What was going on when I was born?

Three years ago yesterday a Soviet airborne division landed at the airport at Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Five days later two Soviet mechanized infantry divisions, leading a force of about 60,000 troops, crossed the Soviet-Afghan border and seized the country's cities, airports and highways. In operations since then, Western intelligence sources say, the Soviet forces, now estimated to total more than 100,000 men, have not succeeded in subduing the Afghan insurgents or in establishing the rule of President Babrak Karmal outside the cities and towns. Position Is Strengthened The Soviet forces entered Afghanistan when its Government was headed by Hafizullah Amin and when its forces were hard pressed by Moslem insurgents. Mr. Amin was deposed on Dec. 27, 1979, three days after the airborne division landed, and was executed. He was replaced by Mr. Karmal.

Washington, Dec. 24--The leaders of the House and Senate have agreed to reintroduce legislation to create public works jobs when Congress reconvenes Jan. 3, and they say they expect President Reagan to support such an effort. Howard H. Baker Jr., Republican of Tennessee, the Senate majority leader, and House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., Democrat of Massachusetts, say they expect a public works jobs bill to be at the top of the agenda of the new Congress. Both say further that they expect the President, who has assailed such programs as counterproductive "makework" legislation, to reverse himself and support the measure in an effort to reduce unemployment, now at 10.8 percent. White House Denies a Shift A White House spokesman said tonight that there was "no truth" to the but in an interview as the 97th Congress drew to a close, Howard H. Baker Jr., the Senate majority leader, said, "I would anticipate that the President will support some form of jobs program." Both the House and the Senate approved separate public works jobs bills in the post-election session of Congress, but they were withdrawn under threat of a Presidential veto. The Speaker and the Senate leader did persuade Mr. Reagan to indorse a highway repair program that supporters say will create 320,000 jobs, and they expect to work together again on a public works jobs program that will win the President's support.

Washington, Dec. 24--Attorney General William French Smith has approved a plan that would allow the Secret Service to use a large computer system of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to keep track of people it believes may pose a threat to officials who are guarded by the Secret Service. The F.B.I. computer until now has been mostly limited to holding information about people who have been officially accused of a crime, not those viewed as potential suspects. The Justice Department's plan to broaden the computer's scope without the approval of Congress has come under criticism from the Democratic chairman and senior Republican of the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. The criticism of the project came in a letter sent to Attorney General Smith by Representative Don Edwards, Democrat of California, and Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin.

For Dr. Barney B. Clark, doctors want the Christmas holidays to be more restful than festive. For his nurses, these will be days when they will be giving continued intensive care and encouragement to Dr. Clark in the quiet celebration of what he regards as his extended life. For these nurses, that mean paying constant attention to the kind of medical detail that is essential to any patient attempting to recover from serious illness, especially one trying to become the first person to adapt himself to a permanent plastic heart. In addition to all the technical skills involved in the permanent implanation of a polyurethane heart in a human body, human qualities are required for success as well. At times, nurses may bring such human touches to bear more readily than the doctors. They may be more attentive, more attuned to a patient's immediate needs.

The Christmas Bird Count, the early-winter rite that inspires some 35,000 American birders to don cold-weather gear and spend a day scanning forests and fields for birds, listening for owls and recording their findings, has come of age. The 82-year-old event, directed by the National Audubon Society, has long provided nature lovers with recreation, physical exercise and a chance to display their spotting skills. But in recent years it has evolved into a respected research tool for organizations that range from municipal planning agencies to the Air Force. Its sponsors point out that it is one of the few research operations in which amateurs can make contributions that are valuable to scientists.

Boulder, Colo., Dec. 24--By midafternoon, the snow was already 18 inches deep and still coming down. Roads were impassable. The Denver airport was closed. But it was down at the Crossroads shopping mall here that the Christmas Eve blizzard claimed one of its more dramatic casualties: Santa Claus was snowbound, somewhere in Boulder County, and wouldn't be making it in to work today.

The army killed 42 guerrillas and destroyed four rebel camps in eastern El Salvador in a three-day offensive, a Defense Ministry spokesman said today. Government troops reportedly suffered only two wounded. Officials said the offensive, said to have included heavy mortar attacks and bombing runs by United States-s@upplied A-37 fighter bombers, ended Thursday and centered on an area 37 miles east of the capital.

The daughter of the President of Honduras flew to Tegucigalpa today for a meeting with her father after her release from nine days of captivity in Guatemala. A Government spokesman said the woman, Dr. Judith Xiomara Suazo Estrada, 33 years old, planned to spend the Christmas holidays with her father, President Roberto Suazo Cordova, at his ranch in La Paz, north of the capital.

Prime Minister P.W. Botha's plan for extending limited political rights to two nonwhite minority groups without opening the door to any effective role for the black majority has presented the opposition in the white Parliament with some difficult choices. Inevitably, the question of whether to accept or reject proposals raises the question of whether the official opposition, the Progressive Federal Party, which is relatively liberal, will play any role at all in the new setup. Some of its members are privately predicting that they will have no choice but to oppose the changes once they have been formally presented to Parliament in the new year and then to exit from the political stage. The party's leader, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, dismisses such forecasts as premature, but he concedes that the members of his small caucus, which has 27 seats in a chamber of 177, are bound to face tough choices as individuals and as a group.

Twenty-two people died Friday when a Chinese airliner burst into flames during an emergency landing in the southern city of Canton, the Canton Daily News reported today. A United States consular official in Canton said by telephone that apparently five or six foreigners were aboard, including two or three Americans, a Mexican woman and a Japanese man.

China's drive to hold down its population by restricting couples to one child has created an uni@ntended side effect - the spoiled brat. The problem was summed up by a Shanghai educator who recently told the English-language newspaper China Daily that ''single children are the sun in a family, and parents and grandparents are planets orbiting the sun.'' Chinese used to enjoy large, extended families in which uncles, aunts, cousins, older brothers and sisters all pitched in to teach a child how to behave. But the traditional old structure is being altered by the limits that the state now imposes on family size.

Rightist Christian and leftist Druse militiamen traded daylong artillery and rocket barrages near United States Marine positions south of Beirut today, and the police said 13 more Lebanese were killed. The Marine commander, Col. Thomas Stokes, said stray rounds landed about 500 yards from Marine positions at Beirut International Airport but emphasized that the fighting did not threaten the lives of the 1,200 marines serving with Lebanon's multinational peace force.