With an Afghan astronaut on board, this week's flight has as much political as scientific significance. The flight originally was scheduled for the middle of next year but was moved up apparently so it would fall near the halfway point in the Soviet withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. He said in an interview published Sunday in the newspaper Sovietskaya Rossiya he had flown 500 attack flights against insurgents. The Soviet Union began pulling out its more than 100,000 troops from Afghanistan May 15 and reached the halfway mark Aug. 15. Afghanistan highlighted the political significance of the joint mission by sending an official delegation headed by Mohammad Aslam Watanjar, Afghanistan's communications minister and member of its ruling Politburo, to Baikonur.
Science also figures prominently in the mission.
Mohmand told Sovietskaya Rossiya the cosmonauts will use instruments aboard Mir to search for potential mining areas in his homeland and to measure oil and gas deposits. To help alleviate a water shortage in Afghanistan, the cosmonauts also will be looking at snow and glaciers in mountains and will assess the hydroelectric potential of Afghanistan's rivers, Mohmand said. He was in space for 175 days in 1979 and a member of a 150-day mission in 1983. Western journalists, in an unprecedented open visit to Baikonur, watched the rocket thunder aloft from an observation site 1,300 yards away in an atmosphere so calm that 20 minutes before launch reporters munched on a buffet of caviar and fish in the bunker's cafe.