responsibility was clear from the discovery of lethal materials of Russian manufacture which had been smuggled into Pakistan from areas under Soviet control. The Signaltones deplored that a super-power should resort to such tactics and called on the Soviet Government "to bring to an immediate halt its terrorist activities in Pakistan." The USSR should not overstep the norms of international behaviour because of its political differences with Pakistan. The Muslim, the independent Isti» ma bad daily, said that the embassy initially refused to receive the memorandum but that a junior diplomat eventually agreed to accept it. The protest came after 18 months of sabotage attacks in nearly all areas of Pakistan. In 1987 alone, 265 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in 361 incidents across the country. In the latest attack a series of car bombs in Islamabad on December 26 killed one person and seriously wounded 38 others. Even greater, bloodshed had occurred a few months previously. On July 5, nine people were killed and 45 injured when bombs exploded at the railway station and the Badami Bagh bus station in Lahore. Sixteen persons died and 40 wfere wounded on August 11 when explosive devices went off near a bus Station and in a crowded bazaar in Mardan, a town in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). But the worst carnage was inflicted by four bombs which exploded amid crowds of rushhour shoppers in central Karachi on July 14. At least 72 people died and more than 250 were injured. Nearby buildings were set on fire, many Shops being gutted. In a speech to a NWFP tribal assembly in November, President Zia-al-Haq said that, havinn foiled over eioM veors to defeat the Afahan resistance, the Soviet Union was now trying to destabilise Pakistan with violence. The aim was to intimidate Pakistan into abandoning its support for the Afghan resistance fighters and accepting the Soviet puppet regime in Kabul; this, however, Pakistan would never do. PROFESSOR DESCRIBES TORTURE Professor Hasan Kakar, who was himself imprisoned in Afghanistan from 1982 to 1987, has confirmed that it is routine practice in Kabulregime jails to torture political prisoners. He said at a recent Press conference in Peshawar, Pakistan, that they were given "inhuman punishments" during a "supervision period" at the start of their imprisonment. Kckar also talked about Kabul University, where he had been a professor. It was now, he said, a university in name only; there being no academic freedom. Many students had been imprisoned or conscripted into the regime's army. Aaed 56, professor Kakar recently fled to Pakistan With his family. According to recent refugee reports, two women university students and ten other political prisoners were killed in Jalalabad on or before December 22. Their bullet-scarred bodies Were discovered nëar thait city's jail. Investigations by the Pakistani authorities have established that cross-border sabotage is being directed by the Fedah, the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of the Kabul regime’s security police, or Ministry of State Security (Wezarat Amniyat Daulati, or WAD). In the first seven months of last year 60 Afghan agents were charged with terrorist offences. The authorities also detained 61 Pakistani citizens, mostly from the frontier tribal areas, who had received money, weapons and training in Afghanistan for terrorist activity inside Pakistan. Formerly known as the KHAD and headed by Dr. Mohammed Najib until he replaced Babrak Karmai as leader of the PDPA (Afghan Communist party), the WAD was enormously expanded after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Some 80 per cent of its personnel have been trained in the USSR and 1,500 Soviet "advisers” are now permanently attached to the various WAD directorates. A journalist and observer on security matters, Dr. Yaseen Rizvi, notes that the Soviet Involvement has been accompanied by a marked increase in the level of sophistication of WAD operations. In his recently published book, Murder - Russian Style, Dr. Rizvi says that whereas the bomb attacks were at first perfunctory gestures, they now constitute a highintensity terrorist campaign, with targets carefully chosen to achieve maximum impact and the use of remote control and timing devices to detonate,explosives. Among the cases cited in the book is that of a 44-yea,r-old Afghan, Sher Afzat, who was convicted of bombing an airline office in Peshawar, capital of the NWFP. Afzal described to Dr. Rizvi.bow he had been trained by KHAD officers in Jalalabad in the use of (Continued on page 4) 2 WILL INVADERS QUIT AFGHANISTAN? (Continued from page 1) Perestroika Komsomol Group at Kiev State University”, apparently composed of dissident members of the university’s branch of the Komsomol, the Communist youth organisation. The authorities, notably the KGB, actively opposed several recent attempts to hold public demonstrations against the continuing Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. Three of these protests, held in Moscow, Leningrad and Lvov to mark the eighth anniversary of the invasion, were kept on a small scale and not allowed to last long. Eight of the Moscow participants were fined and one of them, Yelena Grigorieva, was severely assaulted. Later, she was treated in hospital. The pacifist Moscow Group for the Establishment of Trust between the USSR and the USA was refused permission to hold a demonstration Was it the last Soviet battle - to get in material into 'encircled Khost region - before starting to leave? on the grounds of the Soviet Government being “clearly taking active steps towards peace“. Sane campaigners for human rights who are being held forcibly in Soviet mental hospitals include Leonid Gromov, who was arrested in February, 1985, accused of setting fire to a factory in protest against it making armoured vehicles sent to Afghanistan and Nicaragua. He is reportedly in Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital. Y unis Khalis, with the most formal authority, elected rats, based in Peshawar. Ahmad Shah Massoud, commander of northeast provinces, “lion of Panjshir”. JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1988