Happy Holidays from Afghan Historian!

Members of the Taliban in front of a #Christmas tree at the Texas home of UNOCAL’s Vice President in December 1997. UNOCAL [Union Oil Company of California] was acquired by Chevron in 2005. Taliban also made a stop in Washington DC. Thread: Dec 8, 1997: "Acting Minister of Mines & Industry" Ahmad Jan, "Acting Minister of Information & Culture" Amir Khan Mottaqi & "Acting Minister of Planning" Din Mohammad (ethnic Tajik) meet with American diplomats Karl Inderfurth & Michael Malinowski.

Mottaqi asked to be friends..

Qala-i Jangi was the 1st battle of post 9/11 AFG war. Took place in "fort of war" outside Mazar-i Sharif & led to deaths of @CIA officer Mike Spann, dozs of Northern Alliance & ~300 Al-Qaeda fighters who'd staged fake surrender planned by Mullah Fazl. How did it happen? 1/25 - TH Fazl (here w Noori) & Dostum had made deal on prisoners Nov. 21. CIA later found Dostum had received $500K from Fazl to ensure the latter safe passage. Present for deal was Amir Jan Naseri, fmr. Taliban who had switched sides to Dostum. Nature of deal murky to this day 2/25 - TH

21 years ago, the CIA’s Team Alpha linked up with Abdul Rashid Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek warlord and one of the most controversial figures in Afghanistan history. I interviewed Dostum in Sheberghan in Nov 2020 - last interview, I think, b4 Taliban takeover 1/48 - TH So what did Team Alpha’s first impressions of Dostum. All this is drawn from my book First Casualty. It was clear to the CIA men that Dostum inspired unquestioning loyalty from his men, who viewed him with a combination of love, fear, and awe. 2/48 - TH

Here's @CIA Team Alpha at Karshi-Khanabad (K2) in Uzbekistan just b4 insertion into Afghanistan. They ranged in age from 29 to 49 - 2 spies, 4 paramilitaries, 1 medic & 1 soldier. 1 of them would not return. So who were these men & what was their mission in Afghanistan? 1/9 - TH I've covered David Tyson & Scott Spellmeyer. Team Alpha chief was J.R. Seeger, @CIA case officer based in San Francisco on 9/11 liaising w @FBI. A Dari speaker, he had worked with Afghan mujahideen in 80s out of CIA's Islamabad station. Fmr. 82nd Airborne captain 2/9 - TH

First Casualty book cover (& @AfghanHistorian profile pic for now) is Nov 27, 2001 at Qala-i Jangi. Show 1 of Dostum's commanders (who'd lost a leg in Soviet era) + @CIA's David Tyson & Scott Spellmeyer discussing battle against AQ fighters in the fort 1/4 - TH David Tyson was an Uzbek linguist at CIA station in Tashkent. Deep specialist in Central Asia, former academic at Indiana Univ. On 9/11 he'd been flying to London to discuss Stinger missile retrieval. Had been in U.S. Army but limited military experience. 2/4 - TH

December 2001: “At around 11 a.m. one day in the first week of December, a group of about 300 armed Hazaras arrived at the remote Pashtun village of Bargah-e Afghani, located in the Chimtal district of Balkh province.” 1/? “Just two days prior to the arrival of the Hazara fighters, the villagers of Bargah-e Afghani had handed over their firearms to Manzullah Khan, an Uzbek commander of Junbish, and in return had received a written confirmation from him that they had been disarmed.” 2/?

1980s: USID awarded $60m to Uni. of Nebraska at Omaha to produce children books for Afghan refugees in Pakistan

Pg1 “T” (te) of alphabet for topak (weapon) ex “My uncle has a weapon”

Pg2 “J” (jim) for jihad ex “Jihad is mandatory” “Jamil went to jihad” &“I too will go to jihad” Books for Afghan refugee kids in PAK were also used in AFG by 1990s.

In 2014 NPR interview, Intel. Education Prof Dana Burde said “as part of war efforts [referring to Cold War]..the alphabet of jihad literacy tried to solidify the links between violence & religious obligation.”

August 20, 1998: “Good afternoon. Today I ordered our Armed Forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan because of the imminent threat they presented to our national security,” said President Bill Clinton. “Two weeks ago, 12 Americans & nearly 300 Kenyans & Tanzanians lost their lives, & another 5,000 were wounded when our embassies in Nairobi & Dar es Salaam were bombed,” said Clinton. Intel community said it was bin Laden’s network. Read full address: clintonwhitehouse6.archives.gov/1998/08/1998-0…

Aug 1998: Physicians for Human Rights publishes “The Taliban War on Women: A Health & Human Rights Crisis in Afghanistan” 2 years after Taliban took Kabul.

Report includes survey of 160 Afghan women, 40 case testimonies & interviews. LINK: rb.gy/gfoazb 🧵 Key findings PHR's researcher visiting Kabul in 1998, “saw a city of beggars -- women who had once been teachers and nurses now moving in the streets like ghosts under their enveloping burqas,” begging so as to feed their children. Taliban had banned women from working.

#Kanishka I was, the greatest, and certainly the most famous, of the #Kushan kings.
He is known, from the combined testimony of the literary, epigraphic, and numismatic sources, to have ruled over an extensive dominion extending from Bihar in the east to #Khorasan
@atalbrave

https://twitter.com/AfghanHistorian/status/1160132426905063424

in the west, and from #Khotan in the north to, perhaps, #Konkan in the south.

The Buddhist site of #TapaSardar
Buddhist sanctuary rises on a hill which dominates a vast portion of the Dasht-i Manara plain Ghanzi #Afghanistan. The excavation of the site, carried out by the Italian Archaeological Mission between the late 1960s and the late 1970s.
@atalbrave As attested by an inscribed votive pot found in the site, the sanctuary was known in the past as the #Kanika mahārāja vihāra (“the temple of the Great King #Kanishka”). This evidence confirms that the sacred area of Tapa Sardar was founded during the #Kushan period

The site of Tepe Narenj, which literally means “orange hill”, stands on a relief that is currently denoted as Koh-e Zamburak, or “mountain of the small wasp”, situated on the eastern slopes of the #Hindukush mountain chain, only a few kilometers South of #Kabul #Afghanistan so far only partially investigated, it covers an area of more than four hectares and occupies a dominant position; it faces East and is quite visible from a considerable distance. The site has earlier origins, dated by pottery, paleographic and numismatic finds to the 2nd-3rd CE

#MazarMassacre: There is no way to precisely know how many were killed in weeks following the fall of Mazar to Taliban in 1998. Hazaras & Uzbeks were killed in reprisal for killing thousands of Taliban after a failed attempt by Taliban to take Mazar in May-July 1997. Source HRW. Taliban tried to take Mazar twice before Aug1998. After Taliban killed Pres Najib in 1996, there was an attempt for peace. "I’ve proposed to Taliban not continue with this war since it’s better to solve our problems peacefully, through negotiations rather than fighting,” -Dostum.

Thread on Naghlu Dam
Tweets by AF (@TheFahimi): 1/8

Khrushchev and Bulganin welcomed by PM Muhammad Daud Khan in #Kabul in Dec 1955. They agreed to extend a $100 million aid by USSR to #Afghanistan which would build #Naghlu dam, Bagram military airfield and Darunta dam. 2/8
Naghlu dam, also #Afghanistan’s largest hydropower plant with a 100 MW generation capacity, is located on Kabul River in Surobi district of #Kabul. Work on the dam started in January 1960 and by 1968 the dam was ready for operation. /AF

June 13, 2020. #AhmadZahir would have been 74 years old today. MM 1/11 While the details of #AhmadZahir's death are shrouded in both mystery and controversy, it seems more apt to celebrate the societal contributions he made during his life. MM 2/11

“The Revolution of 7th Saur has been victorious & armed forces of the country are in control. We congratulate the people of Afghanistan,” said radio announcement on repeat across #Afghanistan. A government formed with leaders of People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (THREAD) The new government led by Nur Mohammed Taraki paraded their support in Kabul. They had killed Pres Daoud Khan & 17 members of his family (cousin King Zahir Shah watched from exile in Italy after 1973 coup ended Afghan Monarchy) buried them all in a mass grave discovered in 2008.

This is my last thread for @AfghanHistorian on the events of January-April 1992 which led to the collapse of the Communist State in #Afghanistan. I will end with some concluding thoughts and questions for further studies. 25 April: after a month of negotiations btw Tanzim leaders, Peshawar Accord was reached. It agreed 4 d formation of d Transition Council (Shura-i Intiqali) for 2 months led by Prof. Mojaddadi (comprised of 10 nominees of tanzims, 10 ulama,& 30 field com.) (TS)

With fall of Mazar, a military council (Harakat-i-Shamal-the Movement of the North) was set up under leadership of Dostum. Members: Alam Khan(Jamiat), Juma K. Hamdard(Hizb), Mas’ab (Wahdat), Abdul Wahid (Harakat); militia(Rasul, Ghaffar, Rozi, Jaffar Naderi),& PDPA (Momin&Hilal) On 21 March, interestingly Gen. Azimi was invited to raise the Jand-e-Bala in Mazar New Year celebrations in which all d Movement of the North members were present. This gave further legitimacy to the Movement. In his speech, Azimi makes no mention of the central government.

Thread:
Salam. I am @TimorSharan, & it is my pleasure to take over the role of @AfghanHistorian for the next few days to tweet about the events leading up to the collapse of Dr. Najibullah’s government as we approach the anniversary of the Mujahedeen victory (TS) I am an academic & a former public servant, currently working on a book on d emergence of a “network state” n post-2001 #Afghanistan. My PhD research was on network politics of international intervention&statebuilding,Exeter University. Profile photo is Dr. Najibullah & PDPA (TS)

(1/13) The power struggle within the State Dept. in fall 1996 had two factions: 1) the Afghan desk, under the South Asia Bureau run by Asst. Sec. Robin Raphel, whose members like Lee Coldren were not on board with the Admin's broader attempts to center women's rights as an (2/13) important foreign policy issue & who wanted to engage with the new #Taliban regime in #Afghanistan due to other US interests in Central Asia; and 2) women's rights advocates in the State Dept., especially members of the Office of Global Women's Issues (#OIWI). The first

(1/19) I left off yesterday with the #Taliban seizure of #Kabul in Sept. 1996. The #UnitedStates & much of the international community had largely ignored #Afghanistan since the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, so US policymakers, journalists, & others were startled by the Taliban's (2/19) seemingly sudden seizure of power & were especially troubled by the Taliban's treatment of the people of Kabul. Had the US news been paying attention before Sept. 1996, they would have seen that, although the Taliban initially positioned themselves as wanting to rescue...