AFGHANISTAN UNDER SOVIET DOMINATION, 1964-91

AFGHANISTAN UNDER SOVIET DOMINATION,

1964-91

Anthony Hyman

Third Edition

M

© Anthony Hyman 1982, 1984, 1992

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First edition (Afghanistan under Soviet Domination, 1964-1981) 1982 Second edition (Afghanistan under Soviet Domination, 1964-1983) 1984

Third edition (Afghanistan under Soviet Domination, 1964-1991) 1992

Published by MACMILLAN ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL LTD

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London

Companies and representatives throughout the world

ISBN 978-0-333-49291-8

Typeset by Footnote Graphics, Warminster, Wiltshire

ISBN 978-1-349-21948-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21948-3

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

List of Maps and Plates Preface Acknowledgements Postscript (February 1991)

PART ONE

The Land and the People in History

2 Society and Economy

3 Afghan Foreign Relations

4 The New Democracy and its Limitations

PART TWO

5 The Saur Revolution

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IX

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3

23

39

52

75

I: Two coups 75 II: Reforms- the attempt to mobilise the rural

poor 85 III: The children ofhistory remake the world 92

6 Reforms from Above and Repressions 99

7 Afghan Centres ofOpposition 121

8 Disintegrating Army v. Divided Opposition 146

9 'Positive Non-alignment' 161

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10 A State ofNature 176

11 Jihad and the Superpower Proxy War 197

12 A Bleeding Wound 223

Reading List 269

APPENDICES

A Influential Figures in the PDPA 273

B Opposition Parties 275

C Shabnamah (night letter) of Kabul Opposition, summer 1980 278

D Land Reforms 281

E Chronology 283

Notes Index

285 294

List of Maps and Plates MAPS

1 Principal tribes and ethnic groups 2 Provinces since 1964 3 Afghanistan 1982

PLATES

Kabul street life (a) Kabul bazaar; (b) Selecting fruits

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123

2 King Zahir Shah and his daughter with Queen Elizabeth II 3 Khalq Party demonstration 4 An arms-store in Darra Adam Khel 5 Choosing arms 6 Hizb-i-Islami mujahidin 7 Babrak Karmal 8 Loya Jirga of Afghan tribesmen 9 Refugees

10 Children in Baluchistan 11 The colossal figure of a Mujahid resistance fighter 12 Page of a picture book of the jihad 13 Tanks and gunships are destroyed 14a New patterns of rugs and carpets 14b Afghan activists of J amiat-i- Islami 15a Afghan soldiers smile with child 15b Armed rider leads mujahidin 16 Two Afghan girls pose by a Soviet bomb 17 Afghan opposition poster, 'the fate of the atheist' 18 Farmers at work in an independent area inside Afghanistan 19 President N ajibullah and tribal leaders

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vm List of Maps and Plates

20 Afghan government poster - a smiling Soviet soldier declares he wishes only peace and good things to his 'dear Afghan friends'

21 President Najibullah 22 Afghan refugee school, Pakistan

The photographs for plates 3, 4, 5, 8, I 0, 11, 12, 13, 14a and 14b, 17 and 20 were taken by the author; Plates 1 (a) and (b) ©Alastair Cook; 2 © H.M. Government; 7 ©Camera Press; 6 © Hizb-i-Islami party; 9 © UNHCR, Pakistan; 15a, 15b, 20 ©Afghan Aid, UK; 16, 18 © Katarina Engberg/Swedish Com­mittee for Afghanistan; 19, 21 © The Embassy of the Republic of Afghanistan, London; 22 © UNHCR, Geneva/D. A. Guilianotti.

Preface

The Afghan people are the victims of a bitter civil war, which grew into a nationwide guerrilla resistance after the Soviet invasion, and was compounded by foreign intervention. It is a war which has cost well over one million deaths, with millions more made homeless as refugees, orphaned, wounded or maimed, together with huge destruction to a country already poor and undeveloped even before the struggle began.

The tragedy of Afghanistan since 1978 provoked intense but selective spasmodic media interest. Many other books, including some excellent reports and analyses of the political, social, economic and military developments of contemporary Afghanis­tan have been published since. A great deal of research has been done into the complex interrelationship between political in~ terests and national identity, linking sociology, geography and geopolitics. It is all the more flattering, then, to be asked to pre­pare a third edition of a book originally published in 1982, in­tended to serve as a background history to modern Afghanistan.

The course of the struggle for Afghanistan has shown up the full importance of the deep ethnic, tribal and religious divisions and rivalries within Afghan society. Massive intervention by the superpowers as well as by all the regional states has made this guerrilla war increasingly a proxy war. Yet historical experience shows that the Afghans are not easily ruled by outside powers. Twice in the last century armies from British India invaded, held the capital and some of the towns, trying to impose a ruler upon the fiercely independent tribes- and each time, after initial military successes, the British retreated, leaving the country to its own devices.

Even one hundred years ago, when Afghanistan was incompar­ably more remote, more backward and much less open to foreign influences, there was plenty of evidence of Russian cultural penetration in Kabul. In 1879, when the army of General Roberts occupied Kabul, its chief wrote:

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we found Kabul much more Russian than English. The Afghan Sirdars and officers were arrayed in Russian pattern uniforms, Russian money was found in the treasury, Russian wares were sold in the bazaars, and although the roads lead­ing to Central Asia were certainly no better than those leading to India, Russia had taken more advantage of them than we had to carry on commercial dealings with Afghanistan.

Roberts did not make the simple mistake of equating Russian or English trade, fashions or influence in Kabul with actual political power in the country as a whole. He clearly saw that Afghan suspicions offoreigners in general were too intense to be ignored:

It may not be very flattering to our amour propre but I feel sure I am right when I say that the less the Afghans see of us, the less they dislike us. Should the Russians attempt to conquer Afghanistan we should have a better chance of attaching the Afghans to our interest if we avoid all interference with them.

This same cautious policy of keeping a low profile was adopted by Soviet troops in the capital, only rarely in evidence by daylight, their tanks kept discreetly out of sight behind public buildings and in military camps on the outskirts of Kabul. There are many other similarities between these chief exponents of European imperialism in Asia, separated though they are by a century of rapid change and fundamental differences in ideology. Just like British military writers in the second Anglo-Afghan war of 1878-80, Russian press and radio have consistently under-rated Afghan military abilities; British troops indignantly declared that it was not mere Afghans but Russian gunners who were raining down accurate fire from Afghan gun emplacements. A century on, the Soviet media denounced the activities of foreign agents from the USA, China, Pakistan, Britain, Iran and even Israel, rather than admit that 'mere Afghans' are hitting back by acts of sabotage in a nationwide guerrilla war.

Yet it is hardly vulgar racism which explains the curious Soviet inability to understand the popular roots of resistance to three successive Marxist Governments in Kabul since April 1978. The need to justify to the world the extent of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan is the key to the intense Soviet

Preface Xl

propaganda. Neither at the beginning of this involvement, with full Soviet backing for the so-called 'Saur Revolution' of April 1978, let alone after the military adventure of December 1979, and the imposition of Babrak Karmal as Prime Minister, could the official line of the Kremlin afford to admit doubts as to the popular standing of its proteges inside Afghanistan. Not until the arrival of glasnost did the Soviet media begin to publish articles casting serious doubt on official policy.

Viewed from outside, the cruelly destructive warfare may seem a continuation of older rivalries, the latest (and possibly the last) round of the Great Game- as Anglo-Russian imperial expansion into the borderlands of Central Asia came to be known. Such judgements ignore some basic shifts in regional and global power, not only since the independence and partition of India in 1947, but the gradual rise to pre-eminence in the region of the Soviet Union over the past decade, due to its firm friendship with India and loss of US prestige or even absence of US policy initiatives. If, then, the Russians are playing a game, it is essentially a new game with ground-rules in their favour.

By now the grim reality of the power struggle going on is plain to see - a poor and underdeveloped country is tearing itself apart, while the world media look on spasmodically. The full extent of the tragedy affecting the lives of the Afghan people became only gradually and imperfectly understood by the out­side world, with most foreign journalists long refused entry to Kabul. Those visiting Afghanistan were forced to make hazar­dous trips inside with the mujahidin. Most visited areas of provinces bordering on Pakistan, or in the vicinity of Kabul. The destruction of villages by warfare caused many deaths, and gradually the extraordinary exodus of some five million refugees to Pakistan and Iran, besides many more internal refugees fleeing to relative safety in Kabul and other towns.

This book attempts to show how the present crisis was reached, to examine the nature of the opposition and govern­ments inside Afghanistan, and to assess the prospects for the country. It demonstrates also how foreign policy decisions taken in Moscow, as well as in Kabul itself, have dictated a course of developments largely responsible for the whole tragedy.

Acknowledgements

Initial encouragement and practical help throughout has come from Baqer Moin, David Page, Nabi Misdaq, and many other friends at Bush House, in the Eastern and other services of the BBC. The late Evan Charlton helped me more than he knew. I greatly appreciated the interest shown by Louis Dupree, Mal­colm Yapp and Richard Tapper at SOAS, and all those associ­ated with ARIN (Afghan Refugee Information Network).

In Kabul I was received with warmth by many kind people, in particular Allan Baldry, Anna Clare MacAdam, Dick Parsons, Carla Crissman and Rainer Schlageter, together with many Afghans who must remain unnamed.

In Pakistan there was invaluable initial help from Trevor Wood ofReuters,J.F. Le Mounier of AFP, Sayeed Hasan Khan in Karachi and Yusuf Lodi. I am delighted to acknowledge the help in Peshawar of many friends, and notably Mohammad Asef Ikram, the late Professor S. Bahauddin Majrooh, Professor A. Rasul Amin, Professor M. Hasan Kakar and other former teachers of Kabul University, Dr Azmat Hayat Khan and Abdullah Jan of the Area Study Centre of Peshawar University.

I am very grateful for discussions, criticisms and trouble taken in London or elsewhere by Nasir and Helen Saberi, Nabi Misdaq, Aziz Nairn, Fatima Gailani, Akhtar Kohistani, Ghulam Zamarlwal, Hashim Kamali, M. Ebrahim Arghawan and Rahim Nauroz. Lastly, I wish to thank my wife Hilary for drawing the maps and much else besides. Needless to say, except where otherwise stated, those named above are not responsible for the opinions and conclusions expressed in the following pages, which are my own.

In the preparation of this third edition, I would like to thank Belinda Holdsworth and Anthony Hooper for their careful editing.

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Postscript (February 1991)

Early optimism about peace prospects during 1990 proved wrong. It came from a combination of factors which jointly seemed irresistible. Growing realism among Afghans that, with­out compromise, the struggle would go on indefinitely, was mixed with disillusionment and war-weariness. The role of the two superpowers was crucial to any cut-off of weapons fuelling the war. The steady growth of trust between President Bush and Gorbachov, along with the rapid disintegration of Soviet power in eastern Europe, seemed to bode well. Yet the expected announcement of a peace plan for Afghanistan, due to be jointly presented by the USA and USSR in December 1990, was postponed, almost certainly due to still-unresolved areas of agreement, plus the shock of the abrupt resignation of Eduard Shevardnadze as Soviet Foreign Minister.

While the UN remained remarkably inactive, the ex-King Mohammad Zahir Shah, whom many Afghans still saw as an acceptable figure to head an interim non-party administration, for his part announced a peace plan in October 1990. This proposed the formation of a commission to prepare a list of members for a specialjirga, or assembly, to establish an interim political structure for the transition to peace.

A peace settlement would also depend upon cooperation by the key regional states Pakistan and Iran, together with Saudi Arabia. The 'ideal solution' for Pakistan's lSI, a takeover in Kabul giving power to its own trusted man Gulbuddin Hek­matyar, had faded by the end ofl990, as the strict limits ofHizb­i-Islami's actual influence inside Afghanistan were exposed. Pakistan's President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and its top generals were deeply anxious, like the new government under Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, over the deterioration in relations with India, and keen to see an end to the Afghan crisis.

From inside Afghanistan, there were many signs of reluctance to continue a struggle which, since the Soviet military with-

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XIV Postscript (February 1991)

drawal, could not be justified any longer as a truejihad. Gulbud­din's Hizb-i-Islami failed to carry out its threatened all-out attack on Kabul, because too many guerrilla commanders were opposed to it. In addition, there were unusually severe winter conditions, and extensive destruction from a massive earthquake with an epicentre 112 miles northeast of Kabul in February 1991.

The renaming of the PDPA as the 'Watan' (Homeland) Party, did not win credit for the regime as the government was still identified with communism and the hated Soviet interference. The formation of a credible alternative government was an essential pre-condition for getting peace. Few Afghans doubted Najibullah would have to quit if an acceptable coalition govern­ment was to be formed for peace.

Yet it was President Najibullah who made all the running. In October 1990 he held meetings in Geneva with some ofthe party leaders based in Pakistan as well as representatives of the former King. On his way back, Najibullah stopped in Mashad to talk with Iranian-based leaders of Afghan Shi'a parties. Iran's gov­ernment not only helped set up the Mashad meeting, but reportedly urged the Afghan exile leaders to think seriously about the benefits of reaching a compromise. Iran has its own good reasons for desiring an Afghan settlement.

Najibullah went on to make a prediction that by June 1991 five out of the seven Sunni opposition parties would join in a coalition government in Kabul. Many Afghans interpreted this as meaning only Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Professor Sayaf would hold out. N ajibullah also declared his willingness to quit office under three conditions; firstly, no reprisals against PDPA members or officers of the armed forces, secondly, no risk of a power vacuum but instead a credible interim administration; and thirdly, the guaranteed safe passage out of the country for Najibullah and his close associates.

From the Afghan opposition side, Sayed Nairn Majrooh, director of the Afghan Information Centre wrote that the Afghan people spent 1990, 'in despair and uncertainty .... Our blood is like the oil of a lamp which burns itself but provides light for others. The war continues on the Afghan soil, and the future seems to be dark'.

The respected commentator Mohammad Es'haq of Jamiat-i­Islami also admitted that 1990 had been disappointing. The

Postscript (February 1991) XV

opposition's political weaknesses were glaringly exposed, he stated, while, 'the Mujahidin failed to launch a strategic offen­sive to threaten seriously the Kabul regime'. Es'haq explained this by the lack of a single high command, difficulties in moving from guerrilla war to regular war, shortages of weapons, supplies and food, but stressed the main problems as being a lack of unity and a persistent rivalry between the parties.

The most positive development seen ,in 1990, according to Es'haq, was the formation of the council of commanders at Jawar in Pakhtya province in May and June 1990, culminating in a meeting in October in north-eastern Afghanistan. These initiatives were mounted independently of the parties by such notable commanders as Jalaluddin Haqani and Ahmed Shah Massoud.

During the winter of 1990, a series of shuras were called by the Ahmadzais, Shinwaris and other major Pushtun tribes of the southern and south-eastern provinces, with the declared aim of ending 'external intervention' in Afghan affairs. These initiatives seemed directed against interference from Pakistan quite as much as any other country.

International concern over Afghanistan, already fading, further slipped after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990. For the next halfyear, media interest concentrated on the Iraqi dictator's intentions and the US-led coalition's steady military build-up in Saudi Arabia, culminating in Saddam Hussein's promised 'mother of battles'.

Though an Afghan contingent was promised of2000 mujahidin to join the international coalition forces in Saudi Arabia, dis­putes between the exile leaders prevented their despatch for months. A symbolic contingent of 300 men was finally flown out to Saudi Arabia. They were from only four out of the seven parties supposedly forming the Afghan Interim Government. It cruelly exposed the confusion and disarray within the Afghan opposition.

To many observers' surprise, the two most ardent fundamen­talist leaders Gulbuddin and Sayafbitterly criticised the sending of any mujahidin for the defence of Saudi Arabia. Yet these same two leaders had benefited most from Saudi largesse over the years, as well as valuable support from Kuwait. Saudi Arabia was one of the few countries which had recognised the AIG as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Was this then gross

XVI Postscript (February 1991)

ingratitude on the part of Sayaf and Gulbuddin- and Rabbani of Jamiat-i-Islami, who also finally refused to contribute to the token force sent? Certainly it reflected an existing and possibly growing Afghan strand of distrust and hatred of the USA -ironically, of course, the largest single source of arms for the Afghan resistance since 1979.