The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

“Last spring, anti-government actions in Pamir and some Pashtun tribes intensified.Khalqis responded to those actions with cruel crackdowns and military actions, includingaerial bombardment and destruction of entire villages with half-ton bombs. At the sametime, measures that Gailani labeled as ‘challenging the honor of Afghan people’ wereundertaken. In accordance with Decree Number Seven, party activists who were sent to theprovinces from Kabul began the forced education of women in villages, and demanded thatthey refuse to wear traditional Muslim attire. Muslim women did not appreciate suchdemands. Their resistance was strongly supported by their husbands, fathers, andbrothers.“Pashtun tribes were prohibited from congregating in their traditional Jirga. Someattempts at conducting Jirga were interrupted by executions and aerial bombardment.Abdullah, Hafizullah Amin’s older brother, the power-obsessed maniac who had been putin charge of security for the Northern provinces, ordered the drowning of innocent Hazarain ponds near Kunduz, in front of the city’s residents. Those Hazara were killed simplybecause Abdullah Amin felt some chauvinistic hatred towards them. (One should mentionthat the execution of people and slaughtering of animals by drowning, as well assuffocation, is considered to be the gravest sin according to Muslim tradition becauseduring such a murder, blood, believed by Muslims to contain an individual’s soul, is notreleased from the body.) There were cases of party activists, as well as special services andarmy officers, raping women in provinces and in Kabul. All of these cases causedwidespread indignation among Muslims. The Muslim clergy uses such atrocities in itspropaganda as convincing evidence of the ‘anti-human’ and ‘anti-Islam’ nature of the newauthorities.409