This article is part of theHistory of Afghanistan series. |
Pre-Islamic period of Afghanistan |
Islamic conquest of Afghanistan |
Durrani Empire |
European influence in Afghanistan |
Reforms of Amanullah Khan and civil war |
Reigns of Nadir Shah and Zahir Shah |
Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan |
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan |
History of Afghanistan since 1992 |
This article is about Communist rule in Afghanistan (1978-1992).
On April 27, 1978 a coup was initiated, reportedly by Hafizullah Amin while he was under house arrest. Mohammed Daoud Khan was killed the next day. The communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) gained control and on May 1 Nur Mohammed Taraki became President. The country was then renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), which lasted until 1992.
The PDPA had split into several factions in 1967, soon after its founding. Ten years later the efforts of the Soviet Union had brought back together the Khalq faction of Taraki and the Parcham faction of Babrak Karmal. The "Saur Revolution," as the new government labeled its coup d'etat, after the month in the Islamic calendar in which it occurred, was almost entirely the achievement of the Khalq faction of the PDPA. This success gave it effective control over the armed forces, a great
advantage over its Parchami rival. Khalq's victory was partially due to Daoud's miscalculation that Parcham was the more serious threat. Parcham's leaders had enjoyed widespread connections within the senior bureaucracy and even the royal family and the most privileged elite. These linkages also tended to make their movements easy to trace.
Khalq, on the other hand, had not been involved in Daoud's
government, had little connection with Kabul's Persian speaking elite, and a rustic reputation based on recruitment of students from the provinces. Most of them were Pashtuns, especially the Ghilzais. They had few apparent connections in the senior bureaucracy, many had taken jobs as school teachers. Khalq's influence at Kabul University was also limited.
These newcomers to Kabul had seemed poorly positioned to
penetrate the government. Moreover, they were led by the erratic Mohammed Taraki, a poet, sometime minor official, and a publicly notorious radical. Confident that his military officers were reliable, Daoud must have discounted the diligence of Taraki's lieutenant, Hafizullah Amin, who had sought out dissident Pashtun officers. The bungling of Amin's arrest, which enabled him to trigger the coup ahead of its planned date, also suggests Khalq's penetration of Daoud's security police.
The organisers of the coup had carried out a bold and sophisticated plan. It employed the shock effect of a combined armored and air assault on the Arg or palace, the seat of Daoud's highly centralized government. Seizure of the initiative demoralized the larger loyal or uncommitted forces nearby. Quick capture of telecommunications, the defense ministry and other strategic centers of authority isolated Daoud's stubbornly resisting palace guard.
The coup was by far Khalq's most successful achievement. So
much so, that a considerable literature has accumulated arguing that it must have been planned and executed by the KGB, or some special branch of the Soviet military. Given the friction that soon developed between Khalq and Soviet officials, especially over the purging of Parcham, Soviet control of the coup seems unlikely. Prior knowledge of it does appear to have been highly likely. Claims that Soviet pilots bombed the palace overlook the availability of seasoned Afghan pilots.
Political leadership of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was asserted within three days of the military takeover. After thirteen years of conspiratorial activity, the two factions of the PDPA emerged in public, refusing at first, to admit their Marxist credentials. Khalq's dominance was quickly apparent. Taraki became president, prime minister and General Secretary of the PDPA. Parcham's leader, Babrak Karmal, and Amin were named deputy prime ministers. Cabinet membership was split eleven to ten , with Khalq in the majority. Khalq dominated the Revolutionary Council, which was to serve as the ruling body of the government. Within weeks purges of Parcham began and by summer Khalq's somewhat bewildered Soviet patrons became aware of how difficult it would be temper its radicalism. The destruction of Afghanistan's former ruling elite had begun immediately after the seizure of power. Execution (Parcham leaders later claimed at
least 11,000 during the Taraki/Amin period), flight into exile, and later the devastation of Kabul itself would literally remove the great majority of the some 100,000 who had come to form Afghanistan's elite and middle class. Their loss almost completely broke the continuity of Afghanistan's leadership, political institutions and their social foundation. Karmal was dispatched to Czechoslovakia as ambassador, along with others shipped out of the country. Amin appeared to be
the principal beneficiary of this strategy.
The Khalq leadership proved incapable of filling this vacuum. Its brutal and clumsy attempts to introduce radical changes in control over agricultural land holding and credit, rural social relations, marriage and family arrangements, and education led to scattered protests and uprisings among all major communities in the Afghan countryside. Taraki and Amin left a legacy of turmoil and resentment which gravely compromised later Marxist attempts
to win popular acceptance.
Government was reconstructed in classical Leninist fashion. Until 1985 it was governed by a provisional constitution, "The Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan." Supreme sovereignty was vested in a Revolutionary Council, originally a body of fifty-eight members whose number later varied. Its executive committee, the Presidium, exercised power when the council was not in formal session. The Revolutionary Council was presided over by the president of the Democratic Republic.
Beneath the council the cabinet functioned under a Prime
Minister, essentially in a format inherited from the pre-Marxist era. Two new ministries were added: Islamic Affairs and Tribes and Nationalities. Administrative arrangements for provincial and sub-provincial government were also retained.
In Leninist style, the PDPA was closely juxtaposed with the
formal instruments of government. Its authority was generated by its Central Committee, whose executive stand-in was its Politburo. Presiding over both was the party's secretary general. Policy generation was the primary function of the executive level of the party, which was to be carried out by its members serving throughout the government.
On 5 December 1978 a friendship treaty was signed with the Soviet Union and was later used as a pretext for the Soviet invasion. Major uprisings occurred regularly against the government. On 15 February 1979, the United States ambassador in Kabul, Adolph Dubs, was taken hostage and later killed when Amin ordered the police to attack. The US did not appoint a new ambassador.
In mid-March the 17th infantry division in Herat under the control of Ismail Khan mutinied in support of Shi'ite Muslims. A hundred Soviet advisors in the city, and their families, were killed. The city was bombed, causing massive destruction and thousands of deaths and later it was recaptured with Afghan army tanks and paratroopers.
Taraki visited Moscow on March 20, 1979 with a formal request for Soviet ground troops. Alexei Kosygin told him "we believe it would be a fatal mistake to commit ground troops... if our troops went in, the situation in your country... would get worse." Despite this statement Taraki negotiated some armed support - helicopter gunships with Russian pilots and maintenance crews, 500 military advisors, 700 paratroopers disguised as technicians to defend Kabul airport, also significant food aid (300,000 tons of wheat). Brezhnev still warned Taraki that full Soviet intervention "would only play into the hands of our enemies - both yours and ours."
During this period, many Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran and began organizing a resistance movement. Although the groups organizing in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan would later, after the Soviet invasion, be described by the western press as "freedom fighters"--as if their goal were to establish a representative democracy in Afghanistan--in reality these groups each had agendas of their own that were often far from democratic.
The intense rivalry between Taraki and Amin within the Khalq faction heated up. Amin became prime minister on 28 March 1979 with Taraki remaining President. In September 1979, Taraki's followers had made several attempts on Amin's life. However, it was Taraki who was overthrown and killed, with Amin assuming power in Afghanistan. The Soviets had at first backed Amin, but they realized that he was too rigidly Marxist-Leninist to survive politically in a country as conservative and religious as Afghanistan. The KGB in Kabul speculated that Amin's rule would be marked by "harsh repression and... [result in] the activation and strenghtening of the opposition... The situation can only be saved by the removal of Amin from power."
Taraki's death was first noted in the Kabul Times on 10
October, which reported that the former leader only recently hailed as the "great teacher... great genius... great leader" had died quietly "of serious illness, which he had been suffering for some time." Less than three months later, after the Amin government had been overthrown, the newly installed followers of Babrak Karmal gave another account of Taraki's death. According to this
account, Amin ordered the commander of the palace guard to have Taraki executed. Taraki reportedly was suffocated with a pillow over his head. Amin's emergence from the power struggle within the small divided communist party in Afghanistan alarmed the Soviets and would usher in the series of events which lead to the Soviet invasion.
In Kabul, the ascension of Amin to the top position was quick. Amin began unfinished attempts to moderate what many Afghans viewed as an anti-Islam regime. Promising more religious freedom, repairing mosques, presenting copies of the Qur'an to religious groups, invoking the name of Allah in his speeches, and declaring that the Saur Revolution was "totally based on the principles of Islam." Yet many Afghans held Amin responsible for the regime's harshest measures.
The Soviets established a special commission on Afghanistan, of KGB chairman Andropov, Ponomaryev from the Central Committee and Ustinov, the defence minister. In late October they reported that Amin was purging his opponents, including Soviet sympathisers; his loyalty to Moscow as flase; and that he was seeking diplomatic links with Pakistan and posibly China.
Outside observers usually identify the two warring groups as
"fundamentalists" and "traditionalists." Rivalries between these
groups continued during the Afghan civil war that followed the
Soviet withdrawal. The rivalries of these groups brought the
plight of the Afghans to the attention of the West, and it was
they who received military assistance from the United States and
a number of other nations.
The fundamentalists based their organizing principle around
mass politics and included several divisions of the
Jamiat-i-Islami. The leader of the parent branch,
Burhanuddin Rabbani, began organizing in Kabul before repression
of religious
conservatives, which began in 1974, forced him to flee to
Pakistan during Daoud's
regime. Perhaps best known among the
leaders was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who broke with Rabbani to form
another resistance group, the Hizb-e-Islami, which became
Pakistan's favored arms recipient. Another split, engineered by
Yunus Khales, resulted in a second group using the name
Hizb-e-Islami--a group that was somewhat more moderate than
Hikmatyar's. A fourth fundamentalist group was the
Ittehad-i-Islami led by Rasool Sayyaf. Rabbani's group received
its greatest support from northern Afghanistan where the best
known resistance commander in Afghanistan--Ahmad Shah Massoud--a
Tajik, like Rabbani, operated against the Soviets with
considerable success.
The organizing principles of traditionalist groups differed
from those of the fundamentalists. Formed from loose ties among
ulama in Afghanistan, the traditionalist leaders were
not concerned, unlike fundamentalists, with redefining Islam in
Afghan society but instead focused on the use of the
sharia as the source of law (interpreting the
sharia is a principal role of the ulama). Among the
three groups in Peshawar, the most important was the
Jebh-e-Nejat-e-Milli led by Sibghatullah Mojadeddi. Some of the
traditionalists were willing to accept restoration of the
monarchy and looked to former King Mohammed Zahir Shah, exiled in
Italy, as the ruler.
Other ties also were important in holding together some
resistance groups. Among these were links within sufi
orders, such as the Mahaz-e-Milli Islami, one of the
traditionalist groups associated with the Gilani sufi
order led by Pir Sayyid Gilani. Another group, the Shia Muslims
of Hazarajat, organized the refugees in Iran.
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan began as midnight approached on December 24, 1979. They organised a massive military airlift into Kabul, involving an estimated 280 transport aircraft and 3 divisions of almost 8,500 men each. Within two days, they had secured Kabul,
deploying a special Soviet assault unit against Darulaman Palace, where elements of the Afghan army loyal to Hafizullah Amin put up a fierce, but brief resistance. With Amin's death at the palace, Babrak Karmal, exiled leader of the Parcham faction of the PDPA was installed by the Soviets as Afghanistan's new head of government.
A number of theories have been advanced for the Soviet action. These interpretations of Soviet motives do not always agree -- what is known for certain is that the decision was influenced by many factors -- that in Leonid Brezhnev's words the decision to invade Afghanistan was truly "no simple decision." Two factors were certain to have figured heavily in Soviet calculations. The
Soviet Union, always interested in establishing a "cordon
sanitaire" of subservient or neutral states on its frontiers, was increasingly alarmed at the unstable, unpredictable situation on its southern border. Perhaps as important, the Brezhnev doctrine declared that the Soviet Union had a "right" to come to the assistance of an endangered fellow socialist country. Presumably Afghanistan was a friendly regime that could not survive against growing pressure from the resistance without direct assistance from the Soviet Union.
The government of Babrak Karmal faced crippling disabilities. Installation by a foreign power prevented popular acceptance of the legitimacy of his government. Even though the Parchamis, themselves, had been among the groups most viciously persecuted by the Khalqis, their identification with Marxism and Soviet repression was not forgiven. Indeed, the decimation of their members forced the Soviets to insist on reconciliation between the two factions. The purging of Parchamis had left the military forces so dominated by Khalqis that the Soviets had no choice but to rely upon Khalqi officers to rebuild the army.
Soviet miscalculation of what was required to crush Afghan
resistance further aggravated the government's situation. The Afghan army was expected to carry the burden of suppressing opposition, which was to be done quickly with Soviet support. As the war of pacification dragged on for years, the Babrak Karmal government was further weakened by the poor performance of its army.
Whatever the Soviet goals may have been, the international
response was sharp and swift. United States President
Jimmy Carter, reassessing the strategic situation in his State of the Union address in January, 1980, identified Pakistan as a "front-line state" in the global struggle against communism. He reversed his stand of a year earlier that aid to Pakistan be terminated as a result of its nuclear program and offered Pakistan a military and economic assistance package if it would
act as a conduit for United States and other assistance to the mujahedin. Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq refused Carter's package but later a larger aid offer from the Reagan administration was accepted.
Questions about Pakistan's nuclear program were, for the time being, set aside. Assistance also came from the People's Republic of China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Also forth coming was international aid to help Pakistan deal with more than 3 million fleeing Afghan refugees.
The foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference deplored the invasion and demanded Soviet withdrawal at a meeting in Islamabad in January 1980. Action by the United Nations Security Council was impossible because the Soviets had veto power, but the United Nations General Assembly regularly passed resolutions opposing the Soviet occupation.
In mid-January 1980 the Soviets relocated their command post from Termez, on Soviet territory to the north of Afghanistan, to Kabul. For ten years the Soviets and their Afghan allies battled the mujahedin for control of the country. The Soviets used helicopters (including Mil Mi-24 Hind gunships) as their primary air attack force,
supported with fighter-bombers and bombers, ground troops and special forces. In some areas they conducted a scorched-earth campaign destroying villages, houses, crops, livestock etc.
In attempts to broaden support, the PDPA created organizations
and launched political initiatives intended to induce popular
participation. The most ambitious was the National Fatherland
Front (NFF), founded in June 1981. This umbrella organization
created local units in cities, towns and tribal areas which were
to recruit supporters of the regime. Village and tribal notables
were offered inducements to participate in well publicized
rallies and programs. The party also gave affiliated
organizations that enrolled women, youth and city workers high
profile exposure in national radio, television, and government
publications.
From its beginnings in the mid-1960s, the membership of the
PDPA had taken keen interest in the impact of information and
propaganda. Some years after their own publications had been
terminated by government, they gained control of all official
media. These were energetically harnessed to their propaganda
goals. Anis, the mainline government newspaper
(published in Pashto and Dari), the Kabul New Times
(previously the Kabul Times), published in English, and
such new publications as Haqiqat-i-Inqelab-i-Saur
exhibited the regime's flair for propaganda. With Kabul as its
primary constituency, it also made innovative use of
television.
The early efforts at mobilizing popular support were later
followed up by national meetings and assemblies, eventually using
a variation of the model of the traditional loya jirga to entice
the cooperation of rural secular leaders and religious
authorities. A large scale loya jirga was held in 1985 to ratify
the DRA's new constitution.
These attempts to win collaboration were closely coordinated
with efforts to manipulate Pashtun tribal politics. Such efforts
included trying to split or disrupt tribes who affiliated with
the resistance, or by compromising notables into commitments to
raise militia forces in service to the government.
A concerted effort was made to win over the principal
minorities: Uzbeq, Turkoman, and Tajik, in northern Afghanistan.
For the first time their languages and literatures were
prominently broadcast and published by government media. Minority
writers and poets were championed, and attention was given to
their folk art, music, dance and lore.
As the Afghan-Soviet war became more destructive, internal
refugees flocked to Kabul and the largest of the provincial
cities. Varying estimates (no authentic census was taken) put
Kabul's population at more than 2 million by the late 1980s. In
many instances villagers fled to Kabul and other towns to join
family or lineage groups already established there.
At least 3, perhaps 4, million Afghans were thus subject to
government authority and hence exposed to PDPA recruitment or
affiliation. Its largest membership claim was 160,000, starting
from a base of between 5,000 and 10,000 immediately after the
Soviet invasion. How many members were active and committed was
unclear, but the lure of perquisites, for example, food and fuel
at protected prices, compromised the meaning of membership.
Claims of membership in the NFF ran into the millions, but its
core activists were mostly party members. When it was terminated
in 1987, the NFF disappeared without impact.
The PDPA was also never able to rid itself of internal
rivalries. Burdened by obvious evidence that the Soviets oversaw
its policies, actively dominated the crucial sectors of its
government, and literally ran the war, the PDPA could not assert
itself as a political force until after the Soviets left. In the
civil war period that followed, it gained significant respect,
but its internal disputes worsened.
Born divided, the PDPA suffered virtually continuous conflict
between its two major factions. The Soviets imposed a public
truce upon Parcham and Khalq, but the rivalry continued with
hostility and disagreement frequently rising to the surface.
Generally, Parcham enjoyed political dominance, while Khalq could
not be denied the leverage over the army held by its senior
officers. It was a marriage necessary for survival.
Social, linguistic, and regional origins and differing degrees
of Marxist radicalism had spurred factionalism from the
beginning. When Soviet forces invaded, there was a fifteen-year
history of disagreement, dislike, rivalry, violence and murder.
Each new episode added further alienation. Events also tended to
sub-divide the protagonists. Hafizullah Amin
murder of Taraki divided the
Khalqis. Rival military cliques divided the Khalqis further.
Parchami suffered a series of splits when the Soviets
insisted on replacing Babrak Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah as head of the PDPA on May 4, 1986. The PDPA was riven by divisions which prevented implementation of policies and compromised its internal security.
These fundamental weaknesses were later partially masked by the urgency
of rallying for common survival in the immediate aftermath of the
Soviet withdrawal. Yet, after military successes rifts again
began to surface.
Karmal retained the
presidency for a while, but power had shifted to Najibullah, who had
previously headed the State Information Service (Khadamate Ettelaate
Dowlati--KHAD), the Afghan secret service agency. Najibullah tried to
diminish differences with the resistance and appeared prepared to
allow Islam a greater role as well as legalize opposition groups, but
any moves he made toward concessions were rejected out of hand by the
mujahedin.
Factionalism had a critical impact on the leadership of the
PDPA. Najibullah's achievements as a mediator between factions,
an effective diplomat, a clever foe, a resourceful administrator
and a brilliant spokesman who coped with constant and changing
turmoil throughout his six years as head of government, qualified
him as a leader among Afghans. His leadership qualities might be
summarized as conciliatory authoritarianism: a sure sense of
power, how to get it, how to use it, but mediated by willingness
to give options to rivals. This combination was glaringly lacking
in most of his colleagues and rivals.
Najibullah suffered, to a lesser degree, the same disadvantage
that Karmal had when he was installed as General Secretary of the
PDPA by the Soviets. Despite Soviet interference and his own
frustration and discouragement over the failure to generate
substantial popular support, Karmal still had retained enough
loyalty within the party to remain in office. This fact was shown
by the fierceness of the resistance to Najibullah's appointment
within the Parcham faction. This split persisted, forcing
Najibullah to straddle his politics between whatever Parchami
support he could maintain and alliances he could win from the
Khalqis.
Najibullah's reputation was that of a secret police
apparatchik with especially effective skills in disengaging
Ghilzai and eastern Pashtuns from the resistance.
Najibullah was
himself a Ghilzai from the large Ahmedzai tribe. His selection by
the Soviets was clearly related to his success in running KHAD,
the secret police, more effectively than the rest of the DRA had
been governed. His appointment thus, was not principally the
result of intra-party politics. It was related to crucial changes
in the Soviet-Afghan war that would lead to the Soviet military
withdrawal.
The Soviets grossly underestimated the huge cost of the Afghan venture--described, in time, as the Soviet Union's Vietnam--to their state.
The peak of the fighting came in 1985-86. The Soviet forces launched their largest and most effective assaults on the mujahedin supply lines adjacent to Pakistan. Major campaigns had also forced the mujahedin into the defensive near Herat and Kandahar.
At the same time a sharp increase in military support for the mujahedin from the United States and Saudi Arabia allowed it to regain the guerilla war initiative. By late August 1986, the
first FIM-92 Stinger ground-to-air missiles were used successfully. For nearly a year they would deny the Soviets and the Kabul government effective use of air power.
These shifts in momentum reinforced the inclination of the new
Mikhail Gorbachev government to view further escalation of the war as a
misuse of Soviet political and military capital. Such doubts had
developed prior to the decision to install Mohammad Najibullah. In April
1985, one month after Gorbachev assumed the Soviet
leadership, its May Day greeting to the Kabul government failed
to refer to its "revolutionary solidarity" with the PDPA, a
signal in Marxist-Leninist rhetoric that their relationship had
been downgraded. Several months later, Babrak Karmal suggested the
inclusion of non-party members in the Revolutionary Council and
the promotion of a "mixed economy." These tentative concessions
toward non-Marxists won Soviet praise, but divergence in policy
became obvious at the Twenty-Seventh Congress of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union in February 1986. Gorbachev's "bleeding
wound" speech hinted at a decision to withdraw "in the nearest
future." In his own speech Karmal made no reference to
withdrawal. In early May he was replaced by Najibullah.
Najibullah was obliged to move toward the evolving Soviet
position with great caution. Karmal's followers could use any
concessions to non-Marxists or acceptance of a Soviet withdrawal
against him. Accordingly, he moved in conflicting directions,
insisting there was no room for non-Marxists in government, only
offering the possibility of clemency to "bandits" who had been
duped by mujahedin leaders into resisting the government. In
addition to air strikes and shelling across the border, KHAD
terrorist activity in Pakistan reached its peak under
Najibullah.
Late in 1986 Najibullah had stabilized his political position
enough to begin matching Moscow's moves toward withdrawal. In
September he set up the National Compromise Commission to contact
counterrevolutionaries "in order to complete the Saur Revolution
in its new phase." Allegedly some 40,000 rebels were contacted.
In November Karmal was replaced as now-ceremonial president by a
non-party member, Haji Muhammad Samkanai, signaling the PDPA's
willingness to open government to non-Marxists.
At the end of 1986 Najibullah unveiled a program of "National
Reconciliation." It offered a six-month cease-fire and
discussions leading to a possible coalition government in which
the PDPA would give up its government monopoly. Contact was to be
made with "anti-state armed groups." Affiliation was suggested,
allowing resistance forces to retain areas under their
control.
In fact much of the substance of the program was happening on
the ground in the form of negotiations with disillusioned
mujahedin commanders who agreed to cooperate as government
militia. The mujahedin leadership rhetorically claimed that the
program had no chance for success. For his part Najibullah
assured his followers that there would be no compromise over "the
accomplishments" of the Saur Revolution. It remained a standoff.
While a strenuous propaganda effort was directed at the both the
Afghan refugees and Pakistanis in
North-West Frontier,
the program was essentially a sop to Moscow's hope to
tie a favorable political settlement to its desire to pull its
forces out.
Najibullah's concrete achievements were the consolidation of
his armed forces, the expansion of co-opted militia forces and
the acceptance of his government by an increasing proportion of
urban population under his control. As a propaganda ploy
"National Reconciliation" was a means of gaining time to prepare
for civil war after the Soviet departure.
By the beginning of 1987, the controlling fact in the Afghan
war was the Soviet Union's determination to withdraw. It would
not renege on its commitment to the Kabul government's
survival--Mikhail Gorbachev's options were
restricted by Soviet military
insistence that Kabul not be abandoned. Nevertheless, the Soviet
leadership was convinced that resolution of Cold War issues with
the West and internal reform were far more urgent than the fate
of the Kabul government.
Other events outside Afghanistan, especially in the Soviet
Union, contributed to the eventual agreement. The toll in
casualties, economic resources, and loss of support at home
increasingly felt in the Soviet Union was causing criticism of
the occupation policy. Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, and after two
short-lived successors, Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership in
March 1985. As Gorbachev opened up the country's system, it
became more clear that the Soviet Union wished to find a
face-saving way to withdraw from Afghanistan.
The civil war in Afghanistan was guerrilla warfare and a war
of attrition between government and the mujahedin; it cost both sides
a great deal. Many Afghans, perhaps as many as five million, or
one-quarter of the country's population, fled to Pakistan and
Iran where they organized into guerrilla groups to strike Soviet
and government forces inside Afghanistan. Others remained in
Afghanistan and also formed fighting groups; perhaps most notable
was one led by Ahmed Shah Massoud in the northeastern part of
Afghanistan. These various groups were supplied with funds to
purchase arms, principally from the United States, Saudi Arabia,
People's Republic of China, and Egypt. Despite high casualties on both sides, pressure
continued to mount on the Soviet Union, especially after the
United States brought in FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles which
severely reduced the effectiveness of Soviet air cover.
Conveniently, a formula was readily available for minimizing
the humiliation of reversing a policy in which enormous
political, material, and human capital had been invested. In 1982
under the auspices of the office of its secretary general, the UN
had initiated negotiations facilitating a Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan. Its format had essentially been agreed upon by 1985.
Ostensibly it was the product of indirect negotiations between
the DRA and Pakistan (Pakistan did not recognize the DRA) with
the mediation of the secretary general's special representative,
Diego Cordovez. The United States and the Soviet Union had
committed themselves to guaranteeing the implementation of an
agreement leading to a withdrawal.
Both the format and the substance of the agreement were
designed to be acceptable to the Soviet Union and the DRA. Its
clauses included affirmation of the sovereignty of Afghanistan
and its right to self-determination, its right to be free from
foreign intervention or interference, and the right of its
refugees to a secure and honorable return. But at its core was an
agreement reached in May 1988 that authorized the withdrawal of
"foreign troops" according to a timetable that would remove all
Soviet forces by February 15, 1989.
The accords emerged from initiatives by Moscow and Kabul in
1981. They had claimed that Soviet forces had entered Afghanistan
in order to protect it from foreign forces intervening on the
side of rebels attempting to overthrow the DRA. The logic of the
Geneva Accords was based on this accusation, that is, that once
the foreign threat to Afghanistan was removed, the forces of its
friend, the Soviet Union, would leave. For that reason a
bilateral agreement between Pakistan, which was actively
supporting the resistance, and the DRA prohibiting intervention
and interference between them was essential. In meticulous detail
each party agreed to terminate any act that could remotely effect
the sovereignty or security of the other. This agreement included
preventing an expatriate or a refugee from publishing a statement
which his/her government could construe as a contribution to
unrest within its territory. The bilateral agreement between the
Afghanistan and Pakistan on the principles of non-interference
and non-intervention was signed on April 14, 1988.
The accords thus facilitated a withdrawal by an erstwhile
superpower, in a manner which justified an invasion. They
exemplify the delicacy of UN diplomacy when the interests of a
great power are engaged. In essence, the accords were a political
bailout for a government struggling with the consequences of a
costly error. The UN could not insist that accusations of
national culpability were relevant to the negotiations. In the
case of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union insisted on its own
diplomatic terms as did the United States in a different manner
concerning Vietnam.
The agreement on withdrawal held, and on February 15, 1989, the last
Soviet troops departed on schedule from Afghanistan. Their exit,
however, did not bring either lasting peace or resettlement.
The accords did not bring peace to Afghanistan. There was
little expectation among its enemies or the Soviet Union that the
Kabul government would survive. Its refusal to collapse
introduced a three-year period of civil war.
The Geneva process failed to prevent the further carnage which a
political solution among Afghans might have prevented or lessened. It
failed partially because the Geneva process prevented participation by
the Afghan resistance. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA)
occupied Afghanistan's seat at the
United Nations General Assembly. Denied recognition, the
resistance leadership resented the
central role that DRA was permitted to play at Geneva. When the
United Nations representative Diego Cordovez approached the
mujahedin parties to discuss a possible political settlement in
February 1988--more than five years after negotiations began--they
were not interested. Their bitterness would hover over subsequent
efforts to find a political solution.
Considerable diplomatic energy was expended throughout 1987 to
find a political compromise that would end the fighting before
the Soviets left. While Pakistan, the Soviet Union and the DRA
haggled over a timetable for the Soviet withdrawal, Cordovez
worked on a formula for an Afghan government that would reconcile
the combatants. The formula involved Mohammed Zahir Shah, and by
extension, the leading members of his former government, most of
whom had gone into exile. This approach also called for a meeting
in the loya jirga tradition representing all Afghan protagonists
and communities. It was to reach a consensus on the features of a
future government. The jirgah also was to select a small group of
respected leaders to act as a transitional government in place of
the Kabul government and the mujahedin. During the transition a
new constitution was to be promulgated and elections conducted
leading to the installation of a popularly accepted government.
This package kept re-emerging in modified forms throughout the
civil war that followed. Suggested roles for the king and his
followers slipped into and out of these formulas, despite the
implacable opposition of most of the mujahedin leaders.
The peace prospect faltered because no credible consensus was
attainable. By mid-1987 the resistance forces sensed a military
victory. They had stymied what proved to be the last set of major
Soviet offensives, the Stinger missiles were still having a
devastating effect, and they were receiving an unprecedented
surge of outside assistance. Defeat of the Kabul government was
their solution for peace. This confidence, sharpened by their
distrust of the UN virtually guaranteed their refusal of a
political compromise.
Pakistan was the only protagonist in a position to convince
the mujahedin otherwise. Its intimate relationship with the
parties it hosted had shaped their war and their politics. Their
dependence on Pakistan for armaments, training, funding and
sanctuary had been nearly total. But by 1987, the politics of
Pakistan's foreign policy had fragmented. The Foreign Ministry
was working with Diego Cordovez to devise a formula for a
"neutral" government. President Zia ul-Haq was adamantly
convinced that a political solution favoring the mujahedin was
essential and worked strenuously to convince the United States
and the Soviet Union. Riaz Muhammad Khan argues that disagreement
within the military and with Zia's increasingly independent prime
minister, Muhammad Khan Junejo, deflected Zia's efforts. When
Mikhail Gorbachev announced a Soviet withdrawal without a peace
settlement at his Washington, D.C meeting with
President Reagan on
December 10, 1987, the chance for a political agreement was lost.
All the protagonists were then caught up in the rush to complete
the Geneva process.
In the end the Soviets were content to leave the possibilities
of reconciliation to Najibullah and to shore him up with massive
material support. He had made an expanded reconciliation offer to
the resistance in July, 1987 including twenty seats in State
(formerly Revolutionary) Council, twelve ministries and a
possible prime minister-ship and Afghanistan's status as an Islamic
non-aligned state. Military, police, and security powers were not
mentioned. The offer still fell far short of what even the
moderate mujahedin parties would accept.
Najibullah then reorganized his government to face the
mujahedin alone. A new constitution took effect in November,
1987. The name of the country was reverted to the Republic of
Afghanistan, the State Council was
replaced by a National Assembly for which "progressive parties"
could freely compete. Mir Hussein Sharq, a non-party politician,
was named prime minister. Najibullah's presidency was given
Gaulist powers and longevity. He was promptly elected to a
seven-year term. On paper, Afghan government appeared far more
democratic than Mohammed Daoud Khan had left it, but its popular support
remained questionable.
The Soviet Union left Afghanistan deep in winter with intimations
of panic among Kabul officials. Hard experience had convinced
Soviet officials that the government was too faction riven to
survive. Pakistani and United States
officials expected a quick
mujahedin victory. The resistance was poised to attack provincial
towns and cities and eventually Kabul, if necessary. The first
one to fall might produce a ripple effect that would unravel the
government.
Within three months, these expectations were dashed at
Jalalabad. An initial assault penetrated the city's defenses and
reached its airport. A counterattack, supported by effective
artillery and air power, drove the mujahedin back. Uncoordinated
attacks on the city from other directions failed. The crucial
supply road to the garrison from Kabul was reopened. By May 1989
it was clear that the Kabul forces in Jalalabad had held.
The Mujahedin were traumatized by this failure. It exposed
their inability to coordinate tactical movements or logistics or
to maintain political cohesion. During the next three years, they
were unable to overcome these limitations. Only one significant
provincial capital, Taloqan, was captured and held. Mujahedin
positions were expanded in the northeast and around Herat, but
their inability to mass forces capable of overcoming a modern
army with the will to fight from entrenched positions was clear.
A deadly exchange of medium-range rockets became the principal
form of combat, embittering the urban population, and adding to
the obstacles that prevented millions of refugees from
returning.
Victory at Jalalabad dramatically revived the morale of the
Kabul government. Its army proved able to fight effectively
alongside the already the hardened troops of the Soviet-trained
special security forces. Defections decreased dramatically when
it became apparent that the resistance was in disarray, with no
capability for a quick victory. The change in atmosphere made
recruitment of militia forces much easier. As many as 30,000
troops were assigned to the defense of Herat alone.
Immediately after the Soviet departure, Najibullah pulled down
the façade of shared government. He declared an emergency,
removed Sharq and the other non-party ministers from the cabinet.
The Soviet Union responded with a flood of military and economic
supplies. Sufficient food and fuel were made available for the
next two difficult winters. Much of the military equipment
belonging to Soviet units evacuating Eastern Europe was shipped
to Afghanistan. Assured adequate supplies, Kabul's air force,
which had developed tactics minimizing the threat from Stinger
missiles, now deterred mass attacks against the cities.
Medium-range missiles, particularly the Scud, were successfully
launched from Kabul in the defense of Jalalabad, 145 kilometres
miles away. One reached the suburbs of Pakistan's capital,
Islamabad, more than 400 kilometres away. Soviet support reached
a value of $3,000,000,000 per year in 1990. Kabul had achieved a
stalemate which exposed the mujahedin's weaknesses, political and
military.
With the failure of the communist hardliners to take over the
Soviet government in August 1991,
Mohammad Najibullah's supporters in the
Soviet Army lost their power to dictate Afghan policy. The effect
was immediate. On September 13, the Soviet government, now
dominated by Boris Yeltsin, agreed with the United States on a
mutual cut off of military aid to both sides in the Afghan civil
war. It was to begin January 1, 1992.
The post-coup Soviet government then attempted to develop
political relations with the Afghan resistance. In mid-November
it invited a delegation of the resistance's
Afghanistan Interim Government (AIG) to Moscow where
the Soviets agreed that a transitional government should prepare
Afghanistan for national elections. The Soviets did not insist
that Najibullah or his colleagues participate in the transitional
process. Having been cut adrift both materially and politically,
Najibullah's faction torn government began to fall apart.
During the nearly three years that the Kabul government had
successfully defended itself against mujahedin attacks, factions
within the government had also developed quasi-conspiratorial
connections with its opponents. Even during the Soviet war Kabul's
officials had arranged case-fires, neutral zones, highway passage and
even passes allowing unarmed mujahedin to enter towns and cities. As
the civil war developed into a stalemate in 1989, such arrangements
proliferated into political understandings. Combat generally ceased
around Kandahar because most of the mujahedin commanders had an
understanding with its provincial governor. Ahmed Shah Massoud
developed an agreement with Kabul to keep the vital north-south
highway open after the Soviet withdrawal. The greatest mujahedin
victory during the civil war, the capture of Khost, was achieved
through the collaboration of its garrison. In March 1990
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar cooperated with an attempted coup by the
Khalqi Defense minister Shah Nawaz Tanai: Hekmatyar's forces
were to attack Kabul simultaneously. The plot misfired because of faulty
communications. Tanai escaped by helicopter to Pakistan where he was
greeted and publicly accepted as an ally by Hekmatyar.
Interaction with opponents became a major facet of
Najibullah's defensive strategy, Many mujahedin groups were
literally bought off with arms, supplies and money to become
militias defending towns, roads and installations. Such
arrangements carried the danger of backfiring. When Najibullah's
political support ended and the money dried up, such allegiances
crumbled.
Kabul ultimately fell to the mujahedin because the factions in
its government had finally pulled it apart. Until demoralized by
the defections of its senior officers, the army had achieved a
level of performance it had never reached under direct Soviet
tutelage. It was a classic case of loss of morale. The regime
collapsed while it still possessed material superiority. Its
stockpiles of munitions and planes would provide the victorious
mujahedin with the means of waging years of highly destructive
war. Kabul was short of fuel and food at the end of winter in
1992, but its military units were supplied well enough to fight
indefinitely. They did not fight because their leaders were
reduced to scrambling for survival. Their aid had not only been
cut off, the Marxist-Leninist ideology that had provided the
government its rationale for existence been repudiated at its
source.
A few days after it was clear that Najibullah had lost
control, his army commanders and governors arranged to turn over
authority to resistance commanders and local notables throughout
the country. Joint councils or shuras were immediately
established for local government in which civil and military
officials of the former government were usually included. Reports
indicate the process was generally amicable. In many cases prior
arrangements for transferring regional and local authority had
been made between foes.
These local arrangements generally remained in place in most of
Afghanistan until at least 1995 . Disruptions occurred where local
political arrangements were linked to the struggle
that developed between the mujahedin parties. At the national
level a political vacuum was created and into it fell the expatriate
parties in their rush to take control. The enmities, ambitions,
conceits and dogmas which had paralysed their shadow government proved
to be even more disastrous in their struggle for power. The traits
they brought with them had been accentuated in the struggle for
preferment in Peshawar.
Collusions between military leaders quickly brought down the
Kabul government. In mid-January 1992, within three weeks of
demise of the Soviet Union, Ahmed Shah Massoud was aware of
conflict within the government's northern command. General
Abdul Momim, in charge of the Hairatan border crossing at the northern
end of Kabul's supply highway, and other non-Pashtun generals
based in Mazar-e Sharif feared removal by Najibullah and
replacement by Pashtun officers. The generals rebelled and the
situation was taken over by Abdul Rashid Dostam, who held general
rank as head of the Jozjani militia, also based in
Mazar-e Sharif. He and Massoud reached a political agreement,
together with another major militia leader, Sayyid Mansor, of the
Ismaili community based in Baghlan province. These northern
allies consolidated their position in Mazar-e Sharif on March 21.
Their coalition covered nine provinces in the north and
northeast. As turmoil developed within the government in Kabul,
there was no government force standing between the northern
allies and the major air force base at Bagram, some seventy
kilometres north of Kabul. By mid-April the air force command at
Begram had capitulated to Massoud. Kabul was defenseless, its
army was no longer reliable.
Najibullah had lost internal control immediately after he
announced his willingness on March 18 to resign in order to make
way for a neutral interim government. As the government broke
into several factions the issue had become how to carry out a
transfer of power. Najibullah attempted to fly out of Kabul on
April 17, but was stopped by Dostam's troops who controlled Kabul
Airport under the command of Babrak Karmal's brother,
Mahmud Baryalai.
Vengeance between Parchami factions was reaped. Najibullah took
sanctuary at the UN mission where he remained until 1996. A group of
Parchami generals and officials declared themselves an interim
government for the purpose of handing over power to the
mujahedin.
For more than a week Massoud remained poised to move his
forces into the capital. He was awaiting the arrival of political
leadership from Peshawar. The parties suddenly had sovereign
power in their grasp, but no plan for executing it. With his
principal commander prepared to occupy Kabul, Burhanuddin Rabbani was
positioned to prevail by default. Meanwhile UN mediators tried to
find a political solution that would assure a transfer of power
acceptable to all sides.
Benan Sevan, Diego Cordovez's successor as special
representative of the UN secretary general, attempted to apply a
political formula that had been announced by UN Secretary General
Javier Perez De Cuellar on May 21, 1991. Referred to as a
five-point plan, it included: recognition of Afghanistan's
sovereign status as a politically non-aligned Islamic state;
acceptance of the right of Afghans to self-determination in
choosing their form of government and social and economic
systems; need for a transitional period permitting a dialogue
between Afghans leading to establishment of a government with
widely based support; the termination of all foreign arms
deliveries into Afghanistan; funding from the international
community adequate to support the return of Afghanistan's
refugees and its reconstruction from the devastation of war.
These principles were endorsed by the Soviet Union and the
United States and Afghanistan's neighboring governments, but
there was no military means of enforcing it. The three moderate
Peshawar parties accepted it, but it was opposed by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani,
Rasool Sayyaf and Mawlawi Yunis Khalis
who held out for a total victory over the Kabul government.
Nevertheless, these four "fundamentalists" found it politic to
participate in the effort to implement the UN initiative.
Pressure from their foreign supporters and the opportunities that
participation offered to modify or obstruct the plan encouraged
them to be reluctant players. Pakistan and Iran worked jointly to
win mujahedin acceptance at a conference in July, 1991.
Indicating its formal acceptance of the plan, Pakistan officially
announced the termination of its own military assistance to the
resistance in late January 1992. Najibullah
also declared his
acceptance, but until March 18, 1992, he hedged the question of
whether or when he would resign in the course of
negotiations.
Sevan made a strenuous effort to create the mechanism for the
dialogue that would lead to installation of the transitional
process envisaged in point three of the plan. The contemplated
arrangement was a refinement and a simplification of earlier
plans which had been built around the possible participation of
Mohammed Zahir Shah and the convoking of a meeting in the
loya jirga tradition. By March 1992 the
plan had evolved to the holding of a
meeting in Europe of some 150 respected Afghans representing all
communities in the late spring. Most of Sevan's effort was
directed at winning the cooperation of all the Afghan
protagonists, including the Shia parties in control of the
Hazarajat. In early February, he appeared to have won the active
support of commanders among the Pashtuns in eastern Afghanistan
and acquiescence from Rabbani and Hekmatyar to the extent of
submitting lists of participants acceptable to them in the
proposed meeting. Simultaneously, Sevan labored to persuade
Najibullah to step down on the presumption that his removal would
bring about full mujahedin participation. Instead, Najibullah's
March 18 announcement accelerated the collapse of his government.
This collapse in turn triggered events that moved faster than
Sevan's plan could be put into effect.
In the midst of hectic manoeuvring to put the European meeting
together, Sevan declared on April 4 that most of the parties
(including Hekmatyar's) and the Kabul government had agreed to
transfer power to a proposed transitional authority. He also
announced the creation of a "pre-transition council" to take
control of government "perhaps within the next two weeks." He was struggling to keep up with events which threatened to dissolve the government before he had a replacement for it.
In the end, some of the Shia parties and the Islamists in Peshawar blocked his scheme. They withheld their choices or submitted candidates for the European meeting whom they knew would be unacceptable to others. The hope for a neutral, comprehensive approach to a political settlement among Afghans was dashed. Sevan then worked to ensure a peaceful turnover of power from the interim Kabul government which replaced Najibullah on April 18 to the forces of Massoud and Dostam. In effect, the turnover was peaceful, but without an overall political settlement in place. Within a week a new civil war would begin among the victors as the era of the Islamic State of Afghanistan began.
The Communists take power, 1978
Opposition forces
The Soviet invasion, December 1979
The search for popular support
Internal refugees: flight to the cities
Factionalism
Mohammad Najibullah, 1986-1992
The Soviet decision to withdraw, 1986-1988
The Geneva accords, 1987-1989
The failure to bring peace
Pakistan's attempt at a political solution, 1987-1988
Stalemate: The Civil War, 1989-1992
The demise of the Soviet Union, 1991
The fall of Kabul, April 1992
The United Nations plan for political accommodation
References