Thread by @tequieremos

The tyrannical regime of Afghan communists finds few parallels in the annals of history. Two million Afghans died. 78% of the training institutions were destroyed. Hundreds of students were abducted and summarily executed.

In this thread, I'm sharing some important facts.

https://twitter.com/Taimur_Laal/status/1387080379010535424

The Communist era in Afghanistan began on 27 April 1978 when President Daud and his 18 family members were massacred in a bloody coup d'etat by the militants of Afghan Communist Party (PDPA) who subsequently dignified it with the title ‘The Great Saur [April] Revolution’.

Kabul University is one of the oldest institutions in Afghanistan. In 1977, 750 faculty members were working. After the coup, 36 were executed and 276 were emigrated. Hundreds of students were abducted and summarily executed. Number of students reduced from 14000 to 6000 in 1984.

Around 78% of the training institutions were destroyed by the communist regime.

The number of schools in Afghanistan in 1977:

High Schools 163
Middle Schools 350
Primary Schools 1154

In 1984 during the communist rule:

High Schools 44
Middle Schools 78
Primary Schools 210

In 1984, there were no village schools outside of Kabul. Male teachers were either killed or emigrated to foreign countries. As a result, the number of female teachers in Kabul tripled.

73% of high schools, 78% middle schools and 82% primary schools were destroyed by communists.

After the bloody military coup on 27 April 1979, Noor Taraki became both the President and PM. As a 34 year old Marxist journalist and writer, he was recruited as a Soviet agent in 1951 with codename NUR. He was an islamophobe who killed 10,000 Afghans in his reign of terror.

Taraki believed he had learned from the Bolshevik Revolution that Afghanistan was in need of Red Terror.

‘Lenin taught us to be merciless towards the enemies of the revolution, and millions of people had to be eliminated in order to secure the victory of the October Revolution’

But God works in mysterious ways. Taraki was mercilessly killed by his fellow Communists. Security guards of Hafizullah Amin tied Taraki to a bed and suffocated him with a cushion.

Amin had became the Prime Minister and and also the defense minister during Taraki's Presidency.

But Amin proved to be an even more dangerous lunatic than Taraki. He embarked on a bloody sovietization of the country. He killed and tortured thousands including those from the Khalq faction of communist party by electrocution, castration, impalement, slow freezing and burning.

Because of his ruthless reign of terror which included the Communists as well, the KGB thought that Amin might be a CIA agent. The blood soaked tyrant was removed and replaced by Babrak Kamal who was another KGB agent. He was recruited in 1950s, and given the codename MARID.

In December 2006, a communist-era mass grave, close to the Puli Charkhi prison was found. The grave held some 2,000 bodies. Officials believe that the massacre took place between 1978 and 1986 when communist presidents, Nur Taraki, Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal were in power.

The Soviet occupation in Afghanistan was genocidal. According to a United Nations report from 1986, 33,000 Afghan civilians were killed between January and September 1985 alone. The decade long occupation led to the death of 2 million Afghans.

Another Afghan communist whose atrocities are often whitewashed is Najibullah. He was a KGB agent with code name POTOMOK. As Chief of KHAD, he tortured people with electrocutions, red hot skewers and mock executions. More than 33,000 Afghans died in few months in 1985.

Ali Zahma who studied with President Najibullah wrote in his book, “He was a good terrorist, torturer and killer”

Embarrassed by the reference to Allah in his surname, Najibullah asked to be known instead as ‘Comrade Najib’.

According to the UN, Najibullah’s secret police used sexual violence against men and women raping victims with bottles, bullets. He sometimes executed prisoners himself. His preferred method, according to survivors, was to beat his victims to the ground, then kick them to death.

Pashtun nationalists from Pakistan and especially the leaders of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) have been portraying the Afghan communists as their heroes; the same communists who massacred Pashtuns in Afghanistan.

Reference:

1. Sovietization of Afghan Education by Prof Dr Yusuf Elmo
2. Afghan Women Between Marxism and Islamic Fundamentalism by Parwin Ali Majrooh
3. The World Was Going Our Way by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin
4. The Great Jihad

* ‘The Great Jihad’ is a chapter from Eric Margolis's book "War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan and Asia". It was published by Key Porter Books Limited in 2017.