Alienation of the Pdpa

In March 1982 I conducted an informal survey of my educated acquaintances in the city of Kabul, concluding that the dominant view was that, since party members were unwilling to abandon their servitude to the Russians, they deserved to be eliminated. The public corroborated this view by their attitude. In the first place, the public excommunicated party members, in particular the Parchamis. People generally would not rent them houses and also refrained from either giving them or accepting from them daughters in marriage. In general, party members were ostracized not only by friends and acquaintances but in some cases even by members of their own families. In the second place, when party members became the target of terroristic attacks, people acted as if nothing had happened. I never heard of any person volunteering information to the police on the subject, although it was the custom to cooperate with the police on other crimes, particularly murder. Terrorists thus could not be caught on the spot. Some were caught later, but only as a result of extensive efforts by KhAD.

When party members or collaborators were killed in provincial cities, notices were served barring mullas or religious functionaries from burying the dead in accord with the rituals of Islam. Such orders were obeyed. So, contrary to custom and the injunction of Islam, the dead bodies of members of the official party as well as of collaborators either lay for days without being buried or were buried without ritual. In Kabul, because of fear of terroristic attacks and because of public pressure, most high-ranking party members and known collaborators lived in the guarded, Soviet-made neighborhoods of Macroryan and Wazir Akbar Khan Maina, where the growing number of Russians also lived. Rents skyrocketed, and the regime undertook to build new prefabricated blocks of residential apartments. Perhaps no other ruling party had become so isolated from its own people in history as the PDPA had.