1. Ministry of Planning, General Statistics, 113-22. I am grateful to Amanullah Mansury, a minister of the interior during the constitutional decade, for giving me his only copy of the book. Farhang, Afghanistan 2:41. Barnet Rubin writes about the expansion of modern education in Afghanistan: “In the last eight years of Daoud’s premiership…the number of primary and secondary school students nearly tripled, and the number of post-secondary students…increased more than fourfold; and in the period of political liberalization known as New Democracy (1963-73), the number of primary school students doubled, and secondary students increased more than sixfold, growing an average of one-fifth per year. University enrollment was 3.4 times larger at the end of the decade than it had been at the beginning; there were 11,000 students in Afghanistan and 1,500 per year sent abroad by 1974” (“Political Elites,” 80). On the eve of the communist coup in 1978 Kabul University and Polytechnic had a total of more than 13,000 mixed students, and 1,000 professors. Polytechnic had about 1,000 students and a small number of Afghan junior professors. The Soviet professors outnumbered the latter. Kabul University had more than 800 professors. A. S. Aziemi, personal communication, Peshawar, February 1989. Mr. Aziemi was chancellor of Kabul University before the communists took over. [BACK]

2. Newell and Newell, Struggle for Afghanistan, 45. [BACK]

3. The Front of Afghanistan’s Militant Mujahideen, Watan; M. N. Majruh, personal communication, Los Angeles, January 1991. About the resistance groups which the Afghans set up in Peshawar in 1980, an observer writes, “Anyone who entertained the idea of becoming the Afghan amir or king would rent a garage, a shop, or a house, and would distribute membership cards with his party’s name and his photo boldly engraved on them. In this way over 60 small and big Afghan parties were set up” (Zadran, History of Afghanistan, 795). [BACK]

4. Fundamentalism, in the words of Professor Bernard Lewis, refers to the maintenance, in opposition to modernism, of traditional orthodox beliefs, such as the inerrancy of Scripture and literal acceptance of the creeds as fundamentals of Protestant Christianity. It is thus essentially a Christian term. The term fundamentalist is now also applied to a number of Islamic radical and militant groups. Muslim fundamentalists, however, base themselves not only on the Quran but also on the Traditions of the Prophet and on the corpus of transmitted theological and legal learning. Their aim is nothing less than the abrogation of all the imported and modernized legal codes and social norms and the installation in their place of the full panoply of the Shari’a—its rules and penalties, its jurisdiction, and its prescribed form of government. For details, see Lewis, Political Language of Islam, 118. [BACK]

5. Hekmatyar, Interview, 10; Haqshinas, Russia’s Intrigues and Crimes, 330. [BACK]

6. For details see, Choueirei, Islamic Fundamentalism, 94; Shepard, “Islam as a System,” 37. [BACK]

7. Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism, 94, 123. [BACK]

8. Shepard, “Islam as a System,” 32. [BACK]

10. Hyman, Muslim Fundamentalism, 20. [BACK]

11. Choueiri, Muslim Fundamentlism, 110. [BACK]

12. Mawdudi, Political Theory of Islam, 22. [BACK]

13. Choueiri, Muslim Fundamentalism, 111. [BACK]

14. Ibid., 127. [BACK]

15. Kakar, Government and Society, 177. Choueiri, Muslim Fundamentalism, 137. [BACK]

16. Choueiri, Muslim Fundamentalism, 138. [BACK]

17. Ibid., 135. [BACK]

18. Ibid., 136. [BACK]

19. Shepard, “Islam as a System,” 33. [BACK]

20. Professor M. E. Yapp has described the terms modernization,traditional society, and modern society as follows: “The attributes of a traditional society are: politically, a minimal role for government; economically, the predominance of agriculture or pastoralism, with little industry and the great bulk of the population living in the countryside; and socially, a system of organization based on birth, compartmentalized rather than hierarchic, with low mobility and little literacy, and in which the family, tribe, village, guild and religious community form the the principal units of social life, providing educational, legal and social services for their members and, frequently, economic organization and defence as well. The attributes of a modern society are the opposite of these: politically, there is a large role for the state; economically, it is predominantly industrial and urban; and socially, it is based upon contract, arranged horizontally with a high degree of mobility, and the older units of social life play a much reduced role, their major functions having been usurped by the state or other public organizations. Modernization denotes the passage from the first to the second” (Yapp, “Contemporary Islamic Revivalism,” 180). [BACK]

21. Newell and Newell, Struggle for Afghanistan, 45. [BACK]

22. Nangyal, Political Parties, 10; Haqshinas, Russia’s Intrigues and Crimes, 332-39; Naeem, Russian Program, 71; Khan, “Emergence of Religious Parties.” [BACK]

23. The founding students of the Islamic Movement, besides Hekmatyar, were Mawlawi Abdur Rahman, Engineer Habibur Rahman, Abdur Rahim Niazi, Engineer Sayfuddin Nasratyar, Abd al-Qadir Tawana, Ghulam Rabbani ’Ateesh, Sayyed Abdur Rahman, Abdul Habib, and Gul Mohammad. Except for Hekmatyar, all are now dead (Hekmatyar, Interview, 20). [BACK]

24. Ibid., 23. [BACK]

25. Ibid. [BACK]

26. Shahrani, “Saur Revolution,” 158. [BACK]

27. Ibid. [BACK]

28. Khan, “Emergence of Religious Parties,”; Hekmatyar, Interview, 24. [BACK]

29. Rubin, “Political Elites,” 81. [BACK]

30. Hekmatyar, Interview, 21 [BACK]

31. Quoted in Hyman, Muslim Fundamentalism, 4. [BACK]

32. Zadran, History of Afghanistan, 610. [BACK]

33. Ibid., 510. [BACK]

34. On rejecting general elections, the foundation of democracy, Khalis is categorical and uncompromising. He states: “General elections are the outcome of the ignorance of the East and West. That is why, as they are contrary to the Islamic justice, they are rejected and are unacceptable to us. The advocates of this voice can’t go with us along the same road.” Khalis, Message to the Mujahid Nation, 5, 12, 26; Khalis, Two Articles, 12, 13. [BACK]

35. The fundamentalists are not only opposed to those who have exercised political domination in the past in Afghanistan but are equally vehement in their denunciations of the traditional elite, who are, in their view, to be blamed for the moral degeneration that led to the present tragedy. See Ghani, “Afghanistan,” 92. [BACK]

36. Haqshinas, Russia’s Intrigues and Crimes, 331. [BACK]

37. Before his arrest in 1973, Mawlawi Habib al-Rahman Fayzani (Kakar), known as Mawlana Fayzani, dominated the soul and body of his followers, first as a schoolteacher and principal in Herat and later as a reformer, pir, and political leader. He gave up teaching to combat communism and create an Islamic movement. For this purpose he composed a number of books and traveled in the country before taking up residence in Kabul, where he opened a library and set up Madrasa-e-Quran, a seminary for the teaching of Quran; this program took on an active political dimension among his followers of traditional mullas and artisans. His teachings transcended the communal line of Sunni and Shi’a. To his followers of both sects he appeared as a messianic personality. He played a leading role in the anticommunist agitations of the traditional mullas in 1970. By the time of the Daoud coup in 1973 he had united a number of secret Islamic associations under the name of the School of Monotheism (Maktab-e-Tawheed), of which he was elected amir. Shortly after the coup he was arrested on a charge of plotting to overthrow the regime. During the Khalqi rule Fayzani along with more than one hundred Ikhwanis, including Professor Niazi, were executed. For details, see Edwards, “Shi’i Political Dissent,” 217-20; Haqshinas, Russia’s Intrigues and Crimes, 336; Gharzay, Memoirs, 49. [BACK]

38. Hekmatyar, Interview, 25. [BACK]

39. For details on organizational structure of the Islamic Association, see Roy, Islam and Resistance, 73. [BACK]

40. Hekmatyar, Interview, 20. [BACK]

41. Brigot and Roy, War in Afghanistan, 27. [BACK]

42. Roy, Islam and Resistance, 75. [BACK]

43. Ibid. [BACK]

44. Wolasmal, “Foreign Interference,” 3. [BACK]

45. Dupree, Afghanistan, 762; Haqshinas, Political Changes, 26-32; Roy, Islam and Resistance, 74-76. [BACK]

46. Haqshinas, Political Changes, 30. [BACK]

47. Edwards, “Shi’i Political Dissent,” 221. [BACK]

48. For details, see Jamiat-e-Islami, Aims and Goals; Hezb-e-Islami, Aims. I am grateful to Dr. Nazif Shahrani for providing me with both texts. [BACK]

49. Brigot and Roy, War in Afghanistan, 109. [BACK]

50. Khalis, Message, 2. [BACK]

51. For details, see Ghaus, Fall of Afghanistan. [BACK]

52. Roy, Islam and Resistance, 77. [BACK]

53. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 108-11. [BACK]

54. Nangyal, Political Parties, 30-36. The first coalition, the Covenant of the Islamic Unity, comprising Jam’iyyat, Harakat, Nejat, Mahaz, and Hizb (Khalis), was set up in August 1979, but it was no more than a name. Na’eem, Russian Program, 93-103; Roy, Islam and Resistance, 122-24. [BACK]

55. A senior official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, personal communication, Islamabad, December 1988. [BACK]

56. Roy, Islam and Resistance, 122. Bradsher may have been the first to observe Pakistan’s concern about a strong Afghan leadership. He states that Pakistan “had reason to be concerned that a strong single organization based on its territory might become the voice of a new form of Pashtunistan movement or comparable to the Palestine Liberation Organization in periods when the P.L.O. had defiantly extraterritorial power in Jordan and later Lebanon” (Afghanistan, 295). [BACK]

57. Hekmatyar, Interview, 59. [BACK]

58. Charliand, Report from Afghanistan, 47. [BACK]

59. Quoted in Wassil, “Opinion,” 26. [BACK]

60. Haqshinas, Political Changes, 36. [BACK]

61. Quoted in Emadi, State, Society, and Superpowers, 102. [BACK]

62. Shah Mohammad Nadir Alami, leader of the Islamic Unity of Central Afghanistan, personal communication, 1991. [BACK]

63. Edwards, “Shi’i Political Dissent,” 201-29; Haqshinas, Political Changes, 35-36; Roy, Islam and Resistance, 139-48. [BACK]