1. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 170. Originally from Logar, Zahir Ghazi Alam has spent about twenty months in his home province during four trips that he made there from Peshawar, where he had been a refugee. A medical physician, he made the trips to treat patients. His memoirs cover many aspects of life of the people of Logar in the period under discussion. Dr. Alam and other Afghan refugee physicians—Pashtunyar, Farouq Mairanay, Asadullah, Abdur Rahman Zamani, Ahmad Sher Zamani, Farid Safi, and others—had started the Afghan Doctors Association, which operated at one time with approximately 170 members both in Afghanistan and among the refugees in Pakistan before pressure from the resistance organizations led to its dissolution. Dr. Alam now lives in the United States. For details on the association and the role of the Afghan educated middle class in the resistance, see Farr, “Afghan Middle Class.” [BACK]

2. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 168. [BACK]

3. Ibid., 170. Among Zadrans of the province of Paktia even during the reign of King Mohammad Zahir the ’ulama preached that when renegades persist in “rejecting the fundamentals of Islam,” it behooves their relatives to do away with them, even if they be their own sons or close relations. Zadran, History of Afghanistan, 15. [BACK]

4. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 168. [BACK]

5. Ibid., 146. [BACK]

6. Quoted in Alam, “Jehad of Afghanistan,” 31. [BACK]

7. Barth, “Cultural Wellsprings,” 198. For patterns of local political leadership in Afghanistan, see Kakar, Government and Society. [BACK]

8. Commander Mati’ullah Safi of the Pech Valley of Kunar Province is a good example in this connection. A son of the famous Sultan Mohammad Khan, Mati’ullah Safi, with the assistance of his brothers, first waged jehad independently as a member of the leading family of his community, but subsequently he had to join the Mahaz organization. [BACK]

9. ’Izzatullah Safi, personal communication, Chak Darra refugee camp, Deer, Northwest Frontier Province, 4 November 1988. For a general description of religious groups in Afghanistan, see Kakar, Government and Society. The term mulla or molla is derived from the Arabic term mawla, which may mean “master,” “trustee,” or “helper.” Mawla frequently appears in titles—for instance, mawlawi and mulla—in several parts of the Muslim world, especially India, and in connection with scholars and saints (Encyclopedia of Islam 3:417). [BACK]

10. Majruh, “Past and Present Education,” 79. [BACK]

12. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 136. [BACK]

13. Ibid., 147. [BACK]

14. Ibid., 175. [BACK]

15. In places the intergroup clashes were so bloody that a group would disarm and kill followers of the rival group. When victorious, a group would massacre followers of the rival group. Sometimes the groups robbed people on roads (Zadran, History of Afghanistan, 817). The district of Maidan to the west of Kabul provides us with an extreme example of intergroup clashes. According to one source, up to 1988 Commander Amanullah had lost about forty thousand men in intergroup clashes; by contrast, only forty men had been lost fighting the common enemy, the Soviets and the regime. Although clashes were frequent, this figure is surely an exaggeration. [BACK]

16. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 173. It was not only in Logar that people were executed on a suspicion of being Khalqis or collaborators; such killing was common throughout the land. In reply to an accusation that some people executed by his orders were not Khalqis, Mawlawi Abd al-Hay said: “I again reiterate that if I order that 150 Khalqis be executed, the act is permissible even though 50 among them be non-Khalqis.” The mawlawi was general amir (amir-e ’umomi) of the Harakat-e-Inqilab-e-Islami of the provinces of Takhar, Badakhshan, Kunduz, Baghlan, Samangan, Joazjan, Faryab, and Badghis. (See Nasrat, “Bitter Facts,” 37, 38, 39.) A commander-mulla in Wardak claimed that he recognized Khalqis from their smell. From among the suspicious passengers who were picked up from buses along the Kabul-Kandahar road, some were executed on that account. Another commander of Char Asia, south of Kabul city, instructed his followers in Peshawar to do away with any suspicious person found in their locality: if he were a Muslim he would go to heaven, and if not he would have been accorded the punishment he deserved (Alam, “Violation of Human Rights,” 7). [BACK]

17. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 135. [BACK]

18. Ibid., 161. [BACK]

19. Ibid., 136. [BACK]

20. Ibid., 141. [BACK]

21. Ibid., 147. [BACK]

22. On the religious impact of jehad on the society, see Cultural Council of Afghanistan Resistance, Future of Islamic Afghanistan. [BACK]

23. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 141-44; personal communication with a commander, Germany, August 1988. For a general description of the commanders, see Kakar, Afghans in the Spring of 1987. [BACK]

24. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 139. [BACK]

25. For institutionalized forces behind the Afghan resistance movement, see Barth, “Cultural Wellsprings,” 187; Canfield, “Ethnic, Regional, and Sectarian Alignments.” [BACK]

26. Canfield, “Islamic Sources,” 69. [BACK]

27. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 139. [BACK]

28. Z. G. Alam, personal communication, San Diego, December 1990. [BACK]

29. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 174. [BACK]

30. Emad, “Impact of Jehad.” [BACK]

31. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 153. [BACK]

32. Kakar, Afghans in the Spring of 1987, 37. [BACK]

33. Goodwin, Caught in the Crossfire, 46. [BACK]

34. Bradsher, Afghanistan, 205. [BACK]

35. Ibid., 272. [BACK]

36. Quoted in ibid., 278. [BACK]

37. Alam, “Memoirs of Jehad,” 183. [BACK]

38. Ibid., 182. [BACK]

39. Ibid., 175. [BACK]

40. Ibid., 139. [BACK]

41. Ibid., 172. [BACK]

42. Ibid., 175. [BACK]