The awful logic of genocide

National Review, Oct 4, 1985 by Jean-Francois Revel

Another result was the exodus. More than four and a half million Afghans (a figure we're fairly certain about) have fled their country since 1978, mostly to Pakistan. Given that the official figure of displaced persons worldwide, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is approximately ten million, that means that nearly one out of every two refugees on this planet today is an Afghan. If you add to this figure the number of massacred or starved to death (a figure that can prudently be put at a million) this means that of the 13 to 14 million inhabitants of the country in 1978 there remain today on Afghan soil about eight million. Put otherwide, nearly 40 per cent of the population is either in exile, or dead.

If one notes that the repression started 18 months before the invasion of December 27, 1979, and was directed from the start of Soviet advisors already in place, one cannot escape the conclusion, once again, that the USSR was carrying out a well-thought-through program. It is not credible, as the commentators who wish at all costs to exculpate the Soviets claim, that they gave way to momentary panic. The great "liberal" Mikhail Gorbachev seems to have not the slightest intention of modifying the Soviet political plan for Afghanistan. One of his first declarations on the subject, in March 1985, was to threaten reprisals against Pakistan if that country continued to "meddle in the internal affairs" of its neighbor, which in Soviet language means if Pakistan continues to shelter Afghan refugees instead of repelling them across the border to be massacred on the other side.

Must one conclude that the Soviet Union is invulnerable and can--as South Africa, or Chile, cannot--violate human rights with impunity, shielded by the discreet complicity of an international opinion that knows it is powerless? Perhaps not. What the discreet people find a bit upsetting are the anti-Communist guerrillas: in Angola, in Nicaragua, and above all in Afghanistan. For the first time, the United States Congress, in July 1985, openly recognized the importance of this phenomenon and voted official aid--$15 million to the Afghan resistance.