Plot World History with Andrey Sidorchik
At the height of the American presence in Afghanistan, local television conducted a survey on the topic of which of the country’s leaders they consider the most successful period of government.& nbsp;The answer was unexpected & mdash; & nbsp;the absolute majority called the name Mohammad Najibullah.
& laquo;Anger and shame choked me»
It is quite difficult to imagine such a liberty on the part of the Afghans today, since the last leader of socialist Afghanistan was killed by the Taliban, banned in Russia, during their first coming to power. But why do the people of the country remember Najibullah with a kind word?
He was born in 1947 in the family of a civil servant. By Afghan standards, Najibullah’s parents were quite wealthy people. Mohammad graduated from a prestigious lyceum, after which he entered the medical faculty of Kabul University. During his university years, he joined the Afghan Marxists, who had just created their own party.
Already being the leader of Afghanistan, Najibullah recalled in an interview that during one of his trips to his father, who served in the province, he, at that time still a lyceum student, witnessed the birth of a woman who occurred during the trip. The woman in labor, who was delivered from the burden literally on the road, was already on her way in twenty minutes.
“I felt some kind of internal push, I was trembling. How is it, I thought, why should an Afghan woman give birth on the ground, among the stones, like a stray animal?Believe me, I didn’t think about any revolution at that time, just anger and shame were suffocating me. After all, I loved my land and my people. What is he, should he live worse than the entire human race?»— & nbsp;told Najibullah.
From “unreliable”to the head of the special service
The young Mohammad was among those Afghans who believed that it was mean to cover up eternal poverty and the lack of basic living conditions with age-old traditions and religion. Najibullah expressed his dissatisfaction with the government, which did nothing to improve the living conditions of people, so actively that he soon became a regular at police stations, receiving the stigma of “unreliable”. The university graduate combined his revolutionary activity with medical practice.
In 1978, the Marxists carried out a coup, later called the “April Revolution”. Najibullah was among the members of the Revolutionary Council. Soon he was appointed ambassador to Iran, but just a couple of months later he was removed from his post. The fact is that there were factions in the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan that fought to the death among themselves, and at that time Najibullah was among the losers. The road home was closed for him, and he had to live in the Soviet Union for a couple of years.
After the Soviet troops entered Afghanistan, Najibullah returned, leading under the new leader Babrak Karmal KHAD is an Afghan state security agency. In this hypostasis, he was reputed to be a tough man, but quite effective.
Reconciliation course
After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR in most countries of the socialist camp, the process of replacing the former leaders with new ones who share the new course of Moscow has begun. In 1987, Najibullah became the leader in Afghanistan.
The Afghan conflict dragged on, the Mujahideen received significant support from the United States and other countries, and the Soviet leadership felt that it was necessary to move from harsh methods to compromises. Najibullah declared a course for national reconciliation and the rejection of armed confrontation.
Unlike many other new leaders of the socialist countries, Najibullah was not weak-willed. He was well aware that the opposite camp could regard proposals for peace as weakness, so he was always ready to respond with blow to blow if the Mujahideen ignored his peace initiatives. The militant leaders, who were oriented to the West, did not want peace. But ordinary Afghans wanted it, including those who used to support the Mujahideen. Thousands of former oppositionists laid down their weapons and returned home, tens of thousands of refugees returned to the country.
Najibullah softened his attitude to religion, an Islamic Advisory Council was founded under him, 20 new mosques were built in less than two years and more than 300 old ones were repaired.
The official visit of the General Secretary of the PDPA Central Committee, Mohammed Najibullah, to the USSR. General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev and General Secretary of the PDPA Central Committee Mohammed Najibullah during a meeting. 1986. Photo: RIA Novosti/Yuri Abramochkin
An agreement that is not mandatory for everyone
The new line of the government found more and more support among the people. We should not forget that with the help of the USSR, new schools, hospitals, entire residential quarters, industrial enterprises were built. It was hard not to appreciate the advantages of a renewed Afghanistan.
However, the American media continued to repeat: “Najibullah is a Moscow puppet who will fall the day after the Russians leave.”
In April 1988, settlement documents were signed, according to which Soviet troops should leave the territory of Afghanistan, and the United States and Pakistan pledged to completely stop funding the Afghan rebels. On May 15, 1988, the USSR began to fulfill its obligations. As for the United States and Pakistan, their support for the Afghan Mujahideen has not actually stopped, but only began to flow through other channels. On February 15, 1989, the last Soviet units left Afghanistan.
The story of a betrayal
What happened in 2021, when the Americans left, is well known & mdash; their henchmen lost power in a matter of days.
And Najibullah held on. The Afghan army managed to repel the militants ‘ offensive and stabilize the situation. Moreover, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the support of the country’s leader among the population of Afghanistan began to grow.
Perhaps this moment could be a turning point for Afghanistan. It was enough to stop supporting the Mujahideen and force them to negotiate with Najibullah peacefully, and the country could get out of the quagmire of a long-term war. However, in Washington at that moment, watching the destruction of the socialist camp, they dreamed of an unconditional victory in the “Cold War”. And Najibullah’s steadfastness only irritated the White House.
No matter how bitter it is to realize, but Najibullah was betrayed by Russia. Afghanistan did not need the lives of our soldiers, it needed the supply of weapons, ammunition and fuel. This equalized the possibilities, since no one stopped supplying the Mujahideen. President of Russia Boris Yeltsin and his foreign minister Andrey Kozyrev fulfilled the requirements of the United States, stopping all deliveries to the Afghan government from January 1, 1992.
By March 1992, Najibullah simply had nothing to fight with the Mujahideen. He declared his readiness to transfer power to a neutral government. In April, the opposition occupied Kabul. The deposed leader took refuge on the territory of the UN mission in Kabul.
Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah during a meeting with Soviet journalists in November 1990. Photo: RIA Novosti/V. Kiselyov
Massacre
Peace in the country, however, did not come. Yesterday’s allies in the war with the “infidels”, the Mujahideen committed a bloody civil strife, challenging each other’s power.
Najibullah has repeatedly warned in his interviews that Afghanistan is waiting for just such a scenario, but no one listened to him. The four-year war of everyone with everyone turned into a victory for the Taliban. The period of their rule in Afghanistan shocked the world with monstrous cruelty and obscurantism. When they captured Kabul in September 1996, they first dealt with Najibullah.
The Taliban did not recognize any international rules and norms. At 1:30 am, they broke into the territory of the UN mission in Kabul, beat up employees, destroyed premises and captured Najibullah and his brother. The former head of Afghanistan defended himself, but what could he oppose to armed bandits? He was brutally tortured for several hours, then his dead body was tied to a jeep, dragged along the ground for two kilometers and hung on a fortified checkpoint at the gates of the presidential palace. The bodies of Najibullah and his brother were subjected to mockery, and these images flew around the world.
Paradise Lost
According to one version, the Pakistani intelligence service, which supervised the Taliban, was involved in the massacre of Najibullah. The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is not actually marked and runs along the so-called “Durand line”, defined by the British colonial administration. The Afghan authorities have never officially recognized this border, and they wanted to force Najibullah to retroactively sign a recognition document fabricated by the Pakistani special services. However, the Afghan leader refused to do this, despite the torture.
In the quarter of a century that has passed since the death of Mohammad Najibullah, Afghans have experienced the “true Sharia” of the Taliban and the charms of the American presence, and now they are getting used to the “updated” Taliban. But against all this, the times of Najibullah seem like a lost paradise to the Afghans. The last chaptersocialist Afghanistan is presented as a fairy-tale hero, wise and just, who fell at the hands of traitors. But this hidden cult of Najibullah can’t change anything. There are no people in Afghanistan who want to fight for the ideals for which he lived. And no one will bring a well-fed and quiet life on a platter.