Defence`s Feeds

• Bloomberg reports that the Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion helicopter program may be falling behind schedule, as Pentagon officials have found that a significant number of components require redesign and re-qualification. While a spokesperson from Sikorsky’s parent-company Lockheed Martin said that most of these items are already “fixed and proven or are in process,” initial operational capability—originally scheduled for December 2019—could be delayed by as much as eight months. According to a Pentagon review prepared in February, four helicopters currently in the flight test program were operating at 69 percent effectiveness as of late last year, “well below” the 75 percent to 90 percent benchmark needed. 200 King Stallions have been ordered by the US Marin Corps in a $31 billion heavy-lift program with Lockheed chasing exports to potential operators such as Germany.

• A new assessment carried out by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that Boeing will be unable to deliver all 18 KC-46 Pegasus aerial refueling tankers this year and will only be able to do so in May 2019. Speaking on the new timeline after a visit to Boeing’s Seattle facility in March, Air Force Under Secretary Matt Donovan said the firm “were very pressurized to get this the last ten yards” to delivery, adding that first delivery “is not a contractual requirement,” and the original goal of April to June 2016 “was always an estimate.” Still, it’s “a psychological milestone, and it’s important to us.” He added that he had also seen software fixes that “will vastly improve” the refueling operations.

• Brazilian airframer Embraer told journalists at a recent earnings call that first deliveries of its KC-390 military airlifter to the Brazilian Air Force (BAF) will take place “closer to end of the year.” The announcement was a forecast update which had been previously scheduled for mid-2018. A slowdown in defense spending by the Brazilian government—the aircraft’s flagship customer—due to a slowing economy had already caused the program to be delayed by two years.

• New US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has voiced concerns with his Turkish counterpart over Ankara’s purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air defense system. “The secretary underscored the seriousness of US concerns … if they (Turkey) go ahead,” a senior US official said after a meeting between Pompeo and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers session, Reuters reports. Cavusoglu told Turkish broadcasters after the meeting that the S-400 deal was completed but that Turkey would be open to purchasing other defense systems from its allies. “We have completed the S-400 process. That is a done deal,” he said. “But we need more air defense. We can discuss what we can do for further purchases.”

• Greece’s Council on Foreign Policy and Defense (KYSEA) finally approved Saturday, the $1.46 billion upgrade package for its fleet of 85 F-16s. The potential foreign military sale to modernize the Hellenic Air Force (HAF) fighters to the Viper (V) configuration had been approved by the US State Department following the visit of the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to the White House last October. According to Reuters quoting a Greek defense ministry official, three of the 85 jets earmarked for modernisation will be upgraded in the United States while the rest will be refurbished in Greece and will be paid in annual instalments of about 110 million euros over a decade. Athens said on Saturday that Washington had accepted a revised Greek proposal that takes into consideration the country’s fiscal obligations in the coming years. It did not give details on the revised proposal.

• The Finnish government has kicked off its legacy F/A-18 Hornet fighter replacement competition, earmarking between 7-10 billion euros ($9-12 billion) for the purchase. 64 multi-role fighters will be procured under the program. Likely candidates to enter the fray include American F-35 and Super Hornets from Lockheed Martin and Boeing respectively, the French Dassault Rafale, the Eurofighter consortium’s Typhoon, and fellow Baltic bro Saab’s JAS-39 Gripen. Bids are to be entered by early 2019 with a winner picked by 2021. Previously, during a visit by Finnish Sauli Niinsto to the White House, Donald Trump announced that Finland had had already chosen Boeing’s Hornets as its next fighter, with Niinisto silently looking on rather confused. Niinisto later tweeted a contradiction to Trump’s claim by simply calling the news a duck. “The news of the purchase of F-18 fighter planes is a duck,” he tweeted in Finnish. In this particular context, a duck translate’s into one of the Commander-in-Chief’s favorite expressions—fake news.

• A study commissioned by Japan’s Defense Ministry and prepared by the Japanese shipbuilder Marine United Corp has concluded that the firm’s Izumo-class helicopter destroyers can support Lockheed Martin’s F-35B Joint Strike Fighter. Published last week, the study was prepared with how the Izumo could be used to provide rear-line support to the US military in mind, and the shipbuilder was also asked for estimates for the cost and construction schedule if changes were made to allow the Short Takeoff & Vertical Landing (STVOL) variant of the fifth-generation stealth fighter to land vertically on the deck and to use elevators to transport aircraft to their hangars. Many of these details, however, were redacted from the publicly available version. Speaking on the potential modernization work, one Japanese official said the study was conducted because, with the deployment of F-35B fighter jets to US Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the need might arise to use the Izumo as a carrier during joint Japan-U.S. military training or when US aircraft experienced mechanical problems. It had previously been reported that Japan may buy as many as 40 F-35Bs to compliment its current procurement of the the conventional takeoff F-35A, with the aim of using flying them from its southern island bases which have runways too short for the F-35A.

will take place on 15 May, 9:00-12:30 and 14:30-18:30 in Brussels.

Organisations or interest groups who wish to apply for access to the European Parliament will find the relevant information below.

• Aviation Week reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has cancelled its XV-24A LightingStrike hybrid-electric, high-speed vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) X-plane. Developed by Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences, the firm received a $89 million contract for Phases 2 and 3 of the VTOL X-Plane program in March 2016, however, issues developing the 1-megawatt generator needed for the plane, as well as a lack of a service partner and commercial interest have caused DARPA to cancel the project. Prior to being ditched, the XV-24A was widely viewed as a trailblazer for aircraft electrification as it involved not only a hybrid-electric power train and distributed-electric propulsion layout, but an eVTOL configuration of the type being pursued for urban air mobility.

• As part of efforts to boost the competitiveness of its arms manufacturers internationally, the US government is planning to drop its administrative surcharge on foreign arms exports. As of June, the surcharge will drop from 3.5 to 3.2 percent, Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) director US Lieutenant General Charles Hooper said during an interview at last week’s ILA Berlin Air Show. Attached to the State Department, the DSCA is the agency who facilitates and clears all potential foreign military sales. “This rate reduction will immediately reduce the cost of new business for our international partners,” said Hooper. “We think this rate reduction will allow the US to become more competitive in the global defense market.”

• General Atomics has received a US Air Force (USAF) contract modification for spare engines used on the MQ-9 Reaper drones. According to the Pentagon statement released Thursday, April 26, the order calls for the production of an undefined number of spare engines and engine shipping containers at a cost of $36.6 million. Work will be performed in Poway, California, and is expected to be complete by May 31, 2020.

• The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) has approved the possible foreign military sale of 12 AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters to the kingdom of Bahrain. According to the agency’s press release, the fleet will be armed with 14 AGM-114 Hellfires, and 56 Advance Precision Kill Weapon System II. The estimated cost of the acquisition is set at $911.4 million. The Viper’s manufacturer Bell, alongside Textron and General Electric have been listed as principal contractors on the sale.

• European missile consortium MBDA—jointly owned by Airbus, BAE Systems, and Leonardo—is looking to tie-up with US defense firms in order to increase its chances of tapping the US arms market. Speaking to Reuters, Chief Executive Antoine Bouvier said that instead of implementing a takeover of an American defense firm, the group would instead pursue cooperation partnerships, noting that MBDA was already doing such work with Lockheed Martin on Germany’s multibillion-euro missile defense system called TLVS. Bouvier said that cooperation could expand outside Germany in the future, given what he called the “huge potential for export” of the TLVS system. “When the German customer confirms TLVS then we will have a number of opportunities outside Germany with Lockheed Martin,” he said, citing current Patriot operators outside Europe as possible buyers. MDBA has faced stiff challenges in selling its Brimstone missiles and other equipment in the US market, which constitutes about 40 percent of the world missile market, excluding Russia and China, he said.

• Flight testing of the modernized Tu-22M3M supersonic bomber will commence in August, the CEO of manufacturer Tupolev has said. Speaking to the Russian TASS news agency, Alexander Konyukhov said the twin-engine bomber will make its first flight from the Kazan aircraft plant. The Kazan plant will also be tasked with modernizing Moscow’s existing fleet to the M3M standard, however, the Defense Ministry will not upgrade the entirety of its Tu-22 fleet, Konyukhov added.

• Jane’s reports that the US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) has issued a request for information (RFI) for the upgrade of seven Royal Thai Navy (RTN) Dornier 228s. Posted on April 23, the modernization of the will be carried out under the US funded Building Partner Capacity program. Goodies to be included in the package range from a new radar with 160 n mile range; an EO/IR five-axis stabilised multi-payload system; a communications package including beyond line of sight (X-band) and datalink; plus new avionics systems. The twin-turboprop aircraft is a popular platform for military operators in the maritime patrol role, and the upgraded Thai aircraft will help boost the kingdom’s capability to patrol its coastal territories and waters. US interest in boosting Thai capabilities comes as rival China looks to boost their own power and control in the region.

• China has entered its Dong-Feng 26 (DF-26) intermediate-range ballistic missile into service with the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force. A statement by the Ministry of National Defense said the missile is capable of nuclear, conventional and anti-ship roles. Dubbed the “Guam-killer” by US military officials for its ability to potentially reach the island chain, is is thought to have a range of around 4,000 kilometers and is capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional payloads. Video footage carried in Chinese state media showed at least 22 integrated six-axle DF-26 transporter-erector-launchers along with their crews.

• An Indian Navy IL-38 makes an emergency landing at Zhukovsky airport, Russia:

The coup d’etat that brought the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was a watershed for Afghanistan, driving it into a conflict from which it has yet to recover and ushering in a whole new level of violence by the state against its citizens. Forced disappearances, the routine use of torture for punishment as well as to gain confessions, and massacres of civilians all marked the bloody period from 27 April 1978 until 24 December 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded. The veteran Human Rights Watch Afghanistan expert, Patricia Gossman*, here looks at those crimes and their legacy.

This is the third part of a mini-series looking at the Saur Revolution and its consequences. Part 1 looked at what happened and why there was a coup. In Part 2, we presented the stories of eight Afghans who were alive at the time, their memories of the day itself and the impact the coup had on their lives. Part 4 will examine the relationship between the PDPA and the Soviets after the Soviet invasion of December 1979.

In 1978, there was no Twitter or Facebook to spread the news. Reporting from India a day after the events, the New York Times described the coup as “bloody and violent”, but information on the atrocities that unfolded over subsequent months trickled out very slowly. There were few journalists and no human rights groups on the ground to document what happened. This may be one reason why, even today, it comes as a surprise to many people to discover that serious war crimes in Afghanistan did not begin with the Soviet invasion of December 1979, but 20 months earlier.

While neither the Daud regime, nor the government under Zaher Shah were noteworthy for respecting human rights, growing demands for greater political openness had produced a number of reforms. They were limited and often short-lived, but there was some measure of free speech and freedom of assembly. In April 1978, the PDPA party leadership under Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin killed President Daud Khan and most of his family and then embarked on an ambitious, but ill-planned effort to transform Afghanistan virtually overnight into a modern socialist state. The violence perpetrated by the state was extreme, indiscriminate and widespread

(For a detailed account of the political dynamics in the years leading up to the coup, see AAN’s earlier dispatch.)

Unprecedented Violence: Secret Executions and Forced Disappearances

Taraki launched the coup as what he called a short cut to “the destiny of the people of Afghanistan.” (1) The fact that the Khalqis had virtually no support base outside their immediate membership partially explains the extreme violence of the months following the coup. Amin (who had studied at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University in the 1960s where he was exposed to leftist student politics) was the driving force of the campaign. Taraki, his mentor, called the Khalqis “the children of history,” which according to scholar, Anthony Hyman, illustrated “the almost messianic faith shared by many Khalqis that they had a special role to play as agents of modernisation in Afghanistan.” (2) It was clear that Amin saw himself in that role.

To carry out this sweeping transformation, the Khalq leaders set about eliminating all political rivals and those they considered to be obstacles to their efforts to transform the Afghan state, including anyone who had served in the governments of Zaher Shah and Daud, mullahs, pirs and other religious elites, tribal leaders, Maoists and other leftists outside the PDPA, professionals of every kind and other members of the educated class other than those who had joined the Khalq party and the leaders of various ethnic communities. Abandoning the brief rapprochement with Parcham, the other faction of the PDPA, Taraki and Amin purged the party of leading Parcham members, executing at least hundreds, imprisoning others and exiling some as ambassadors abroad.

American scholar Louis Dupree, who was living in Kabul at the time of the 1978 coup, spoke of “thousands” being arrested from all targeted groups in Kabul alone in the months after the coup, (3) the vast majority of whom were secretly killed. In most cases, the families never received the bodies for burial or any official acknowledgement of their deaths. Many were killed inside Pul-e Charkhi prison and buried in mass graves there. General Nabi Azimi, a Parchami who would become deputy defense minister and commander of the Kabul garrison under Najibullah, wrote that the regime “arrested too many ordinary people, clergymen, intellectuals … and put them in Pul-e Charkhi prison or executed them … without trial on dark nights and threw them into holes already prepared.” (4) Amnesty International reported in 1979 that it had “received a substantial number of allegations that political prisoners [were] … subjected to torture. … some prisoners [were] paralyzed and that others died as a result of torture.” (5) The prison was vastly overcrowded with some 12,000 prisoners in 1979. (6) Many died from disease from poor food and sanitation.

In 1986, scholar Olivier Roy suggested that throughout the country in those 20 months, between 50,000 and 100,000 people were forcibly disappeared, saying then that “the story of this wave of repression has yet to be written.” (7) It remains a largely untold story, although the few available accounts give a sense of the scale of killing. Dr Sima Samar, chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said of the time: “Any Khalqi could kill anybody.” (8) Some accounts of people whose relatives remain disappeared and mourned to this day can be found in AAN’s oral history of the ‘Saur Revolution’, here.

A UN report mapping the major patterns of human rights violations from the war’s beginning was meant to be published in January 2005, but was deemed too sensitive for official release (see AAN analysis here). It included this description:

[T]he regime … tortured captives not solely as an interrogation tactic, but to humiliate, punish, and annihilate them … The tortures and executions in Pul-i Charkhi prison became part of the legends of this time, which form part of the Afghan national memory.

The new intelligence agency Taraki had created, De Afghanistan Gato Satunki Edara (AGSA) (in Pashto, the Administration for the Protection of the Interests of Afghanistan) was principally responsible for carrying out the arrests and executions. It was headed by Assadullah Sarwary. President Taraki set the tone for its operations, announcing in March 1979, “Those who plot against us in the dark will disappear in the dark.”(9) Sarwary remains the only former PDPA official from this period to ever face trial in Afghanistan. Taken into custody by Shura-ye Nazar forces when they entered Kabul in April 1992, Sarwary was detained in Panjshir until he was brought to Kabul in 2005. In February 2006, he was tried in a rushed proceeding, found guilty of conspiracy against the state and mass killings and sentenced to death. An appeals court reduced the sentence to 20 years. Sarwary was released in January 2017. (See AAN reporting here)

Resistance and Repression in the Provinces

The tactics used by the Taraki-Amin government to crush any opposition sparked resistance throughout the country. The Herat uprising was the largest such challenge to the regime at the time, demonstrating the extent of popular resistance even in the cities. In March 1979, military commanders, including Ismael Khan, mutinied and began providing arms to resistance fighters in Herat city. They held the city for a week before the government, with the support of Soviet bombers, crushed the rebellion, killing possibly several thousand people. According to the Afghanistan Justice Project, the dead were buried in mass graves between Takht Saffar and Bagh-e Millat, an area locals thereafter called the area “the place of obscure martyrs.” (10)

The Khalq government also relied on violence to impose its reform agenda outside the cities. In an incident described in the 2005 Afghanistan Justice Project report, local authorities called the men of a Kandahar village in Dand district to come to the village school, and then asked the assembled villagers to identify the local landlords and any others resisting land reform measures. Those so identified were taken away. One witness described the scene:

Then they asked, “who has said women should wear the chador?” Again, some admitted saying it, and others were accused of doing so by some in the crowd. They were taken away too. Then those who had been accused were put into three big trucks and taken to the governor’s office. The relatives came there searching for their men. In the evening 29 of them were killed. Some were released, and others remained there. My brother was held there, and for a time we could bring him food. When Amin came to power [in September 1979], the prisoners were taken away and we never saw them again. (11)

The regime undertook military operations—which involved mass arrests and summary executions—in areas where resistance was strongest. Kunar was one such area. In early 1979, organized resistance to the PDPA had gained considerable ground throughout the province. By March the mujahedin had captured all the district centres, and were launching sustained attacks on the provincial capital, Assadabad. The besieged provincial personnel requested military assistance from Kabul, which deployed the 444 Commando Force commanded by Sadeq Alamyar. (12) His forces trapped some of the retreating mujahedin within Assadabad’s outskirts, in particular the village of Kerala, and moved in for a clean-up operation that included reprisals against the local population. The troops summoned all the men and older boys to an area of open ground on the river bank, next to the bridge which links Kerala to Assadabad. They then opened fire, and afterwards used a bulldozer to dig a trench to bury the bodies. The main mass grave is still visible in this location. (13)

In October 2015, the Netherlands police arrested Alamyar in Rotterdam, where he had been living since the early 1990s, as a suspect in the mass killing of men and boys in Kerala on 20 April 1979. According to the official statement, Dutch police made the arrest on the basis of a criminal complaint by relatives of those killed. The statement alleged that Alamyar had been head of a commando unit that had “dragged large numbers of men and boys from their homes and … killed them.” (See AAN reporting on the announcement here) The statement included a call for:

[P]ersons who were present in or around Kerala, Dam Kelai or Assadabad on or around 20 April 1979 and who are witnesses of events relating to the investigation to contact the Netherlands National Police. Persons who were present at the time as government troops or government officials may have information that is especially important for the Dutch investigation. These categories of persons are therefore urged to provide such information to the Dutch Police.

Alamyar was released from custody, although the investigation remains open, pending any additional information coming to light.

The Kerala massacre was the largest mass killing of the early years of the war. Indeed, that record would remain until the late 1990s when Jombesh and Hezb-e Wahdat forces in and around Mazar-e Sharif and Dasht-e Laili killed over 3000 Taliban prisoners in May-June 1997 and then, a year later, when the Taleban killed thousands of civilians, mainly Hazaras, after they captured Mazar in August 1998.

The Legacy: Cycles of Violence

After the Soviet invasion in December 1979, the new regime attempted to count the missing, but gave up as the numbers climbed over 25,000. (14) Five years ago, the Dutch government published an official list of 5000 names it had obtained in the course of an investigation into a war crimes suspect—a ‘death list’ of those detained and marked for execution at the time (see AAN reporting here). It was the only official acknowledgement any families ever received, but it represented a small fraction of those who were killed. I recently discussed this period with an Afghan journalist who grew up listening to stories about his grandfather, who was detained and tortured after the coup, and others who were among the disappeared. He lamented how few of his peers in Afghanistan know the history of those early years, though they live with its legacy in a conflict that continues to this day.

The PDPA’s reforms and the brutal way it imposed them launched a resistance movement that included people from a wide spectrum of Afghan society. As widespread repression prompted mutinies in army garrisons across the country, the imminent disintegration of the armed forces ultimately prompted the Soviet Union to invade to prevent the pro-Soviet state from collapsing.

Millions of Afghans were then displaced inside the country and millions more fled to Iran and Pakistan as refugees, a pattern of forced migration echoed many times over the next few decades as war washed over lands, villages and cities. The forced mass migration in the early 1980s fractured social ties which had already been weakened by the PDPA’s killing of many traditional leaders. As armed resistance mounted, authority increasingly belonging to commanders, those who could win the loyalty of armed fighters. Their power and influence has remained to this day: because of war, they emerged as military and political leaders.

In every part of Afghanistan, powerhas changed hands multiple times in the last four decades of war, pitting different alliances of armies and militia forces against each other and leaving Afghanistan open to manipulation from outside as the various forces sought foreign backing. The cycles of violence and retribution triggered by the bloody violence of the Saur revolutionaries, in hindsight, can be seen to have set Afghanistan on a course of seemingly endless war. That conflict has now consumed generations.

(1) Edwards, citing Taraki’s statement in the Kabul Times, August 16, 1978.

(2) Anthony Hyman, Afghanistan under Soviet Domination, 1964–91(New York: St. Martin’s   Press), p92.

(3) Louis Dupree, “Red Flag over the Hindu Kush,” American Universities Field Staff Reports (1980).

(4) Nabi Azimi, “Ordu wa Siyasat Dar Seh Daha-ye Akhir-e Afghanistan” (“Army and Politics in the Last Three Decades in Afghanistan”) (Peshawar: Marka-e Nashrati Maiwand, 1998), p167. Cited in Afghanistan Justice Project, Casting Shadows: War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity: 1978-2001, p12.

(5) Amnesty International, Afghanistan: Violations of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, pp15-16.

(6) Amnesty International, p9.

(7) Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp95,

(8) Barnett Rubin interview with Sima Samar, 2004, cited in the UN Mapping Report, p12.

(9) Hyman, p108, citing TheKabul TimesMay 3, 1979. After Amin overthrew and assassinated Taraki in September 1979, he renamed AGSA the Kargari Istikhbarati Muassisaas (KAM), the Workers Intelligence Agency.

(10) Afghanistan Justice Project, p21.

(11) Afghanistan Justice Project, pp17-19.

(12) Afghanistan Justice Project, pp17-19

(13) Afghanistan Justice Project, p19.

(14) UN Mapping Report, p24, citing the UN report on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, E/CN.4/1986/24.