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"Ah yes, the dynamiting," Dost said with relief as another boom sounded in the distance and he realized what had misled me. "They do it almost every day, sometimes twice a day, for producing stones for construction, you know." A tall, slim man with a neatly clipped moustache, Dost, who had started his diplomatic career under King Mohammad Zahir Shah and was now the most prominent face of Afghanistan's Moscow-installed regime, wanted me to understand that the war was virtually over: "We've destroyed the main hideouts of the bandits and mercenaries. Now they can't act in a group form. It's only a few individuals who indulge in terrorist activities and sabotage, which is common all over the world. We hope to eliminate that also."

It was November 1981, almost two years since Soviet...