Defence`s Feeds

Eminent Afghanistan specialists and historians have praised Jonathan L Lee’s 2018 Afghanistan: a history from 1260 to the present as “detailed research of the highest quality” and even the new go-to “encyclopaedia” on this subject. It is indeed encyclopaedic, pulling interesting episodes out of the dark of Afghan history, but still, it is partly disappointing, says AAN’s Thomas Ruttig, who has read through the 780-page oeuvre and finds the post-1919 chapters riddled with factual errors.

This book is a gigantic undertaking in its scope. The praise heaped on it is overwhelming, although one should know to take the blurb printed on the dust cover of a book with a large pinch of salt. William Dalrymple has called Afghanistan: a history from 1260 to the present “a model of clarity [and] accuracy”; the renowned literary magazine, the Kirkus Review, an “encyclopaedia.” Chris Wyatt, of the University of Birmingham and himself an author on Afghanistan (Afghanistan in the Defense of Empire, London: Taurus, 2011), declared it “the last word on the history of Afghanistan.” The work by Jonathan L Lee, an Englishman residing in New Zealand. It came out at the end of 2018, but given its length – 780 pages – it is difficult to digest quickly.

The author’s approach – starting at such a specific time in history – creates expectations. In contrast to most authors, he starts neither too late, with the foundation of the Durrani empire in 1747 nor, at the other extreme, with Alexander the Great’s campaign, in what today is Afghanistan. The author starts instead in 1260. This is indeed a historical turning point insofar as Ghengis Khan’s invasion led to the destruction of much that existed in what become Afghanistan as we know it today, particularly the irrigation-based cultures in what is now Afghan Turkestan (northern Afghanistan). Indeed, the invasion shook power structures in the wider Central Asian region to the core. This date is an interesting choice. However, the author never really explains his reasons for this date. Instead, after a rather conventional overview of Afghanistan’s geographical situation and ethnic and religious composition, the book dives directly into describing events. Only in the very last paragraph of his conclusion does Lee write: “Afghanistan emerged from the collapse of three great empires” (p697), referring to the Saffavids, the Mughals, and the Khanate of Bukhara. That is what the book should have started with and developed from.

The book is, as such, in its width of detail, indeed encyclopaedic and gives us some strong chapters. They include thrilling accounts of the fall of the pre-Durrani Sadozai dynasty (a tribe to which former president Hamed Karzai belongs – his son bears the name of the dynasty’s most well-known ruler, Mir Wais); of the civil wars after Timur Shah’s death in 1793, the king who transferred the country’s capital from Kandahar to Kabul; of Afghanistan’s steps towards independence under Amir Amanullah (r. 1919-29); and, of the intra-dynastic conflicts of the Afghan monarchy in the 20th century. This has been done for the first time in such detail since Leon Poullada’s 1973 Reform and Rebellion in Afghanistan, 1919-1929. Particularly strong are Lee’s findings on the relationship between the Turkic tribes and empires of Transoxanian Central Asia and Afghanistan, and how the areas between the Hindu Kush mountains and Amu Darya became Afghan Turkestan; these included Amir Abdul Rahman’s far lesser known atrocities there (compared with those in the Hazarajat) which “encompassed all sections of society [or rather elites] from religious elites to the families of the former Uzbek amirs, the officers corps and rival Muhammadzais.”

There are plenty of not well-known facts and enlightening anecdotes in the book, such as that reports of Amir Abdul Rahman’s (r. 1880-1901) Turkestan atrocities

… eventually appeared in the Indian and British press, which led to a public outcry. Even Queen Victoria wrote to Salisbury expressing her revulsion of the Amir’s conduct.

Or that a woman (the widow of Amir Abdul Rahman) tried to topple his successor Amir Habibullah I in 1903 by instigating a military revolt (p414). Or that

… until 1879 there was an Armenian church in Kabul’s Bala Hisar. In the 1840s a daughter of one of the leaders of the Armenian community married [or maybe was married to] Sardar Muhammad ‘Azam Khan, who was briefly Amir of Afghanistan from 1867-8. (…) A handful of Georgian traders are also recorded as living in Kabul, Kandahar and Herat, and early European explorers noted the grave of a Georgian bishop on the slopes of Kabul’s Koh-i ‘Asmayi. (Page 77 has a short rendering of the battle near Ghazni between the Georgian ghulaman (slave soldiers) of the Safavids, led by one Georgi Khan, against the Abdali and the Kakar who had refused to pay their taxes.)

This is all not surprising: Lee is best-known for his contributions to the history of northern Afghanistan, and particularly the little-known independent Uzbek khanates in those areas that came under Kabul’s rule in the 19th century. His most famous book previously was The ‘Ancient Supremacy’: Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731-1901 (1996). One of his earlier papers, “The History of Maimana in Northwestern Afghanistan, 1731-1893”, also still makes for a thrilling read.

From Afghaniyat to ‘Pushtunism’?

In the chapters about Afghanistan’s post-independence period, Lee looks at developments through a somewhat narrower, primarily ethnic lens. He particularly focuses on the ruling royal family’s attempts at creating an Afghan national identity, by what he sees as establishing Pashtun “racial and cultural superiority” in Afghanistan. For this, he uses various terms: “Pushtunism”, at times “Pushtun”, or “ethno-nationalism,” or “Pushtun-Aryanism.” (He uses the rather unusual spelling “Pushtun/Pushtu” throughout the book; sometimes he writes “Pakhto.”).

Lee sees the beginnings of these tendencies in the pre-Amanullah years. He refers to Amanullah’s father-in-law and mentor Mahmud Tarzi’s concept of “Afghaniyya” (p441-2, or afghaniyat) as “the foundation stone of all subsequent royalist-nationalist discourse.” Tarzi’s followers, the Young Afghans, he adds, had conflated this concept “with social Darwinism, German ideas of racial supremacy and Aryanism.” Over the following parts of the book, Lee closely associates these ideas, and later policies, with ideas and ideologies – particularly German – that culminated in Nazism and the holocaust. He asserts that “some of the more radical Pushtunists claimed that the Pushtun ‘race’ was part of the Herrenvolk, or Master Race.” This seems to hint at Muhammad Gul Khan Momand, to whom Lee later dedicates a separate subchapter. (We will get back to him later.)

That is heavy artillery. However, the author does not give us even a brief analysis, or sources, of which authors and ideas influenced Tarzi’s (or Momand’s) concepts, or those later of the Young Afghans. He refers to the “Aryanist” and “German-born Orientalist Max Müller” (1823-1900; p441) but tells us how he influenced the German Nazi party, not whether he was read by Tarzi or other Afghans. It is known that there were French and British contributors to the concept of Herrenvolk (Master People) and Herrenrasse (Master Race), such as Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (1816-82), or Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927), who had been widely read in Asia (see also this AAN analysis).

This is compounded by incorrect details, which – together with the mentioned assertions – often seem to border on bias. For example, Lee tells us (p439) that “the vast majority of citizens of Afghanistan” did not speak Pashto (author’s highlight and that “by the most generous estimates Pushtuns make up only one-third of Afghanistan’s population.” Well, the ‘most generous’ estimates, among them some Soviet ones, put the figure at 60 per cent. Just before, on the same page, the author had correctly reminded us that “[p]opulation estimates vary considerably.” Also, his assertions that Pashto was not “the language of the literate” and that “the primary native speakers of Pushtu were mostly illiterate peasants, the maldar nomads and the semi-independent hill tribes of the Afghan-Indian frontier” are problematic. It ignores that, as a result of Amanullah’s reforms of the education system, a strong Pashto-speaking segment of the Afghan intelligentsia had emerged (see this AAN paper; many of them left the country after the Soviet invasion in 1979). Lee goes as far as ridiculously claiming (p441) that “Tarzi’s advocacy for Pushtu as the national language of Afghanistan (…) was equivalent to the British government making Welsh the national language of Britain.” (There are fewer than one million Welsh speakers among a total population of over 66 million in the United Kingdom.)

Another major inaccuracy is the claim that Pashto had been declared “the only official language of Afghanistan” in 1936 (p527). In fact, Pashto was made the second official language, next to the country’s lingua franca, Dari (Farsi, Persian) which already had this status. The promotion was, in fact, part of a bilingual nation-building project, as Pashto, up to that point in history, had been relegated to the margins of official use. What in reality was an upgrade of Pashto to the same status as Dari, makes Lee’s mistake look like an attempt to establish Pashto linguistic supremacy. Indeed, this was not popular, as officials were forced to attend language courses. The measure sounds less authoritarian when one reads that even Nader Shah (r. 1929-33), his brother and children took the lessons. That the increased use of Pashto led to “chaos”, as Lee claims, referring to a British source from more than two decades later (1959), goes a bit far. There are no reports to that avail elsewhere in the literature.

The role of Muhammad Gul Khan Momand

One of the many players in Afghan history Lee pulls out of obscurity is Muhammad Gul Khan Momand (Lee writes Mohmand, but there is no ‘h’ in the Pashto original of this tribal name). As interior minister immediately after Nader Shah overthrew Habibullah II Kalakani in 1929 (AAN background here), and simultaneously provincial governor, Momand became one of the most influential politicians of pre-World War II Afghanistan. Originally a military officer, but also interested in linguistics, particularly, but not exclusively, of his mother tongue, he used his political position to become a driving force in the promotion of the Pashto language (1). James A Caron, the author of the only extensive western publication about Momand (Cultural Histories of Pashtun Nationalism, Public Participation, and Social Inequality in Monarchic Afghanistan, 1905-1960) quotes a fellow Pashtun intellectual, Sediqullah Reshtin, as saying about Momand that he “brought about political Pashto.”

Lee accuses Momand of forcibly relocating non-Pashtun “indigenous communities as well as Turkman and Uzbek refugees from Central Asia” to southern Afghanistan, “confiscating their lands and properties, which were sold off cheaply, or gifted, to a new wave of Pushtun colonists from Nangahar [sic], many of whom were members of Gul Khan’s Mohmand tribe.” (pp535-6) He also accuses Momand of “cultural vandalism,” by carrying out a programme of

… province-wide redevelopment of the main provincial towns, which aimed at the eradication of emotive symbols of indigenous culture… as the consequence [of which] most of the urban centres of northern Afghanistan lost their character and charm and were replaced by vistas of concrete uniformity.

In Lee’s word, this sometimes sounds (although he does not use the term) like ‘ethnic cleansing.’

There is no doubt about the – also forcible – resettlement of Pashtuns from the south and east of the country, the so-called naqelin, to northern and northeastern Afghanistan. How often this was accompanied with displacement, the book leaves unclear. (For a collection of secondary sources on Pashtunisation strategies in northern Afghanistan by Christian Bleuer, see here.) Lee also only gives a few examples of the alleged cultural destruction, apart from  the settlement and fortress of Minglik, on the road from Aqcha to the Amu, and “an area of several hundred [square] meters around” what he calls “the shrine of Shah-e Mardan” in Mazar-e Sharif being “completely levelled.” (The shrine’s more commonly used name is Rauza-ye Ali. There is a shrine, Shah-e Mardan, in Kabul.) (2)

Robert Byron, whose famous 1937 travelogue The Road to Oxiana Lee quotes in support of his argument, does not speak of wide-ranging destruction. Byron, who describes how he met governor Momand, confirms the clearing around the Rauza-ye Ali and “extravagant eccentricities” in the reconstruction of Balkh town. However, in contrast to Lee, he mentions that Balkh had been destroyed before during the short-lived Soviet military incursion into northern Afghanistan in favour of Amanullah in 1929, and does not consider it a scheme to eradicate ‘symbols of indigenous culture’. He even enjoyed a “smartened up” Mazar-e Sharif (p287):

The bazaars are new and whitewashed, and their roofs are supported on piles which let in light and air underneath. In the new town (…), the roads are edged by neat brick gutters. (…) it would be churlish not to admit that the town is the pleasanter for these improvements.

Byron also does not mention forced replacements, but seeing “Afghans from the south, Persian-speaking Tajiks, Turcoman, and Hazaras,” for example, in the bazaar of Maimana (p277). True, he describes Momand Khan as an “extreme nationalist”, but adds that this kind of nationalism existed Asia-wide and was “inevitable” in its “desire for self-sufficiency” and to “no longer be called interesting for the lack of plumbing.”

Events of mass displacement around this time, early to mid-20th century, which, in Lee’s words, sound like ethnic and cultural ‘cleansing’ are also not mentioned in other sources. While Abdurrahman Khan did inflict mass murder, wide-scale famine, torture, imprisonment and exile upon much of the non-Pashtun and rebellious Pashtun population of northern Afghanistan in the last two decades of the 19th century, the 20th century witnessed much less population displacement. Rather, lands newly irrigated as part of agricultural development projects were given to southern Pashtun settlers and exiles. In Thomas Barfield’s words, while the government’s “strategy was to overwhelm the Uzbek with sheer numbers of settlers,” land in parts of the north was “an expanding resource” thanks to land reclamation projects. As a result, Pashtun resettlement in many areas could happen without displacing other ethnic groups (Thomas Barfield, “The impact of Pashtun immigration on nomadic pastoralism in northeastern Afghanistan,” in JW Anderson & RF Strand (Editors), Ethnic processes and intergroup relations in contemporary Afghanistan. New York: Afghanistan Council of the Asia Society, 1978, p3).

Caron confirms that Momand “equated the preservation of an authentically Pashtun cultural heritage with the maintenance of a legitimate right of Pashtun political hegemony, and by extension cultural dominance.“ He adds that “bureaucrats [including Pashtun intellectuals such as Reshtin] at the center were disquieted by their sense that Momand wished to extend the hegemony of Pashtunism outside an appropriation of aristocratic court symbols, and into the realms of education, the bazaar and even the home.” This group “decided to stop the trend,” and did so. Momand was sidelined. Caron adds:

After 1946, Pashto and Pashtun culture was, by official policy, to be promoted by the state solely in the realm of publication activities, filtered through a number of periodicals and through the activities of the Pashto Tolana. The Tolana was still the premier official cultural organization in the country, but of course, reading was not a mandatory state activity. This was quite a bit less than Momand had worked for.

This part is missing in Lee’s book. Also, his accusation that Momand was responsible for “imprisoning and executing basmachi leaders” (p535) stretches what is available in other sources. (3) Under Nader Shah and Momand’s governorship in northern Afghanistan, military force was surely used to drive Basmachi fighters back over the Soviet border. There, some of them were caught and executed (Ibrahim Beg in 1931), but there is no other source claiming that Afghan forces had a direct role in ‘executing’ Basmachis.

Nazi German influence

Lee has come to the conclusion that the Afghan monarchy’s close relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930s strongly influenced their policies of ‘Pushtunism’. He asserts (p526) that:

Sympathy with Hitler’s Germany and National Socialism ran deep within the ruling elite, due in part to the government’s active promotion of Pushtun nationalism, which was increasingly conflated with ideas of racial and cultural superiority and Aryanism.”

Indeed, Afghan-German relations were close over this period. Definitely of importance is when Lee points to an academic source that clearly shows anti-Semitic elements in the policies of Abdul Majid Zabuli, the then economy minister, namely Sara Koplik’s book A political and economic history of the Jews of Afghanistan (Leiden and Boston, 2015). According to her, Zabuli’s sherkats (joint stock companies), the basis of the Afghan state capitalism economy he intended to create, excluded Sikhs and Jews from having shares. This particularly hurt the community of Bukharan Jews who had fled from Central Asia after the Soviet takeover. According to Lee, they were the main traders in qaraqul (lambskin) and, therefore, Zabuli’s main competitors. He further writes that, in 1933, the Bukharan Jews and the much older Jewish communities in northern Afghanistan were forced to relocate south of the Hindu Kush, accused “of being fifth columnists for Moscow,” followed by anti-Jewish riots in Herat in 1935 and the departure of most Afghan Jews to Palestine. Byron (p280) confirms that Andkhoi’s Jews “had been deported from here to Herat in order that the trade should be no longer in the hands of ‘foreigners’.”

But Lee wrongly states, for example, that King Muhammad Zaher and his Prime Minister Muhammad Hashem Khan attended the propagandistic 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi-ruled Berlin (p531). It was Hashem’s younger brother, and later war minister, Shah Mahmud who attended. Hitler even managed to persuade him to attend the notorious Nazi party congress that year in Nuremberg where the anti-Jewish race laws were inaugurated. This episode, intensively researched by a number of German authors, is not in Lee’s book. (Apart from 15 Persian sources, his bibliography only has English-language ones.)

It never becomes clear what Shah Mahmud thought of Nazi ideology. It is known that Hashem Khan, who visited Germany privately for medical treatment later the same year, apparently did not sympathise with Nazis ideas, and said so openly. A German source quotes him telling the German ambassador in Kabul (apparently not a fanatical Nazi) that he hoped that the Nazis would not gain the upper hand, as this would mean “the end of peace in the world.” Hashem reportedly also raised concerns about the activities of the local Nazi party group at the German embassy in Kabul, drawing large audiences with their public display of propaganda films. At that time, there was no cinema in Afghanistan and, of course, no TV yet either.

There must also be a question mark after Lee’s allegation that the Afghan team in the 1936 Olympics marched into the stadium for the opening of the games showing “the Nazi salute.” There had also been the same allegation made against other teams, including that from France. Research however shows that “the alleged Hitler salute is identified in case of most teams as the ‘Olympic salute’.” This was also given with an outstretched right arm, and could be confused with the Nazi salute. Therefore, the Olympic movement abandoned it after World War II. Lee also says that Zabuli married the daughter of a German policeman in Berlin in 1929 (p515). Again, his source is not clear, but this author, who has researched Zabuli’s political role, found that most sources say he was married to the daughter of a German-Russian trader family in St Petersburg. It is possible though that he had several wives, as his National Bank (Bank-e Melli) – founded in 1932, and which had a monopoly over Afghanistan’s lucrative qaraqul export – had branches all over the world, including in Moscow, Berlin and New York.

Lee continues by telling the reader that Zabuli, who visited Nazi Germany several times, had told Hitler “that he was prepared to depose King Zahir Shah and Hashim Khan and declare war on British India.” This is only half true: Yes, Zabuli, like other Afghan politicians, offered Nazi Germany Afghanistan’s support against Britain by starting either a guerrilla war, or even open warfare in British India, in exchange for a German assurance that after their victory over Britain, Kabul would receive back the North-West Frontier Province of British India, once separated from Afghanistan. However, the plan to topple Zaher Shah and to put Amanullah back on the throne (he was in exile in Mussolini’s Italy then) was pursued via exiled supporters of Amanullah living in Berlin, such as Sediq Khan Charkhi, according to German files. (The plan did not fly in Berlin because it did not want Mussolini’s influence in that part of Asia.) (4)

It is not correct that the Young Afghan movement, inspired by Mahmud Tarzi, the mentor of later Amir Amanullah, “was regarded [by whom?] as almost synonymous” with the first constitutionalist movement in Afghanistan of 1908/09, the Mashruta-khawahan. (There never was a “Hizb-i Mashruta” (p430ff); this was a term attributed post factum to the group.) (5) Literature usually treats the Young Afghans as a continuation of their ideas, but there was not much personnel continuity, not least because the leading Mashruta-khawahan were executed. Lee even entertains the idea that Tarzi, whose nephew was among the executed, might have betrayed the conspirators (p436). This is a serious accusation and would need more than speculation.

Osama, Mullah Omar and other issues  

Factual mistakes also dot other parts of the book’s sections on Afghanistan’s history in the 20thcentury. One of his most blatant errors is the allegation that al-Qaeda leader, Osama ben Laden, resettled from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996 on the “specific invitation” of Taleban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar (p 643). It is correct rather that Osama came to Afghanistan, namely to Jalalabad, during the mujahedin government of interim president Borhanuddin Rabbani (see for example, Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, 2004, pp9, 325-7).

Borhanuddin Rabbani was not the “President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” from 1992 to 1996 (p567). (It was the ‘Islamic State’ – although not the terrorist organisation of current days. At least in the beginning, Rabbani was also only the interim president.) Daud was not the president of the “Democratic Republic of Afghanistan” (p580; it was only ‘Republic’). Harakat-e Enqelabi-ye Islami was not founded in “the 1960s” – this was a predecessor group named Khuddam ul-Furqan (p566; AAN background here). The “bicameral system” in Afghanistan’s 1964 constitution did not consist of the Loya Jirga and the Wolesi Jirga (p561), but the Wolesi and the Meshrano Jirga (the Senate).

Shah Mahmud’s 1946 cabinet did not have “a decidedly Leftist and Reformist leaning” (p539), nor were there “Communist sympathisers” (p550). There were simply no leftists nor even just reformists in Afghanistan in the 1940s. The leftist PDPA and the Maoist Shola-ye Jawed movement only emerged in 1965. The 2012 Memories of Khalilullah Khalili, the sha’er ul-shuara (poet laureate) at the pre-WWII Afghan court and a major source of Lee for this period, describes all the hand kissing and lack of debate in the cabinet. (6) The reformists were in opposition.

In fact, it was Shah Mahmud’s personally more ‘liberal’ approach (in contrast to his brother and predecessor’s paranoid authoritarian style) that opened the way for a re-emergence of reformist groups. After becoming prime minister in 1946, he released the Young Afghan political prisoners and, for the first time in Afghan history, allowed halfway free elections in 1949 based on secret voting. Five reformists elected to the Wolesi Jirga formed a faction named Jabha-ye Melli (National Front), echoing the name of the party of their role model, the nationalising Prime Minister Sadeq Mosadeq in neighbouring Iran. Lee wrongly calls it “Jabha-ye Mardum” (People’s Front) (p549). (7) He is correct in calling the faction “critical of the government.” In June 1951, they launched the first ever vote of no-confidence against an Afghan cabinet. But this movement was not critical of “the King” as Lee claims (p549). On the contrary, its members showered him with pledges of loyalty and appeals to put himself at the front of the reforms. The king did so in 1964, but only after most of the reformists had gone through years of jail under his successor Daud (1953-63). (8) Also, describing an earlier period, Lee conflates an embryonic Afghan communist group – the “Central Committee of Young Afghan Revolutionaries” founded in exile in Bukhara in 1920 – with Tarzi’s Young Afghans (p480).

Writing about post-Taleban Afghanistan, Lee makes the current US peace negotiator and post-2001 US special envoy and ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, a “monarchist” (p642). Khalilzad’s 2002 Emergency Loya Jirga (ELJ) action of removing the former king as a candidate for head of state, because he was in competition with US favourite Hamed Karzai, does not bolster this characterisation (see AAN background). Furthermore, Lee wrongly says the 2001 Bonn agreement on Afghanistan was “valid for six months” (p655) – it was valid, as its official title (“Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-establishment of Permanent Government Institutions“) said, until 2004 with the first presidential election. (9) Former King Zaher was not “Honorary Chairman of the National Assembly” (which is the bicameral parliament), but of the 2002 ELJ (p660). He was also not “unilaterally” given this post by then head of state Hamed Karzai; rather this was stipulated by the Bonn agreement. The ELJ did not elect an “interim President,” but instead a chairman (the title ‘president’ was only used after the first full-scale election in 2004), and ELJ members were not “nominated by elected provincial councils” (p660). Also, not “five hundred individuals, including former mujahidin commanders… turned up” at the ELJ of which “fifty… were admitted to the sessions” (p661), but rather Karzai was given the right to nominate 50 extra members, and he chose some of those commanders and warlords. In the 2009 election, after the heavily fraudulent first round of the presidential elections, Karzai did not “refuse to step down,” but he did want to avoid a run-off.

Lee also revives a few cold war myths. He says that “Marxist sympathisers were given the nod by Soviet embassy officials to go ahead with the planned coup” in 1973. Given the importance of this event, a differentiated discussion of this allegation (p580) would have been a must in a 780-page book. Khalqis were alsonot in power after this coup (p583). That Parchamis and Khalqis did not share “Daud’s obsession with Pushtunistan” is far-fetched. Lee also picks up the controversial assertion that, after the Soviet invasion of 1979, the Karmal regime “administratively” signed over the Wakhan corridor in Badakhshan (p599) to the USSR, so that Moscow could install surveillance facilities there during the time of the East-West nuclear arms race of the 1980s. (10) Finally, Lee repeats the widespread, but oversimplistic ethnic description of the PDPA’s two main factions, Khalq and Parcham, the former “a mainly Ghilzai Pushtun party” – not explaining what the Ahmadzai Ghilzai Najibullah (r. 1986-92) (and others) did in Parcham. (11) He wrongly puts the PDPA founding in January 1964 (p563), and Neda-ye Khalq newspaper, that was published for just a few months in 1951, into the post-1964 ‘decade of democracy’ (p563), confusing it with the PDPA’s Khalq newspaper.

This list of errors (which is not exhaustive here, see footnote 12) makes it look as if the author had written parts of this book from the top of his head, without much double-checking. Also, the sourcing is often thin. (Admittedly, the necessary endnotes would have expanded the book by at least another 100 pages.) Apart from all that, there is a whole series of misspellings, confused names and linguistic mix-ups. (13)

Given the above, the publishers and the author should have taken a bit more time and done more peer reviewing before throwing the book into the market. One can only hope a second edition is published – as the book’s plenty of material deserves this. (14)

Myths and demystification

There is no doubt that Afghanistan – the economically weak rump of the Durrani empire  – has been ruled and dominated up to the fall of the monarchy in 1973 (15) by a Pashtun tribal aristocracy. (AAN will soon publish a report on Afghanistan as a rentier state.) There is no doubt that its rule over the non-Pashtun areas and people now in its territory was established by brutal force, taking on genocidal aspects under Amir Abdul Rahman (r. 1880-1901) and his subjugation of the Hazaras. (It does not make it better for the victims and their descendants that such policies were widespread in that era, from the subjugation of the American West to the British Boer Wars in South Africa, or Germany’s pushing the Herero and Nama people of today’s Namibia, who had risen up against them, into the desert to die, to the Russian and Soviet conquest and re-conquest of Transoxania.) There is no doubt that there is widespread denial about these episodes of Afghan history among the Pashtun elites, and that there was never any official  taking stock or apology for these crimes. Such denial has been repeated concerning the war crimes committed in the post-1978 factional wars. There is no doubt that these open historical wounds still shape the politics of present-day Afghanistan.

It is doubtful whether Kabul’s courting of Berlin’s support can be equated with full-scale sympathy for Nazi ideology. Despite all the unsavoury elements of Pushtunist ideology and the systematic exclusion, by law, of non-Pashtuns from government positions and officers’ ranks in the security forces up to 1964, insinuating that ‘Pushtunism’ somewhat equals fascism – a regime that stands for the industrialised annihilation of ethnic and religious minorities and political opponents – goes a long step too far. Other Asian leaders who also tried to win Nazi Germany’s support, such as Burma’s Aung San or India’s Subhas Chandra Bose, cannot be characterised as Nazis. It can possibly be held in the favour of the 1930s Afghan elites that they – like most politicians in the west at that time – had no idea that the Nazis’ anti-Semitism would lead to the Holocaust. In opening up for this interpretation, the author also runs the risk of playing into heated arguments about the character of the current state and government that do very practically jeopardise not “ethnic coherence,” but political stability.

This is the more so the case, as aggressive ethno-nationalism is also on the rise among other ethno-political groups in Afghanistan, and ethno-political groups who have experienced exclusion do not behave differently when in power (AAN reporting here). This probably shows that we do not talk about a phenomenon of ‘ethnicity’ only, but about power.

It is definitely necessary to deconstruct certain Afghan historical myths, discover under-researched periods, and fill in blanks in Afghan historiography as Lee sets out to do. In doing so, the author overshoots his target in the chapters on the post-1919 period. This does a grave disfavour to the rest of the book which is, indeed, richer in detail than other recent histories of Afghanistan by a western author and, therefore, a worthy read.

Jonathan L Lee, Afghanistan: a history from 1260 to the present, Reaktion Books, London, 2018. 784pp.

Book cover photo: Reaktion Books website

 

(1) Momand was Nader Shah’s first interior minister, starting in 1929. Simultaneously, he served as governor, first in Paktia, then Parwan and Kapisa, then Kandahar, and finally as military governor (rais-e tanzima) of the four provinces of Badakhshan, Qataghan, Afghan Turkestan and Maimana (not only of Balkh, as Lee writes) from 1933 to 1940 and Minister of State from 1940, according to this Afghan source. (Ludwig Adamec’s 1975 Who’s Who of Afghanistan has other figures: interior minister from 1930 to 1939, and Minister of State starting from 1945; it is not clear how long he held this position.) Momand was the author of several linguistic books, including the first Pashto grammar written by an Afghan (it was lost due to the destruction caused by Habibullah II) and a Pashto-Farsi dictionary (1938). He initiated the foundation of the Pashto Anjuman-e Adabi (Pashto Literature Society) in Kandahar in November 1932 that he, in 1937, merged with other local organisations into the Pashto Tolena (Pashto Society) in Kabul, the institution tasked with promoting Pashto. (It later became part of Afghanistan’s Academy of Sciences.) In the programme of the Pashto Anjuman-e Adabi, which Momand himself presented at its founding session, there was nothing postulating a Pashto supremacy: apart from collecting and printing Pashto language texts, it stipulates that members would work towards “attracting the entire nation’s attention and optimism for the development of the Pashto language, by publishing a literary magazine.” At one point, he indeed spoke of the “Pashtun nation,” but he did not equate it with Afghanistan (the reviewers 1985 diploma thesis, here).

Earlier, in 1929, Momand had founded a Pashto newspaper, De Kor Gham, in Jalalabad, in opposition to Habibullah Kalakani, and turned the Dari-language Kandahar weekly Tolo-ye Afghan, founded under Amanullah, into a bilingual publication in 1932. In the late 1940s, he was instrumental in bringing about the Wesh Zalmian movement (later a party), one of the earliest Afghan political parties (background in this paper of the author). Momand died in 1964.

(2) Interestingly, Lee blames the destruction of the famous covered bazaar of Tashqurghan (also known as Kholm, in Samangan province), “one of the few towns to escape this cultural vandalism,” on whom[?], which is usually attributed to the Soviet forces in the 1980s and/or to a 1990s firefight between Dostam Jombesh forces and fighters of Hezb-e Islami (p537).

(3) The Basmachi were insurgents fighting Soviet rule in Central Asia across the Amu Darya, often from safe havens in northern Afghanistan, sometimes with Afghan support, sometimes persecuted, depending on how Soviet-Afghan relations were playing out. Under Amanullah, reluctantly, and under the short rule of Habibullah Kalakani in 1929, Kabul supported them. (more about Afghan-Soviet and Afghan-Basmachi relations in this AAN paper)

(4) See: Johannes Glasneck and Inge Kircheisen, Türkei und Afghanistan: Brennpunkte der Orientpolitik in zweiten Weltkrieg, Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1968, pp212-4.

(5) Lee also calls Tarzi’s attempts to create the theory of Afghan nationalism a “jumble of inappropriate ideas cut and pasted from Turkish nationalism” (p440). This might be the case, but he bases that on the argument that Tarzi’s term for nation (watan) meant the much smaller region of one’s birth “in colloquial Kabuli Persian.” Apart from the fact that this is also the case in Pashto, this is no argument, as Tarzi tried to re-interpret concepts he indeed borrowed from the religious and intellectual discourse he was familiar with.

Inexplicably, Lee repeatedly talks about a “Sunni party” or “faction” (pp412, 425) and then of a “sycophantic Royalist Party” (p487) at the court. At that time, there was no Shia influence at the court, or in Afghan politics generally, to speak of, so this term is superfluous, and there were definitely no non-Royalist ‘parties’ there. (There were a few scattered early republicans, also among the mashruta-khwahan, but in exile.)

(6) The Memories of Khalilullah Khalili, edited by his daughter Marie Khalili and Afzal Nasiri, were printed privately in Virginia (US) in 2012. Khalili calls one of the few reformers of that time, Abdul Rahman Mahmudi, “a faithful Muslim” who “would have never opted for the leftist ideology.”

(7) Lee also calls a 1940s political organisation initiated by Daud and Zabuli, the Klub-e Melli (Kabul Club) the “Kabul branch” of the reformist Wesh Zalmian movement (Lee writes Wish or Wikh) (p 548). The Club indeed was founded only after Daud’s and Zabuli’s attempts to co-opt the Wesh Zalmian were rebuffed by them.

(8) The National Front later grew to 16 members. Mobilising between 30 and 40 others of the 120 MPs for their vote of non-confidence in June 1951, they were still outvoted. Nevertheless, Lee writes that Daud, during a 1953 visit to Moscow, had been encouraged to replace Shah Mahmud, as the latter had (the still not existing) “Communist sympathisers” imprisoned. Neither were the movement’s print organs “broadsheets,” but rather small-format, hand-copied pamphlets produced on primitive print machines called Gestettner.

(9) Lee also wrongly writes that late mujahedin leader Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani “backed” the Rome group (which he wrongly calls “Rome Party”; p655), one of the four delegations at the Bonn conference. Gailani had his own one delegation, the Peshawar Group, led by his son, Sayed Hamed Gailani, now his successor.

(10) Reports of a Soviet annexation of the Wakhan made the rounds in the media in the early 1980s (see one media report here), but sources were usually anonymous “diplomats” or Pakistan. This 2003 UN report, giving a history of the Wakhan, including in the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, does not mention an annexation at all, while saying only that the Soviets built and manned a post at the border with China, in order to cut off Chinese support for anti-Soviet insurgents.

(11) He also makes him “Najib Allah Khan”; a title he most likely would never have used (p620).

(12) Lee refers to Arbab Ibrahim Beg, a 1940s Hazara rebel against Kabul’s heavy taxation, as “Gawsewar” (he was actually a son of Gawsewar) and a “religious leader” (p539; he was merely the son of a khan). He even makes him the father of Shia political activist Sayed Muhammad Ismail Balkhi (p550). Although they were jointly accused of having been involved in a coup attempt in 1949 (Lee dates it to 1951), they were not related to each other at all, except for their religious denomination. This error seems to originate from Khalili memoirs (see FN 6).

Abdul Hadi Dawe, a leading Young Afghan, is called “Dawai” (p437); Abdul Rahman Mahmudi, one of the five reformist MPs in 1949 was a Kabuli Tajik, not a Pashtun “Mohmand” (p563). Zaher Shah was not 19 years old (p530) when he ascended the throne in 1933, but – officially – 18 and, in reality, only 17; he was made one year older to be able by law to become king at all, as he liked to tell visitors after he returned to Afghanistan in 2002. This author also doubts that former Afghan Prime Minister Hashem Maiwandwal was an Ahmadzai (p567; there are not many Ahmadzai in his area of origin, Maiwand district, in southern Afghanistan.

The Yari brothers, leading Maoist activists of the 1960s, were from Daykundi, not from “Jaughori.” There was no PDPA splinter group called Jawanan-e Zahmatkash (p564); this is possibly a confusion with Jamiat-e Enqelabi-ye Zahmatkashan-e Afghanistan (JAZA; Revolutionary Toilers Association of Afghanistan) – which, despite the name, was predominantly Pashtun.

Fazl Hadi Shinwari was not a minister, but Chief Justice (p657); ex-warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum was not “first deputy prime minister” (p659) but First Vice President under Ashraf Ghani.

There are also no Orakzai, Bangash and Turi Pashtuns in Paktia and Paktika (p34), perhaps only some refugees. These tribes live on the Pakistani side o the border.

(13) The first typo is on the first page of the introduction, “wulswalis” instead of “wuluswalis”, for districts. This is followed on the next page by “Nangahar” (an “r” missing) and Spingar. Spinghar, with its missing “h,” is a toponym and stands for “White Mountains” in the east of country. “Ghar” is the word for “mountain”, while “gar” is a suffix to indicate professions (kargar, worker; buzgar, farmer [literally goatherd]; zargar, goldsmith…). Instead, an “h” is superfluously added to “Khushk,” a district of Herat province, two pages further. This is not about different systems of transcription, but about distinguishing between different consonants in Afghan languages, such as “k” versus “kh” (see Kandahar and Khost). There is “Deh Kundi,” instead of Daykundi (p662), Nadd-i ‘Ali (p28) instead of Nad-i ‘Ali, or Nadali. “Tang-i Waghjan” (p501) should be Tangi-ye Waghjan (“tangi” not “tang” being “gorge”). The politician Shamsuddin Majruh lacks an “s” (p561). That such errors occur throughout the entire book is not a sign of ‘accuracy.’

Some mistakes simply should be embarrassing for a Persian speaker. Lee mixes the name of a famous 1920s governor of northeastern Qataghan province and promoter of Afghanistan’s cotton producing company Spinzar, with the name of an Afghan river harbour, calling him “Sher Khan Bandar.” Bandar means “port”; the man’s correct name was Sher Khan Nasher. Nanwayis (“bakers”) become “nanbais” (p583), Saudi King Faisal “Faizal” (p587), the Tsarendoi (the regular police) the “Defenders of the Revolution” militia (p600). Lee also mixes Dari and Pashto, claiming, grammatically incorrectly, that Daud was called “Surkh Sardar” (the Red Prince) (p559). In correct Dari, this would be Sardar-e Surkh, while in Pashto it would be Sur Sardar. The same where he calls a famous tribal leader “Loya Khan” (p538), which should be Loy Khan, as Pashto, in contrast to Dari, has grammatical genii.

(14) It should also correct mistakes that go on the publisher: the mistaken chapter headers over hundreds of pages. “Nadir Shah and the Afghans, 1732-47” is not only printed at the top of this chapter’s pages, but also in the following six ones, from page 116 to 411. This makes checking footnotes extremely difficult. The same is the case with the chapter heading “A house divided, 1933-73”, which is also wrongly put over one extra chapter. Only after rectifying these mistakes does this book have a chance to become the go-to source on Afghan historiography as it is advertised.

(15) The monarchy ended in 1973, but the 1973-78 republic, under former prince (Sardar) Muhammad Daud, can be considered as the last, short chapter of that era. After 1978, Afghanistan has been ruled mainly by Pashtuns again, with the exception of 1992-96, but under drastically changed, but still authoritarian political systems.

 

China's HQ-22 Long-Range Air Defense Missile System

British Brimstone Anti-Tank Guided Missile

Forty years ago, Soviet forces entered Afghanistan, killed then President Hafizullah Amin from the Khalq faction of the ruling communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) on 27 December 1979 and brought to power Babrak Karmal, who was from the rival Parcham faction. The move was meant to be a relatively short-lived, regime change operation, but swiftly turned into a fully-fledged occupation that would last one long decade and plunge the country into an intricate, devastating armed conflict from which it has yet to emerge. AAN has spoken to a range of people about their memories of those days and how the Soviet invasion affected them and changed their lives  (interviews by the AAN team, compiled by Reza Kazemi).

This is the second dispatch about the Soviet invasion on 25 December and the subsequent killing and deposing of Hafizullah Amin on 27 December 1979. It offers Afghan memories of these events. An earlier dispatch described the dynamics that led to the Soviet decision to intervene by force and how this was part of a wider global reordering that still reverberates today.

For this dispatch, AAN team members interviewed thirteen Afghans; ten men and three women, who remember the days when the Soviet troops arrived in Afghanistan (the capital Kabul and the three provinces of Baghlan, Ghazni and Kunduz) and installed a client regime more favourable to the Soviet Union. Back at that time our interviewees’ occupations were: three low-ranking government civilian employees, one army officer, four students, two teachers, one housewife, one self-employed man and one flour mill owner. Some were pro- and some anti-regime. Some went on to become mujahedin or refugees. Many ended up deciding to leave the country altogether. Their memories reveal how shocked Afghan people were by the Soviet invasion and, in the quickly unfolding events, how difficult they found it not to take a side in the internationalising conflict. The memories also reveal how people were affected differently, depending on whether they lived in cities, such as the capital Kabul, or in the countryside, at least before the Soviet withdrawal.

The interviewees were each asked the same set of questions. Not all of them answered every question.

 

Do you remember the day the Soviet troops arrived in Afghanistan in Jaddi 1358/December 1979? How old were you and where were you? What were you doing at that time?

1. School teacher, Kunduz

I was 22 years old and a school teacher when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. It was a Thursday in a cold winter when things changed in our lives. I saw aircraft passing by in the sky and a white line of their smoke. It was very clear that these aircraft were transporting Soviet soldiers and military equipment to Afghanistan. Every one of us was looking at the sky and asking each other: what is going to happen.

At night, everyone was listening to the radio and following the news. In our family, my father, my three brothers and I gathered in a small room and stayed there until morning listening to the radio. It broadcast national and patriotic anthems for several hours. At one point, this was cut and a statement was delivered. It said that the followers of Hafizullah Amin had been thrown into the dustbin of history forever and people were rescued from them. Then, it was said that Babrak Karmal would deliver a speech soon. There were more patriotic anthems. Later, Karmal delivered a speech and said that Amin’s followers no longer existed and people were freed of his cruelty, tyranny and oppression. We then realised that there was a new regime led by Karmal.

2. High school graduate, Kabul

I was 22 years old when the Soviet troops arrived in Afghanistan. I was in Kabul and had just finished high school. I was trying to take the university entrance exam, but as the Soviets came, I failed to work on my plans. At that time, I was only thinking about how to keep myself safe. I was askar goriz [evading military service]. I managed to get a medical letter showing I was sick and [therefore] unfit to join military service. I had a shop, but friends and relatives told me not to do such a business. So, I bought a car and became a cab driver [to make a living].

3. Army officer, Kabul

I remember the night of the Soviet invasion well. I was 35 years old and was working as an army officer. I had gone to Hutkhel [area of Kabul city]. When I returned home at night, I watched the news on TV. All of a sudden, Babrak Karmal appeared on the screen with his speech, saying Hafizullah Amin had been killed. I felt the regime was collapsing. I did not know anything about the invasion of the Soviet Union. It was because at that time nobody could talk about the regime, even in their own home. The people were very afraid of the government. I became very happy when I heard that Amin has been killed because he was treacherous. He had killed thousands of people in Kabul and the provinces.

4. Schoolboy, Kabul

I remember the night of Soviet invasion very well. We were living in Khair Khana in police district 13 [of Kabul city]. I was a grade 6 pupil in Ghaffur Nadim Primary School and I was 13 years old. I heard the sound of tanks and armoured vehicles stationed in Hazara-ye Baghal [neighbourhood in Khair Khana]. We also heard the sound of artillery and could see smoke pluming from Darulaman area. Babrak Karmal gave a speech saying Hafizullah Amin was killed because of his wrongdoings and the Revolutionary Council had succeeded [to overthrow him].

5. Female teacher and activist, Kabul

I remember the day when the Soviet troops arrived in Kabul. I was in Afghanistan, in Kabul, in Mikrorayon 2. I lived in the blocks constructed for families of the military during Daud Khan. I was 27 years old and a teacher teaching physics, mathematics, geometry and trigonometry to girls in grades 10 and 11 in Zarghuna High School in Kabul. I had graduated from the Science Faculty of Kabul University about five years earlier. Aside from teaching, I was the deputy head of Shura-ye Zanan-e Shahr-e Kabul [Women Council of Kabul City]. The council was independent from the PDPA and had its own statute and objectives. It had provincial councils and a Kabul city council. The head of the council was someone else. We were mainly providing training for women.

On 6 Jaddi 1358 [27 December 1979], it was 10 or 12 minutes to 7 pm when Soviet troops entered Afghan soil upon the request of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and its agreement with the USSR. I say it was 10 or 12 minutes to 7 pm because I remember my husband was a military officer, a dagarman [lieutenant]. He had just returned to Kabul from duty in Bamiyan. I remember that we had hot water in Mikrorayon on Thursdays. I had a two-month-old daughter. Around that time on that Thursday, 6 Jaddi 1358, I was washing her clothes using the hot water. My husband rang and told me that he would come home for the meal and then return to his duty. By that time, the Soviet troops had begun arriving.

It was past 7 pm when I heard the sound of aircraft and tanks and the radio and television stopped broadcasting normal programmes. I called my husband, but did not get any answer. Various government buildings had been identified for the [Soviet] troops to enter.

6. Government employee, Ghazni

The Soviet intervention is still very fresh in my mind, so I completely remember it. I was in Kabul. I was going to Ghazni on 7 Jaddi 1358 [28 December 1979]. We came across Soviet soldiers and were shocked by this sight. They did not allow us to go on. We had been unaware about the invasion the night before. They were stationed on the road. They had closed the road. I was 37 then and worked as the control manager in Ghazni Mustufiat [Revenue Department]. I had my home in Kabul city where my family lived and my job in Ghazni city to which I commuted weekly or whenever needed. I was a government employee.

7. Government employee, Kabul II

I was then working in the transport department of the Sedarat [Prime Minister’s Office]. Hafizullah Amin had shifted from the Arg, which was then called Khana-ye Khalq [House of the Masses], to the Taj Beg Palace. The Taj Beg Palace was renovated for some 40 days and then we moved some commodities like rugs and carpets from the Sedarat and the Arg there. Amin moved there along with his family. The first storey was dedicated to his guards, attendants and cooks. The second storey was where the ministers held their meetings. The third storey was allocated to Amin and his family. It took some three months for everything to be ready, so Amin could move to the Taj Beg Palace.

On the night of 6 Jaddi [27 December], I was at home in Khair Khana area [in the north of Kabul city]. Around 8 pm we heard the sound of gunfire and heavy weapons. My cousin came to our home and said something strange is going on in the city. We at once turned on the TV. We had a TV since the time of Daud Khan. It was broadcasting the national anthem. Around 10:30 pm, Babrak Karmal appeared on TV. He was wearing a white shirt and tie. He was speaking from abroad. He talked seriously and emphatically, saying the fascist regime of the treacherous and untrustworthy Amin has come to an end. He then assured the people, whom he called his brothers and compatriots, to feel safe wherever they were.

8. Schoolgirl, Kabul

It was Jaddi 1357 [sic]. It was winter and very cold. I remember I was in Kabul. We lived in Chardehi area and I was a grade 8 pupil at school. I remember we were all very nervous in the family. Since the 7 Saur [27 April 1978] coup, we had lived in fear and I, as a teenager, had become very involved in politics due to the nature of the discussions going on in the family. We were against the new communist rule. It was a time of nervousness. We were helpless. The city looked like a frontline in war. With no freedom of expression, we had to watch every word we spoke, even at school among our classmates.

9. Housewife, Kabul

I was 22 years old and giving birth to my firstborn daughter and was in hospital when the Soviet tanks and helicopters and troops arrived in Kabul. My father-in-law often joked about it later, saying ironically, I had brought such a stroke of good luck to the country. People were worried and it seemed they did not know what to do. People in the hospital, especially the doctors, tried to keep us calm and assured us that it was not a war, but that foreigners had come to Kabul. It was a very long and disturbing night. I was worried about my daughter and about my husband who was at home or God knows where. The next day, when I left the hospital to go home, the city seemed very quiet. We lived in Qala-ye Wahed area where I still live. There was almost no movement on the streets and my husband was not home for the whole week. He was a university student and a member of the [Maoist] Shola-ye Jawed [Eternal Flame] party that organised anti-regime resistance.

10. Government employee, Kabul

I was a government employee working in the Central [Grain] Silo when the Soviet troops arrived in Kabul. I was 27 years old at that time.

11. Self-employed man, Baghlan

I was 28 years old. My father was a tribal elder and had been imprisoned by the Amin regime. I was the eldest son and so I was responsible for looking after a large family. That night, the radio broadcast mainly patriotic songs and everyone felt something had happened. But we didn’t know what exactly.

National and patriotic songs kept playing for several hours. Eventually, Babrak Karmal’s voice was heard. He gave a speech in which he called Hafizullah Amin a savage and said he no longer led the country. Karmal also announced a general pardon for those imprisoned by Amin. After hearing this, I screamed loudly because I knew my father would be released. The whole family was shouting. That night, we were only thinking about the safe return of our father, which did indeed happen later. We were all awake until morning, celebrating the collapse of Amin’s regime. The following day, when I went out, people were talking about a Soviet invasion, an issue I had never thought about. Religious scholars and some mosque preachers were saying that Afghanistan is out of our hands and the Soviets will lead it now.

12. Schoolboy, Ghazni

I remember the day when the Soviet Union forces arrived in Afghanistan. I was in grade 6. People in our village, my teachers and classmates, were saying the Soviet forces had arrived in Afghanistan. I also learned about the arrival of the Soviet forces from the radio that was broadcasting news saying that the Russians have come to Afghanistan. We lived in Andar district and I also worked with my father on our agricultural lands.

13. Flour mill owner, Ghazni

I think I was about 45 years old at the time. I had a flour mill in those days. The flour mill I had was working very well and I had a reasonable business. However, after the arrival of the Soviet forces, I started to think about moving the mill to the eastern part of Andar [district]. We moved to a village there because we felt safer in that village than in our own village.

Museum of war remnants, Kabul. Photo: Thomas Ruttig

 

Did you personally see or hear anything, either on the day or immediately before or just after? Did you do anything? What did you think about the Soviet intervention at the time?

1. School teacher, Kunduz

The day after [the invasion], more and more Soviet soldiers entered Afghanistan through Hairatan port and I saw long lines of their tanks on the highway to Kabul.

School teachers were told by the Ministry of Education to deliver pro-government speeches in the classrooms and encourage students to sing pro-government and patriotic anthems every morning before classes started. On the other side, the mujahedin started to target pro-government school teachers. At school, we split into two parts: pro-communist government and ikhwani [a general term for the members of the mujahedin groups]. Many teachers were arrested by the government and marked as ikhwanis, while many others were targeted by the mujahedin and labelled as communists. Some mosque preachers in our district delivered anti-government speeches every Friday at the congregational prayers.

2. High school graduate, Kabul

Before the Soviets came, the PDPA regime made a lot of propaganda. They told the people not to come out of their homes during the night. They told the people to shut their doors and have heavy curtains on their windows so that they would not see or be seen from outside. Soldiers were patrolling the streets at night.

It was before 6 Jaddi [27 December] when the Soviet troops arrived in Afghanistan. They came by land and air. The troops were settled in Kilagai plain in Baghlan and Khair Khana in Kabul. I saw them in Khair Khana. There was fighting in Darulaman area, in Tappa-ye Taj Beg [Taj Beg Hill].

3. Army officer, Kabul

The next day, I heard that the Russians had come a day before the killing of Hafizullah Amin. They had told him to run the government from [the Taj Beg Palace in] Darulaman [area of Kabul city]. He had already moved there. Actually, the Russians wanted to kill him there because they wanted to avoid killing many people if any kind of rebellion arose [in the centre of Kabul city where the traditional Presidential Palace – the Arg – is situated]. On the second day, all of the Parchamis [members of Parcham faction of PDPA] took up weapons and were in charge of security. They were both civilians of the Parcham party and military people.

4. Schoolboy, Kabul

I saw Russian airplanes which were bringing tanks and ammunition a few days before the invasion. Other Russians came through Hairatan port [in northern Balkh province]. The Russians had told Hafizullah Amin that Pakistan was attacking Afghanistan, so they brought ammunition and a small number of skilled Russians to instruct Afghans to repel the attack. The government had announced to the people of Kabul that when the government sounded the alarm, nobody should come out of their homes, no one should look outside of their homes and they should put black curtains on the doors and windows of their houses. On the second day, I saw red-faced Russians on tanks in the city.

5. Female teacher and activist, Kabul

Two or three days before [the invasion], aircraft had been seen flying at high altitude over the country. Everyone thought they were reconnaissance airplanes flying at such altitudes. However, two days after the arrival of Soviet troops, it became known that those airplanes had transported giant tanks to the country.

On the following day [28 December], there were tanks and people on the streets who were not familiar to us. I tuned in to the radio and came across, I think, a Tajikistani radio channel, where I heard Babrak Karmal’s voice saying: I have arrived in Afghanistan and a new era has begun.

I wanted to find out what was happening. Parchamis were saying that this was the beginning of a new era of 7 Saur [27 April 1978, which was the initial communist coup]. I went to school on the Sunday [three days later, 30 December], when the atmosphere had changed. Some teachers and pupils had shown up, but others were absent. I searched for my husband, sending people around and trying to call him, until he was found [dead] in Charsad Bestar [400-Bed] Hospital [now known as Sardar Muhammad Daud Khan Hospital] in Kabul. Later, I found that my husband had been shot from behind by a Kalashnikov in his office in Shashdarak, with one bullet. His name had been registered as the first martyr in the hospital registry. No one was telling us anything at the beginning, but I learned this after almost a week’s time. My son was five years old and my daughter was two months old and I myself was a teacher. I moved to my father’s house with my children and raised them there.

6. Government employee, Ghazni

I became aware of the Soviets coming to Afghanistan only the day after [28 December]. There was a lot of rumour and gossip circulating among the people. I heard people saying that the Soviets had brought Babrak [Karmal] [to power], or that Babrak had brought the Soviets [to Afghanistan]. There was a broadcast on the radio in which Babrak was talking. He was speaking on the radio and said that Amin had been eliminated. He congratulated the Afghan people on the killing of Amin and announced a kind of unity government between the Khalqis and Parchamis [two rival factions of the PDPA].

That the Soviets would come to Afghanistan in such a way was something that had been utterly unimaginable for me and many others I was in touch with. We were all caught unawares. It was a conundrum that Babrak Karmal would come to power through a Soviet invasion. We were dumbfounded at what was happening and how quickly this was happening. People were saying different things about the Soviet intervention. Some were saying it was a good thing because people got rid of Amin who was sucking the people’s blood. Others were saying it was a bad thing because the Soviets came and occupied our soil. They were saying now everything in Afghanistan would be in their hands; they would have all the authority in our country.

7. Government employee, Kabul II

The following day [28 December], I did not go to work. The gunfire had fallen silent. I did not go to work because the fear and dread of Amin was still somehow in the air. Some three days later, someone came to my home. I was afraid that a government security agent had come and might take me away. So, I put some money in my pocket to give him [as a bribe] to leave me alone, if he wanted to do such a thing. I was wearing my piran tomban [shalwar kameez]. I later found out that he had been sent from the Sedarat [Prime Minister’s Office] to take me there for some official business. When we reached the Sedarat, it was surrounded by Soviet tanks. Inside, in the room where I was asked to go, I saw a Soviet general. For me, it was the first time I had seen a Soviet general, in that room in the Sedarat. There was an instruction for us from Comrade Karmal to go to the Taj Beg Palace to do an inventory of the things present there and to bring back anything that belonged to other offices, such as the Sedarat and the Arg. We were sent in a convoy of two tanks and four jeeps.

When we arrived in the Taj Beg Palace, all we saw were Soviets. Outside and around the Palace I saw the imprint of tanks moving around. The outside and inside of the Palace was packed with Soviet generals and soldiers. We were introduced to them and they let us go in to do what we had been assigned to do. We did an inventory of the things there, from sofas, to rugs, to carpets and anything that was there or that had been left there. I myself went up to Amin’s bedroom. It was large and had one large bed above which was written “Khalq” [Masses – the name of Amin’s PDPA faction]. No one could talk to anyone and no one could ask anything. There was a tense atmosphere. Some of the rooms I saw upstairs had piles of clothes scattered everywhere. On one stairway I saw blood. To me, it looked like a sheep had been slaughtered and dragged away, with the blood forming a trail behind it. We did the inventory and separated and took the things belonging to the Arg, the Defence Ministry and the intelligence service. We saw no Afghans in the palace: no sweepers, no guards, no attendants, no kitchen staff, no Afghans. They were all Soviets.

There was lots of gossiping in town about what had happened in Kabul and in Afghanistan. Some were saying Afghanistan had been occupied by the Soviets. Some were saying the Soviet Union was a global power and had come to help Afghanistan progress and prosper. Some were saying the Soviets had come to crush the ashrar [villains, ie the mujahedin].

8. Schoolgirl, Kabul

My father and brothers were all involved in politics, opposing the [communist] government. We were in hiding when the Soviets arrived. We felt we were under constant surveillance and we could not get out of our house easily and without fear. We were all sitting and listening to the radio. I was mostly the silent observer, listening to the unending discussions of my father with my brothers, who were now not in contact with their fellows who believed in the same cause [anti-communist jihad]. Later, five months after the invasion, all five of them [father and brothers] were killed by the regime.

9. Housewife, Kabul

The people did not know what was happening. Our neighbours did not know what was happening, either. There was a massive amount of propaganda being passed around. The women in our neighbourhood often said that the country had been sold to foreigners. Those who had a clue would say that it was an invasion and the country was occupied by the Soviets. People were being swayed by Khalqis or Parchamis or mujahedin, without understanding any of these groups’ agendas. It was a strange time back then for the people; a time of rushing, a time of not knowing what was happening and not knowing what to do.

10. Government employee, Kabul

A few days before the arrival of the Soviet troops, the [communist] government had told the people to stay indoors if the alarm was sounded and to have curtains on their windows at home, during the day and night. It told the people that some [unspecified] incident might happen.

When the Soviets came, sounds of planes and helicopters could be heard during the night. The following day [28 December], I saw their tanks moving in a line from the Polytechnic Institute to Kot-e Sangi area… People were saying that wherever the Soviets went, they stayed there and did not think about getting out. I thought they would do the same in Afghanistan.

Before the invasion, Hafizullah Amin imprisoned and killed a lot of people. One of my friends and a relative of mine were imprisoned and killed at that time. So, many Afghans went to the villages and started fighting the communists and [later] the Soviet troops when they came. I did not stay in Kabul, either. I went to Ghazni [province]. Then, I migrated to Pakistan and finally to Iran.

11. Self-employed man, Baghlan

I saw long lines of Soviet military vehicles and Soviet soldiers passing along the Mazar-Kabul highway. Their faces were red and they were armed. Some people along the highway were holding Afghan and Soviet flags and were celebrating the arrival of Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. Others were merely watching the military parade of the soldiers. In our own groups, we began debating and arguing about the Soviets. Most of us were saying Afghanistan was no longer a safe place to live.

12. Schoolboy, Ghazni

In the days after the Soviet forces arrived, I heard that the Russian forces had gone to different provinces and different military corps across the country. The Russian forces also came to Ghazni city. People who went to the city would say they saw Russian forces in their military tanks in Ghazni. They also came to our district in Andar. When the Russians went to the villages, the Afghan security forces would not tell the local people that there were Russians with them. Instead they said that they were all Afghan.

On the other side, a few days after the Soviet invasion, I saw the mujahedin not allowing people to go to Mirai, the district bazaar. They were trying to disconnect the people from the government. There were generally two types of thinking. Those people who were pro-government thought that the arrival of Soviet forces might bring positive changes, but those opposing the government thought the invasion by Soviet forces would mean a complete takeover of the country. These people would say that the Russians would force them to convert from Islam. Also, they thought that the new system would bring unacceptable changes, such as the confiscation of land or the targeting of tribal elders in the villages.

13. Flour mill owner, Ghazni

I saw Russian forces in Ghazni city. When I had the flour mill, I needed to go to the city and buy fuel for the engine and bring it to my village. Whenever I went to the city from then on, I would see Russian soldiers there. They were in or around their tanks and they had white skin. They were guarding different parts of Ghazni city. I first saw them in front of the [provincial] governor’s house.

I was thinking about the Russians in the same way other people were thinking about them. People thought: the Red Army has invaded our country. Since the Red Army was non-Muslim, people thought they would promote atheism in our society and would not allow people to perform their religion openly. This was not acceptable for the people. We also thought that since the Russians had invaded Afghanistan, it was going to be their country now. We thought the Russians were colonising Afghanistan and annexing it into their union.

Soviet tank wreck, Hazarajat. Photo: Thomas Ruttig (2004)

Did the Soviet intervention change your life – if so, in what way?

1. School teacher, Kunduz

The major change in our lives was a split between family members and relatives. Some of our relatives followed the government, while others either remained neutral or followed the mujahedin. The new government restarted the previous strategy of Nur Muhammad Tarakai and Hafizullah Amin by arresting and detaining religious scholars, local elders and influential figures who opposed the government. Schools were shut in many villages because of the mujahedin’s attacks and warnings. Government employees were warned, told to quit their jobs and join the mujahedin.

In my personal life, I lost my job and was forced to serve as a security service member. In Kabul, I was caught by the police and immediately sent to a frontline in Kandahar to fight the mujahedin. I spent one and half years there and had no clue about my family. Eventually, I managed to flee to Pakistan where I had no contact with the rest of my family for another year. Finally, I managed to send a written letter to my father to inform him about myself and how I fled to Pakistan. After almost two years, my family joined me and we remained in Pakistan until the collapse of the communist regime.

2. High school graduate, Kabul

I joined a mujahedin party, Sazman-e Nasr [Victory Organisation, a Shia group]. We believed the Russians had come to Afghanistan to stay forever and would not go. So, I became involved with [clandestine] political and cultural activities in Kabul against the Soviets.

3. Army officer, Kabul

The arrival of the Russians did not change my life in any way. I was very happy because the Russians made a very good decision. The only change that came to my life was that we got rid of a traitor [Hafizullah Amin]. Some people like me had a chance to speak about the politics of Afghanistan. The people were not killed, at least not in Kabul. I continued my job in Kabul happily. I served my duty in the Najib government [last communist president, 1987-92]. I lived and worked in Kabul during the mujahedin, under the Taleban and during the government of Karzai. I retired in Karzai’s time… [But] it would have been better if Nur Muhammad Tarakai had not carried out the coup. The [communist] revolution needed to wait for 200 more years [to happen in Afghanistan]. It was what Babrak Karmal was also saying.

4. Schoolboy, Kabul

I was not happy because I was thinking that we had become a colony of the Russians. My family and I were happy with the government of Hafizullah Amin. We never liked those who were fighting against the government. Many people left their homes in the beginning, because they were afraid of the Russians, but they soon came back to their houses. My life did not change and my family and I were not affected badly. The only thing we were unhappy with was the rule of Russians over our people and our country. They were killing people in the provinces. I completed high school and was admitted in the Police Academy of Kabul. I was later recruited as an army officer. I was thinking the war would end and the situation would change, but unfortunately it did not.

5. Female teacher and activist, Kabul

Afghanistan was destroyed with the arrival of the Soviet forces. They caused so many problems for the country due to the impact of the Cold War. I, as an Afghan citizen, am not an exception to [the suffering]. I lost my husband. The best person [in a women’s life] is her husband. It was like my house was destroyed. My children were deprived [of their father]. However, I raised them in a way so that they did not feel it.

The presence of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan led to increased problems for the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahedin who had gone to neighbouring countries turned into guerrillas and paved the way for increased assistance to the opposition, and the Soviet Union was recognised as the occupier. Opposition against the nascent Democratic Republic of Afghanistan inside the country, in the region and in the world increased and took on military, economic and political dimensions. Pakistan took a more active role in arming, equipping and dispatching the opposition back to the country and reaped huge benefits from this. After the arrival of the Soviet troops and, after that, the engagement of more than 40 countries in Afghanistan, the situation in the country deteriorated, which dealt a strong blow to the country. If we look comparatively, Afghanistan [its communist government] enjoyed only the Soviet support, whereas the opposition received support from the most powerful country [USA] and many other countries of the world.

6. Government employee, Ghazni

Our country changed. War started and has continued till this very day. Power was in the hands of the Soviets. We were besieged by other countries. Pakistan began intervening. The US and Iran did similar things. They were counteracting the Soviets. This was what befell and devastated Afghanistan. If war had not begun, Afghanistan would have been a different country: a country like our northern neighbours, such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Soviets were working to develop Afghanistan’s infrastructure, but the war that ensued allowed neither them, nor their client communist government, to work on their plans. The Soviets were a better friend to Afghanistan than Pakistan has been. In fact, Pakistan has been our foe.

My family’s life did not change much. We had a hand-to-mouth existence. I was a low-ranking employee of the government. I was content with whatever I was doing and whatever money I was making at work. I was just spending my days. My work did not change much, either. However, I was threatened by the Khalqis [here a general term for all PDPA members] on a couple of occasions. Once they took me to Kandak-e Operatifi [Operations Battalion] for detention and possibly worse, but, fortunately, my father knew several Khalqis and so he managed to get me out. I worked in Ghazni until 1365 [1986]. I was then transferred to Kabul city where I worked during Najib’s time. I quit my work for some 10 years or so during the so-called jihad, including when the mujahedin captured power in Kabul. I rejoined the government during Karzai’s time and worked as an employee in the Ghazni Directorate of Public Works. I then missed my family so much that I applied to be transferred to Mazar-e Sharif, which was granted. I retired about 10 years ago.

7. Government employee, Kabul II

For me there was no change. I was an employee of the government. Government employees, at least in Kabul, were paid on time and were given coupons to get provisions, such as wheat, cooking oil, tea and rice. There was no degrading or humiliating treatment towards us. The Soviets were not like the Americans who go from house to house [to search them]. They were stationed in their bases.

Of course, if I look at the country, we suffered and we suffered tremendously. War began and intensified. There was war in Parwan [province] and elsewhere. People’s houses were destroyed. There were bombings. Convoys transporting food provisions were attacked and disrupted. If the Soviets had not come to Afghanistan, there would not be such a war in Afghanistan. I remember the period of Daud Khan. There was calm all over Afghanistan. Roads were open. People could travel around the country unimpeded and without fear. They could work and decide where to work in the country. There was no sound of gunfire. When the Soviets came, things got worse. War in Afghanistan became a war that involved various countries. The mujahedin, who were supported by Pakistan and other countries, said our land has been invaded and occupied by the Soviets. The Soviets and their Afghan government were calling them ashrar that had to be rooted out. We suffered a lot. Our country suffered a lot.

8. Schoolgirl, Kabul

It did affect me. When they [Soviets] came, they killed my father and four brothers. That directly affected my life. I turned against the Soviet invasion. I became a member of a mujahedin group called Sazman-e Mujahedin wa Mustazafin-e Afghanistan [Organisation of Afghanistan’s Mujahedin and Downtrodden]. I forgot my childhood. I forgot a lot of things that a child would dream of or wish for. I became very invested in politics. This was true for many of my classmates too. We were divided into factions. I was pro-mujahedin and there were also Khalqi and Parchami supporters. You would not believe this, but I remember that whenever there was news of a protest or a call for gathering, we would argue and sometimes fight in the classrooms. I was scared that my classmates would report me. I received a few warnings that I would be imprisoned if I continued my activities. I had to hide my opinions. I remember that a few days after my father was killed, I went to school. They asked me to go to the principal and she asked me why I was sad. I lied; I said it was just because my father was dead and that it had nothing to do with the Khalqis or Parchamis or the fact that mujahedin were being defeated badly in the frontlines.

9. Housewife, Kabul

As I said, I had given birth to my daughter. She was 40 days old when they captured my husband. He was imprisoned for three months and then he disappeared. We still have no clue what happened to him. He was captured by the Parcham party on the accusation of working with the Shola-ye Jawed group. He was captured during a meeting of the group. We know for sure that he is dead, but we have no idea how it happened and when and where. It did not end here. My brother-in-law was also killed later, then another brother-in-law, then my father-in-law. It is a vicious circle. My father was killed later during mujahedin rule. I have witnessed the deaths of my beloved ones, my family, all because of these failing and destructive politics we practice in Afghanistan. It was all a horror. I went to Pakistan to seek refuge with my two kids. I have seen hunger and misery and bad days ever since. We walked 12 days through the mountains till we reached Pakistan. I stayed there for five months until I was forced to return. It was a life of migration, struggle and sorrow for me, so you can say it has affected me personally and a great deal. This is not only my life, but the life of many others I know.

10. Government employee, Kabul

Life became harder when the Soviets arrived and Babrak Karmal was installed in power. The PDPA was divided and they had internal problems. I was alone. I had no one at home to support my family and the government wanted me to join military service. I did not want to and so I escaped. My life changed when the Soviets came. I had to migrate to Iran. I was away from my family. Working in Iran was difficult and my family lived a difficult life in Kabul.

11. Self-employed man, Baghlan

The only [good] change the Soviet intervention brought to our life was the release of my father from prison. He was released a month later, but our daily life completely changed. The house searches, bombardments and detaining of religious scholars and tribal elders restarted. Because of my father’s background as a tribal elder and an alleged ikhwani, my whole family fled from Baghlan to Kabul. We thought people would not recognise us in Kabul and we would have a safe life there. However, even in Kabul, we were not safe. Later, we fled to Pakistan and remained there until the fall of the communist regime.

12. Schoolboy, Ghazni

It changed my life. We left our village for Kabul where I could not complete my schooling. After a year in Kabul, the government forced me to join the army. After some time, I became a tank driver. I had a tough life. I was mostly on the frontline, fighting the mujahedin. I would drive over landmines, but I somehow luckily survived. Back in our village, the local mujahedin grabbed our land. They did not want to return the land to us after the fall of the Najib government, but, ultimately, we got it from them. We returned back to our village after more than ten years and I started to have a normal life, away from war.

13. Flour mill owner, Ghazni

The Soviet invasion changed my life a lot. War intensified in our village and I had to leave for another village. But I did not have that kind of active business there. I had fewer customers and people did not trust me as they did in our own village.

All the people in our area, myself included, decided to support the mujahedin. I had not joined the mujahedin, but I did help them in different ways, such as providing them with food and protection in my mill.

In the village I moved to, the Russians and the communists came to my flour mill three times. They took anything they wanted. After spending a few years there, I returned to my own village where I used to have a grape orchard. The Russian tanks had destroyed it. I had to hire people and reconstruct the walls to start taking care of my land again.

The interviews were conducted by Ali Mohammad Sabawoon, Ali Yawar Adili, Fazal Muzhary, Khadija Hussaini, Obaid Ali, Reza Kazemi and Rohullah Sorush.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert and Thomas Ruttig.

Soviet war remnants at Kunduz airport. Photo: Thomas Ruttig (2005)

 

Israeli Spike SR Anti-Tank Guided Missile

Russian Burevestnik Cruise Missile with Nuclear Propulsion System

Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan 40 years ago today, on 25 December 1979. Two days later, on 27 December, they toppled and killed Amin’s Khalqi’s government which had called for the troops and had assumed they had come for their rescue. The resulting occupation that would last for more than ten years became the last direct Soviet involvement in a ‘hot’ war in the global Cold War of that era. What was meant to be a relatively short and limited regime change operation, ended up changing history. It became part of a larger configuration of events that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union and its dominance in Eastern Europe and what, at the time, was described as the ‘end of history’: the end of the Cold War and the final triumph of liberal democracy (an illusion that has become obsolete). In Afghanistan, armed conflict did not end with the Soviet withdrawal, making Afghans the main victims of this war. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig reminds us of the unfolding events and the history they were part of.

In an improvised intervention during a cabinet meeting in January of this year, US president Donald Trump gave us his version of the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. During what CNN described as a “freewheeling” speech, he said:

Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia [again] because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. … The reason Russia was in, in Afghanistan, was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt.

Although after 40 years, people not directly involved in the events can probably be forgiven for not remembering all the details, it is useful to revisit the actual decisions that led to the intervention, as well as the wider context which made this a crucial period in world history. Our current era has been strongly shaped by what happened in that crucial year.

Coups, assassinations, invasion

The prelude to the Soviet intervention started on 27 April 1978, when a group of left-wing military officers toppled and murdered Afghan President Muhammad Daud, and most of his family, in a coup d’état. The government they put in power was dominated by the until then clandestine, pro-Soviet People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA).

Announcement of the PDPA takeover in April 1978. Source: Kabul New Times.

Five years earlier, Daud, himself a member of the royal family, had overthrown a monarchy that had existed since 1747. Some of the officers who later killed him in 1978 had supported him then.

The PDPA’s policies – from land reform to enforced co-education – was met with resistance among the population. The resistance was spontaneous at first, but soon grew and became better organised and led by mujahedin organisations that operated from Pakistan and Iran with support of their regimes. Aleksandr Lyakhovskiy, a former high-ranking Soviet officer, who helped prepare the operation that unseated Amin, quoted a Soviet intelligence estimate in a paper for the Wilson Center in 2007 as saying that by the autumn of 1979 there were 40,000 mujahedin operating “against government troops in 12 of the 27 provinces of the country” and that the Afghan army, “weakened by repression, turned out to be incapable of crushing the antigovernment [sic] movement.”

The PDPA leader, Nur Muhammad Tarakai, a teacher from Ghazni province, as chairman of the Revolutionary Council and now the head of state, reacted violently and had tens of thousands of opponents – real or imagined – who were put into prison or who ‘disappeared’ (AAN background here). He, and later Amin, repeatedly asked the Soviet leadership under Leonid Breshnev for direct military support. Moscow rejected all these requests.

At the same time, from the beginning there were major internal power struggles in the faction-ridden PDPA. One of its deputies, Babrak Karmal, a former member of parliament, was exiled in a mountain resort in what was then Czechoslovakia, after having been accused of preparing another coup. (In November 2019, Frud Bezhan published a fascinating story about this episode on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Gandhara blog (more photos here).

In September 1979, Tarakai’s self-styled ‘pupil’ and remaining deputy, Hafizullah Amin, also a teacher, from Paghman near Kabul, ordered the murder of his ‘ustad’ and took power.

The killing of Tarakai shocked the Soviet leadership and, by late 1979, they had grown even more suspicious of Amin as documents published in January 2019 showed. He had not kept them abreast of his peace overtures to mujahedin leaders, particularly his co-tribal Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (a Kharoti Pashtun like himself), Hekmatyar’s backer Pakistan and even the US embassy in Kabul. (US documents that were declassified in January 2019 also confirmed the meetings with Amin – for the US and Soviet documents see here). Amin opponents also turned Soviet attention to earlier inner-PDPA allegations that Amin had had contacts with the CIA while studying in the US (which had prevented him from becoming part of the party leadership in the 1960s).

Moscow feared Amin could bring about “a change in the political line of Afghanistan in a direction which is pleasing to Washington,” as contemporary Soviet documents published in October 2019 put it. There had been precedents of leaders switching over to the West in the global Cold War earlier in the 1970s, including President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt and Muhammad Siad Barre of Somalia.

The situation for the new regime, in the meantime, had worsened. By late 1979, according to Lyakhovskiy, the rebels had managed to “launch combat operations in 16 of the (then) 27 provinces. They controlled Laghman, Kunar, Paktia, and Paktika completely” – except for the provincial centres.

According to Lyakhovskiy (p8), by late November 1979, the Soviet leadership had already decided to remove Amin from power by force. However, the removal was initially not meant to happen by means of a full-scale military intervention.

On 4 December, a high-ranking KGB officer was sent to Kabul “to prepare the operation … to remove Amin from power.” Two days later, the Soviet Politbureau decided to back the operation by sending “a detachment to Afghanistan of about 500 men [from the army’s intelligence] in uniforms which would not reveal an affiliation with the Soviet armed forces.” Officially, this was framed as a response to Amin’s request for a battalion to defend his residence and the Bagram air base. This so-called “Muslim battalion” was “dressed in Afghan uniforms.” Among these soldiers was a 22-man “special purpose detachment” from the Soviet intelligence service, the KGB. They were “housed in three villas in Kabul rented by the Soviet Embassy,” according to Lyakhovskiy.

On 7 December, Babrak Karmal and another PDPA leadership member, Anahita Ratebzad, Karmal’s mistress, were flown clandestinely into Bagram base on board of a civilian Tu-134 aircraft belonging to Moscow’s intelligence chief Yuri Andropov (the Soviets had earlier brought both of them from Czechoslovakia to the USSR). In Bagram they were put under the protection of KGB paratroopers. According to Lyakhovskiy, another group of dissident PDPA leaders – Nur Ahmad Nur, Muhammad Aslam Watanjar (who had participated in Daud’s 1973 coup), Sayed Muhammad Gulabzoy and Asadullah Sarwari,. who had stayed in Bulgaria – were brought to Bagram separately.

Soon, Lyakhovskiy wrote, the Soviet leadership “was leaning more and more to the opinion that without Soviet troops it would be difficult to create the conditions for removing Amin.” On 8 December, two options were worked out by the so-called “small Politbureau” in party leader Leonid Brezhnev’s private office: “remove Amin from power using the KGB’s capabilities and transfer power to Karmal; if this didn’t work, then send a certain number of troops to the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] for these purposes.” Defence minister Dmitri Ustinov was ordered to put 75-80,000 Soviet troops on standby for “temporary” deployment in Afghanistan. Apart from Brezhnev, only four other persons participated in the meeting: intelligence chief Andropov, defence minister Dmitri Ustinov, foreign minister Andrey Gromyko and chief ideologue Mikhail Suslov. (1)

On 12 December, the “Politbureau of the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union” – as this body was officially called in full (2) – signed a hand-written “Politbureau decision no P 176/125” titled “Concerning the situation in ‘A’” (see below). According to Lyakhovskiy, “[t]he record was signed by all CC CPSU Politburo members present at the meeting.” (Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin was absent.) Later, in his description of events, he puts “present” in quotation marks and adds that only the inner circle had signed the document, actually no Politbureau meeting had even taken place and all other members were ‘asked’ to sign post factum.

The short two-paragraph document is generally considered the (only available) document of the decision to invade Afghanistan. (3) However, it is framed in extremely general terms. It abbreviates using only Afghanistan’s first letter and refers only to “ideas and measures” (most likely the ones discussed on 8 December), the implementation of which it ‘approved.’ Lyakhovskiy wrote that the fact that it was handwritten and signed by Brezhnev and he had not even involved a scribe, in order to keep it top secret, proves the extraordinary significance of the document.

Here the Wilson Centers transcription of the document:

 

Top Secret

SPECIAL FOLDER

Chaired by Cde. [comrade] L. I. Brezhnev

Present: Suslov M. A., Grishin V. V., Kirilenko A. P., Pel’she A. Ya., Ustinov D. F., Chernenko K. U., Andropov Yu. V., Gromyko A. A., Tikhonov N. A., Ponomarev B. N.

CC CPSU Decree No 176/125 of 12 December concerning the situation in “A”

1. Approve the ideas and measures set forth by Andropov Yu. V., Ustinov D.F., and Gromyko A. A. Authorize them to introduce amendments of non-essential nature in the course of the execution of these measures.

Questions requiring the decision of the CC should be expeditiously submitted to the Politburo. The implementation of all these measures is to be entrusted to Cdes. Andropov Yu. V., Ustinov D. F., and Gromyko A. A.

2. Charge Cdes. Andropov Yu. V., Ustinov D. F., and Gromyko A. A. to keep the CC Politburo informed on the status of the execution of the outlined measures.

CC Secretary

1. Brezhnev

No 997 (1 page)

 

Facsimile of the 1979 Soviet Politbureau decision about “A”. Source: The Wilson Center (screenshot).

 

However, Lyakhovskiy also argued that this decision might not have been meant to be a final one about a full-scale military invasion. He wrote:

… anyone who is remotely familiar with the process of preparing documents and their evaluation at CC CPSU Politburo meetings knows that there should also be a note with the suggestions of Andropov, Ustinov, and Gromyko. In fact, such a note does not exist. (…) On the basis of these facts and the development of the situation in Afghanistan I will take a risk and offer another version: at this meeting the Politburo discussed questions (…) regarding the conduct of the operation to remove Amin using forces already in Afghanistan. If the operation had been conducted successfully it would not have been necessary to introduce Soviet troops into the DRA.

Indeed, further attempts were made to get rid of Amin without a larger military operation. Between 14 and 16 December, Soviet snipers tried to shoot him on his way to or from the Arg, but unsuccessfully so. (They did not come into a position to shoot as Amin’s convoy was too well protected, according to Lyachovskiy.) Another attempt on his life, with poisoned Pepsi Cola, also failed. After these failures, Karmal and the other PDPA leaders were brought back temporarily to safety in Tashkent (now in independent Uzbekistan).

Amin had apparently still not noticed that something was wrong and was still asking for Soviet military forces. Lyakhovskiy quotes Soviet documents according to which Amin told the KGB representative in Kabul in meetings on 12 and 17 December 1979, “what boiled down to the following”:

– the present Afghan leadership will greet the presence of the Soviet Armed Forces at a number of strategically important points in the northern regions of the DRA…

Amin said that the forms and methods of extending military aid should be determined by the Soviet side;

– the USSR can have military garrisons wherever they want;


– the USSR can take under guard all facilities where there is Soviet-Afghan collaboration;

– the Soviet troops could take DRA lines of communications under guard.

On the day of the second meeting, 17 December, orders were given for the raid on Amin’s palace. On 19 December 1979, he relocated his residence from the Arg in central Kabul to Taj Bek palace “at the urging of his Soviet advisers,” according to late Afghan historian Hassan Kakar (Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1995, pp21-2). Kakar wrote:

The new palace had originally been the seat of the reformist King Amanullah (1919-29). Before Amin became the head of state, the Khalqi government had spent more than one billion afghanis (approximately $20 million) to repair the palace and make it a suitable seat for his predecessor, Nur Mohammad Taraki. President Amin moved into it at the urging of his Soviet advisers. (…) But Tapa-e-Tajbeg, situated on a mound two miles south of the city, could easily be attacked should the Soviet Union decide to do so.

Tarakai-Brezhnev meeting in Moscow in summer 1979. Photo: author’s archive.

Kakar wrote further that Amin “wanted to be away from the old palace, which reminded him of the many bloody events that had taken place there.” It had been the place where Tarakai tried to get rid of him (and perhaps kill him) in September, and where he had Tarakai murdered in the following month.

About the following events, Lyakhovskiy wrote:

On 22 and 23 December Ambassador Tabeyev informed Amin that his request for Soviet troops to be sent to Afghanistan had been granted in full in Moscow. They were ready to begin deployment on 25 December. Amin expressed gratitude to the Soviet leadership and gave instructions to the DRA Armed Forces General Staff to give assistance to the deploying troops.

When thousands of airborne Soviet soldiers landed in Kabul and Bagram and started crossing the land border in the north at 3pm Moscow time on 25 December, (4) moving toward Herat and Shindand airbase in western Afghanistan and to Kunduz, Pul-e Khumri and the Salang Pass in the northeast, Amin still assumed they had come to help him. Two days later, at a reception on 25 December 1979, he told those present, according to Lyakhovskiy:

Soviet divisions are already on their way here. Paratroopers are landing in Kabul. Everything is going beautifully. I am in constant touch by telephone with Cde [comrade] Gromyko and we are discussing together how to best formulate the information to the world about the extension of Soviet military aid.

In the late afternoon of the same day, a last attempt to poison Amin failed. Soviet doctors who were present – but had not been informed of the coup plan – kept Amin alive. Then, Soviet Special Forces stormed his residence in Kabul’s Taj Beg palace and shot him dead. (5) Karmal was flown in yet again from the Soviet Union and was installed as the new leader.

Front page of government-owned Kabul New Times, announcing the ouster of Hafizullah Amin, the takeover of Babrak Karmal – but not the Soviet invasion.

It still remains an open question who made the final decision to enter and act with such a large force. It seems clear, however, also from Lyakhovskiy’s account, that the Soviet leadership was thinking not only about the mujahedin threat to the government, but also that it expected – and experienced – stiff resistance from the Afghan armed forces. The Khalqis – the PDPA faction Amin had belonged to – still had the majority in the army and police officer corps (despite earlier purges, which had also turned some of the faction’s members, such as Watanjar, Gulabzoy and Sarwari, against him). It was only to be expected that they would vehemently oppose the takeover by Karmal’s rival Parcham faction. This is confirmed by Artemy Kalinovsky, another leading writer on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, who wrote (p51):

The months following the invasion were key in turning the intervention into a decade-long war. Following the use of a limited contingent of Soviet troops to put down an Afghan army mutiny at the beginning of January [1980], Soviet forces were drawn into skirmishes with increasing frequency.

The international situation had influenced the decision-making. Lyakhovskiy wrote that Andropov and Ustinov told Brezhnev in early December that “a Western-oriented Afghanistan could become a base for short-range nuclear missiles targeted at the USSR.” According to Kalinovsky (p50), it was this that had finally convinced the hesitant Breshnev. Remarkably, the Politbureau decision “Concerning the situation in ‘A’” was taken on the same day that the NATO Council in Brussels approved the deployment of new US medium-range cruise missiles and Pershing-2 missiles in Western Europe.

Turning tides

The Soviet military intervention, initially planned to be a limited regime change operation, turned into a large-scale invasion that lasted ten years. By spring 1980, there were 81,000 Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. In 1986 this number had grown to 120,000 and, finally, there were around 100,000 troops before withdrawals started in mid-1988, according to Rodric Braithwaite in his 2011 book, Afganzy (pp122, 283).

After the troops’ negotiated departure in February 1989, continued military and financial support – first Soviet and then briefly Russian when the Soviet Union disintegrated – kept the Afghan regime alive for another three years. When Russian President Boris Yeltsin deemed the engagement to have become too costly and stopped it in early 1992, the Afghan regime crumbled. One of the PDPA factions handed power to the mujahedin, who moved into Kabul without encountering any resistance on 28 April 1992. Unfortunately, this was not the end of the war – but the rest is better known history.

Trump’s assertion that the Soviet Union “went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan” – a view held by many Afghans too – is only part of the truth. (6) In his 2019 book Zeitenwende 1979: Als die Welt von heute begann (Turning of Times 1979: When the world of today began, Munich 2019 – not available yet in English) German historian Frank Bösch argues that it was a series of international events in 1979, including the events in Afghanistan that, ultimately, undermined the Soviet Union and the Soviet-led ‘Eastern Bloc’, led to the rise of political Islam, with violent, terrorist jihadism at its fringes, and established a new, multipolar world.

The year 1979 had started with the Islamic revolution in Iran. The new regime, under Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini, followed a doctrine that included ‘export of the revolution’ through support to likeminded groups in the region. (The Soviets initially expected the new, strongly anti-US regime would be an ally.) Later that year, Saddam Hussain took power in Iraq and soon led his country into war with Iran. On 20 November 1979, the first day of the Islamic 15th century, a group of armed millennial Islamists led by Juhaiman al-Otaibi stormed and occupied the Grand Mosque of Mecca. The group called itself al-Ikhwan (The Brothers), as a reference to an uprising against the Saudi dynasty in the 1920s. They proclaimed a Mahdi, declared the end of the world and the victory of ‘true Islam’ over jahiliyya (ignorance), which, in their eyes, included the Western-allied Saudi regime. After a siege of two weeks, the group was brutally defeated with the help of French Special Forces advisers. Otaibi and 67 others were publicly executed. According an authoritative book on the events – The Siege of Mecca by former Afghanistan correspondent of the Wall Street Journal Yaroslav Trofimov (London 2007) – the brutal repression alienated many Muslims from the Saudi regime, among them Osama ben Laden. Some of them would find a common cause and an arena for their fight in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

Outside the region, Pope John Paul II’s visit to his homeland Poland in June 1979 boosted the country’s anti-communist opposition led by the independent Solidarność trade union, as well as opposition groups elsewhere in Eastern Europe. In mid-1979, the start of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership in the United Kingdom started a conservative wave in the west (in the US, Ronald Reagan would follow soon). On 12 December 1979, the NATO responded to the deployment of Soviet nuclear middle-range missiles in eastern Central Europe with the above mentioned, so-called Double-Track Decision (deployment of nuclear missiles and bomber airplanes able to carry nuclear weapons in western Central Europe). This brought Europe – and the world – to the brink of nuclear war.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, just two weeks after the NATO decision, ended the East-West détente, which witnessed a period of almost a decade during which East-West relations had become less confrontational due to disarmament measures. Thus, direct Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan, in the midst of global tensions, internationalised an internal political conflict which, so far, had been mainly over the question of whether to modernise (or not), at which pace and in which form.

Over time, the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan became stronger and received support from the West, most Islamic countries and China. However, it was Pakistan’s Islamist military dictatorship under Zia-ul-Haq that made sure that non-Islamist groups were excluded from this support. As a result, what started as a largely national resistance movement, over time morphed into a resistance dominated by ‘Jihadi’ armed groups.

In 1979, the Soviet leadership – like everybody else – was still unable to read the signs of the time. Boosted by the establishment of new socialist regimes in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and South Yemen during the 1970s, and by the victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979, they were buoyed by dreams of a constantly expanding “socialist world system,” spanning from Moscow to Maputo, and Havana to Hanoi. This ‘historic optimism’ may well have contributed to Moscow’s hubris to decide to invade Afghanistan.

Ten years later, the financial burden of the new arms race had brought the Soviet Union into economic crisis. New Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachov decided to cut costs, first in Eastern Europe (mainly by curbing the subsidised oil and gas and other mineral resources) and then, increasingly, in Afghanistan – until Yeltsin decided to completely cut Afghanistan off.

Historian Bösch wrote:

The run of history is often moulded by coincidence, but mostly by long-term changes which appear compacted at certain points of time and take on rapid speed.

In the year of 1979 rapid changes culminated in many spheres and regions. In this sense, one can talk about a ‘1979 turn of the times’ in which our present world began to emerge.

That is definitely the case for Afghanistan, as a single country, too. The Soviet war in Afghanistan would only be the first stage of a now 40-year long armed conflict, with changing and shifting participants and alliances, and severe consequences, above all for Afghans.

According to a 2005 report of The Afghanistan Justice Project,

…. [t]he Soviet occupation brought about a shift in tactics in the war. Soviet forces assassinated Amin, and installed Babrak Karmal, from the rival Parcham wing of the party in his place. Aware of the need to build support for the party, the Soviets ended the mass slaughter of intellectuals, religious leaders and others and instead adopted more systematic means of intelligence gathering and more selective targets of repression. The secret police, the Khidamati Ittila’at-i Dawlati (State Information Services), or KhAD, (…) engaged in widespread summary executions, detentions and torture of suspected mujahidin (resistance) supporters. In the countryside, the bombing became routine and indiscriminate. [It] devastated the countryside, killed tens of thousands and drove five million Afghans into exile.

Casualty figures of the Soviet phase of the war alone are estimated to have been between 800,000 and two million dead (7) and three million wounded (the latter mainly civilians); 6.4 million (one third of the pre-war population) turned into refugees, the largest refugee population in the world for many years, up to and until the Syrian war that started in 2015; two million internally displaced. Then there are the consequences from mass traumatisation to the devastated economy and destruction of the social fabric. (8) In 1989, the Afghan economist Ghanie Ghaussy calculated that Afghanistan’s direct material and potential Grand National Product losses and the damages to the capital stocks and infrastructure from the Soviet war could be estimated at approximately 13 billion US dollars. Agricultural and industrial output declined to 40 to 60 per cent of the production level of the pre-invasion period.

The impact on individual lives has been staggering and is sometimes subsumed by the suffering that followed in the next phases of the war. In memory of this chapter in Afghan history, we will reflect on what it has meant to ordinary Afghan lives and how they remember these event in a companion dispatch that will be published in the next few days.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert

 

(1) Kalinovsky, another leading writer on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan speaks of a “troika” only – Andropov, Gromyko, and Ustinov (see here (p49).

(2) A full list of Politbureau members during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is in this 2005 report (pp 33-4) of The Afghanistan Justice Project.

(3) According to the author’s knowledge, this document was published for the first time (in original, from a Soviet archive, and in a German translation) in Switzerland in: Bucherer-Dietschi, Paul, Albert Alexander Stahel and Jürg Stüssi-Lauterburg (eds), Strategischer Überfall – das Beispiel Afghanistan. Quellenband – Teil II, Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, Liestal 1993, pp 680-1.

(4) Rodric Braithwaite, Afganzy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89, London 2011, p 86.

(5) BBC Radio has two gripping eye-witness accounts, one told by Najiba Kasraee, a later BBC journalist, then a child that had been in Taj Bek palace during Amin’s 27 December reception and the subsequent Soviet commando raid, and one by one of the Soviet paratroopers who was involved in the raid (listen here and here).

(6) Trump also thought that “The reason Russia was in, in Afghanistan, was because terrorists were going into Russia.” Although there were no terrorists in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded, there were incursions from Afghanistan into the Soviet Union afterwards. Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, head of the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service’s Afghan Bureau, responsible for directing financial and military assistance to the Afghan mujahedin from 1983 to 1987, related in his 1992 book The Bear Trap: Afghanistan’s Untold Story (together with Mark Adkin) how he organised, with CIA support, mujahedin cross-border operations inside the USSR, including rocket attacks, mine laying and ambushes around Soviet military installations near the Afghan border.

(7) The most realistic figure might be “nearly one million” (see Barnett Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, Yale 1995, p 1).

(8) Sources: Goodson, Larry P. Afghanistan’s Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban, University of Washington Press, 2001, p. 5; Wickramasekara, P., Sehgal, J., Mehran, F., Noroozi, L., Eisazadeh, Afghan Households in Iran: Profile and Impact, UNHCR-ILO Cooperation, 2006; A. Hilali, US–Pakistan Relationship: Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. Burlington, 2005, p. 198. According to Gorbachov-time Soviet sources, the country’s armed forces lost 15,051 dead (Braithwaite, Afganzy, p 329) and 54,000 wounded.

 

Three Afghans, who were detained and rendered to the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and 2003, and then transferred to the United Arab Emirates 2016 and what turned out to be further incarceration, have been released. Obaidullah and Mohammed Karim from Khost and Hamidullah from Kabul have also been allowed to return home to Afghanistan and are now with their families. A fourth man, Wali Mohammed, is still in the UAE. The four featured in a major 2016 AAN report on the experiences of Afghans in Guantanamo which looked at their cases in detail. It found the US allegations against them far-fetched and their files to be full of factual errors and gross misunderstandings. AAN’s Kate Clark has been following the latest developments (with input Ali Mohammad Sabawoon).

News that three of the four Afghans transferred from Guantanamo to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been released from Emirati custody and repatriated came through on 23 December 2019. The three men had been incarcerated for the best part of two decades: detained by the US in Afghanistan – or by Pakistan which handed them over to the US – in 2002 or 2003. They were then rendered to Guantanamo and held there until they were transferred to the Gulf in 2016. Three of the four men sent to the UAE have given detailed accounts of having been tortured. (The fourth, Hamidullah, has not spoken about the matter.) President Obama, after having failed to close the prison camp itself, worked to get as many detainees out of Guantanamo before he left office in January 2017 and these transfers were part of that drive.

Two other Afghans were sent to Oman at this time: Bostan Karim, a businessman who had a plastic flower shop in Khost and Abdul Zaher, a choki dar from Logar. They were freed by the Omani authorities after a short spell in detention and have been resettled in Oman and their families allowed to join them. So far, however, they have not been allowed to travel. The four men sent to the UAE believed – as did their families and lawyers – that they were also heading for temporary detention and then resettlement and family reunion. Instead, for almost all of the last three years, the UAE authorities have held them in al-Rizan maximum security prison. The men were allowed family visits, but were not permitted to see their lawyers or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The three men’s release has come about because of the 2016 peace agreement between Hezb-e Islami and the Afghan government (for AAN reporting, see here). The chairman of the commission charged with implementing that agreement, Zia ul-Haq Amarkhel, told AAN that the government had been working initially to secure the release of Hamidullah, who comes from a prominent Hezb-e Islami family in Kabul – his father was the religious scholar, Mullah Sayed Agha Tarakhel, who died while Hamidullah was in Guantanamo. Then, Amarkhel said, the existence of the other three former Guantanamo detainees held in the UAE came to their attention. The government has managed to secure the release also of Obaidullah and Kamin and he said they are still “pushing for the UAE to send Wali Mohammed soon to Kabul.” Amarkhel said they had been talking directly to the UAE government. As to whether it had contacted the Americans before agreeing to release the men back to Afghanistan, he said he did not know.

The men who have now finally been allowed to come home are among the unluckiest of the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Afghans whom the US detained in the early years after 2001. As detailed in AAN’s 2016 report, “Kafka in Cuba: The Afghan Experience in Guantanamo”, the US military and CIA carried out mass, arbitrary arrests in this period as they sought information about the location of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and in their ‘hunt’ for ‘Taleban remnants’ (even though, in terms of rebel fighting forces, these did not really exist (1). Of those the US detained, 220 Afghans were rendered to Guantanamo. (2) Many were Taleban, including some senior military figures, but most were not. They included shepherds, taxi drivers and shopkeepers, children, the very elderly and individuals with mental health problems. There were also some significant non-Taleban notables and elders and those who had actively worked against the Taleban when the group held power. The American practice of paying for intelligence incentivised false tip-offs from Afghan commanders who used the US military and CIA to target their personal enemies, or to make money. The Pakistani state also handed over ‘terrorists’, again for money or for reasons of politics. Many detainees were tortured by the US military or CIA and their testimony occasionally led to further detentions. Almost all of those sent to Guantanamo were eventually released and repatriated, apart from the six who were sent to the Gulf in 2016 and 2017.

Two Afghans remain in Guantanamo, Asadullah Harun Gul and Muhammed Rahim (called (called Harun al-Afghani and Rahim al-Afghani in Guantanamo), both of whom were detained in 2007. Rahim was the last Afghan to be sent to Guantanamo and also the last detainee of any nationality that we know of who was tortured by the CIA and rendered to Guantanamo. Three other Afghans died in the prison. (3)

The cases against the four Afghans sent to the UAE

The US cases against the four men transferred to the UAE barely make sense. Moreover, their Guantanamo documents are full of strange assumptions and gross errors of fact. Full details of their cases can be read in our 2016 report, “Kafka in Cuba”, but thumbnail sketches are given below. The men’s names are given as they are most commonly spelt in their US documents, along with Internment Serial Number or ISN, which uniquely identifies each detainee.

None of these detainees were picked up on the battlefield. Nor were any accused of any specific attack. For the most part, trying to make sense of why these men were detained is more likely to succeed if, instead of looking at the allegations against them, the probable incentives, including financial or political benefits, of those handing them over or informing on them is considered.

1. Obaidullah, ISN 762, mid-30s, from Khost. Detained by US forces July 2002; rendered to Guantanamo, 28 October 2002. Transferred to UAE and further detention, 14 August 2016.

Obaidullah was detained after an anonymous tip-off accusing him of being an al-Qaeda bomb-maker. He confessed to being a member of a cell, but retracted this soon after arriving in Guantanamo, saying he had been tortured. Evidence for this was presented later in court testimony for a petition for habeas corpus, when the state has to justify in court its detention of an individual. Obaidullah said he had been subject to sleep deprivation and physical abuse at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost. The state dropped parts of its case against Obaid rather than contest his torture claim in court. (4)

During a long-running petition for habeas corpus, much of the case against Obaid was shown to be dubious, untrue or derived from statements obtained under torture. For example, blood in a car he had driven that was alleged to be from wounded Taleban turned out to have been from his wife in labour. Yet, the many inconsistencies, wrong assumptions and errors in the state’s evidence revealed during the case made no apparent difference to the judge’s acceptance of the state’s evidence. In the end, the case rested on the original, anonymous tip-off by someone whose identity has never been revealed to Obaidullah and which he could not question and his alleged links with another detainee, a former business partner Bostan Karim, who was transferred to Oman in 2017 (and remains there). Whatever evidence that was not discounted or undermined during Obaidullah’s various hearings pointed to him possibly having been a low-level Taleban insurgent. However, nothing backed up the US claim of links with al-Qaeda or explained why it was deemed necessary to incarcerate him for so many years.

Moreover, certain US allegations against Obaid were simply bizarre, for example, that he had “helped coordinate the movement and activities of various foreign al Qaida” at a time when was a teenager and also did not speak Arabic and that he had hid and relocated to Pakistan “18 Arab al Qaeda members” at the start of the allied bombing campaign in 2001; the foreign militants fled several weeks later and quite openly. (5) 

2. Mohammed Kamin, ISN 1045, early 40s, from Khost, imam. Detained by Afghan forces 14 May 2003 and handed over to US; rendered to Guantanamo 21 November 2003. Transferred to UAE, 14 August 2016.

 Kamin’s was the flimsiest of all the eight cases covered in AAN’s 2016 report. He was detained by (unspecified) Afghan forces in Khost city who told the US he had a GPS device with suspicious grid points stored on it. The US also deemed the make of Kamin’s watch suspicious; the Casio F_91 has been used in IEDs, but is also a global bestseller, owned by millions round the world.

The allegations against Kamin were, in any case, garbled. He was accused of being a member of, or affiliated to five different terrorist groups of different nationalities, not all of which actually existed: al-Qaeda (pan-Islamic), the ‘Afghan Coalition Militia’ (did not exist), ‘North African Extremist Network’ (did not exist), the Taleban (Afghan), Harakat ul-Mujahedin (Pakistani) and Jaish-e Muhammad (Pakistani). The US did not explain why or how this was possible. The US military also alleged Kamin had met “the Taliban Supreme Leader” after the war against the Soviets, a time when Kamin was aged between 11 and 16 years old and Mullah Omar was a village mullah in Sangesar, Kandahar province, several days’ journey away across multiple frontlines. 

3. Hamidullah, ISN 1119, mid-50s, from Kabul, dealer in property and second-hand cars from prominent Hezb-e Islami family. Detained (probably) by the Afghan intelligence agency, the NDS, and handed over to US August 2003; rendered to Guantanamo 21 November 2003. Transferred to UAE, 14 August 2016.

The US deems as suspicious the fact that Hamidullah is from a Hezb-e Islami family, even though the US also supported this faction during the 1980s against the Soviet Union. It also accused him of having welcomed the Taleban in the 1990s (many Afghans did). Yet the fact that he was imprisoned by the Taleban when they were in power because he was Hezb-e Islami is dismissed.

 The US accused Hamidullah of plotting to bring the Afghan king, Zaher Shah, back to power, although why this should have been illegal or the act of an insurgent is not explained. He was accused of being in league with a coterie of co-conspirators, including groups and individuals, anti and pro-monarchist, anti and pro-American, moderate and extreme, and several that are mutually antagonistic. They included: the Iranians; the Taleban; the anti-monarchist Hezb-e Islam; several stalwarts from Jamiat-e Islami (anti-monarchist) including Mullah Ezatullah (whom the Americans label as Hezb-e Islami) and Haji Almas, both now MPs; the monarchist, pro-American former minister of defence, Rahim Wardak and; the monarchist and notoriously moderate mujahedin faction Mahaz-e Melli, which had not fought since 1992, but which Hamidullah’s Guantanamo ‘Assessment’ document described as “extremist”.

Hamidullah’s files are also full of factual errors. For example: Mullah Ezat was said to belong to Jamiat’s arch enemy, Hezb-e Islami; Taleban commander Mawlawi Kabir whom Kamin was said to have “identified” was reported by the US not only to have been a member of the Afghan National Army (he was not), but at a date before the army was founded and; Hamidullah’s father was said to have been a founding member of the Taleban (he was not). Not only are these ‘facts’ wrong, but anyone knowing anything about Afghanistan would have known they were wrong. Even someone with access to the internet could have readily discovered the errors. Hamidullah’s looked to be a clear case of a man handed over to the US military by his factional enemies as the NDS was then controlled by Jamiat-e Islami. 

The fourth Afghan to be transferred to the UAE, on 17 January 2017, in the last hours of the Obama presidency, Wali Mohammed, has yet to be freed. However, his case is as strange as the others.

Haji Wali Mohammed, ISN 560, mid-50s from Baghlan, money changer at the Central Money Market in Kabul. Detained in Pakistan 26 January 2002; handed over to US forces February 2002; rendered to Guantanamo 30 April 2002. Transferred to UAE 19 January 2017.

The US accused Wali Mohammed of being a financial backer of the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Yet, when the Taleban were in power, he had been detained and bankrupted by them after a joint venture with the Central Bank went badly wrong. (NB The deal itself was not controversial.) The accusation that Wali Mohammed was anything other than a publicly-known figure with a legal money exchange and gold-importing business rested on hearsay – the reports of foreign intelligence agencies and one detainee saying what another detainee had allegedly told him about Wali Mohammed. He himself believes he was framed by the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, to protect one of its agents who owed him money after a tribal jirga asked to sort out the dispute had ruled in Wali Mohammed’s favour.

Wali Mohammed challenged his detention with a petition for habeas corpus in 2005, but only got a hearing in 2013, after repeated procedural delays and permission by the state to use secret evidence. The judge, after taking three years to decide the case, in 2016 dismissed the government’s allegation that he was an al-Qaeda financier as “not credible.” However, she ordered his continued detention because of what she believed was his association with the Taleban and the, by then, no-longer-insurgent Hezb-e Islami (Wali Mohammed’s sister is married to a nephew of Hezb leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar).

The parole-like body which decides whether to continue detaining Guantanamo detainees, the Periodic Review Board at Guantanamo, cleared Wali Mohammad for transfer in September 2016, noting, bizarrely, as he had by then been in American custody for 14 years, that his “business connections and associations with al Qa’ida and the Taliban pre-date 9/11 and appear to have ended.”

Freed, but their names not yet cleared 

None of these four men have ever been tried in a court of law. US assessments of the detainees were never about deciding guilt or innocence or determining criminal responsibility for example, for particular attacks, but about perceived risk. (6) Still, inmates have felt their guilt was assumed and they had to try to prove their innocence, although without the means they would have had if they were in a court of law. The US has set up various assessment boards over the years, but detainees were never allowed to bring witnesses or scrutinise the evidence against them. In some cases, they were not even told the exact allegations. At a review of his case in 2004, when Wali Mohammed got his first chance to speak publicly, he appears flabbergasted: how could the US accuse him of funding the Taleban and al-Qaeda when he was up to his ears in debt and the Taleban had put him in prison? In this extract from the transcript, he is being asked to respond to the allegations being read out by his Personal Representative (an officer chosen to ‘represent’ him at the hearing):

Personal Representative: The Detainee paid for a senior member of the Taliban to travel.

Detainee: I was buried in losses; I’d lost lots of money. Should I pay for my losses, or pay for the Taliban’s tickets? This accusation is not logical.

 Personal Representative: The Detainee purchased vehicles for the Taliban.

Detainee: I still had my own problems and bills to pay; I wasn’t in shape to buy vehicles for the Taliban. Should I pay my loan, or should I buy cars for the Taliban who had treated me brutally? This is not correct; you guys just think about it. (7)

From a transcript of an assessment hearing of Hamidullah in 2006, we can also see him struggling to make sense of the system of justice he was facing. Hearing allegations made by un-named sources which appeared to him to simply be based on misunderstandings, he repeatedly asks his captors to show him proof of his wrong-doing:

Detainee (through translator): I am asking you your basis for my capture. If you have any documents, records, or papers please let me know. Don’t just tell me that someone told you… You say I am al Qaida and I say I am not. Do you have proof of anything? It is up to you to show me the proof. (8)

As to the various petitions detainees have made for habeas corpus, they found American judges presuming the state to be truthful and barely questioning far-fetched allegations or correcting gross factual errors. The courts have let the state present evidence kept secret from the petitioner and allowed it to delay petitions repeatedly, often for many years, and without penalty. Judges have also spent months, or even years making decisions. “Careful judicial fact-finding,” one 2012 study of the habeas cases found, has been “replaced by judicial deference to the government’s allegations,” with the “government winning every petition.” (9) Guantanamo detainees have sought, but not found justice in America’s courts.

Even when the Periodic Review Board ruled that the four men sent to the UAE could be transferred out of Guantanamo, it did not formally decide the allegations against any of them were untrue. Rather, it decided the men no longer represented a danger to the United States “warranting continued detention.” The George Bush contention that those in Guantanamo were the “worst of the worst” has never been lifted. Yet from AAN’s study of these four men’s files and backgrounds, it is clear that none represented a threat to the US or its interests. Rather, they have been subject to extreme injustice.

Conclusion 

That the Afghan government has followed up on its citizens incarcerated in the UAE has come about because of its peace agreement with Hezb-e Islami. Without that initiative, it seems unlikely that anything would have been done for these Afghans detained overseas. Afghan ambassador in Washington Roya Rahmani, for example, told AAN that she had received no instructions regarding the two Afghans still in Guantanamo and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesmen said the detainees there and in the Gulf were the Ministry of Justice’s responsibility, rather than securing their welfare being a consular duty (both interviews in March of this year).

As of today, three Afghans out of the 220 sent to Guantanamo are still in detention, Wali Mohammed in the UAE, and Muhammad Rahim and Harun Gul in Guantanamo, while the two men in Oman, Bostan Karim and Abdul Zaher, are living freely, but not allowed to travel. Zia ul-Haq Amarkhel said the government’s efforts to get all the Afghans freed and allowed to come home would continue.

This dispatch uses material researched for a follow-up report on the fate of the eight Afghans who featured in our 2016 publication. We hope to publish that early in the new year.

 

Edited by Thomas Ruttig

 

(1) Most Taleban had accepted defeat in 2001, as the author wrote in her 2016 “Kafka in Cuba” report:

There would be no Taleban ‘resistance’ to speak of until early 2003 and even that was very patchy and extremely local; it took several years for the insurgency to really take off. In reality, for anyone who knew Afghanistan and was there in late 2001, the opposite was true. The Taleban’s defeat had been total. Barely a single Afghan had rallied to their cause and the collapse they had suffered – military, political and psychological – had been swift and absolute.” (p 9)

(2) The largest national contingent at Guantanamo were the Afghans (220), followed by Saudis (135), Yemenis (115) and Pakistanis (72).  In total, men from 49 nationalities were held there.  “The Guantanamo Docket” published by The New York Times.

(3) They were: Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, died 30 December 2007 from cancer; Awal Gul, died 2 February 2011, after having been recommended for release, reportedly collapsing after exercise and; Inayatullah, died 18 May 2011, reportedly taking his own life (spellings as per US documents).

(4) See “Declaration of Richard Pandis”, pp 7-9, 8 February 2012, and “Kafka in Cuba”, pp 38-40, for more details.

(5) Arab and other foreign fighters fled on mass through Khost city to Pakistan in November 2001 after Kabul had fallen, according to interviews with eye-witnesses undertaken for BBC radio, July 2002 (no URL available).

(6) The one partial exception here are the military commissions held in Guantanamo, although these have been subject to excoriating criticism by lawyers and human rights advocates; see, for example, Steve Vladeck, “It’s Time to Admit That the Military Commissions Have Failed”, 16 April 2019, Lawfare, and Human Rights Watch’s discussion of “The Guantanamo Trials” on its website.

(7) Wali Mohammed Combatant Status Review Tribunals, 2004, transcript, p 5 (see Kafka in Cuba, p 25 for more detail).

(8) Hamidullah Administrative Review Board hearing 2006, transcript, p 8. (see Kafka in Cuba, p 55 for more detail).

(9) See Mark Denbeaux, Jonathan Hafetz, Sara Ben-David, Nicholas Stratton, and Lauren Winchester, “No Hearing Habeas: D.C. Circuit Restricts Meaningful Review”, Seton Hall University School Of Law, 1 May 2012.

Israeli Nimrod Anti-Tank Guided Missile

Israeli Spike NLOS Anti-Tank Guided Missile

American LAV-ATM Anti-Tank Guided Missile Carrier

The European Defence Agency has today published its annual Defence Data report for the year 2018, detailing spending by the 27 EDA Member States. Total defence expenditure stands at €223 billion, representing a 3% increase on 2017  and marks the fifth consecutive year of increased defence spending. EDA’s report also finds that Member States are not meeting spending commitments in key areas.   
 

Total defence expenditure returns to pre-financial crisis levels  

The year’s report finds that overall defence spending by the 27 EDA Member States has almost returned to pre-financial crisis levels, €225 billion in 2007 compared to €223.4 billion in 2018. This level of spending represents 1.4% of GDP and 3.1% of total government expenditure. Although overall spending fell by 11% between 2007 and 2013, since 2014 Member States defence expenditure is increasing in line with economic growth.  

“It is extremely positive that defence budgets have almost fully returned to pre-financial crisis levels, with 2018 marking the fifth consecutive year of increased spending. Our report is evidence that Member States have put a renewed impetus into defence spending after suffering heavily in the years following the financial crisis. Nevertheless, EDA’s findings do paint a mixed picture in terms of European collaborative defence, with a worrying fall in both equipment procurement and R&T spending in a European context. While European collaborative defence R&T still remains significantly below 2008 levels, it is encouraging that the value and number of ad-hoc R&T projects under EDA is increasing”, Jorge Domecq, EDA’s Chief Executive, commented. 
 

Shortfalls on collective spending commitments  

Despite the rise in total defence expenditure, spending on fulfilling collective benchmarks has failed to keep pace. Spending on areas where collective benchmarks have been agreed namely: Defence Investment; Defence Research and Technology; European Collaborative Defence Equipment Procurement; and European Collaborative Defence R&T all still remain below 2008 levels. EDA’s report provides detailed analysis of how current spending relates to these four collective benchmarks agreed at the EDA Steering Board in 2007, as follows:

• €44.5 billion on Defence Investment (procurement of new equipment and R&D), representing 19.9% of Total Defence Expenditure against a collective benchmark of 20%; 
• €6.4 billion on European Collaborative Defence Equipment Procurement, representing  17.8% of Total Defence Equipment Procurement against a collective benchmark of 35%; 
• €2.1 billion on Defence Research and Technology, totalling 0.9% of Total Defence Expenditure against a collective benchmark of 2%; and, 
• €153 million on European Collaborative Defence R&T, totalling 7.3% of Total Defence R&T against a collective benchmark of 20%.    
   

Key findings  

However, among the 27 EDA Member States some disparities in achieving these benchmarks can be observed:  

• 14 Member States spent 20% or more of their defence budget on investment in 2018, up from 7 states in 2014;     

• 21 Member States now dedicate more than 10% of defence budget on investments;  

• 8 Member States combined account for 96% of total defence research and technology spending, with the largest four accounting for 85%.   
   

Background 

EDA collects defence data on an annual basis, and has done so since 2006, in line with the Agency’s ministerial Steering Board decision of November 2005. The Ministries of Defence of the Agency’s 27 Member States (all EU Member States except Denmark) provide the data. EDA acts as the custodian of the data and publishes the aggregated figures in its booklets. 

All data is collated (“Total incorporates 27 EDA Member States”), and it has been rounded. Defence expenditure figures are provided in constant 2018 prices in order to take inflation into account and allow for a comparison across years.  
 

More information  

• EDA Report: Defence Data 2017-2018 Key Findings and Analysis  

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