AFGHANISTAN: The High-Wire Man

To the casual eye, the mountain-locked central Asian kingdom of Afghanistan still looks much as it must have centuries ago. Camel caravans still wind below mud-walled villages perched for safety on hilltops. In the boulder-strewn valleys, leathery men in loose pantaloons guard their flocks with homemade rifles. Most Afghan women, gypsy-eyed and adorned with necklaces of silver coins, still hide their faces when a stranger appears. But in the windswept capital city of Kabul last week, TIME Correspondent Donald Connery found evidences on every side of Afghanistan’s awakening—an awakening that is creating a fresh danger spot for the West. His report:

Since 1955, when Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin swept into Kabul after a whirlwind tour of India, the Afghan government has developed a talent for taking with both hands from both sides in the cold war. From Russia come military instructors, heavy tanks, MIG fighter planes and Ilyushin jet bombers. To Russia go hundreds of young Afghans for training as pilots and mechanics. In the country’s northern provinces, Soviet aid is transforming potholed Afghan roads into paved superhighways, including one that runs from the Russian railheads and ports on the Oxus River 390 miles south to Kabul. Scarcely 40 miles by Russian-built road from the capital lies the huge new Pagram airfield with runways long enough to take Russia’s biggest jets.

In Kabul, Moscow’s aid has a more pleasing and dramatic look. On Russian-paved streets, Soviet-made taxis dart in and out of the traffic of laden camels and horse-drawn carriages. Over the city looms an eleven-story mechanized silo with a bakery attached where Russian experts supervise the mass production of bread and its delivery throughout the city by a fleet of Russian trucks. Some $300 million in Soviet grants and loans provide Afghanistan with oil-storage tanks, power plants, factories and a direct radiotelephone link with Moscow. Today, fully half of Afghanistan’s trade is with the Soviet Union (v. 17% in 1951).

Highways South. U.S. aid ($145 million) includes construction of some 500 miles of roads from Kabul south and east to the Pakistan border; although it was not intended that way, the roads will provide the Russians with a perfect network of all-weather highways running from the Oxus to the Khyber Pass, the traditional invasion route into India from the north. U.S. technicians are also working on a huge international airport at Kandahar and have raised dams, like those in the Helmand Valley, to control Afghanistan’s seasonal rivers. But, although it is carefully geared to the nation’s long-range needs, most U.S. aid is invisible to the average Afghan. A quiet program of teacher training cannot compete with a skyscraping silo; a gift of wheat is less evident than a fleet of delivery trucks.

The Unveiling. Inaugurator and chief manipulator of Afghanistan’s profitable “positive neutrality” is tough, bald Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud, 50. Cousin to Afghanistan’s figurehead King Mohammed Zahir Shah, Daoud took over as Prime Minister six years ago, deals with everything from high policy to trivial administrative details. Hard-working and ironfisted, he is quick to jail even his own Cabinet ministers if they step out of line.

Daoud claims that his objective is improving the lot of his 12 million people to the point where they can choose the kind of government they wish. Though Afghans are still 90% illiterate, schools are multiplying, and the government pays all student expenses. Daoud has even moved cautiously against the cherished Moslem custom of purdah, or seclusion of women. Today, unveiled women appear in Afghanistan’s schools and hospitals, are working as operators at Kabul’s new telephone exchange and as hostesses on the Afghan airline. And for the first visit to Kabul of India’s Prime Minister Nehru fortnight ago, Daoud persuaded the royal family and high-ranking officials to let their women appear unveiled at a banquet under the full light of the ornate chandeliers in handsome Chilstoon Palace.

The Guarantee. Daoud’s avowed excuse for his close relations with the Soviet Union is that he needs support in his running quarrel with neighboring Pakistan over “Pushtunistan,” a dream state that the Afghans would like to see carved out of Pakistani territory inhabited by 4,000,000 Pathan tribesmen. But, in fact, his reckless “neutrality” clearly rests on his belief that by cashing in on cold war rivalries he can push Afghanistan’s development at a rate the country could never afford by itself. And to his ministers’ occasional nervous warnings that he is thereby giving Russia life-and-death control of the nation, Daoud replies with all the confidence of a high-wire performer: “I personally guarantee that everything will come out all right.”