1. Amnesty International, Afghanistan, 2, 6. [BACK]

2. Quoted in Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 59. [BACK]

3. Mackenzie, “Brutal Force,” 15. [BACK]

4. Sharq, Memoirs, 230. [BACK]

5. Rasul Bie, son of Haji Barat Bie, personal communication, Pul-e-Charkhi, 1983. Rasul Bie said that his efforts to get the gold back failed because the Soviet advisers had a share in it. For details about KhAD, see Kakar, Afghans in the Spring of 1987, 55-64. [BACK]

6. Sharq, Memoirs, 230. [BACK]

7. B. Rubin, quoted in Mackenzie, “Brutal Force,” 10. [BACK]

8. KhAD officials had told the imprisoned members of Afghan Millat that on Karmal’s order they were going to be released. For a list of the names of members of the imprisoned Afghan Millat, see Amnesty International, Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, 8. [BACK]

9. Personal communication, Pul-e-Charkhi prison, 1985. [BACK]

10. M. Nabi, formerly director of interrogation, personal communication, Pul-e-Charkhi prison, 1986. About twenty elders from Laghman Province, led by Abdul Aziz Kakar, twice met Najibullah as well as Prime Minister Kishtmand to discuss my release. But the officials declined their request, stating that Kakar did not want to budge from his opposition to the Soviets. If they could have released me, they probably would have done so to make the elders grateful. [BACK]

11. Mackenzie, “Brutal Force,” 14. According to Yves Heller from the Agence France Presse, “KhAD has become not just a state within a state, but the state itself” (quoted in Laber and Rubin, A Nation Is Dying, 77). [BACK]

12. Mackenzie, “Brutal Force,” 14; Rustar, Pul-e-Charkhi Prison, 9. [BACK]

13. Sharq, Memoirs, 230. [BACK]

14. Ibid. [BACK]

15. Laber and Rubin, A Nation Is Dying, 77. [BACK]

16. K. Matiuddin, quoted in Mackenzie, “Brutal Force,” 14. [BACK]

17. Fahima, quoted in Mackenzie, “Brutal Force,” 9. [BACK]

18. M. Rasuli, personal communication, San Diego, 1991. [BACK]

19. Barnet Rubin, quoted in Mackenzie, “Brutal Force,” 15. [BACK]

20. “Torture in Afghanistan,” Amnesty International Newsletter (London), December 1983, 1. [BACK]

21. Amnesty International, Afghanistan, 1. [BACK]

22. Bilolavo, “One Man’s Sentence,” 13. [BACK]

23. Mackenzie, “Brutal Force,” 15. [BACK]

24. Bilolavo, “One Man’s Sentence,” 12. [BACK]

25. Sharq, Memoirs, 231. [BACK]

26. I arrived at the approximate figure of thirty thousand with the help of inmates who had been to all the cellblocks in Pul-e-Charkhi. It is satisfying to note that another inmate, Mohammad Jan Werr, formerly press director in Baghlan Province, had arrived at almost the same figure by a separate approximation. The difference between our figures was 400, the number of criminal inmates in cellblock number 4. Shafi Ayyar notes that the number of inmates for the cellblocks number 1, 2, and 3 alone was 20,000. Shafi Ayyar was also a prisoner; see Ayyar, Bloody Fists, 7. [BACK]

27. In the Sadarat detention center, women were confined to separate cells in a separate block, adjacent to the block where I had been. Women with babies were also imprisoned. Once the authorities punished them for tying the names of cabinet ministers to the tails of mice—a form of insult. Saliha and Tajwar Kakar were known inmates in 1982. T. Kakar, personal communication, Peshawar, 1988. [BACK]

28. Ayyar, Bloody Fists, 12. [BACK]

29. Ibid., 16. [BACK]

30. Ibid., 20-43. Ayyar had also taken part in the hunger strike. [BACK]

31. A bashi, or head, of cellblock number two, personal communication, Pul-e-Charkhi prison, February 1987. [BACK]

32. A former director of operation of KhAD number five, quoted by an inmate, Pul-e-Charkhi prison, February 1987. [BACK]

33. Homosexuality is, of course, viewed differently in different cultures. Although it is practised among the Afghans, they condemn it on moral and religious grounds. The act is liable to punishment and viewed seriously when it becomes a scandal. For how KhAD abused this ruling and blackmailed a former junior university professor in prison to spy for it, see Rustar Pul-e-Charkhi Prison, 96. Conversely, KhAD condoned the homosexual activity of one of its former agents, who also worked for it in the prison. On homosexual acts in the Pul-e-Charkhi prison, see Ayyar, Bloody Fists, 13, 23. [BACK]