Pop open your June 11, 1984, copy of Time, turn to page 38, and read "Caravans on Moonless Nights: How the CIA supports and supplies the anti-Soviet guerrillas."

It's an exciting story about the military successes of the redoubtable mujahidin commander Ahmad Shah Massoud--how, with the help of munitions and radios supplied by the CIA, he and his men resisted the Soviet army's seventh assault on the Panjshir Valley.

It tells how the mujahidin obliterated a 40-vehicle Soviet convoy and used mines to turn flatlands into a cemetery for tanks and crews that had grave diggers working overtime.

"Caravans" is an encouraging, almost upbeat account of how the CIA is helping Afghan freedom fighters (called mujahidin) as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. It's become one of the State Department's few really popular policies as world outrage at the Soviets has continued to grow following their 1979 invasion and, as Time noted, the Soviets resorted "to carpet bombing, chemical warfare and outright massacre of civilians."

The article, which underscores the U.S. commitment, quotes Secretary of State George Shultz telling several thousand Afghan refugees, "You fight valiantly, and your spirit inspires the world. I want you to know that you do not fight alone. I can assure you that the United States has, does and will continue to stand with you."

Time then detailed the operation of the CIA's pipeline from Pakistan into Afghanistan which carries everything from medicine to surface-to-air missiles past vigilant low-flying Soviet helicopters—mostly on moonless nights.

It was a remarkable story. How often does the CIA willingly provide detailed information about their deep-cover operations—especially one characterized as "one of the most hazardous and difficult tasks ever undertaken in modern military history"? Under the circumstances, you'd expect them to guard their secret like Coca-Cola guards the formula for the "real thing."

But no. In Time you can learn all about the history of the pipeline, CIA recruiting practices, and their methods of operation.

Even better, you get an inside look at how the pipeline works: Massoud asks for land mines. U.S. Army ordnance depots in the United States and West Germany spring into action to collect the matériel, remove the markings, and ship them. You follow the mines to a secret landing strip in Oman to Pakistan's coast where CIA-trained Afghans truck them to the mujahidin near the border. They in turn drive inside Afghanistan, load the mines onto camels, and head off to Massoud. Time called this a "textbook example of the pipeline in action." Alas, if it were only true.

I do not know if Massoud happened to pick up this copy of Time. It isn't easy for him to get to a corner drugstore these days. For one thing, the CIA pipeline doesn't exist, U.S. aid is scarce as hens' teeth, and his men are short of food, medicine, radios, and military supplies.

True, the mujahidin are doing well on the ground. But they don't have an air force and their few anti-aircraft weapons are ineffective against Soviet juggernauts like the Mi-24 Hind D helicopter, which can level a village in ten minutes.


When the Afghan freedom fighters hear stories like "Caravans on Moonless Nights," they shake their heads. Who wouldn't? Abdul Mutawakil, an Afghan holy man, recently received all of 24 World War II-vintage rifles from the United States for his 50,000 men. Mujahidin commander Wali Kahan says he is lacking adequate supplies and quality military equipment. Zia Massoud, Ahmad Shah Massoud's brother, says he hasn't even received the money promised him to transport supplies to his men before winter.

Brigadier Safi says his men fight in sandals. Other commanders report the same. Besides suffering from the cold, not having good boots increases the risk of being injured by a land mine —-especially when at least one commander is still waiting for U.S.-supplied mine detectors. And along with shoes, food, medicine and munitions, the freedom fighters wish they had some quality surface-to-air missiles like the U.S.-made Redeye and Stinger.

But that's not the idea you get from the news. "Caravans" was not the first story that, thanks to carefully placed leaks, leads readers to the ineluctable conclusion that the United States is helping the mujahidin.

In fact, it's well nigh impossible to come away without the impression that the U.S. government has been doing everything it can to get clandestine aid to the Afghans. "It had been an open secret," Time said in May of 1983, that "the U.S. was helping Afghan guerrillas resist the Soviet occupation of their country. But in a surprise move last week, a segment of the Administration made the American role public by leaking details to the New York Times."

Unnamed sources in the Administration said that the president had "ordered an increase in the quantity and quality of armsddddIn December [of '82], the officials said, the Central Intelligence Agency began providing the rebels with bazookas, mortars, mines and recoilless rifles."

The following October, Newsweek reported that "Washington sources estimate that the United States now supplies the mujahidin with $100 million annually—mostly through middlemen who can supply Russian- or Chinese-made weapons to cloak the U.S. involvement." Then, in 1984, "Caravans" reported that the CIA spends about $75 million a year "supplying the rebels with grenades, RPG-7 rocket launchers and portable surface-to-air missiles, as well as radio equipment and medicines."

In April of 1985 Time announced, "The U.S. pipeline alone is delivering an estimated $250 million in covert aid this year." On October 10, 1985, word was leaked from the Senate Intelligence Committee that Congress had secretly approved another $300 million in military aid for mujahidin for the next two years in addition to secret funds already appropriated for fiscal 1986 and 1987. And according to the Washington Post, some insiders were talking about "the potential of a $1 billion-a-year program pretty soon."

A U.S. aid program of sorts does exist. But it is not supplying the kinds of aid described in the press—and what little aid does get through does not arrive by "pipeline." In fact, most of it simply does not get through. "Critics," as the Post observed, "have charged that much of the aid intended for the rebels has somehow disappeared into a maelstrom of graft and political maneuvering involving the CIA, assorted intermediaries and officials of the Pakistani government who are thought to be facilitating the transfers." And quite in conflict with the pronouncements of George Shultz, the State Department—which lobbied against a 1984 Tsongas-Ritter bill that would have provided aid for the mujahidin—has actually tried to block aid to the Afghans.

The picture that emerges from the pages of Time et al. is so at odds with the real life experiences of the mujahidin that it is almost inexplicable. Almost. But Americans who have traveled inside Afghanistan with the mujahidin have an explanation—disinformation, an adroit mixture of lies and truth designed to mislead the enemy, in this instance compounded by the CIA and the State Department.

But in this case who's the enemy—the Soviets? Hardly. They know whether U.S. aid is getting through in any quantity. The mujahidin? Indirectly, perhaps. But they too know if U.S. aid is getting through. Well, then, who's left to mislead? Only the American public who are supposed to believe their government is, as Shultz promised, standing with the Afghan freedom fighters.

Hard to believe? When Karen McKay first organized the Committee for a Free Afghanistan in January of 1981, she didn't believe it either. She knew that virtually no aid was getting through. But she ascribed it to bureaucratic bungling. Now she believes that there is "almost an unholy alliance with the CIA and the KGB pulling the wool over the eyes of the American people—the CIA, because the State Department wants the American people to believe that everything necessary is being done for Afghanistan, and the KGB wants us to believe that America is behind the freedom fighters because that justifies their presence in Afghanistan."

Wars are a curious phenomenon. Truth is supposed to be the first victim in any conflict. But—if what Americans outside the State Department who have tried to help the mujahidin say is true—when future historians analyze this one, they will be at a loss to explain American policy towards it. They will struggle with the fact that when it was in the U.S. interest to aid the freedom fighters, we failed to do so. But most of all, they will have a hard time explaining why the State Department tried to block the passage and delivery of small amounts of Congressional and independent aid to the mujahidin, while at the same time floating stories that every needful thing was being done for the resistance.

It is precisely these ironies that give Karen McKay a job which can mean the difference between life and death for an entire nation—if only she can convince a largely misled American populace that the Soviets are killing people by the millions in one of the most beautiful nations in the world. And that our own government is contributing to the catastrophe.

This is not the kind of work she envisioned. She started out in Fresno, California, where she became an expert equestrian. But a love of country and adventure took her into the Army where she rose to the rank of captain. She's now a major in the U.S. Army Reserve where she has had assignments in the Special Forces, the elite 82nd Airborne Division, the Pentagon, and the Rapid Deployment Force.

Karen's odyssey took her to Greece and Israel where she gained firsthand knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs while pursuing a doctorate in history at Hebrew University and working as a free-lance journalist. She returned to the United States at the end of 1979 and in January 1981 organized the Committee for a Free Afghanistan and became its executive director.

Since then she's been battling it out in the trenches of Washington, D.C., trying to get effective military and humanitarian aid for the Afghans. And it hasn't been easy. Even though the House and Senate, liberal and conservative alike, are supportive of the mujahidin, not nearly enough is being done to protect the Afghans from extinction.

Karen, politically conservative, finds much of her congressional support among liberals, has testified before the Socialist International, and is in "back-slapping agreement" with the Italian Communists on the war in Afghanistan. Yet the killing goes on.

There is only one unpredictable element in this drama—when will the sleeping giant, the American people, wake up?

Americans are a curious people. Our attitudes toward love, war, and death keep a small army of writers employed explaining us to ourselves. We're compassionate and charitable to a fault. Sadly, we're often charitable after the fact.

During World War II few Americans in or out of government were concerned with the fate of the Jews in Europe. It was only after the war that holocaust became a burning national issue and Americans collectively said "never again."

We became concerned after two or three million Cambodians were murdered or died from disease, malnutrition, or forced labor at the hands of Marxist Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodian) soldiers led by Pol Pot—who seized power in 1975 and immediately drove the inhabitants of the capital, Phnom Penh, out of the city in a violent effort to reshape Cambodian society. Likewise, there was trouble in Ethiopia long before it became a fashionable cause.

Yet for every Ethiopian who has died in the famine, as many as ten Afghans have died at the hands of the Soviets—and another ten to twenty have been forced to flee their country.

As in the past, one day the American people will wake up and the plight of the Afghans will be in vogue. The only question is, will it be too late?

Coming Revolution: You are the flame of freedom that is speaking today for millions of Afghans. We realize that this is a people of strength and inner spirit and fire whose nation is being assaulted by a superpower and most of the world is either unconscious of this or uncaring.

The Soviet army invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979. But they laid the foundation way back in the 1950s when they started building airfields and a hardened, all-weather highway that linked Afghanistan to the Soviets' transportation system.

They also began the slow, step-by-step process of subversion that included training cadres of pro-Soviet officers while organizing the Afghan army. And then in a series of progressively more pro-Soviet coups they put in their puppets—Nur Mohammed Taraki in 1978, Hafizullah Amin in September of '79, and then in December of '79 Babrak Karmal.

This is a pattern that has repeated itself over the years in one form or another. And we see the same tragedy happening again and again. And while there is time and opportunity for the reinforcement of the Afghan freedom fighters, the powers of the West do not take a stand, they do not move. Today, therefore, when the carnage is at the present level, what can we do, we the people of America, for the people of Afghanistan?

Karen McKay: Well, there is a great deal that we can do if we move before it's too late. After six years, for the first time, I think it's fast becoming too late because half the population of Afghanistan is now either dead or has fled the country as refugees.

The country only had a population of 15 million to start with. More than five million have fled as refugees. Another two to three million have probably been killed in the bombings or by war-related causes. That doesn't leave very many people inside Afghanistan. And most of them have been terribly affected because there is a famine throughout Afghanistan and a medical crisis—a deliberately engineered medical crisis.

The Soviets long ago developed famine as a weapon against peoples. They used it against the Lithuanians, the Ukrainians, what they called the Basmachi, the Turkmen and Azerbaijani and others of what are today the Asiatic republics.

Famine, deportation, and medical crisis are very much weapons in the Soviet arsenal. Other folks rely on bombs and bullets and rockets and so forth. The Soviets have developed a far greater arsenal that no nation which has a conscience imposed on it by man or God or public opinion could ever do.

CR: Karen, this has been a particularly gruesome war from the start. But we understand that in Lahgman Province things have reached new levels of inhumanity.

KM: Oh, yes. Well, you know, atrocities have been going on since the beginning of this war. But as the Soviets became increasingly frustrated with their inability to defeat the guerrillas, they turned more and more on the civilian population.

Then about two years ago we saw a very ominous turn in the war as we saw evidence that there had been a conscious policy decision that the civilian population, the noncombatants—primarily women and children and old people—were now going to be the primary target of the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

This war against the civilian population has taken the form primarily of a war of terror. The Soviets are trying to frighten the people (if they cannot beat them) into submission—to frighten them to where they will no longer support the freedom fighters and will try to find a way to accommodate the inevitable, meaning the Soviet occupation of their country.

Mao Tse-tung wrote a long time ago that the guerrilla moves among the people as the fish moves in the sea. In Afghanistan they can't catch the fish so the Soviets are draining the sea. In a way this is kind of a sick compliment to the Afghan people, a recognition by the Soviets that they are fighting a truly popular people's movement, which they must surely envy.

Like every other province in Afghanistan, Lahgman has seen atrocities beyond words. Even the Nazis didn't do the kinds of things the Russians are doing. We've been hearing for years of children having their throats slit with bayonets, pregnant women being disemboweled, of girls snatched from villages, raped at 15,000 feet and then hurled from helicopters back into their villages—things like this. But the reports that we got last June from Lahgman seemed to carry it into yet another realm of horror. A report, for example, of a two-day-old infant tied to a spit and roasted live in front of the eyes of his parents, and then the parents were shot.

Afghanistan is a country that was intensely cultivated in the few areas where it could be cultivated. These areas have a water system that has been built over the millennia and is very intricate. And the entire country is laced with an underground network of aquifers that the people have learned to use as bomb shelters. Every so many hundred meters there is a well that goes down into the aquifer that the people go down in and they pull a stone in over them when the Russians are known to be coming. But the Soviets have learned that the people hide in these underground aquifers.

A couple years ago in Lahgman Province there was a terrible massacre where 106 men and boys, from the age of six up, were slaughtered in one of these aquifers with both chemical weapons and incendiaries. I would have described this as having killed these people three times because any one of the munitions the Soviets used in that aquifer would have killed those people. But it was done more for the terror effect because the bodies literally melted to the walls of the aquifer. And the rescuers who went in to try to bring them out were overcome by the noxious, lethal chemical agents that were left behind.

CR: This particular massacre created quite a stir in certain circles in the United States.

KM: The Afghans can't understand our keen interest in atrocities or chemical weapons or anything like that because they say, "The Russians do it every day. What Americans should care about is not how they kill us but the fact that they are killing us."

The Soviets don't care whether they kill you with an AK round or a missile or chemical weapon so long as they accomplish the mission. Chemical weapons are a very cheap combat multiplier—a cheap weapon of mass destruction like nuclear weapons. And while nuclear weapons are a terrifying possibility that are always held over our heads, chemical weapons are a terrifying reality being used by the Soviets and their proxies in half a dozen countries.

CR: Under the circumstances, how are the Afghans holding out?

KM: Afghanistan is a country where God is very present. And if you ask the freedom fighters how, empty-handed, barefooted, empty-bellied, they've held out for so long against the mightiest superpower on earth—that's been throwing at them the world's most advanced weapon systems, including laser-guided weapon systems and chemical and biological warfare and the helicopter gunship—they simply shrug and they say, "God's doing it."

There can't be any other answer for it because no other people in the world have been able to stand up to the Soviets and kick mud in their eye and continue to do it with impunity for so long.

CR: So how long can the Afghans continue to hold out?

KM: I've often been asked that. And I always say, "Well, the smart guys said that it would be over within a week like Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and they're still fighting." Never before would I give any prediction. But I think this past summer will have been the watershed—this past summer and winter—because Afghanistan has lost half its population.

That war of terror has got to ultimately someday demoralize them. It hasn't yet. But the abuse of their women and children . . . The Soviets know that the women and the children are the most sacred treasures of the Afghan people. The raping and defiling of women is something that a Moslem cannot tolerate. To the Afghans that is like defiling God, and it's something they can't take. And I feel that if we don't get them effective aid, it's soon going to be too late.

CR: And one of the greatest races of people the world has ever known will be effectively leveled.

KM: Effectively, yes. This is genocide. You know, genocide is the destruction of a genus. That's what the Nazis tried to do to the Jews and the Cambodians did to themselves. And in the case of the Afghans, there being so few of them to start with and so few of them left, they may well disappear from the face of the earth if we don't get them some help.

CR: That's right.

KM: Both morally and strategically.

CR: When you say strategically, you're talking about more than simply providing the Afghans the weapons they need to defend themselves. You're also referring to the defense of the United States. Why?

KM: The Soviet invasion of that country was the most blatant and naked act of aggression by one country against a sovereign nation since Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. Yet everywhere I go in America people ask me, "Why Afghanistan?"

There's a tendency on the part of our more arrogant intellectuals to denigrate the Afghans as a bunch of medieval ragheads worshiping a funny god, talking a funny language, and running around a pile of rocks, and that this has absolutely nothing to do with the security of the West.

Afghanistan has everything to do with the security of the free world, indeed with the future of Western civilization as we know it.

From their bases in southern Afghanistan, Soviet MiG fighter bombers are only 490 nautical miles from the Strait of Hormuz, that vital narrow bottleneck of water through which moves 70 percent of the oil the free world imports. And then, of course, throughout the Persian Gulf you have the greatest oil reserves in the world [see map].

CR: Then for the Soviets the invasion of Afghanistan was a strategic move.

KM: It was very much a strategic move, kind of a last move in a global chess game that's put us in check to the Russian bear.

The Soviets are building six or eight of the most dangerous long-range offensive bases in the world in Afghanistan. Shindand is on its way to becoming the most sophisticated military base in the world. And that's only about 80 miles from the Iranian border and it's a combined-arms army base. It's got tanks and motorized rifles and helicopters and long-range bombers and fighter bombers and long-range transport aircraft and so forth, and they're digging in there. But there are another six or eight bases being built to threaten Pakistan, India, and China. And then they've got more than 30 more bases on the northern side of the mountains.

All over the world the Soviets have been moving for the past generation to poise themselves to sever our resource lifelines. They have held us mesmerized with nuclear blackmail while moving all over the globe to where they are now positioned anywhere you look—in the Caribbean, in the Horn of Africa, in southern Africa, in Southeast Asia, southwest Asia, the Middle East. Wherever there's a hot spot there is either some choke point in our resource lifeline or a vital source of our raw materials.

The United States is no longer self-sufficient in anything. We can't make a toaster oven, a jet engine, or grow an ear of corn without vital important resources. And if they move to sever our resource lifelines, we will be forced to capitulate. We can't run a war machine without those important resources.

We import well over 90 percent of the raw materials we need for our security. The Soviets, by contrast, have over 90 percent of their raw materials within their borders. And if they are able to consolidate their hold on Afghanistan and these other areas of the world, all they have to do is shut off the tap and Europe and the United States and Japan will be isolated in the ever-widening margins of the Soviet empire—isolated one from the other to atrophy and drop off.

CR: What you're really saying is that if the American people want to retain their freedom and their integrity as a nation, they're going to have to get to the core of the unelected officials that are running the bureaucracy who have denied or blocked aid to the Afghan freedom fighters. The people are going to have to come alive and realize that their future is in total jeopardy because of Afghanistan.

KM: Absolutely. Absolutely. We know that President Reagan is totally committed to the freedom fighters. I've met with him myself. He has repeatedly said that if the Afghans need weapons, we'll give them. We're never going to let these people go down the tubes. And yet nothing happens.

CR: What is happening to U.S. aid, the $250 million that was appropriated? Is it getting there or isn't it being delivered?

KM: That's a figment of somebody's imagination. On the ground in Afghanistan, the bottom line is that there is no evidence of any significant outside aid.

There is some Chinese aid. There used to be Egyptian aid before Sadat was murdered. But there is nothing that, by virtue of its quality or quantity, you could even speculate as being from American sources—even through a third nation. All of these reports of x amount of aid have been speculation, rumors, deliberate leaks, and disinformation. Nobody who really is in a position to know has ever said anything about it.

There's been a very skillful campaign of disinformation. I think that anyone who claims that he knows the figures of alleged CIA aid is lying, because anyone who is in a position to know isn't talking.

I think that maybe buried in the various budgets that some aid has been earmarked. But it has never been sent except little bits and pieces of things that I do know about—Thompson submachine guns that they stopped making before World War II, ammunition for the 303 rifle whose boxes are marked "Do not use after July 17, 1944," and so forth.

CR: They're just dumping their waste.

KM: Actual trash, yes. But the Redeye, which they need so desperately, is obsolete in our forces and we've got them sitting in warehouses.

Last summer Congress voted a huge, munificent sum of $2 million for medical aid inside Afghanistan. Now $2 million won't buy you much of a villa in Beverly Hills, but that was the first overt, open humanitarian aid ever voted for Afghanistan since the Soviets invaded in '79.

The State Department was given the mandate to distribute this aid inside Afghanistan for humanitarian aid. The upshot of it was that $1.2 million went to the Red Cross, which will not work inside Afghanistan. They do good work in Pakistan for the surviving handful who make it that far, but will not work inside Afghanistan. Another $400,000 or so went to buy ambulances to be used on the Pakistan side of the border, again, for the handful that make it. The remaining few hundred thousand was given to various international committees to be distributed inside Afghanistan.

Our problem with aiding the Afghans is definitely in the State Department. And I believe the CIA is very much the instrument of the State Department in this case.

The State Department doesn't want any traceable, visible, or effective American aid or foreign aid getting in to the Afghan people. So they are running a disinformation campaign in the media and on the Hill.

We have debated State Department officials at Amnesty International meetings and so forth where they claim, "There's no hunger, there is no medical problem. The Afghans have more guns than they know what to do with. In any case, they're incompetent. In any case, the Russians really aren't there"—really radical, extreme statements which are easily refutable, except that people want to believe and tend to believe their government.

The State Department wants the American people to believe that "everything necessary," in their words, is being done for the Afghans. They will point to the number of aircraft that have been allegedly shot down in the last year and they will say, "Dozens of Soviet aircraft have been shot down."

Some have been shot down, but very few, because the Afghans lack anti-aircraft weapons. Most of the Soviet air losses are due to pilot error or equipment failures.

CR: Karen, we do not have to be astute political scientists to understand this situation. It's very obvious what kind of a key Afghanistan is. We do not need to teach our representatives in Congress or at the CIA or at the State Department. They know.

KM: They should know.

CR: Then what is the real power play behind the denial of aid?

KM: That's a hard one. There's a lot of speculation. There are a lot of conspiracy theories going around. For a long time I refused to accept any of them because the patriotic American in me did not want to believe that my country would be so malevolent. But then, when you get to thinking about it, we built the Kama River truck factory. Those are Ford trucks. And those are what are used to haul the Soviet troops into Afghanistan.

In fact, we built their entire industrial infrastructure because the Soviets are neither builders nor repairers. This goes back again to the threat to our resource lifelines. These people can't make anything—not even a sewing machine. They've got to capture what other people have. They don't want to blow us to smithereens with nukes. They want what we've got intact.

As for the conspiracy theory, you can't help but give it some credence. And for a long time I couldn't figure out where the "disconnect" was and I attributed it more to incompetence than evil. Now I have to attribute it to definite malevolence of forethought on the part of our State Department.

But fortunately, I think the American people are basically with us--those that we've been able to reach, because the media doesn't help us.

Our liberal intellectuals and our media people, like Dan Rather, tend to sneer at the Afghans as being so dumb, so medieval that they don't know any better than to fight the Russians. They're not smart enough to know that you have to capitulate and live with the Russians. In this the Afghans are providing an example to all of us, a beacon of liberty, a beacon of freedom, a shining example of what you can do—that the Soviet empire is neither immutable nor inevitable and that Ivan is not 10 feet tall, undefeatable or immortal, that you can fight Ivan and you can win.

CR: And actually the situation in Afghanistan is far worse than it is in Ethiopia.

KM: Far worse. And the thing is, with Ethiopia you can ignore the Soviet and the Communist origins of the problems there and pass it off as a natural disaster. In Afghanistan, if you're going to cover that story objectively and fairly, you have to point the finger of j'accuse at the Soviets because you cannot ignore the fact that what is happening in Afghanistan is very much the intent of the Soviets.

CR: If we do equip the Afghans or they're able to equip themselves somehow, what will happen to this war?

KM: Well, there we've got to get into the realm of speculation. It's anybody's guess, but my guess is that the Soviets will be defeated—forced to withdraw from Afghanistan in ignominious defeat as we were from Vietnam.

The least that we can do is increase the Soviet pucker factor by adding anti-aircraft weapons in there in any kind of significant supply. The most that can happen is the defeat of the Soviet empire. But I think what will happen, though, is if we couple aid to the Afghans with diplomatic, political, and economic support—which is essential because every guerrilla movement has got to have outside support in order to succeed—the pressure can be raised to the point where the Soviets will say, "All right, we'll negotiate. We'll negotiate a face-saving withdrawal." That happened in Iran three times in this century. In addition, they were forced to give up Austria. They were forced to give up Greece. They were forced to give up Finland.

CR: If the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan, what happens to Eastern Europe?

KM: I think that if their withdrawal from Afghanistan is forced into a deadbeat retreat, the captive world which has been waiting for years, hungering for freedom, longing to throw off this yoke of Communist tyranny, will rise up, because all they've been waiting for is the opportunity.

During the Vietnam war a lot of our intellectuals and journalists and so forth laughed at the domino theory. It worked. Vietnam fell, Laos and Cambodia fell, Taiwan is threatened today. And the domino theory could work here too. But it can also work the other way. If we support the Afghan freedom fighters today, it could be the opposite of the domino theory; it could be the spark that ignites a string of firecrackers.

The entire captive world is watching Afghanistan. Lech Walesa, the Solidarity movement leader in Poland has said over and over that what has given them courage to have hung in there as long as they have is the Afghan freedom fighters.

But, yes, it could be the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire.

One last word. We would like to point to the parallel between Afghanistan and Ethiopia, and call upon the world to show the same generous concern for the one as for the other.

The Coming Revolution hurls a challenge to all who love Life and are willing to pay the price to defend it—to Bob Geldof, Ken Kragen, Bob Dylan, and all the participants in and sponsors of USA for Africa, Live Aid, Band Aid, Hands Across America, Sport Aid, etc.—to raise money for the starving Afghans.

If we truly believe in sending aid to all hungry people, let's get together and help the Afghans now, before there are none left to save.

What's the difference between a starving Ethiopian child whose parents are rebelling against their Soviet-backed government and a starving Afghan child whose parents are doing the same?

It's time we realize that the status quo will continue--unless we take action now.

So what can we do?

1. Let's not wait for Afghan genocide to become a chic cause.

2. Let's write our congressmen. It does work. Most of our senators and representatives from Edward Kennedy to Jack Kemp, support the mujahidin.

3. Let's tell them all that we know the U.S. is not giving the aid we say we are and demand to know the reason why. Let's tell them we want action now.

4. We can also remind them of the importance of anti-aircraft weapons, and of the Redeyes stacked up in our warehouses—obsolete, but fully capable of defending a village.

The Afghans aren't asking for our troops. They want to win this one themselves. So why don't we untie their hands?

After all, do people have a right to defend themselves and the freedom of their homelands or don't they? Are we to leave them victims of a hideous chemical extermination and the carpet bombing of their villages and fields?

How can a nation who loves the Lady Liberty neglect her greatest cause?

Sooner or later we must give answer for our neglect before the courts of the world and of heaven. If we do not act, we will be found wanting.

5. Let's tell our friends about disinformation. Let's challenge the media's blackout on the atrocities, the famine, and the dire need for the aid that isn't getting through.

6. Why don't you ask the Committee for a Free Afghanistan for the most up-to-date information and what you can do to help.*

7. We can give dynamic decrees for the Afghan people. Start with Archangel Michael's decree on page 56 of this magazine, inserting your special prayer for the Afghans. And send for his powerful rosary cassette tape and booklet* and learn how to call legions of angels into action to defend the Afghans.


*Write 214 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E., Washington, DC 20002.


Mao Tse-tung wrote a long time ago that the guerrilla moves among the people as the fish moves in the sea. In Afghanistan they can't catch the fish so the Soviets are draining the sea.

The Afghans can't understand our keen interest in atrocities or chemical weapons. They say, 'The Russians do it every day. What Americans should care about is not how they kill us but the fact that they are killing us.'

If you ask the freedom fighters how, empty-handed, barefooted, empty-bellied, they've held out for so long against the mightiest superpower, they simply shrug and say, 'God's doing it.'

Afghanistan is a beautiful, mountainous country; the Afghans, a handsome, independent people who are close to God and their land. An ancient mosque at Mazar-i-Sharif, like so many others that have been systematically destroyed, has probably been leveled. In this war the Soviets have bombed livestock and fields and made children and old people primary military targets in order to break down the resistance.

The Mi-24 Hind D helicopter gunship is one of the most potent weapons platforms in the world. It can reduce a village to rubble in a matter of minutes. It is so heavily armored that the mujahidin need heat-seeking missiles--which the U.S. and her allies will not supply--to shoot them down. The takeover of Afghanistan was a key move in a two-decade-old geo-strategic global chess game that placed the U.S. in check to the Russian bear. From their bases in Afghanistan, Soviet MiGs can easily reach the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf and threaten our oil lifelines.

The pen is mightier . . . especially this "pen" (a) which is actually a bomb designed to blow off the hand of a civilian. Its purpose is not to kill but to terrorize and maim. Many of the victims are children. The Soviets have dropped thousands of "toy bombs" that look like butterflies, dollies, birds, and chewing gum but will blow off a hand or foot. The Soviets have also seeded the countryside with small, camouflaged land mines.

In general, to be wounded in Afghanistan is to be dead. These are some of the survivors: Boy (b) who stepped on a mine and lost a foot. Two-year-old boy (c) who lost a hand picking up a toy bomb. Boy (d) who was badly injured by shrapnel when his village was bombed. Three men (f, j, k) who suffered facial wounds. Two of the three (f, k) received treatment and are again fighting for their country. Many mujahidin are taken out of action by land mines—high-tech punji sticks—that blow off a foot. They cripple one soldier and take two more, who must take the victim to the rear, out of action.

There are few Afghan doctors, and the State Department has made a concerted effort to keep American physicians from going into Afghanistan on a voluntary basis to save the lives of those who would live with proper medical care. Most of those injured die slowly from infection, lack of food, blood poisoning and related maladies. Those who reach Pakistan, which has the closest medical facilities, arrive by camel or donkey—the only ambulances available.

Sixty-seven-year-old mujahidin commander (e) who stepped on a land mine. His leg was progressively amputated to the hip. He survived, is wearing a prosthesis (g), and is back inside leading his men. Man (h), 19, was burned by napalm over 90 percent of his body. From Russia with love. (i) A contribution to peaceful village life. Afghan children sit on a dud Soviet bomb. It still could go off.