Death Behind a Keyhole

Protests over a perverse tragedy in Afghanistan

Since taking over as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan last July, Adolph Dubs, 58, an affable 29-year career diplomat known to all as "Spike," had traveled a similar route to his office every day, without a security escort and without incident. There was a winding drive from his residence, skirting the old bazaar district, then a fast stretch to his embassy on the edge of Kabul. Last week Dubs' routine led to his abduction and death -and an international uproar that put still more stress on U.S.-Soviet relations.

As Dubs reached a midtown intersection last Wednesday morning, on schedule at 8:45 a.m., four armed attackers, one of whom was dressed as a Kabul traffic policeman, stopped his chauffeur-driven Oldsmobile at gunpoint and jumped into the car. The abductors, believed to be right-wing Shi'ite Muslims opposed to Afghanistan's pro-Soviet regime, ordered their captive to drive to the Kabul Hotel, located near the Defense Ministry.

From room 117 on the hotel's second floor, they issued their demand for Dubs' life: the immediate release of three insurgent Muslim leaders jailed last month. Within minutes, police cordoned off the hotel and Afghan security forces took charge. Senior U.S. embassy diplomats at the scene were excluded from a crisis command post. In it were Afghan security chiefs, military officers and, significantly, Sergei Bakhturin, the Soviet embassy's chief security officer, and a Soviet adviser to the Afghan police.

Frenzied attempts to negotiate with the terrorists through the keyhole of 117 proved inconclusive. Other U.S. officials attempting to establish contact with President Noor Mohammed Taraki or high-ranking Afghan officials were shunted off to a Deputy Foreign Minister.

Alerted at home in Washington at 1 a.m. (E.S.T.), after urgent high-speed cables clattered simultaneously into the State Department, Pentagon and White House, Secretary Cyrus Vance issued firm instructions by telephone to the embassy in Kabul: Urge the Afghan government to exercise "extreme discretion" and take no chances that could further endanger Dubs' life. The State Department also contacted Moscow with a similar plea.

These demands for restraint went unheeded. Afghan officials later argued that they had received a ten-minute ultimatum from the terrorists, and had heard an unexplained shot inside the hotel seconds before they acted. At 12:50 p.m. Afghan army commandos and police stormed the room with a 40-second assault that one eyewitness described as "a complete holocaust" of gunfire and explosions. In the cordite smoke, Dubs was found slumped in a chair, dying of multiple wounds; it was unclear whose bullets had hit him. Afghan officials later exhibited what they claimed were the four bullet-ridden bodies of the terrorists.

The State Department pinned the blame for the reckless decision to attack on the two Soviets, and summoned Moscow's Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin to protest the Soviet role "in the strongest terms." In Moscow, U.S. Ambassador Malcolm Toon delivered an equally forceful remonstration to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. But Moscow disclaimed "any responsibility," and from Kabul, TIME Correspondent Lawrence Malkin reported a widespread impression that the attack decision had been made by the Afghans, not the Russians.

The shootout in the Kabul Hotel could turn out to be a major test for Afghan Strongman Taraki. Ever since the 61-year-old former leftist journalist seized power last April in a Soviet-backed coup, he has been pestered by mounting tribal and religious insurgency in the rugged eastern Afghan mountains. Now the rightist Muslim rebels, perhaps emboldened by the Shi'ite success in Iran, have shown they could strike close to home. The perverse tragedy of Spike Dubs was that guerrillas fighting a pro-Soviet regime had picked an American to show the world their rebellion. qed

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