In the refugee camps of Pakistan I had heard reports of destruction of food supplies, and of fears of a famine in the spring. Refugees from the Panjsher Valley, a center of resistance, told me how their walnut and mulberry trees were systematically cut down by the enemy during Soviet offensives. Here in the unplanted fields of Jaji I see the confirmation of these stories.

Farther on, in another village, a gray and-white cat prowls delicately along the top of a ruined wall. In a roofless room a carved wooden chest lies askew on a tilted floor. Under our feet are bedposts, scattered grain, and a single shoe, very small.

The mujahidin climb up a rickety ladder to the upper floor of the ruined mosque. Though the back wall gapes and half the floor is missing, the mosque is still sacred, and someone has strewn fresh straw on the floor. In the shadow of carved wooden columns, the men turn away from the destruction behind them, face the niche that marks the direction of Mecca, and pray.

Later, in a field of grass stubble under an opalescent autumn sky, we find shattered pieces of dull green plastic, one with a detonator still attached. These are the remains of small mines shaped like butterflies, which can take off the hand or foot of an unwary person or injure livestock. Designed to maim, they are scattered from helicopters on inhabited areas and important routes. Many Afghans have learned to explode the mines, usually by throwing stones from a safe distance. But two weeks later, in a Pakistani border town, I will watch a doctor bandage the mangled hand of a scarlet-veiled woman from Jaji who had been unwary enough to pick up the strange green plastic object.

THE SUN is nearly on the edge of the sharp, snow-covered peaks and ridges that mark the far limits of the valley when Mustafa stops and points to a cluster of nondescript mud buildings on a hilltop about a kilometer away. The fort at Ali Khel appears deserted, but inside are Afghan government soldiers and some Soviet officers. Mustafa tells me to stay behind the wall, out of direct line of sight and fire. "Every night the mujahidin attack the post," he says. "We will be in a rain of bullets. Do you want to go with us?"

After dark we make our way to the house of a man loyal to my friends' party. Mustafa is relieved that the man's family has not yet left for exile in Pakistan. At night, he says only half-jokingly, mujahidin factions are less trustful of one another.

A couple of hours later the attack on the government post begins, and Bahram Jan leads me up the stairs to the square tower with a picture-window view of fiery parabolas of tracer bullets arcing from the mountainsides toward the mud fort. The fighting goes on for hours in the frosty night, the mujahidin firing Kalashnikov automatic rifles and a heavy machine gun or two at the solid walls of the fort, the enemy post answering with machine guns, mortar fire, and occasional flares. The 120 rounds issued to each of my escorts will not last the night, and some must be conserved for the journey back to Pakistan. They cannot aim for victory, only for harassment.

Over the past five years 325 million dollars in covert U.S. aid has reportedly been channeled to the mujahidin, mostly in the form of smuggled Soviet-made small arms, along with a few antitank missiles and SAM-7 antiaircraft missiles. But there are questions as to how much of this aid has actually arrived inside Afghanistan. Commander Abdullah of Helmand Province said with more passion than realism: "We fight tanks with Kalashnikovs. Nowhere else in the world do they do this. Send us antiaircraft guns, and the mujahidin, with the help of God, would get the Russians out within one year." Certainly there are few effective antiaircraft weapons. The surface-to-air missiles are notoriously unreliable. When asked about the SAM-7, Ishaq Gailani grimaced. He and other mujahidin representatives would prefer portable, lightweight British or Swedish missiles.