Defence`s Feeds

• The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is one more weapons delivery accuracy (WDA) test away from having its initial operating capability (IOC) declared for its Block 3F software. The news comes after a surge by the F-35 Developmental Test team in early August, which saw multiple test events accomplished over the course of a number of days. Speaking on the surge, Torrey Given, a weapons integration engineer with the 461st Flight Test Squadron at Edwards Air Base, said that the testing allowed the development team to “accomplish some complex air-to-air demonstrations with the (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile) in order to show the full capability of the aircraft.” Upon achieving its IOC, the aircraft will then move to operational test organizations so they can be combat proven.

• Israel’s RADA Electronic Industries has been contracted by the US military to deliver its Multi-Mission Hemispheric Radar systems. Valued at $8 million, the company stated that the radars will be used by a “key US military force” for air surveillance with “an emphasis on counter-UAS with the most advanced on-the-move capabilities,” adding that dozens of the system will be delivered this year for immediate fielding. More than 300 Multi-Mission Hemispheric Radar systems have been delivered to various defense customers. It is an S-band, software-defined, pulse-Doppler, active electronically scanned array systems with beam forming capabilities and advanced signal processing.

• Lockheed Martin Space Systems has won a $21.9 million US Navy contract modification for support of the Trident II D5 submarine launched ballistic missile. Work will be split between Sunnyvale, Calif., Cape Canaveral, Fla. and other locations across the US with a completion date expected by Sept. 30 2017. The Trident II D5 is the submarine-launched ballistic missile deployed by both the US and British Royal Navy, and is the sole nuclear weapon system deployed by the UK.

• The Hermes 900 UAV is likely to have its full operational capability (FOC) declared by the Israeli Air Force before the end of the month. Developed by Elbit Systems, it is expected that the number of Hermes 900s in use with the air force will be increased once FOC is awarded. The MALE UAV was first used in combat during Israel’s 2014 Protective Edge operation in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, accumulating hundreds of flight hours throughout the campaign, flying in excess of 100 times with what the service described as an extremely high success rate. Switzerland and Brazil have also expressed interest in purchasing the UAV.

• Norwegian firm Nammo A/S has come to a landmark agreement with the Finnish Defense Forces (FDF) to supply its newly developed artillery shells. Helsinki is the first international customer for Nammo’s 155 mm insensitive munitions, high explosive, extended range ammo (IM-HE-ER)—which has been under development since 2002 and partly funded by the state-owned Norwegian Defense Material Agency (NDMA)—which covers almost twice the distance of Nammo’s previous precision-strike artillery ammunition offerings. The ammo purchase forms part of a long-term project by Finland to reinforce the Army’s artillery capability and fire-power, which has already seen the February purchase of second-hand K9 Thunder 155 mm/52 caliber self-propelled artillery systems from South Korea. Training with the K9s will commence in 2019 following a modernization with Finnish sub-systems that include battle management, global positioning, communications and camouflage bolt-ons.

• After 72 years, a lost World War 2-era heavy cruiser has been discovered 18,000 feet (5.5km) beneath the surface. The USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine torpedo on 30 July 1945 somewhere in the Philippine sea between Guam and Leyte, resulting in the deaths of 880 seamen—the largest loss of life at sea in the history of the US Navy. Notoriety of the the ship’s sinking intensified after news of the vessel’s final mission, completed just days before the Japanese attack—it carried parts for the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima as well as enriched uranium fuel for its nuclear reaction. Those supplies were delivered to an American base on Tinian island, in the final year of the war which launched the world’s first nuclear bombing. A spokesman for the survivors, 22 of whom are still alive, said each of them had “longed for the day when their ship would be found”.

• Ten US Navy personnel remain missing after the guided missile destroyer USS John S McCain collided with a Liberian-flagged oil tanker off the coast of Singapore. The collision was first reported at 05:24 local time on Monday, east of the Strait of Singapore, as the US warship was planning to perform a routine port stop in Singapore. Authorities stated that the McCain sustained damage to her port side, while the tanker sustained damage to a tank near the front of the ship 7m (23ft) above the waterline, with no injuries to her crew. A US-led rescue operation with support from the Malaysian and Singaporean navies and coast guards is ongoing.

• The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has fielded its first six Pilatus PC-21 basic trainers at its East Sale air base in Victoria. The Swiss-built turboprops are the first of an eventual 49 PC-21s that will be operated by the RAAF, replacing a 30-year old fleet of PC-9/As in the training of Australian pilots from 2019. A new basic training school will be equipped with 42 of the aircraft, along with seven simulators and related training equipment, four will be assigned to the RAAF’s 4 Sqn to support operational training needs, with the final three will be operated from its Pearce air base in Western Australia for research and development.

• Interview with USS Indianapolis survivors:

• Raytheon has been granted a $103 million contract to supply its AGM-176 Griffin precision guided missile and associated support to the US Air Force. Work will be conducted in Tuscon, Ariz., and is expected to be finished by Dec. 31, 2018. Originally designed for MC-130 special operations gunships, the light attack missile comes in eitheraft-launch or forward firing variants for aircraft and can also be deployed from ground and naval units.

• The US Navy and Lockheed Martin have completed the first tactical configuration of a Long Range Anti-ship Missile (LRASM) from a B-1B Lancer bomber based out of Edwards Air Base. The free-flight launch was conducted over the Point Mugu Sea Range in California. A Lockheed statement announcing the success stated that the missile “navigated through all planned waypoints, transitioned to mid-course guidance and flew toward the moving maritime target using inputs from the onboard multimodal sensor. The missile then descended to low altitude for final approach to target area, positively identified and impacted the target.” The LRASM is slated to start entering operational service with the B-1B by next year and the F/A-18 Super Hornet by 2019.

• Upgrades planned for the RIM-116C Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) Block 2B will include improved seeker and missile-to-missile link (MML) capability. Known as the RAM Block 2B Raid Engineering Change Proposal (ECP), the enhancements will increase the missile’s ability to deal with complex multi-missile raids—in effect allowing missiles to talk to each other. Raytheon’s Block 2B upgrades have aimed to increase the use of kinematic and sensor upgrades, designed to expand the missile’s engagement envelope, so as to defeat more manoeuvrable and higher-speed anti-ship cruise missiles.

• General Atomics has called on the US government to clarify and relax export controls of UAVs to non-NATO customers as the firm announced that it is chasing a sale for its Predator C Avenger UAV. The Avenger, which so far has only been supplied to the US military, is classified by the international missile technology control regime (MTCR) agreement as a Category 1 and is rarely licensed for export. As the Trump administration considers setting new MTCR export policies, GA-ASI chief executive Linden Blue urged the White House to make short-term changes, such as relaxing State Department-imposed policies on UAV exports. Blue added that while US industry had once been the leading exporters in UAVs, the export control regime had given competing suppliers, namely non-MTCR adherents China and Israel, an edge in the global market.

• L3 Vertex Aerospace is to conduct maintenance and logistics on Kuwaiti-operated KC-130J Hercules tanker aircraft, following the award of a $8.9 million US Navy contract. The agreement covers equipment and logistical support for three KC-130J tankers until August 2022 and work will be conducted at Abdullah Al-Mubarak Air Base, Kuwait. As well as its usual mission to provide mid-air refueling of military aircraft, the aircraft is capable of strike actions using the Harvest Hawk weapons pod—a system that gives the KC-130J the ability to launch laser-guided Hellfire and Griffin missiles.

• The Lebanese Army has commenced military operations against Islamist militants along its shared border with Syria. Operations conducted at the weekend saw the military assault an Islamic State enclave on the northeastern border, as the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah aiding the Syrian government announced an assault on the militants from the Syrian side of the frontier. During the move, the Lebanese Army also took over positions formally held by the once Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, finding arms caches that included surface-to-air missiles and US-made TOW anti-tank missiles.

• The US State Department has cleared the sale of mobile artillery rocket systems to the government of Romania. Estimated at a value of $1.25 billion, the foreign military sale includes the delivery of 54 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and associated equipment and support, with Lockheed Martin acting a lead contractor. Bucharest announced last month that it planned to buy HIMARS and 36 F-16 fighter jets by 2022, part of a larger plan to spend roughly $11.6 billion on military procurements in the years 2017 through 2026. It also plans to acquire Bell Helicopter combat helicopters and a Patriot air and missile defense system.

• Japan’s Ministry of Defense has requested $179 million in funding to go towards research on Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) radar technology for the better detection of stealth aircraft. The funding, if approved, will go towards developing and fielding a prototype radar and it is expected that the technology will be ready to roll out in 2024. Tokyo also plans to build a radar system to monitor space junk and other nations’ space-based weapons ahead of its first participation in space-related international war games backed by the US military.

• The multi-capable Griffin missile:

A new attempt is underway to relaunch Hezb-e Watan, the ruling party that was revamped by President Najibullah in 1990 when he renamed the PDPA and tried to shed it’s communist past. Although the intention is to bring together an important segment of the former leftist forces in Afghanistan, the relaunch also has the potential to cement the existing fragmention. Whatever the case, the party will be entering the fray seeking to mobilise and court support as Afghanistan’s pre-election period begins to heat up. Thomas Ruttig and Ali Yawar Adili look into the party’s post-1992 history and the relationships between its many successor groups and discuss how this may affect its revival.

Pre-announcing the “legal re-launch” of Hezb-e Watan

A large number of people – “thousands”, according to a BBC report – gathered in a Kabul hotel on 28 July 2017 for the fourth “consultative gathering for a legal relaunch of Hezb-e Watan” (Homeland Party) (media report here). Hezb-e Watan is not just any political party in Afghanistan. It is the reincarnation of the Soviet-backed Hezb-e Dimukratik-e Khalq-e Afghanistan (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, PDPA) that ruled the country after a coup in 1978 and under the Soviet occupation (1979-89) until 1992, albeit, since 1990, under its new name Hezb-e Watan.

The party was banned and dissolved by the mujahedin government in 1992. Several attempts to officially revive it after 2001 have been rejected by the Ministry of Justice (under which all parties have to register). The conferences, that still did not officially declare the “existence” of the party, are a way to explore how this could work.

The convener of the conferences was Abdul Jabbar Qahraman, a former MP, who relinquished his seat to become the president’s envoy for security affairs in Helmand in January 2016; a position he left after three months, as he told a Dari-language Russian website. Qahraman was a member of the central committee of the 1990s Hezb-e Watan, as he told AAN, but he is mainly known for his earlier association with the party as a pro-government militia leader in the country’s south (more about this below).

Qahraman stated in his speech to the conference that his party supported the current government, but only its “sound policies” (media report in Pashto here). He called on all former Hezb-e Watan members to re-join the party on the basis of its former leader Najibullah’s policy of ‘national reconciliation’ (ashti-ye melli) – an approach Qahraman suggested to be applied again on the current situation. This policy remains to be, after 25 years, the major feature and rallying cry for the ‘Najibist’ segment of the various PDPA successor groups. (1)

Under Najibullah’s lead, the party in 1990 dropped its leftist programme and its goal of turning Afghanistan into a socialist society in favour of a power sharing arrangement with his armed Islamist opponents. The new Watan party now wants to position itself as the heirs to this policy and the person of Najibullah, who was killed by the Taleban in 1996.

Emal Layan, a member of its leadership, echoed this position, saying the new Hezb-e Watan sees itself today as “centre-left.” This meant, he explained, that “moderate and inclusive policies for people from all walks of life lie at the heart of the party’s policies, including activities in favour of the rights of the toilers (zahmatkashan), including workers and [other] ordinary people.” He particularly pointed to the need for an insurance system.

Layan told AAN that the party is concentrating on gathering “mainly Hezb-e Watan cadres from the second-level and third-level”, rather than its prominent senior members. Indeed, the most prominent former PDPA/Hezb-e Watan leaders that were associated with earlier revival attempts of the party were absent from the conferences. Several of them confirmed to AAN that they did not receive invitations. (2) Layan said once this organisational process is completed, the party would right a new programme. He also said it will be decided at a future congress who will lead the party.

It is unclear what the mobilisation potential of the relaunched Hezb-e Watan might be. When still in power, and when the previous incarnation of the party held its last congress in 1990, it had 185,000 members, according to a former leader involved in those events (he is not part of the current revival attempt). Layan estimates that 60 to 80 per cent of these members are not politically active today and believes that this is the potential the party can tap into. As videos of the fourth conference showed (see one here), the old guard seemed to have been dominant among the attendants, but there were also a number of people from the younger generation (including women).

Hezb-e Watan relaunch in July 2017, with Jabbar Qahraman and Najibullah portraits in the background. Photo: Hezb-e Watan.

Hezb-e Watan’s PDPA past

The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan was founded in 1965, sailing the worldwide leftist wave. (3) It became popular among the progressive part of the Afghan intelligentsia; it mobilised among university and high school students and helped to build trade unions. One of it factions, Khalq (People) was dubbed the “teachers’ party” – its leader, Nur Muhammad Tarakai, (murdered in 1979 by his deputy) was a teacher too. This strong presence of schoolteachers gave the Khalq faction a substantial outreach into rural areas. Babrak Karmal (who died in 1996 in Russian exile), the leader of the PDPA’s second faction, Parcham (Banner), was a popular student leader who had served a jail term for this activity. 1965, the year of the first relatively free parliamentary election under a new constitution, saw four PDPA leaders elected as MPs. Khalq and Parcham operated separately and virtually as parties in their own right from 1967 to 1977. (4) Both also recruited young army and police officers, separately.

With the help of two military coups – in 1973 and 1978 – engineered by army officers loyal to the party, the PDPA took over power in two steps and ruled the country enabled by a large suppression apparatus under the Soviet occupation. From 1978 to 1987, the PDPA ran a one-party state. Najibullah’s change towards a more moderate course partly came in response to the sustained pressure of the armed resistance against his regime. It was also inspired by Soviet aspirations, starting in the second half of the 1980s, to cut the costs of its occupation, pull their troops out and hand over responsibilities to its protégé regime.

Despite some local successes, Najibullah’s efforts to make peace with the mujahedin failed. After the new Russia under Boris Yeltsin cut all aid, his regime was deprived of financial resources and fragmented and collapsed in April 1992. Troops of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, that had been the regime’s shock troops, but switched sides to the mujahedin, stopped Najibullah from leaving the country, after which he sought shelter in the Kabul UN compound. Four years later, when the Taleban moved into the capital, he was brutally murdered after UN protection was removed in the chaos accompanying the takeover.

The PDPA regime, when in power, committed mass atrocities against political opponents of all shades, particularly in its early years. Its targets ranged from supporters of the Islamist mujahedin and Maoist urban guerrilla groups to the old monarchist elites and tribal leaders. It covered all real and imagined opponents of the new regime (AAN reporting here and here). The memory of these misdeeds still haunts many Afghans, and continues to mar the image of any Afghan group that wishes to claim the PDPA’s and Hezb-e Watan’s political heritage. Najibullah’s efforts to later moderate the party, however, do mean that he escapes some of the worst judgements and enjoys a moderate, and seemingly growing, level of popularity.

Re-emergence in fragmentation

After the ban of Hezb-e Watan in 1992, most of its leaders went into exile, where some continued to be politically active. The party fragmented into a plethora of groups that first re-emerged among the diaspora, but increasingly also had a presence inside the country. By 2016, there were at least nine registered political parties that had some link to the former PDPA or Hezb-e Watan, and many more without registration – altogether over twenty.

Most of the small post-PDPA parties are led by individual former Khalq and Parcham leaders. They are negatively associated with, either the extremely repressive Tarakai/Amin period, or with Karmal, who was brought in and propped up by Soviet troops. By comparison, the brand “Hezb-e Watan”, and the name of its late leader Najibullah, today ring more positively, and not only among its own activists. A growing number of Afghans seem to, retrospectively, consider Najibullah to have at least been a shrewd politician, a good organiser and a commander of a functioning security apparatus—particularly when compared to more recent government leaders. Some seem willing to now overlook the atrocities committed by the KhAD, also in Najib’s time. For those who had not been directly affected, this may seem a long time ago while those committed under the mujahedin and Taleban regimes are often still more present.

As an Ahmadzai Pashtun born in Sayyed Karam in Paktia province, Najibullah is particularly popular in Afghanistan’s southeast. The first time this author saw a portrait of him (next to one of then president Hamed Karzai) was in a restaurant in Paktia’s capital Gardez in 2004. Since then, posters with his portrait have regularly turned up at Kabul street corners. There have even been banners at the international airport (see photo) for a while and his speeches are sold on DVD in the bazaar.

The new Hezb-e Watan party is trying to capitalise on this popularity, as reflected by several portraits of Najibullah put on display at the Hezb-e Watan conference venue. Rumours that Najibullah’s wife, Fatana, who lives in India, or his daughter Heela, who lives in Europe, might attend the conference, contributed to its high attendance, according to participants who, as they told AAN, were disappointed when neither appeared. When AAN spoke to Heela Najibullah, who has just published a book taking stock of her father’s national reconciliation policy, she said she had never intended to attend the conference and had not been consulted about the party’s relaunch. Her mother had already made it clear in an interview in 2012 that she had no intention of becoming politically active. [Corrected on 23 August 2017: Heela told AAN that “there is nothing absolute, I can’t predict the future but for now we are not active in the current political processes.”]

From militia to party leader

The leader of the latest incarnation of Hezb-e Watan, Abdul Jabbar Qahraman, also came to prominence under Najibullah’s government. Qahraman, a Nurzai Pashtun from Spin Boldak in Kandahar province, led a pro-government militia in Maiwand district in his home province as part of Najibullah’s extensive militia programme. In the early 1980s, he studied at Kabul’s military academy (a short bio here). Under this programme, which was strongly supported by the Soviets, army officers, such as Jabbar, were allowed to decommission and start militias in their home provinces. (5) (There are a number of remnants of this programme among Afghanistan’s current militias.) In Maiwand, Jabbar got his nickname Qahraman (which means “hero”) for his success in pushing back the local mujahedin. Later on, his militias, like other militias, received the same status (and even better pay) than regular army units. Jabbar received a general’s rank and a division’s status for his militia. His group was often sent into other hotspots of fighting, similar to Dostum’s militia from the north.

After his return to Afghanistan in 2007, Qahraman successfully ran for parliament in Helmand in the 2010 elections. When the current government lost control to the Taleban in 2015 over an increasing number of districts in Helmand (AAN analysis here), President Ashraf Ghani decided to employ his experience and made him special security envoy for Helmand in early 2016. (In 2010-11, Qahraman had already advised the US army on the defence of his former stronghold Maiwand, according to sources familiar with the local situation.) The envoy position gave Qahraman, as “operational commander” – at least in theory – control over the security forces in the province (media report here). He tried his 1990s recipe again, employing a mixture of talk offers to the Taleban and the use of irregular forces. However, after three months, Qahraman stepped down from the post claiming that widespread corruption had made his mission impossible. Incidentally, the police chief for Helmand from that time, has just been given a three-year jail term for corruption and nepotism by an anti-corruption court in Kabul (he has appealed the sentence; read here).

His return to Helmand gave Qahraman significant political clout and access to senior government officials, including the National Security Council. Former Hezb-e Watan members, who are carefully watching his current party project, in Kabul and from abroad, speculate that it is this access that might have helped him to secure the necessary resources for such a costly exercise, involving several large conferences.

The many Hezb-e Watans

After political parties were allowed once again under the 2004 constitution, several groups have attempted to relaunch Hezb-e Watan in the Afghan diaspora and in Afghanistan. (7) As a result, there are now several Hezb-e Watans competing for its political legacy. In addition to Qahraman’s faction, there are two other Hezb-e Watans that have been officially launched and still exist.

The first emerged in 2012 after eight years of talks between various Najibist groups. Some of them joined a party congress symbolically held in Kabul on 27 September, the anniversary of Najibullah’s death. They consulted the Najibullah family hoping one of them would take the lead. This led to Ms Najib’s statement that she would not participate in any attempt to relaunch the party. Mir Afghan Bawari was then elected its leader. The new party described itself on its website as “national and democratic, progressive and reformist.” Qahraman was not part of this group.

However, the party’s application for registration with the Ministry of Justice was rejected. The ministry urged them to choose another name, as this one had been banned in 1992. The party instead chose not to officially register, but is still active. Bawari recently told an Afghan news website that they had 13,000 members with a presence in 30 Afghan provinces. Faqir Muhammad Wadan, one of the party’s leading members who lives in Germany, told AAN that there were also party structures in Western Europe, former Soviet countries and Australia. (8)

One faction of this party led by Sherullah Jabbarkhel took up the MoJ offer and registered under the altered name Hezb-e Melli-ye Watan (National Homeland Party). It also started a Najibullah Foundation to the indignation of the family who had not been consulted.

The groups led by Bawari and Jabbarkhel did not attend Qahraman’s conferences, but also did not seek to undermine his efforts. (9) Bawari told AAN that they did not have a negative view towards this new initiative, “but we talked to him two months ago and told him we already had an existing organisation” and urged him join. Jabbarkhel took the same line: “We did not participate in the gathering because we are an already constructed house, and he is just designing a house.” Layan, from Qahraman’s group, told AAN that they hope their new party will be: “at the centre of all factions that have branched out of [the old] Hezb-e Watan.”

There are also sceptical voices. Asef Baktash who had been active in most previous attempts to unite the progressive political forces, including but not limited to the former PDPA/Hezb-e Watan clientele, on a reformist basis, told AAN the current attempt was like the hope that “Jesus Christ descend from heaven and revive a dead body.” He said the currently active “splinter groups” were no comparison to the strength of the original Hezb-e Watan and “cannot bring back the party to its previous strength.”

For Bawari’s group, the problem is that Qahraman might succeed in taking over the Hezb-e Watan brand – if the MoJ agrees to register a party under that name this time (which it might, given Qahraman’s good relations with the government and, possibly, the passage of time). Wadan, from Bawari’s group, told AAN that they expect exactly this to happen, but had not yet decided whether they would join Qahraman in this case and that talks were ongoing. Jabbarkhel, from the third faction, told AAN that, if Qahraman succeeds in the registration, his party would form an alliance with him.

All three groups have made it very clear that they do not plan to relaunch the old PDPA. They all distance themselves from the Parchamis (who they now call ‘Karmalists’, after Najib’s predecessor) and the Khalqis. They allege that many former Parchamis are in cahoots with Russia and many Khalqis with Pakistan and note that they do not want to join hands with people who are remote-controlled from abroad. Indeed, in 1992, a number of prominent Khalqis fled to Pakistan and joined hands with then Pakistan-supported Hezb-e Islami after the regime’s breakdown, while a number of Parchamis joined the then Russia-supported Northern Alliance. A number of them have returned to Afghanistan and set up their own parties.

Pre-election positioning: A crowding political field

The new revival attempts of Hezb-e- Watan can be seen as part of a broader invigoration of Afghanistan’s political scene. It follows in the footsteps of the formation of other new groups, such as the ‘Ankara coalition’, or Etelaf baray Nejat-e Afghanistan (Coalition for the Salvation of Afghanistan) as it is officially called, which was sealed in Vice President Dostum’s mansion in the Turkish capital, the New Jombesh that was established by dissidents from Dostum’s party  (read AAN on both here and here) and a pro-Karzai coalition called Mehwar-e Mardom-e Afghanistan (People’s Axis of Afghanistan) (press release here and an earlier AAN analysis here). The political comeback of Hezb-e Islami leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, in the fall of 2016, in a partly welcomed, partly condemned, peace agreement with the Afghan government, also belongs to this line (see AAN collection about it here). In addition, a number of new protest movements as well as mujahedin councils have sprung up (outlined by AAN here, here and here), some with links to existing political parties, others in an attempt to shed the old leaders of their particular ethnic group.

These new and returning parties and newly mixed coalitions foreshadow the pre-election positioning and alliance building that will only heat up from now on. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for July 2018 and presidential elections for the following year. Both Hezb-e Watan and the New Jombesh have announced they intend to ‘participate’ in those elections. Hezb-e Islami leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, even self-confidentially declared that the next president will be someone supported by his party.

So far, the new Hezb-e Watan seems to be targeting mainly its 1990s predecessor’s members. They may hope to become a gathering point for former leftists and the newly interested but, so far, there are few indications that they will be able even to unite the ‘Najibist’ spectrum of the former pro-Soviet Afghan left. One of the obstacles, other than the general difficulty of getting political leaders to unite (and give up the claim to be number one), are current political differences: While Qahraman’s group sees itself as an ally of Ghani, Bawari told AAN: “We supported Dr Ashraf Ghani in the last elections, but the president failed to deliver on the promises he made to the people. I do not think we will support Ashraf Ghani again.”

Other – non-Najibist – post-PDPA parties are not interested in joining forces with the Najibists, as Liaqat Ali Faramarz, a member of the leadership council of Hezb-e Mutahed-e Melli-ye Afghanistan (National United Party of Afghanistan, NUPA), told AAN. Faramarz’s party is led by former PDPA general Nur-ul-Haq Ulumi, a former Parchami (he served as interior minister in the National Unity Government under Ghani and Abdullah; see AAN’s previous reporting here) and is part of the coalition that supported Dr Abdullah in the 2014 presidential election. It defines itself as “non-ideological” and “pro free market.” NUPA and several other post-leftist parties, in June 2017, have just finalised their own, multiple-step unification process that has taken several years to achieve. (10)

Regardless of the mobilisation power of this latest Hezb-e Watan relaunch, and whether it will succeed, or not, in bringing together all or most of the Najibists, substantively, it does not represent the return of an ideological Afghan left. Radical leftist ideas have been widely discredited – in Afghanistan more than in most other places – due to the bloodshed that ensued under its rule. Many of the former leftists of all strands today define themselves as ‘social-democrats’, supporting (and actually enjoying) political pluralism and electoral parliamentarianism. Some are strongly engaged in trade and professional unions. This is also reflected in the new Watan party defining itself as ‘centre-left’, while some other post-PDPA groups, such as NUPA, reject any notion of being leftist at all.

At the same time, as in the West, there is also an interest in leftism among young, educated Afghans, but more in a curious rather than an ideological way. Many of them find it difficult to identify with the groups originating from the Old Left, but even more so with the dominant Islamist ideology. However, whether a new Hezb-e Watan will attract them, remains to be seen, particularly as there is also a more radical Afghan ‘New Left’, with the Solidarity Party (that has repeatedly drawn the ire of Islamists). The Solidarity Party has established contact with leftist parties in the west, for example, in Germany and Sweden, as well as in Pakistan. It is visibly dominated by the young generation and has a young woman as its leader (AAN reported here).

But, even if the new Hezb-e Watan, and the various initiatives alongside it, has only limited success, it potentially represents a not insignificant part of the electorate and is still likely to become a target of political mobilisation and courting. This is similar to when the current president signed cooperation protocols with various parties before the 2014 election, including the leftists, in an attempt to secure their votes.

Najibullah when still in power. Photo: Payyam-e Watan website

(1) Najibullah became a PDPA student leader in the mid-1960 while studying at the medical college of Kabul University. He was head of the country’s intelligence service from 1980 to 1985. He became the PDPA leader in 1986 and was Afghan president from 1987 to 1992.

For several years, Najibullah (only one name) used only Najib, often also Dr Najib or Dr Najibullah. His family also confirmed once more that his name was only Najibullah, without Muhammad, as often used in media.

(2) The absentees included Eng. Nazar Muhammad, the highest ranking among the former pro-Najib Hezb-e Watan leaders (he was one of the four secretaries of the party’s central committee, ie de facto deputies of Najib) and 88-year old Sulaiman Laeq, one of Najibullah’s key 1990s allies (he is also a well-known Pashto poet from the Mujaddedi family and former UNAMA political officer). Laeq told AAN: “I was not consulted about the initiative. Otherwise, I would have attended the meeting. My position towards all Hezb-e Watan factions is similar: I do not belong to them, but I am optimistic about them. I am against those [other] groups who terrorise, loot and kill our countrymen.”

(3) Afghanistan’s left was divided into two currents: pro-Soviet (represented mainly by the PDPA) and pro-Beijing (usually called Shola-ye Jawed, Eternal Flame – which also fragmented into many groups). The Najibists – which combine the former Parchamis (to which Najibullah belonged) and Khalqis who supported Najibullah’s national reconciliation policy of the late 1980s – today have become a third faction among the former PDPA members (in addition to the old Parcham and Khalq networks). The former Parchami. who were against Najibullah’s new policy (and the fact that he replaced their leader Karmal as party leader and president). are today known as ‘Karmalists’. Most Khalqis were against the Soviet intervention in the first place, as it removed and killed their then leader Hafizullah Amin, the former deputy of murdered Tarakai. Many of them also opposed Najibullah, the former Parchami, as many of them were in jail when he was head of the intelligence. The attempt to overcome this notorious factionalism was one of the reasons to recreate the PDPA as Hezb-e Watan.

(4) Khalq and Parcham were brought together again in 1977 under major Soviet pressure via the Indian Communist Party. By then, Parcham had been pushed out of its de facto coalition with President Muhammad Daud, a member of the former royal family, who had attained power in the first PDPA-engineered coup in 1973. (Khalq was never part of this coalition.) The party was reunited, but fierce power struggles between the two factions continued, and. apart from some minor factions, PDPA members were, either “Khalqi”, or “Parchami.” Najibullah belongs to Parcham.

The two factions were named after the party’s consecutive and short-lived party newspapers during the country’s ‘decade of democracy’ (1963 to 1973), the period between the introduction of the 1964 constitution, which changed Afghanistan into a fully constitutional monarchy, and the military coup led by Daud in July 1973. The new constitution brought about formal elements of parliamentarianism, including a two-house parliament, a free press and relatively free and pluralistic elections. For the first time, it opened the way for the formation of political parties, from Marxists to Islamists. As the king has never signed the drafted political parties law, all parties remained unofficial.

(5) See: Jonathan Steele, Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground, Berkeley 2011, 141ff.

(6) See for example: Antonio Giustozzi, Empires of Mud: Dynamics of Warlordism in Afghanistan, 1980-2007, London 2009, 76; Mike Martin, An Intimate War: An Oral History Of The Helmand Conflict 1978-2012, PhD dissertation, London 2011, chapter 3, 20.

(7) The first new Hezb-e Watan already had emerged in the mid-1990s in Belgium. It was led by a young relative of the last aide-de-camp of Najibullah and successfully established branches all over Western Europe. This party formally expelled all old leaders (with the exception ofNajibullah, obviously) in an attempt to draw a line under the PDPA past. The party has now disappeared.

(8) Bawari was a member of the 1990s Hezb-e Watan central committee and headed its economic department. Wadan was also a central committee member, where he led its propaganda department. He was later secretary of the party’s provincial committee for Nangarhar.

(9) This process has resulted in a merger of NUPA with Hezb-e Melli-ye Taraqi-ye Mardom Afghanistan (Afghanistan People’s National Progress Party). The latter, with its complicated name, is the result of three parties joining forces earlier on (the National Party, the People’s Party and the Fatherland Progress Party; “fatherland” was dropped). On the way to unification, most parties involved suffered the loss of breakaway groups that can be expected to continue working under the old names.

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