Massacre in Panjsher

The regime still had only precarious control from Kabul to Charikar, the capital of Parwan Province, which they controlled through terror. In August 1981 KhAD arrested about six hundred men of the city, accusing them of having cooperated with the mujahideen. To pacify the region, the Soviets undertook a regionwide operation (’amalyat-e-sartasari). But before that operation is described, it is necessary to note their operations in the valley of Panjsher. A long, tortuous river valley, Panjsher is inhabited by Tajiks and a number of Sunni Hazaras. The valley is flanked by high mountains, pierced here and there with habitable caves; indeed, the caves are so spacious that people sometimes use them as summer quarters. A combination of circumstances made Panjsher famous as a resistance front. Mujahideen, taking cover in the caves or other protected places in the mountains, could be safe from rockets and bombs. In an emergency whole populations could take refuge in the rugged hills. From the start of the jehad only one resistance organization, Jam’iyyat, operated in Panjsher; Jam’iyyat was, moreover, under the leadership of a local commander, Ahmad Shah Mas’ud. Emeralds, rubies, and other precious gems, taken from twenty-five mines in the crags of the Siah Qullah in Khinj above the valley, gave the resistance an income from eight to nine million dollars a year with which to buy weapons and meet other expenses.^[21] Unlike the mujahideen in other areas, who pressured the locals for taxes and other necessities of life, the Panjsher mujahideen did not. Hence, the solidarity between them and the locals was unstrained. This solidarity proved significant, since the Panjsheris who worked in Kabul as technicians, drivers, shopkeepers, and government employees provided the resistance with necessary intelligence. Since Panjsher, like many areas, was not self-sufficient, the enterprising Panjsheris worked and lived in Kabul, particularly after the development programs begun in the late 1950s. Some owned transport companies.

The district of Panjsher and Ahmad Shah Mas’ud did not at first attract the attention of the Soviets. When, however, Parwan and Kapisa became disturbed and when the mujahideen of Panjsher also took part in the disturbances, the Soviets directed their war machine at it. They did this to dry up one source of mujahideen and to guard the Salang road, which runs close and parallel to the Panjsher Valley. The road from the south of the tunnel to the town of Jabalus Siraj is vulnerable to attacks from the Panjsher side. In early January 1981, after the mujahideen had repulsed some Soviet military operations and inflicted losses on them, the Soviets blockaded the valley of Panjsher. At the foot of the valley, near Unaba, they erected a wall, a miniature version of the Berlin Wall, and intensified the bombardment. The French medical doctor Lawrence Laumonier, who visited Panjsher for the second time in the summer of 1981, states:

For three months I did not see any bombings in Panjsher when I was there [in 1980], but this time I saw [bombardment] every day.…It was practically every day [that] the civilian population, especially women and children, at five o’clock in the morning, left the villages, went up into the mountains to find refuge in grottoes and caves, and they only came back at five or six o’clock in the evening. And it is only during the nights that the women can do the house work and the men can irrigate the fields and do the normal agricultural work.^[22]

But the bombing destroyed their houses and killed their cattle. Dorr Mohammad, a native of Panjsher, states: “In villages they [the Soviets] managed to destroy our fruit trees like walnuts, almonds, things that we live on. When they come to a village they even destroy or kill our cattle…like cows, sheep and even our donkeys. In our villages there are not many houses left for the people…to live in. Consequently, they have to move from their villages which are totally deserted now [1983].”^[23] The blockade failed, and grain was imported to Panjsher, although with difficulty, from other regions, notably Andarab. In September 1981 the Soviets undertook their fifth operation against Panjsher; it, too, was repulsed by the mujahideen. By this time the Panjsher front had become famous, and in order to raise the morale of its forces the regime lied that it had pacified it. Addressing the Polytechnic students, Saleh Mohammad Zeray, a member of the politburo, said, “After the USA and the USSR, the Panjsher front is the strongest in the world, and our forces are now stationed there.”^[24] On 22 September 1981 the regime announced that Panjsher had fallen to it, but it was untrue.

Against this background, in February 1982 the Soviets undertook a regionwide operation in Parwan and Kohistan that resulted in the massacre of civilians. The Soviets had started the operations in December 1981, but until the following February they were small and sporadic; moreover, the Soviet forces had fared badly, and their casualties in men and weapons had alarmed them. For example, on 11 February 1982 a group of seventy-one members of SAMA destroyed thirty-three enemy tanks. Ten days earlier SAMA had defeated another Soviet unit. Having acquired weapons from the Soviets and the regime forces, and being composed of daring men, SAMA fought the Islamic Party as well as the Soviets at the same time. Frustrated at their failure, on 14 February the Soviets undertook the largest operation to date in the region; it continued for five days.

Military units of the Soviet and of the regime, supported by approximately five thousand tanks, took positions in certain areas surrounding Parwan and Kapisa while helicopter gunships hovered over them to block exits of the mujahideen. At the request of the locals, the mujahideen refrained from opposing the invaders, and many withdrew under cover of night. Some Soviet army units from the opposite points in Bagram and Jabalus Siraj spread throughout the region unopposed. In the course of house searches, the invaders did what men with consideration for life would not do. My diary entry for 26 February 1982 reads:

Although not fired at, the Soviet army showed barbarity, especially in the villages where female folk threw certain things over them from rooftops. The invaders killed women, children, and the elderly. They killed anyone who was sighted. They were also said to have used gas. Every family lost some members. The dead bodies lay in fields, mosques, lanes, homes, everywhere. The total number of casualties was estimated to be between one thousand and two thousand. The Parchamis gave out that the backbone of the resistance was broken. Throughout the region military posts were set up, but when the troops withdrew the mujahideen destroyed them. The mujahideen, as before, spread throughout the region, and assisted the bereaved in burying their dead.

But before withdrawing, the Soviet forces brought another calamity on the locals. To mark the triumph, the regime assembled thousands of the locals at a rally led by Dastagir Panjsheri, an eccentric member of the central committee. When the televised fanfare and the cries of “Hurrah!” were over, the people found themselves prisoners. Led into waiting buses, they were taken to Kabul, where some were said to have been executed for being suspected as mujahideen. Others were enlisted in the army, some were later released, and the greater number imprisoned in the Zone Ward of Pul-e-Charkhi, where I, along with about three hundred other inmates, was transferred from block two in 1984.