Historical Overview of the Marxist Revolutionary Movement in Afghanistan and the Afghanistan Liberation Organization (ALO)
The Years of “Royal Democracy”
[tie_index]The Years of “Royal Democracy”[/tie_index]
The first revolutionary Marxist organisation in Afghanistan was founded in 1966 under the name of Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO). The revisionist Moscow-directed “People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan” (PDPA) had been founded some time earlier by a number of intellectuals with suspicious links to a faction of the ruling elite. (Prince Daoud, cousin of King Zahir Shah and prime minister of Afghanistan [1953-1963] was dubbed “The Red Prince” because of his soft spot for the post-Stalin Soviet leadership; Babrak Karmal, one of the founding fathers of the PDPA and leader of the Parcham faction of this party was notorious as a Daoud informer and as a pander to Daoud’s political ambitions.)
A salient characteristic of the revolutionary Marxist movement in Afghanistan since its very inception has been its unflagging struggle against revisionism and opportunism. It was in an anti-revisionist and anti-opportunist context that the revolutionary Marxist movement in Afghanistan was founded and grew up. Those early years were dominated by ideological polemics between the communist parties of the Soviet Union and China on the one hand and the Cultural Revolution in China on the other. Both political phenomena had indelible ideological and political effects on the PYO. It can very well be claimed that the PYO was founded as a necessary entity for defending and propagating revolutionary Marxism against the revisionism and collaborationism of the PDPA led by Noor Mohammad Taraki and Babrak Karmal.
The winds of change were blowing in Afghanistan. In 1963 Daoud had to step down as prime minister in order to make way for King Zahir Shah to proclaim a constitutional monarchy. A new constitution was adopted and vestiges of democratic freedoms including a small measure of freedom of expression and freedom of the press was allowed to the people. Taking advantage of the thaw in the political climate, the PYO set out to publish a weekly mouthpiece, Sholai Jawaid [The Eternal Flame] which concentrated on introducing the principles of New Democracy (Mao Zedong Thought) and exposing the machinations of the PDPA and Soviet revisionism. Sholai Jawaid was banned after only 11 issues but that was enough to sow the seeds of revolutionary thought and to capture the hearts and minds of thousands of vanguard intellectuals and conscious workers.
Noor Mohammad Taraki with his master in KremlinThe thaw in the political climate was appreciated by other political groupings also. Very soon political gatherings and demonstrations began to draw large numbers of adherents and to generate intense interest in Kabul and major towns. In most of such gatherings and demonstrations, three political currents were very visible: The Sholayis (as members, followers and sympathisers of the PYO came to be known after their mouthpiece Sholai Jawaid), the Khalqis and Parchamis (followers of the two rival factions of the PDPA, after their respective mouthpieces Khalq [The People] and Parcham [The Banner]), and the Ikhwanis (Islamists and Islamic fundamentalists, later renamed Moslem Youth, after the name of their prototype in Egypt -Ikhwan al-Muslimeen [Moslem Brotherhood]). From the point of view of numerical strength, the gatherings and demonstrations staged by the Sholayis in Kabul far outnumbered the Khalqis and Parchamis and completely dwarfed whatever the Ikhwanis could stage despite their claim on the religiosity and religious propensity of the general populace.
The Ikhwanis were initially not taken very seriously by political circles because of their inferior numbers and poor attraction for intellectuals. The Ikhwanis made up for their inferiority by their virulence, which first manifested itself by a spate of acid spraying onto the faces of young university and high school girl students. (This was motivated by Islamic fundamentalist misogyny which abhors the appearance of women in society and considers life-incarceration of women in houses and harems as the acme of Islamic piety.) This Ikhwani virulence grew by leaps and bounds and very soon reached the point of bloodthirsty murders of secular-minded intellectuals. A number of such murders were overtly committed by the Ikhwanis in Herat and Laghman and many covert cases of Ikhwani murders came to light in Kabul and other cities. The climax for the revolutionary Marxist movement came in June 1972 when Sholayis and Ikhwanis clashed on the campus of Kabul University, a hotbed of ideological and political struggle and debate. True to their nature, the Ikhwanis had come armed with knives and pistols. The situation on that fateful day quickly got out of hand and Saydal Sokhandan, a prominent PYO activist and fiery Sholayi orator was personally assassinated by Golbuddin Hekmatyar who later gained notoriety as the leader of the most rabid Islamic fundamentalist grouping, the Hizb-i-Islami [Islamic Party]. (It was this Hizb-i-Islami which got the lion’s share of the CIA largesse during the years of the War of Resistance against Soviet aggression and occupation; like all Afghan fundamentalist parties the Hizb-i-Islami was nurtured on CIA arms and dollars until from a lowly jackal it grew into a bloodthirsty hyena, feasting on the entrails of the people of Afghanistan. This one fact alone is enough to expose the hypocritical howls of Western imperialism against Islamic fundamentalism.) Many other Sholayis were wounded, some of them critically. This clash further polarised the general political atmosphere and generated intense debate within the PYO, forcing an introspection into its policies and approaches.
The prevailing criticism amongst the Sholayis was that despite the fact that the Sholai Jawaid political current had amassed a large and dedicated following of thousands of young Afghans, the leadership of the PYO had been unable to harness the potential of these adherents for the political mobilisation of the peasant masses who comprised 90% of the people of Afghanistan. The outreach of the PYO and its leadership rarely extended beyond the urban intelligentsia, urbanites and a limited number of workers. It was in consequence of such introspection that at the beginning of the 70s different circles within the Sholai Jawaid political current began highlighting the mistakes of the PYO and opened up an extensive ideological struggle at all levels of the organisation. The most profound criticism of the PYO came from the Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan (later upgraded and renamed Sazman-i Rehayi Afghanistan [Afghanistan Liberation Organisation]). The totality of such criticisms resulted in the dissolution of the PYO into a number of smaller revolutionary groupings generally adhering – with different degrees of disagreement — to Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought.
The Daoud years
[tie_index]The Daoud years[/tie_index]
In July 1973 Daoud, the “Red Prince”, supported by the Parcham faction of the PDPA, staged a bloodless coup d’état in which he ousted his cousin King Zahir Shah and proclaimed Afghanistan a republic with himself as the president. Daoud’s Parchami cronies got appointed to key government posts, but the Parchamis and their Russian masters had underrated Daoud’s famous self-willed bull-headedness. After a year of Parchami mismanagement and misdemeanour at all levels and their pursuance of a hidden agenda dictated by Moscow, Daoud sacked all key Parchami office bearers in his administration. This obliged Moscow to concentrate on the Afghan armed forces for the achievement of its ulterior motives. During Daoud’s 5-year rule as president (1973-1978) the revolutionary movement remained in a state of stagnation. This was due to disunity amongst former members and followers of the now-dissolved PYO. The Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan (the precursor of the ALO) emerged as one of the few well-organised revolutionary groups having a clear agenda. It laid stress (with hindsight, perhaps overstress) on the need for more in-depth work with the peasantry and most of its cadres and activists shifted their activities to the rural scene.
Babrak Karmal with his Russian Master in KremlinDuring this period the two rival factions of the PDPA (the Khalq faction led by Noor Mohammad Taraki and the Parcham faction led by Babrak Karmal) who had split some years ago in consequence of a personality clash between Taraki and Karmal were reunited in 1977 under strict orders from Moscow. This was in preparation for the implementation of strategic plans hatched in the Kremlin for a Russian version of 19th century colonial Britain’s “forward policy“. Daoud had in the meantime become disillusioned with his Kremlin sponsors and had turned to the West for help in his ambitious development plans. He mended fences with Pakistan (a long dispute with Pakistan over “Pashtunistan” was Daoud’s favourite foreign policy quarrel) and visited Iran and Saudi Arabia to solicit financial assistance. Daoud’s about-face was too abrupt and too alarming for Kremlin strategists to brook any delay in a swift, decisive counteraction. (Memories of Anwar Sadat and Mohmmad Siyad Barre’s booting out of the Russians from Egypt and Somalia a few years earlier were still too fresh and too painful). In April 1978 the KGB engineered the assassination of Mir Akbar Khyber, a key Parchami figure, and had the unified PDPA stage a massive show of strength and defiance at his funeral. This was orchestrated in order to provoke Daoud into a crackdown on the PDPA. The arrogant Daoud fell into the trap and triggered an armed backlash spearheaded by KGB moles in key army and airforce units. The “Glorious Saur Revolution” was on. The bloody ensuing coup d’état of April 28, 1978, resulted in the massacre of Daoud and his entire family along with an estimated 7,000 military and civilian population and the coming to power of the PDPA with Noor Mohammad Taraki as president and prime minister and Babrak Karmal as his deputy. At this juncture in time Afghan revolutionary groupings were not a recognisable political force, but the correctness of their political appraisal of the Soviet Union as a social-imperialist power and of the PDPA as an agent of high treason and a mole of social-imperialism, and the Sholayis’ oft-repeated refrain trying to bring home the need for unrelenting struggle against master and lackey did not fail to register itself on the minds and conscience of thinking and feeling patriots.
The “Saur” years
[tie_index]The “Saur” years[/tie_index]
Neither the people of Afghanistan nor revolutionary groupings were sorry to see Daoud fall, but this did not prevent all revolutionary Marxist groupings –the political heirs of the PYO— from swiftly, unequivocally and unanimously condemning the bloody coup d’état and calling on the people to rally to save the motherland from the fate that awaited her at the hands of the sold-out PDPA arch-traitors and their Russian masters. This swift and clear response was based on the fact that no revolutionary Marxist individual or grouping in Afghanistan had the slightest doubt that the indigenous Khalqi and Parchami lackeys of Soviet revisionism had any role or mission in Afghanistan other than to sell out their country to the Soviet Union under the guise of the touted “non-capitalist road to development” and to safeguard at all costs the interests of the Soviets in Afghanistan. Immediately after the “victory of the Saur Revolution” a nightmarish reign of terror was unleashed on the broad populace in general and on dissident intelligentsia in particular. Arbitrary individual and mass arrests, horrendous torture of suspects and mass executions of all “counter-revolutionary” elements arrested on the slightest pretext by hysterically obsessed functionaries commissioned by a frantically paranoid coterie of KGB agents at the helm of the state and government became commonplace and routine. None were spared. For the Khalqi parvenus (they very soon fell out with the Parchamis and, gaining the upper hand, turned on their erstwhile comrades-in-arms; under the aegis of Alexandre Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador, Babrak Karmal and his retinue of key Parchamis were banished abroad but a number of them were clapped into prison) anyone and everyone uttering a word against the Soviet Union and the “Saur Revolution” were traitors and counter-revolutionaries and all counter-revolutionaries were either “Sholayis” (if they were educated and secular-minded) or “Ikhwanis” (if they were illiterate, uncouth and/or religious-minded). Between these two categories, the harsher and crueller treatment was meted out to the “Sholayis” for they were “conscious enemies” with pre-meditated political motives for antagonism and animosity against “the achievements of the Glorious Saur Revolution” as opposed to “ignorant enemies” who opposed the “Saur Revolution” out of thoughtless religious fanaticism. Not in words but in deeds the regime lashed out at the religiosity of the masses, misreading the ABC of historical materialism and Marxist sociology. All this was perpetrated in the name of “democratic revolution”, “people’s democracy as the first rung on the ladder to socialism” and “the abrogation of exploitation of man by man”. All concepts that were hallowed and venerable for workers, the exploited classes and the toiling masses were rendered profane and despicable, epitomising terror, treachery and “red villainy”. Irreparable damage was done in the name of “revolution” to the image of true revolutionary intellectuals and workers and revolutionary concepts.
Galvanised by the universal atmosphere of terror, dismay and tragedy and the awareness of much worse and much more serious to come, groupings of revolutionary Marxists began to draw together again and in some cases reached some degrees of unification, but under the prevailing circumstances such unification had little practical results. However, each revolutionary grouping, spurred by the same relentless circumstances to becoming more organised and to evolving into Marxist organisations, were -each in its own way and according to its available means and capabilities- engaged in deepening and expanding the patriotic struggle. On August 5, 1979, the Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan (precursor of the ALO) collaborating in a united front with a number of militant Islamist organisations participated in a military uprising in the Bala Hissar garrison in Kabul (popularly remembered as the Bala Hissar insurrection). The insurrection was savagely quashed by the regime and a large number of Revolutionary Group cadres were killed in the fighting, succumbed under torture or were summarily executed. The correctness of the policy and line of action taken by the Revolutionary Group in forming a united front with Islamists and participating in a military uprising is still debated in Afghan Marxist circles, but as mentioned in an ALO document, the 5th August insurrection showed that Marxist patriots did not flinch from being in the first line of battle when defence of the people and independence of the motherland were at stake, and that seas of blood separate the Sholayis from Khalqi and Parchami revisionist traitors.
For Afghan Marxist revolutionaries it was a foregone conclusion that in the light of the outright rejection of the regime by the people and the regime’s increasing failure in all aspects of governance the Soviet Union would have to step in to safeguard its strategic interests. As was expected, the PDPA regime very quickly degenerated into a mêlée of party top dogs going for each other’s throats with Alexandre Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador and veteran spymaster, acting both as patron and referee. Hafizullah Amin, Taraki’s unscrupulous and megalomaniacally ambitious lieutenant in the Khalq faction very soon turned the Khalqis on the Parchamis and had the Parchami top brass banished and some of them handed over to the dreaded omnipotent AGSA secret police for “investigation”. Soon afterwards he turned on his mentor, Taraki, and, in a dramatic scene strongly reminiscent of New York mafiosi settling scores, there was a shoot-out in the presidential palace in the presence of the Soviet ambassador. The Soviet godfather had given the Kremlin’s tacit blessings to Taraki to have the egotistical Amin annihilated, but the plan went awry and Amin managed to escape unscathed while his trusted aide-de-camp Daoud Taroon was killed. This was the last straw. Amin had Taraki peremptorily arrested and assumed all his official titles. A couple of days later Taraki, the “Great Leader”, the “Prodigy of the East”, was smothered to death on orders of his “loyal pupil” and “devout disciple” Amin. Amin was now at the top and was effusive in his frequent eulogies of the Soviet Union, but he couldn’t fool the Soviets. He had foiled the Kremlin’s plans, had considerably embarrassed Moscow and had kicked out the Soviet old hand in political intrigue in Afghanistan who was present when he had his close call. But Moscow had taken pains to have spares. It now lifted a finger and Parchami bigwigs banished as ambassadors to different countries by the Khalqis scurried to receive their orders. On December 27, 1979, Babrak Karmal went on the air from a radio station in the then Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic dissembling Radio Afghanistan and announced the inauguration of the “new and evolutionary stage of the Glorious Saur Revolution”. Amin had on that day been poisoned by his Russian guards in his palace in Kabul and “limited contingents” of the Soviet army poured into Afghanistan with Babrak Karmal perched on the barrel of their tanks. The former informer of Prince Daoud and the KGB’s ace spook was now at the helm.
The War of Resistance
[tie_index]The War of Resistance[/tie_index]
Comrades of ALO in their post inside AfghanistanThe worst had come to pass. The homeland of a fanatically independent people had been occupied by a foreign invader and a despised quisling had been foisted on them at gunpoint as their ruler. The people flew to arms, often nothing better than kitchen knives or rusty 19th century firearms. For the revolutionary Marxist movement in Afghanistan it was a time of great tribulation. A fledgling movement which had not yet completely found it bearings and had not yet even teethed was saddled with the formidable challenge of putting its mark on a national liberation struggle against a superpower armed to the teeth. This was a country still in the throes of semi-feudal relations of production struggling with a primitive agricultural economy and an illiteracy rate of over 90% and, of course, deeply religious. The sacred sovereignty of such a people had been scandalously betrayed by “Marxists” and the integrity of such a country had been rudely violated by the country Lenin had built. Social-imperialism had struck home. The Afghan people’s concept of honour and the totality of their world outlook, encapsulated in their religious faith, had been battered and insulted. The masses were crying out for the blood of the atheist “communist” traitors. In such an atmosphere a fledgling revolutionary Marxist movement was expected to perform its historical mission.
Afghanistan is the homeland of different ethnic groups who due to the under-development of productive forces have not yet been completely fused into one nation in the strict sense of the word. The same factors which have prevented the people of Afghanistan from becoming a modern nation have for more than a millennium conditioned them to look to their Islamic religious belief as the one unifying agent of all social classes and all ethnic denominations, particularly in times of historical adversity. With the coming to power of the quisling PDPA and particularly after the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, the call for a Jihad –a Holy War– began to be echoed from all corners of the country’s plains and valleys. As against the British in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, this was the only way a people barely out of the Middle Ages, both spiritually and materially, could articulate the need for a patriotic war of resistance against an alien invader. Only Jihad could provide a burning motivation, a simple and well-understood ideological elucidation of the need and duty of giving up life and limb in an all-out concerted effort to rid the country from the defilement of indigenous traitors and their alien masters. Amid the cacophony of Islamic exhortations to a Jihad after the pro-Soviet coup d’état and particularly after the Soviet invasion, Islamic fundamentalist merchants of faith were reaping gold.
The Ikhwanis had made a bid for power during Daoud’s fateful years. Theirs was an exercise in folly as no segment of the Afghan society supported their feeble insurrections in Laghman and Panjsher. Most of their leaders were rounded up and put in jail and a number of them took refuge in neighbouring Pakistan where they offered their services to the intelligence agencies of the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. They were put on modest payrolls and put away for a rainy day. With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the wakening up of Western imperialism to this chance of getting even with its social-imperialist rival after the humiliating defeat of the US in Vietnam, they were brought out of the closet and made into leaders overnight. The deity must have been smiling down on them as the wily secular-minded Bhutto had been deposed by his Islamist Chief of Army Staff, General Zia-ul-Haq, and the US arms-and-money pipeline and Arab petrodollars began pouring in. Inflated with US and Arab arms and money and surfing on a high tide of popular anti-Soviet religious sentiment, the fundamentalist small-time paid agents burst onto the political scene as leaders of the Afghan Mujahedin freedom fighters, and by extension, leaders of the people of Afghanistan. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the murderer of Saydal Sokhandan in bygone years, rose to stardom by dint of his political acumen, cruel, unscrupulous nature and shameless obsequiousness to Pakistani generals and bigwigs charged with dispensing US and Arab arms and dollars. He had not forgotten old animosities. He declared the Sholayis, as true revolutionaries, to be “the principal enemy” and more than at a par with the Khalqis and Parchamis. In the words of a revolutionary Afghan writer:
“The revolutionary movement in Afghanistan was pitted not only against the Soviet aggressors. The Khomeini regime in Iran and the Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship in Pakistan saw eye-to-eye and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the Russians and the puppet regime in Kabul in decimating Marxist revolutionaries in Afghanistan and nullifying their work amongst the masses. Our fledgling revolutionary movement was under siege from all four directions.”
Hundreds of Afghan revolutionary Marxists were executed in the Polygon killing fields of Pol-i-Charkhy in Kabul during the Taraki-Amin period and later on during the Karmal and Najibullah years of Soviet occupation. Hundreds more were hunted down by Ikhwani parties in Pakistan and inside Afghanistan. The Khad secret services (the Afghan arm of the KGB) had a special section mandated with the task of annihilating all Sholayi organisations and groupings. The Sholayis were fighting against impossible odds. On the one hand they were duty bound to participate in the national liberation struggle, whether Jihad or War of Resistance, and on the other they had to fight off the KGB on one side and the Ikhwani bloodhounds on the other side. Yet participate in the national liberation struggle they did. The Afghanistan Liberation Organisation (the former Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan) and the Afghanistan People’s Liberation Organisation (SAMA) are two revolutionary organisations which have actively and tangibly participated in the War of Resistance. At one time SAMA even had liberated areas of its own. With such prominent presence in the national liberation struggle it was too much not to expect rabid Ikhwani reaction. The Islamists did not spare any Sholayi falling into their hands and spared no effort at getting at prominent comrades of the revolutionary movement. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami was the top bloodhound in hunting down Marxist revolutionaries. Many an intrepid revolutionary and many a stalwart patriot was gunned down or made to disappear without a trace in Peshawar, Pakistan, centre of resistance political and logistical activities. Comrade Dr Faiz Ahmad, veteran of the Marxist movement in Afghanistan and founding leader of the Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan and subsequently of the ALO was handed over to the Hizb-i-Islami by a traitor commissioned by the Hizb, and tortured to death. Tens of other ALO cadres and comrades were assassinated by the Hizb-i-Islami. It is a well known fact that Prof. Qayum Rahbar, leader of SAMA, was gunned down by Hizb-i-Islami hit men in Peshawar, although SAMA –for reasons of their own– have not yet documented this fact. Throughout the years of Russian occupation (by an irony of fate coinciding with the Zia-ul-Haq years in Pakistan) Afghan fundamentalist parties in general and Hizb-i-Islami in particular enjoyed highly privileged status afforded them by the Zia-ul-Haq regime. The resources of the Pakistan armed forces, intelligence services, police and the fundamentalist Jamaat-i Islami Pakistan party were all at the ready disposal of the Afghan fundamentalists, therefore Afghan revolutionaries and secular patriots had no refuge and no recourse to even a modicum of support or sympathy from the Pakistani authorities. By extension, they were deprived of any and all recognition and acknowledgement by the world media.
. . . Upto the present
[tie_index]. . . Upto the present[/tie_index]
The unsung and unnoticed revolutionary Marxist movement in Afghanistan, battered to nigh extinction from right and left, is outstanding by its resilience. The almost totality of its leaders and the absolute majority of its cadres and veterans have been decimated by either the Khalqis and Parchamis or by the Ikhwanis. Yet by the fiat of history the Marxist revolutionary movement is alive and immortal. The incredibly overpowering circumstances of the years of the War of Resistance compelled true communists to adopt tactics apposite to the situation. One such tactic was to infiltrate the ranks of belligerent reactionary Islamist parties and organisations at the grassroot level with the intention of authenticating their unseverable bond with the masses and acquiring arms and ammunition for revolutionary forces. A lasting monument to the contribution of revolutionary Marxists to the people’s War of Resistance against Soviet aggression is the fact that the names “Sholayis” and “Sholai Jawaid” have not been drowned out by fourteen years of thunderous Islamist stridency in a war which was never allowed by the Islamists to be labelled as anything but a war of Islam against atheism and communism. The prestige of Marxist revolutionaries has been enhanced by their active presence in frontlines of battle and the authentication of their personalities as intrepid, caring and popular individuals informed in military issues and evincing insight and discernment in political analyses. The known irreconcilability of revolutionary Marxists groupings and organisations with the puppet regime (notwithstanding the emergence of a few traitorous and capitulating elements amongst them) has greatly contributed to the growth of the revolutionaries’ prestige amongst the masses and amongst honest elements of the Islamist opposition. One very orthodox Muslim compatriot is on record as saying, “I am and always have been inimical towards the Sholayis but I do not for a moment doubt their patriotism and their love for the people.”
The War of Resistance against Soviet social-imperialism is over and the people of Afghanistan can rightfully claim the laurels of victory. Social-imperialism has been sent to its rightful place in the dustbin of history and classical Western imperialism is sure to follow suit sooner or later. But it is the historical misfortune of the people of Afghanistan that after giving the fatal mauling to the social-imperialist bear it now has to fend off rabid reactionary hyenas, the chained dogs of Western imperialism. As with the national liberation war of resistance against social-imperialism, the ALO shall continue to stand in the forefront of the battle with fundamentalist beasts.
The true communist movement in Afghanistan is beset by innumerable deficiencies, foremost amongst which are theoretical ambiguity and a concomitant organisational confusion; and is severely constrained in its political-awareness disseminating tasks. But it has amassed rich experience in combat activities and in work amongst the masses. Afghan revolutionary Marxists have become veterans in armed engagements with the enemy. Should it ever become possible for revolutionary Afghan Marxists to combine this fighting experience with a deeper understanding of class contradictions in Afghan society, with increased class consciousness of both its members and the toiling masses, and with the enjoyment of deeper trust of a people fatally betrayed in the name of Marxism-Leninism by social-imperialist stooges, history shall surely witness dramatic changes in the political arena in Afghanistan. The depth and breadth of the ignominy and savagery of the current Islamic fundamentalist rule in Afghanistan is unprecedented in contemporary world history, as is the devastation inflicted on the moral and material fabric of the country and the people. Not the fundamentalist but the ultra-fundamentalist beast is now worrying what is left of the living skin and bones of the Afghan people. What the world is witnessing in Afghanistan at the present juncture in time is ultra-reactionary religious fascism, mass gender apartheid and ultra-fundamentalism all rolled into one. Such unprecedented mediaeval tyranny is and shall be matched by the resilience, heroism and faith of true Afghan communists in their historical mission to deliver their country and people from the current inferno and to lead the toiling masses to a society free from the shackles of feudalism and the capitalist exploitation of the many by the few. This alone is sufficient to ensure that such an anachronistic political monstrosity cannot and should not live long. History shall always find the ALO at its post.
[tie_index]Glossary[/tie_index]
Glossary of Names and Terms mentioned in the Historical Overview
AGSA:Acronym for Afghanistan Gattho Satoonkai Aidara [Afghanistan Interests Safeguarding Administration] the dreaded secret police of the Tarkai-Amin regime.
Dr. Faiz Ahmad:Founder and leader of the Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan which in 1981 was reorganised and renamed Afghanistan Liberation Organisation. A veteran of the Sholai Jawaid political current, he was betrayed on November 12, 1986 into the hands of the Hizb-i-Islami by a traitor and immediately butchered to death.
Hafizullah Amin: Taraki’s sycophant and megalomaniacal lieutenant. Amin had a key role in assuring the success of the April 1978 coup d’état and dubbed himself the Brave Commander of the Saur Revolution. He was the key policy maker of the Khalq faction of the PDPA and murderer of Taraki when they fell foul of each other.
Bala Hissar: [The High Fortress] A military citadel rich in history located inside Kabul city. It was the seat of Afghan rulers throughout the 19th century and was in continuous use as a military garrison during most of the 20th century.
Bala Hissar insurrection: A military uprising in the Bala Hissar on August 5, 1979 which was brutally crushed by the Taraki regime. The uprising was engineered by the Jabhai Mobarezien-i Mujaheed-i Afghanistan [The Afghan Mujahdin Freedom-fighters’ Front (AMFF)] a united front of four struggling politico-military organisations including the Marxist ALO. The uprising was meant to be one in a string of simultaneous insurrections in key garrisons in the capital and major military bases in the provinces. The objective of the uprisings was to deal a crippling military and political blow to the PDPA regime and to pave the way for its military overthrow. The plan for the general uprising had been worked out in detail by a committee of military experts from participating parties but was found out by AGSA agents only 24 hours before the plan was due to go into action. The de-activation alert was flashed to all concerned military bases but failed to reach the Bala Hissar garrison which, true to its commitment, went into action at the appointed hour. The uprising was put down after many hours of fierce fighting in which a large number of ALO cadres and activists including some members of its central leadership were killed. The legitimacy of the ALO’s participation in such a putschist venture and its partnership with reactionary parties in such a united front has been hotly criticised and debated within the Afghan Marxist movement and within the ALO itself. The ALO’s consensual appraisal of the Bala Hissar insurrection is that it was a mistake inevitable under the then circumstances.
Zulfiqar AliBhutto:President of Pakistan. He gave refuge and support to Ikhwani dissidents, particularly after the quashing of their anti-Daoud insurrections in 1975, but toned down his support after Daoud began making reconciliatory overtures to Pakistan at the end of his rule.
Prince Daoud: Cousin of King Zahir Shah and prime minister of Afghanistan (1953-1963). In 1973 he staged a bloodless coup d’état and deposing his cousin proclaimed Afghanistan a republic with himself as president. He was killed in the bloody April 1978 coup which brought the PDPA to power.
Forward Policy:A policy formulated by the government of British India in the 19th century advocating direct intervention in Afghanistan against the interests of Tsarist Russia.
Fundamentalist: rabid Islamist
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: An engineering college dropout with a brief Parchami background who first gained notoriety in Kabul for savage acid sprayings onto the faces of young girls going about unveiled. In 1972 he murdered Saydal Sokhandan for which he spent some months in prison but was released when Daoud came to power. He immediately fled to Pakistan where he developed strong links with the Pakistani intelligence establishment. Known for his astute Machiavellian machinations in his lustful pursuit of power, he founded the Hizb-i-Islami in Pakistan and was the spoilt child of the CIA and the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] during the years of the War of Resistance.
Hizb-i-Islami:[Islamic Party] The most dreaded of fundamentalist parties, responsible for thousands of murders of intellectuals and personalities opposed to its policies or standing in the way of its craving for power. Founded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Hizb-i-Islami continuously received more than half of all cash and arms assistance pouring in mainly from the West, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and China. This was due to the Hizb’s ruthlessness and its unquestioning loyalty to the dictates of the Pakistani military intelligence agency vested with the mandate to organise and direct the anti-Soviet war effort on behalf of western imperialism and regional reaction.
Ikhwani:name given to Islamist activists in Afghanistan. The name has been taken from what the first Islamist group in Kabul University circles called itself in the 1960s, in imitation of the prototype Egyptian Ikhwan al-Muslimeen [Muslim Brotherhood] founded by Hassan al-Bana in the 1920s and reflective of the fact that nearly all the ideologues and linchpins of the group had been educated in Egypt’s al-Azhar University, a breeding ground for Islamism and reaction. The group later renamed itself Jawanan-i Mussulman [Muslim Youth] but the popular designation of “Ikhwani” to denote Islamists and educated religious bigots remained ingrained.
Islamist:advocate of political Islam and a socio-political order based on the Quran.
Jamaat-i Islami Pakistan: [Pakistan Islamic Society] A reactionary fundamentalist party in Pakistan which was Zia-ul-Haq’s political constituency during his years of military dictatorship. This party acted as a procurer of Afghan Islamist agents for Zia’s military intelligence department and regarded Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as the perfect specimen of an Islamist hero. The Jamaat-i Islami was instrumental in catapulting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to the fame and position of trust he enjoyed with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, which in turn was conducive to the Hizb-i-Islami’s armed might and political influence.
Jihad:[Holy War] Islamic equivalent of the Christian crusade. The national liberation War of Resistance against Soviet social-imperialism in Afghanistan was universally termed Jihad due to the immediate religious appeal of the appellation to the deeply religious Afghan masses, and to underscore the leadership of Islamists who from the very beginning of the national liberation struggle were patronised by the pro-Islamist regime of Zia-ul-Haq acting on behalf of world imperialism and regional reaction.
Babrak Karmal:Ace political agent of Kremlin strategists during the Brezhnev era in Afghanistan. Karmal was a co-founder of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in 1965 and led the Parcham faction against Noor Mohammad Taraki’s rival Khalq faction. Karmal’s political career was characterised by his servile loyalty to the Soviet Union’s social-imperialist policies and the overriding priority he placed on Soviet interests in Afghanistan. He was Moscow’s man when the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan in the closing days of 1979. Karmal went to great lengths to embellish the image of his puppet regime but he was much too despised as an arch-traitor and a sold-out fifth-columnist to command much respect. He was demoted in disgrace by his own party in 1985 after winds of change began to blow in the Soviet Union with Gorbachov’s glasnost and perstroïka. His name has popularly become synonymous with the highest degree of political infamy.
Khad: Dari (Persian) acronym for State Intelligence Services, the local branch of the KGB and the powerful Afghan secret police and counter-insurgency organisation at the time of the Soviet occupation.
Khalq: [The Masses] Name of the first mouthpiece publication of the PDPA, owned by Noor Mohammad Taraki. The weekly was banned after a few issues but the “people’s democratic ideas” set forth in those few issues were propounded by adherent of the PDPA who shortly afterwards split into two rival factions, one led by Noor Mohammad Taraki and the other by Babrak Karmal. Because the newspaper was owned by Taraki, his faction came to be denoted by the name of his newspaper. The name was the emblem of the Taraki-Amin regime after the PDPA seized power in 1978 but was changed after the Russians invaded Afghanistan.
Khalqi:[Populist] A follower of, or pertaining to, the Khalq faction of the PDPA.
Mir Akbar Khyber: One of the founding fathers of the PDPA and key figure in the Parcham faction. Known as a moderate, he outshone Karmal as an ideologue. His assassination in April 1978 was, like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, the spark that lit the conflagration that has reduced Afghanistan to ashes during the past 19 years. It is widely suspected that the KGB engineered Khyber’s assassination to galvanise the newly-reunited PDPA rank-and-file and to bait Daoud into open confrontation with the PDPA, and at the same time to eliminate a powerful rival to Karmal’s fanatic pro-Soviet leadership of the Parcham faction.
Mujahedin: [Holy Warriors] Participants in the Jihad.
Najibullah: A leader of the Parcham faction of the PDPA who rose to lead the PDPA after Karmal was disgraced in 1985. Trained as a doctor and known as Dr Najib he was the Parcham faction’s prize orator in the pre-reunification PDPA. He was banished as ambassador to Iran by Hafizullah Amin a few months after the PDPA seized power but was brought back together with Karmal by the Soviet army in 1979 and given the top-sensitive and highly powerful post of head of Khad. He used this post to build a strong power base and was directly involved in massacres of civilians and executions of thousands of captured opponents of the regime, and in frequent acts of sabotage both in Peshawar, the logistical and political base of the resistance movement, and elsewhere in Pakistan. He came out as party strongman after Karmal was dismissed in disgrace and, inspired by Gorbachov, set out on a perestroïka of his own. Having seen the writing on the wall he determined to salvage what he could. He therefore announced a national reconciliation policy and purposefully began scraping off the red paint from the image of the PDPA and the regime. His Machiavelism and powerful oratory powers may have carried the day but his past as operator of the regime’s infamous torture machine could never be forgotten by the people. From spymaster and hangman he metamorphosed into a statesman and signed up to UN efforts to undo the damage he had been so instrumental in causing. That was never to be and he failed in his last-ditch attempt to flee the country with UN aid immediately before the armed fundamentalist opposition poured into Kabul. He remained holed-up in the deserted UN compound in Kabul for over four years until he was dragged out and butchered in the first victorious act of the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban after they had chased the Rabbani regime out of Kabul in September 1996.
Parcham: [The Banner] Mouthpiece publication of the PDPA after their first weekly paper was banned. Unlike the first newspaper Khalq, Parcham was both owned and edited by PDPA members who followed Babrak Karmal after the party split into two rival factions. For this reason, Babrak Karmal’s faction of the PDPA came to be designated by the name of their newspaper.
Parchami: [Bannerist] A follower of, or pertaining to, the Parcham faction of the PDPA.
Pashtunistan: Daoud’s dispute with Pakistan and favourite foreign policy issue. Pashtunistan means “land of the Pashtuns”; Pashtuns are a conglomeration of kindred tribes straddling the ill-defined Durand Line border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Over half the population of Afghanistan are Pashtuns and the Pashtun elite have been the traditional rulers of Afghanistan since the second half of the 18th century. At one time all Pashtun areas had been under the jurisdiction of kings of Afghanistan but during the 19th century the eastern part of Pashtun territory became annexed with British India (later to become part of Pakistan) while the bigger western portion became part of Afghanistan. The separation has always been resented but over the years a resigned attitude set in as tribes on both side of the border accommodated themselves to the status quo. Daoud picked upon this issue and made it the centrepiece of his foreign policy. His gravitation towards the Soviet Union in the late 1950s was to a large extent conditioned by the Soviets’ support for his policy in regard to what he called Pashtunistan. This was an ill-defined and thinly masked policy of irredentism couched in terms of support for the self-determination of Pashtuns and Balouches on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line.
PDPA: The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, founded on January 1st, 1965. The founders all claimed to be Marxist-Leninists and unquestioningly supported the policies and positions of the Soviet Union versus the interests of the people of Afghanistan. The role of Soviet agents in setting up the PDPA has not been established but it is an established fact that the leadership developed close ties with the Soviet embassy in Kabul. Noor Mohammad Taraki and Babrak Karmal were the recognised leaders of the party from its inception, but the personality clash between the two and the divergent social backgrounds of their supporters resulted in a split in the party within a year after its founding. The supporters of Noor Mohammad Taraki, known as Khalqis, were mainly of Pashtun stock and came from rural backgrounds while the supporters of Babrak Karmal, known as Parchamis, were mostly non-Pashtun urban petty-bourgeois. They remained divided in everything but name and loyalty to the Soviet Union for over a decade until reunited on instructions from Moscow shortly before the April 1978 coup d’état that brought them to power. The marriage did not last long; the Khalqis rid themselves of the Parchamis but the Soviets favoured the Parchamis and reinstated them in power after they occupied Afghanistan. Thereafter the Khalqis and Parchamis co-existed cat-and-mouse-like until the final debacle of Soviet social-imperialism and the scandalous end of its lackeys. The present devastation of Afghanistan is the direct result of the PDPA’s criminal performance when in power.
Polygon: Execution grounds near the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul where thousands of patriots were shot and buried (many were buried alive) during the Taraki-Amin reign of terror.
Alexandre Puzanov:Top KGB expert on Afghanistan and Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan in three successive regimes (Zahir Shah, Daoud, Taraki) throughout the 1970s. Puzanov was a KGB coup d’état expert with field experience in more than one country before being posted to Afghanistan. His last mission in high-level intrigue and manipulation in Afghanistan failed when the plan to assassinate Hafizullah Amin in his presence in the presidential palace in Kabul misfired. He was kicked out by Amin and coldly received back in Moscow.
PYO: Progressive Youth Organisation: A Marxist-Leninist Mao Zedong Thought organisation set up in 1965. The PYO was the guiding force behind the Sholai Jawaid political current in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The PYO leadership were sincere revolutionaries but inexperienced in systematic political struggle and organized wor. Due to its manifold shortcomings, the PYO could not develop its political and organisational capabilities to accommodate the vast numbers of urban intelligentsia attracted to it. It failed to build a strong structured organisational apparatus and to balance overt and covert forms of political struggle. Despite the fact that the PYO never openly divulged its name and existence (PYO adherents were known as Sholayis), all its cadres were brought out into the open in student political debates and street demonstrations; the decimation of Sholayi cadres particularly at the hands of Khalqis and Parchamis is to a great extent in consequence of this mistake. The Sholai Jawaid political current expanded on the surface, but the PYO failed in giving depth to the movement by taking it amongst the masses and breaking its intellectual cocoon. The PYO weakened after heightened criticism of its shortcomings and was dissolved as a political organisation in the early 1970s; its political life, however, was continued by Marxist-Leninist organisations and groupings which carried on the struggle. The ALO is one of the successors of the PYO.
Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan:A group formed by Dr Faiz Ahmad after the PYO failed to respond to criticism of its shortcomings. The group espoused the political doctrines of the PYO and set itself the task of succeeding where the PYO had failed. In contrast to the PYO, the Revolutionary Group was highly structured and better disciplined. In its quest for rectifying the mistakes of the PYO, the Revolutionary Group overemphasised the shifting of cadres to work amongst the peasantry in the rural countryside. The coup d’état of April 1978 drastically changed all political priorities and necessitated a rethinking of positions in the interests of the national liberation struggle. The Revolutionary Group entered into alliance with a number of moderate Islamist organisations in a united front against the Soviet-backed Taraki regime. Its cadres and members actively participated in what became known as the Bala Hissar insurrection. The crushing of the insurrection dealt a painful blow at the Revolutionary Group which lost a number of its key members. With the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Army in 1979, the Revolutionary Group heightened its political and military struggle. In order to reflect the new challenges and new priorities facing a revolutionary Afghan Marxist organisation in conditions of unmasked social-imperialist onslaught, the Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan published a detailed political manifesto Mash’al-i Rihayi [The Beacon of Emancipation] in 1980 and declared itself Sazman-i Rihayi Afghanistan [Afghanistan Liberation Organisation (ALO)].
SAMA:Acronym for Sazman-i Azadibakhsh-i Mardom-i Afghanistan [Afghanistan People’s Liberation Organisation]. SAMA was the result of the fusion of a number of patriotic Marxist and leftist groupings and circles in 1979 with the popular and charismatic Majid Kalakani playing a key role in its formation. SAMA succeeding in orchestrating spectacular switch-overs of whole military garrisons in Hussain Kot (north of Kabul) and Paktia province to the side of the resistance which won it widespread popular acclaim. It received a deadly blow when Majid Kalakani was captured by Khad agents in Kabul in March 1980 and was executed shortly afterwards. SAMA guerrilla operations, however, did not cease and they had a heavy presence and broad influence, including liberated areas, in a number of provinces.
Saur: [Taurus = the Bull; April 21-March 20], the second sign of the Zodiac and the second month of the solar calendar officially used in Afghanistan.
Sazman-i Rihayi Afghanistan:[Afghanistan Liberation Organisation (ALO)] The ALO is the upgraded Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan, coming onto the political stage and the national liberation struggle arena in its new identity with the publication of its manifesto Mash’al-i Rihayi in 1980. The ALO took active part in the anti-Soviet national liberation war of resistance but due to the harsh dictates of an uncongenial political atmosphere has seldom been allowed to publicise details of its contribution. As with SAMA and other revolutionary Marxist organisations, the ALO’s active and selfless participation in the national liberation struggle earned it the implacable ire of both the now-defunct puppet regime and their Russian masters and of the different fundamentalist groupings fighting in the war of resistance, particularly Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami. This latter fundamentalist party had declared the Sholayis as their “principal enemy”, therefore the remarkable performance of the Sholayis in a domain they jealously regarded off limits to any but rabid reactionaries was considered intolerable. Physical annihilation of key activists of the ALO was high on their agenda. A number of ALO members and activists were assassinated in Pakistan as were a large number of ALO members inside Afghanistan. In November 1986 Dr Faiz Ahmad, the founder and leader of the ALO, together with a number of key ALO members were delivered into the hands of Hizb-i-Islami by a traitor who formerly worked with the ALO. The deaths of Dr Faiz Ahmad and his close associates dealt a deadly blow to the ALO but the soundness of the organisational structure, the intrepidity and revolutionary training that Dr Faiz Ahmad and the leadership of the ALO had taken pains to build into their organisation stood the ALO in good stead in its hour of trial. The ALO did not collapse, as had been intended, but rallied to carry on the unfinished work of the fallen comrades. After the coming to power of the fundamentalists, the ALO has the stamina and the organisational infrastructure to carry on the revolutionary struggle in this new phase of our people’s travail and agony. Despite its acknowledged shortcomings, constraints and handicaps, the ALO is keeping aloft the banner of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought in Afghanistan.
Sholai Jawaid:[The Eternal Flame] The mouthpiece publication of the Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO). The revolutionary political current that was set in motion with the publication of 11 issues of Sholai Jawaid in 1968 (and came to be known after the name of the weekly newspaper) advocated New Democracy (Mao Zedong Thought) and gained immediate and widespread support amongst urban workers and intelligentsia, becoming one of the major political currents of its time. After the dissolution of the PYO, the Sholai Jawaid political entity was carried on by a number of disunited successor revolutionary organisations and groupings.
Sholayi:[“Flame-ist”] A follower of, or pertaining to, the Sholai Jawaid political current. The Sholayis’ endorsement of the line of the Communist Party of China in the ideological controversy between the communist parties of the Soviet Union and China earned them the accusation of being supported by China and serving Chinese interests in the same servile way that the PDPA was advocating Russian interests. Opponents believed that the Sholayis maintained links with China and the Chinese embassy in Kabul much on the same lines as the Khalqis and Parchamis maintained liaison with the Soviet Union and with the KGB representative in the Soviet embassy, but during the three decades since, and despite the opening up of secret archival intelligence records in Kabul –and notwithstanding the fact that Khalqis, Parchamis and Ikhwanis have spared no effort in befouling the image of the Sholayis– there has yet been absolutely no substantiation of the accusation. History is the ultimate arbitrator. The cataclysm of the past two decades in Afghanistan have put the claims, beliefs, assertions and accusations of all political entities through a trial of fire and blood. China was a main arms contributor to the anti-Soviet war effort in Afghanistan, but the Sholayis’ challenge to any and all to produce a shred of evidence that a single cent or a single bullet was supplied by the Chinese to a Sholayi grouping before or during the national liberation war of resistance is still open and unmet. Much to the chagrin of Sholayis, many a Sholayi stalwart has been laid low by Chinese-supplied arms in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. The Chinese Communist Party failed miserably in its internationalist duty to succour Afghan revolutionary Marxists in the slightest way during the years of anti-social-imperialist struggle.
Social-imperialism:Socialism in word and imperialism in deed; the essence and policies of the Soviet Union from the mid-1950s onwards.
Saydal Sokhandan:A science faculty student at Kabul University and prominent Sholayi speaker. His death at the hands of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar himself during a student clash between Sholayis and Ikhwanis on Kabul University campus in June 1972 was the first of thousands committed by Hekmatyar and his Hizb-i-Islami.
Noor Mohammad Taraki:Founder and leader of the PDPA. An insignificant writer, he headed the Khalq faction of the PDPA and was elected first secretary of the party when the two factions united shortly before the April 1978 coup which brought them to power. Highly susceptible to flattery and sycophancy, he revelled in the bombastic titles of “Great Leader” and “Prodigy of the East” and the signs of adulation Amin (his “loyal pupil” and “devout disciple”) heaped upon him after became the first president and prime minister of the “Saur Revolution” regime. Amin very well understood Taraki’s weak points and exploited them to gain increasing sway over his “master” and to reduce Taraki to a figurehead. Taraki was awakened to the peril looming over him and with the connivance of the Soviet ambassador hatched a crude conspiracy to get rid of Amin. The conspiracy misfired; Taraki was arrested and smothered to death with a pillow on Amin’s orders.
Daoud Taroon:Aide-de-camp and confident of Hafizullah Amin. He was killed in a presidential palace shout-out in September 1979 while trying to shield the intended victim, Hafizullah Amin, in a conspiracy hatched with the connivance of the Soviet ambassador.
Zahir Shah, King:Last King of Afghanistan [reigned 1933-1973]. He was deposed by his egotistical cousin, Daoud, who had been his prime minister [1953-1963].
Zia-ul-Haq:Military dictator of Pakistan [1977-1988]. He proclaimed martial law in Pakistan after deposing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto whom he hanged on charges of killing a political opponent. Zia had a strong penchant towards Islamists, and being void of any political following made the fundamentalist Jamaat-i Islami Pakistan into his political constituency and power base. He was instrumental in nurturing Afghan fundamentalist parties to the detriment of all other political forces fighting in the national liberation war of resistance against Soviet social-imperialism by giving them the totality of aid flowing in from all over the world for the anti-Soviet war effort. He was killed in a mysterious air crash in 1988.