Blood Washing Blood by Phil Halton

Author:Phil Halton [Halton, Phil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Afghan War (2001-)
ISBN: 9781459746664
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14 THE STUDENTS

RABBANI, THE LEADER of Jamiat-e Islami, replaced Mojaddedi as president in June 1992, placing his party in nominal control of the country. The truth was actually much more complex.

Jamiat controlled most of the capital, although the outskirts were contested and the city itself was subjected to rocket attacks by rival parties. Now the citizens of the capital no longer commonly wore Western dress: both men and women were admonished to dress conservatively. Although not as strict as future regimes, Jamiat still enforced an Islamist view of proper conduct and dress. It also controlled much of the northeast of the country, in particular the Panjshir Valley and the neighbouring provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar. Within this region, it ran a relatively progressive state apparatus that provided schools and hospitals to the population, protected by a well-trained and disciplined army of mujahideen zarbatis (professionals) as well as a second tier of village militia. Tension within the party was along regional lines, with a Panjsheri qawm (best represented by the party’s pre-eminent military commander, Massoud) competing against a Badakhshani one (represented by Rabbani).

To the west of Jamiat’s territory were the four provinces under the control of Dostum, who had remade his communist militia division into a political party, Jumbesh-e Melli-ye Islam-e Afghanistan (National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan). From his capital in Mazar-e Sharif, he maintained a level of peace and stability that was unsurpassed throughout the rest of the country. To achieve this he effectively managed an alliance of ethnic Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Tajiks, including former members of the mujahideen and many reconciled Parchamis. With easy access to the former Soviet states of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, Dostum was able to encourage a simple trading economy. He ran his fiefdom like a separate country, even issuing his own currency.

Farther west was the domain of Ismail Khan, the “Amir of Herat,” who although supposedly a member of Jamiat, ran his affairs autonomously. Herat was an ancient city with a sophisticated culture, which Ismail Khan worked to foster. He too funded schools and hospitals, using the proceeds from taxing trade with Iran.

Control of the south of the country was divided between many petty warlords, most little more than bandits, who fought ferociously against each other while looting the civilian population. In Helmand the “provincial governor” was the militia commander Rasoul Akhundzada, who had allied himself with Ismail Khan, to depose a Jamiat commander, Akhwaendi. Nominally allied with the Rabbani government, like his sponsor Ismail Khan, Rasoul was in reality an independent player. Kandahar City, the country’s second most populous and the capital of the Durrani Pashtuns, was split among numerous smaller commanders. Well-known mujahid Gul Agha Sherzai was the provincial governor, appointed by the government in Kabul, but although he lived in Kandahar he exerted little control. Criminality was present throughout the country during this period, but it was particularly rampant in the south, where checkpoints proliferated along the highway that leads from Pakistan to Iran, and connects the region to the rest of the country.

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