One night In the Puli-e-Charkhi Concentration Camp

تاریخ

M. Hassan Kakar

Formerly professor of history at Kabul University.

It was the 23^rd of December 1983, and I was one of about 30,000 inmates in the Pul-e-Charkhi concentration camp just a few miles to the east ok Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. The Soviet client Parchami regime was desperately trying to establish itself, detaining any Afghan who opposed it as well as the Soviet invaders. For the regime it was a struggle for survival, and for the Afghans it was a struggle for independence. And both sides were deadly determined in their resolve. There was then no room for accommodation. For the regime the imprisonment was one of the many measures it resorted to and Pul-e-Charkhi was a major means it utilized to deactivate or eliminate its active internal enemies.

A few months before that December our group of university professors had been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. I was to spend there eight years. But none of us was a member of any resistance organizations or of any political group that waged armed struggle against it. We belonged only to the recently organized secret professional association of teachers and students. But the authorities did not know of this. They only knew that we were critics-some of us outspoken critics-of the occupation and of the puppet regime. But what we actually said or did was within the bounds of the recently promulgated fundamental law that was most democratic in words. We were, nevertheless, arrested but were lucky – thanks to Amnesty International and other human rights watches-that our lives were spared while those of so many others, nay, of thousands of others were done away with by will and design.

Of the seven huge three- storied blocks Block Number One had usually fewer inmates. It was smaller in size than others. But it was more infamous and more awesome. There the authorities kept the special inmates whom they marked for sever punishment or execution. We professors had been transferred there from Block Number Two because the authorities feared the sympathy the inmates had shown us for having been sentenced to too long terms of imprisonments. Before that in the huge halls of Block Number Two, the only one with four stories, some of us had helped inmates by writing them defenses in their cases for the kangaroo court trails. Most inmates were illiterate and none had access either to attorneys, or the laws under which they were tried. Any way in Block Number One we were still more isolated and kept under closer watch so much so that one of us was haunted by the specter of execution even though we all knew that once a prisoner was sentenced and the term of imprisonment officially handed over to him he was off the execution mark. We had already been given such documents.

Weeks before December 23 Block Number One had become full to capacity. Many inmates from other blocks who had been tried but not given the aforementioned documents had been brought there. They were called bay sarniwisht, that is, those whose fate had not been determined. It was a common knowledge that they had been marked for execution, but no one would say so. Most if not all, nevertheless, hoped that they might one day be released. For one thing the regime was considered unviable. For another they or most had not committed such acts for which to be deprived of life, the most precious value on earth. Yet for another thing some had spied for the regime, hoping that by doing so the regime may not take their lives. Actually, the prison authorities had induced a considerable number of inmates to spy for them. Some had even been induced to intimidate those who were considered to influence the inmates. One such person had one day used very abusive language against me. Usually, these ‘inmates’ were police officers planted among the inmates as ordinary prisoners as part of their training. Others would loudly profess loyalty to the official party. One such person in our hall would deafen others by shouting that he was the “son” of the party. Still the authorities worried that among so great number of inmates some might rise against them. They had actually done so in 1982 in the greatest uprising that the Afghan inmates had staged in their history.

Weeks before December 23 the grim and awesome Block Number One had become lively at least one the surface in its courtyard where all inmates were allowed to go for doing physical exercises for one hour every day. All inmates were looking forward to the hour to get out of the stuffy and crowded halls to the fresh and open air of the courtyard and also to exchange news and views and indulge in gossiping. This was possible at the time as inmates received news and comfort from their nearest relatives who visited them once a month. Inmates could not receive visitors when they were under investigation. So as soon as the inmates stepped in the courtyard they would speedily go in small droves this way and that and speak in low voices to avoid being overheard by the regime’s ubiquitous spies. Others would do exercises, while still others would play some simple games. I played volleyball with others. In spite of the concern for what was to come games. I played volleyball with others. In spite of the concern for what was to come most of the inmates in the courtyard looked apparently happy. The human crowd and the fresh air served them as a strong tonic. They had already passed the trying ordeal of the investigation period when investigators would award punishment of every kind. Besides, most of these inmates were healthy, robust and strong, ranging in age between twenty and forty. In the presence of so many such human beings when all were victims of the same evil force they felt psychologically strong and perhaps even hopeful. But December 23, 1983 changed all that dramatically and most tragically.

At half past five in the evening on December 23, 1983 electric power was switched off, an ominous sign. A complete silence prevailed. What the bay sarniwisht inmates felt inside their minds is every body’s guess. What happened to the inmates of the hall where I was along with seven others serves as an example. The only difference was that here in this hall were only a few inmates relative to other halls. I was brought there form another hall of the same block apparently to make me frightened. Most probably the prison director, Mr. ‘Arief, wanted me to think that fate had now linked me to the bay sarnwisht inmates. He had personally turned against me. I had complained of him to an official visiting commission that the director prevents books reaching me even after the official censorship. He responded that he has done so because the book in question was anti- Marxism to which I responded that it had been published in English in 1893 translated from an already published German edition.

Of the inmates in the new hall I personally knew Sher Ali and ‘Abd al -Qadir. With the former I had lived in a cell in Block Number Two for many months after we university professors had been brought there in January 1982 from the headquarters of the intelligence Service, KhAD in the city. To be precise, after our arrival there I was assigned a place in the corridor of the block linking two portions of a huge hall with small rooms along its walls. The corridor was a narrow and busy thoroughfare and not a place for living. It was also a playing ground for innumerous lice. The number of lice that I saw roaming speedily up and down on a young handsome inmate from Pakistan I had never seen in my life. They were still few by comparison to those in the headquarters of the KhAD that made life hell for inmates. We university professors had been lodged there in rooms with no swarms of lice. Any way after I had passed two nights in the corridor this Sher ‘Ali rook my belongings to his room after he had heard that a university professor was in the corridor. Sher ‘Ali had thus saved me from the inevitable assault of swarms of lice and a most uncomfortable position. But the room that became my new living place had been designed originally for one inmate now had become the living place for six in its three two-level wooden beds and one on the ground.

Sher ‘Ali was a mmried man of 22, with a baby daughter, a younger brother and parents from Padkhab-e-Shana in the Logar province. He was in Iran working for a living when he heard that his country had been invaded. He returned home to resist the invaders but was caught and arrested. He was a bay sarnwisht. ‘Abd al-Qadir was a medical student of Kabul university, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. The other inmates in the hall I did not know, but were bay saniwisht. Knowing full well what was in store for them they related their stories, and some even asked me to visit their families after I was released, a promise I could not fulfill. No one, however, panicked, all were quiet and serene and apparently ready to meet the most dreadful hour in their lives.

Immediately following the black out a simultaneous operation of rounding up the bay sarniwisht inmates began in all the seven blocks. In our block the rounding up was one by one. A guard would open the door and ask a bay sarniwisht inmate by name to come out. As a later an inmate who had been taken down by mistake told me as soos as an inmate would reach the foot of the staircase two strong men would jump suddenly on him, shackle his hands and tie his lips with a tough plastic. Afterward he would be dragged to a room where an official would loudly take his name several times as well as the ‘crime’ for which he had been sentenced to death to make sure that he was the actual and not the wrong person as they found out that my informant had been wrongly picked up. The doomed inmate would also be boldly marked on his back.

The precaution was necessary because of the similarity of cases and the fact that many Afghans go by the same name. Later I came to know that three inmates not only had the same name, but also the names of their fathers and grandfathers were the same. Anyway after the confirmation procedure had ended the doomed inmates were led to the buses in wait outside the block. As far as I know the whole operation went without any serious incident even though it was the biggest of its kind. Dozens of Soviet advisors, a number of medical doctors and hundreds of the KhAD’s official and military officers and guards made this happen. By half past one the next morning the buses outside had been loaded of the doomed human beings said to number between 250 and 400. From there they were taken to the desert of Chamtala just north of Kabul where they were executed.

All the bay sarniwisht inmates including a central committee member of the official party, Ahad Rahnaward and two of his associates were executed. The latter were executed for the killing of a rival member of the official party in Mazar. Until then Rahnaward was allowed to act as if he was the boss in Block Number One. That the next day only a small number of inmates appeared in the courtyard showed that the block had been emptied of all the bay saniwisht inmates.

Though the biggest operation yet it was not the last one. The total number of inmates that the Parchami regime has executed will never be known. Whatever the actual number it would be disproportionaly high relative to the number of people under its control which was about 3 million in a population of over 15 million which the country had at the time. When Babrak Karmal led the Parchami regime until May 1986 it went on with the execution as a matter of pacification policy. Until May 1984, that is, in a little over four years according to a source between 16,500 and 17,000 inmates were taken to Chamtala for execution. Karmal’s successor, Najeeb Allah, slackened its pace, whereas, according to an authortitative official report, during the seventeen-month Kahalqi rule under Noor Mohammad Taraki, over 12,000 inmates had been executed in the deserts called Polygoon and Dehsabz. His successor, Hafeez Allah Ameen also slackened the pace of execution during the three months of his office. There was, however, a marked difference in the ways the officials of the intelligence departments of both regimes killed. The Khalqi officials of the intelligence department of both regimes killed. The Khalqi officials of the intelligence department, AGSA, killed without regard to the law or its procedures. They just killed as they pleased with impunity. The prison officers then could not give an account of the inmates under their supervision. Directed by the Soviet advisors the Parchami officials of the KhAD killed in the name of the law and its procedures but they twisted both to the regime’s advantage.

The stark fact is that whatever the procedures both regimes killed their opponents on a big scale, hoping to consolidate their rule. That did not happen. Not only they failed completely, they were also dislodged completely from the stage of history.

Britain outlines strategy for rebuilding Afghanistan – smh.com.au – World

Britain outlines strategy for rebuilding Afghanistan

By Ewen MacAskill in London

The first 100 days after a Taliban collapse would be critical for the political and economic reconstruction of Afghanistan, says the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw.

PUTTING A NATION TOGETHER AGAIN

O political and economic reconstruction could take place gradually, province by province, depending on military progress.

O The United states-led coalition wants a broad-based Afghan government, but there are differences over who should be in

O The United Nations could end up administering Afghanistan, as it has other countries after conflict, and organizing any elections.

He used a spec to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London to sketch out the thinking of Britain, the United States and other member of the international coalition about the nature of a post-Taliban administration.

Mr. Straw said repair work would need to be carried out as quickly as possible in the first 100 days on project that would make and immediate impact, such as restoration of water supplies and rebuilding the country’s limited power plants. Such step would be necessary to bolster the incoming government.

Mr. Straw’s speck offered a glimpse of the work being done in the Foreign Office, the US State Department and elsewhere into the complex problems attached to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Mr. Straw, who is to meet the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, today, said there were several possible outcomes to the military action, and Western officials were preparing for all of them. “We know we might need to move very quickly. When the end of the current regime comes it could come gradually, area by area, or very suddenly.”

Speaking of the period after a Taliban collapse, he said’ “The early phase of a transition is going to be crucial. We should identify a number of projects which can have an immediate impact to alleviate suffering – within the first 100 days – to give credibility and legitimacy to an interim regime.

“As well us humanitarian aid, these might include reconstruction of housing and repair work on water and irrigation. We will need teams of people with expertise ready to go in and make work straight away.”

In the longer term it was important to have civilian police in place to help the United Nations, which he said must have a leading role in the rebuilding process.

“Civilian policing assistance has, again and again, proved essential in post-conflict situations. And troops, whether in UN blue helmets or as a multinational force, could be required to protect civilians to provide a security environment in which the UN could work. Nor do we rule out non-Taliban Afghan forces perhaps playing a role in this.”

Mr. Straw promised that the international community would not walk away as it had after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. “If it is needed, we should be prepared to contribute to an international fund for Afghanistan administered by the UN.” The aim was a broad-based government but it would be for the Afghan people to decide through a loya jirga, the traditional Afghan meeting of tribal chiefs, or “some localized form of decision-making”.

The Guardian

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