The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

traveled back and forth. Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters triumphantly declared an IslamicRevolution and the rule of Islam in all spheres of life in Iran that February. Perhaps thatwave reached Herat as well?Whatever the cause, on March 12, 1979, crowds of agitated peasants entered Heratfrom different directions. City-dwellers joined the peasants in the streets, and that mass ofpeople, armed with sticks and stones and shouting “Allah Akbar,” poured into the center ofthe city. The party committee and all of the local organs of power were ransacked. PDPAactivists were torn to pieces by the mob, and their houses were burned down. Herat,normally so peaceful and quiet, had become a raging inferno overnight. The military’sattempts to pacify the mob by firing rounds overhead from armored vehicles that rolledalong the streets had the reverse effect. The crowd grew more agitated, and appeals tostorm the military base itself and seize the arsenal of weapons were heard across the city.On March 14, the senior military adviser to the commander of the division, ColonelStanislav Katichev, requested assistance from Kabul. General Gorelov ordered Katichev toopen artillery fire on the rebels and promised to assist in “keeping the situation undercontrol.” Soldiers from the artillery unit began to position their weapons to fire into theangry crowds.By that time, the Soviet colony in Herat had assumed its first losses. Yuri Bogdanov,a wool merchant, was brutally murdered in his home. His wife was miraculously saved byher Afghan neighbors, who hid her battered, broken body from the raging crowd. MajorNikolai Biziukov was brutally murdered when rebels intercepted his jeep en route to theSeventeenth Division.The violence that had overtaken Herat was completely unexpected. Before, it had355