The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

looming in the fields, to be handed out to the mourners in the procession. Photographersand filmmakers were invited. Strong young men formed a group of guards for the CentralCommittee members. The funeral procession’s route was thoroughly planned. It wouldbegin at the location were the assassins had dumped Khyber’s body and proceed to thecemetery at the base of the Bala Hissar Fortress.Around fifty thousand people gathered on the day of the funeral to participate in themourning procession. Following their leaders’ suggestions, many party members invitedtheir colleagues, relatives, and neighbors to join. There were many students among thosemarching. Girls and young women, who mourned and openly vented their sorrow andanger, comprised more than half of the participants. Their emotions filled the streets ofKabul with a particularly dramatic flair on that day. Almost all of the participants of thefuneral procession carried red tulips in their hands. Countless red flags and bannersfluttered overhead. Khyber’s portraits and slogans were ubiquitous. Following thememorial service, a line of mourners paid their respects to the revolutionary by tossingtheir tulips onto his fresh grave. Before long, a huge mound of red and green had risen ontop of the spot where Khyber’s body was buried. His funeral became the most attendedpolitical demonstration in the preceding history of Afghanistan.“It’s strange that the authorities did not try to provoke the participants of theprocession; they didn’t push people towards chaos,” Babrak continued thinking in hisprison cell. “It would have been so easy to do. There was plenty of fuel to start the fire…Onecould have sent fewer than ten provocateurs into the column of demonstrators and clasheswith police would have broken out instantly, followed by riots, clashes with the police,shootings…Taraki and the rest of us could then be easily apprehended and charged with76