Cf. the acct and history of Pakastani socialist (imprisoned by the PDPA), "The Tragedy of Afghanistan: A firsthand account, " Verso, preface by Fred Halliday and , "Afghanistan's Endless War, " by Larry Goodson. A new, huge book by Steve Coll, of the Washington Post on Afghanistan, the CIA and Osama bin Laden, "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, " has abundant data esp. the 2nd chapter on Afghan communism.
I can send the full article below, co-written by Fred Halliday, to anyone offlist. Magazine: Europe-Asia Studies, December 1998
THE COMMUNIST REGIME IN AFGHANISTAN
1978-1992: INSTITUTIONS AND CONFLICTS
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The Afghan communist regime in perspective
THE IMPORTANCE OF ANALYSING THE COMMUNIST REGIME of 1978-92 in Afghanistan, and Soviet policy towards it, needs little elaboration. In the first place, the history of the PDPA regime is important for the reconstruction of modern Afghan history. It was in this 14-year period that the society and politics of the country were brutally transformed, from above and below, and that Soviet forces entered the country, leading to the chaos of the 1990s in which another radical authoritarian faction, the taliban, came to power. The PDPA period is equally important internationally, in the later history of the Cold War and of the Soviet decline. Afghanistan was not the sole, or even main, cause of the collapse of the USSR, but, through its drain on Soviet resources, and through its symbolic weakening of Soviet credibility, it played a significant part. The Afghan case of authoritarian role also merits attention as to cause, consequence and outcome, not least because, with many differences, its Islamist opponents were in many respects similar and are now embarked on their own attempt to impose an externally inspired, and funded, model of society on Afghanistan.
These historical issues aside, the Afghan communist story is significant as a study in state building and its limits, above all for the comparative study of authoritarian revolutionary states. In his commanding study of modern Afghanistan, Barnett Rubin refers to the period following April 1978 as `the failure of revolution from above': this is a pertinent starting point for a study of the Afghan regime, both because it captures the intentions, and methods, of the PDPA and because it helps, within limits, to set the Afghan case within a comparative perspective.(n1) The literature on `revolution from above', covering such countries as Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Peru, has tended to focus on countries which already had relatively strong states: it was from within these that revolutionary counter-elites, military bureaucracies, emerged, deploying the powers of that state to enforce radical change.(n2) It was a feature of these cases that resistance from below, and external support for that resistance, were relatively weak. Ironically, there may be comparison here with the fate of the communist regimes imposed in Central Asia under Soviet rule: although, in common with other Soviet republics, these declared independence in December 1991 and professed adoption of Western ways, they have, in large measure, remained authoritarian regimes, direct descendants of their CPSU forebears. Central Asia too may, therefore, constitute another set of cases of successful `revolution from above'.
The record of such attempts at transformation from above in weaker states was, however, to be markedly different: during the 1960s and 1970s radical regimes emerged in countries without strong states: Yemen (1962), Ethiopia (1974), Afghanistan (1978). Here the attempt at revolution from above took place in societies that were fragmented by ethnic and tribal factors, and where, as a result, pressure from the state occasioned fissiparous but widespread resistance. In addition, the historical context was more unfavourable: the clash between ideological radicalisation at the top and indigenous society below, exacerbated in each case by external intervention, overt and covert, was all the greater: of these three cases two ended in military defeat and the fragmentation of the society (Ethiopia, Afghanistan), while the third avoided this fate only partly, as a result of compromise from within that confirmed the prevalence of decentralised, tribal and armed, society over the central state (Yemen).(n3)
The lesson of these cases of failed `revolution from above' goes to the heart of contemporary discussions of revolutions, and of the limits of the state: it underlines the point which history itself, in the form of the failure of authoritarian communism, and recent theoretical work on the limits of states, has made, that state capacities are limited, and that strong states are peculiar to a particular time and place in the modern world.(n4) Not that weak states can avoid the impact of this modern world: rather, the very weakness of these entities can be exacerbated when international factors, in the form of internationally stimulated aspirations to transform on the one hand, and external intervention on the other, combine to aggravate the clash of state and society. Any comparative assessment of 20th century `revolution from above', and of the broader record of authoritarian social reform, should include assessment of the Afghan case. It is a study of failed state building, of the attempt, with considerable external backing, to consolidate and develop a state, and, at the same time, of the ways in which that external support, combined with the strength of the opposition, served in the end to defeat that attempt. Hitherto, however, little has been written on this, the majority of the literature on Afghanistan in this period being either concerned with the Islamist opposition, or with military operations, or being of a more or less partisan kind, whether favourable or hostile.(n5) This article is an attempt, using available published material and a range of interview and unpublished sources, to establish an analytical survey of the Afghan regime and to make possible inclusion of the Afghan case in this comparative literature.
Revolution from above
The communist regime in Afghanistan was an example of what has been termed `'revolution' from above, i.e. the introduction and imposition of a set of changes by a radical group within the state apparatus committed to a forced modernisation of the country. Those who took power were products of a secondary education system based in the capital, and employed in both military and civilian sectors of the state. While all revolutionary, and indeed some reforming, regimes exhibit elements of such imposed change from above, the category of states where `revolution from above' has been attempted is distinctive. In common with other cases where this has occurred, the impulse in the Afghan case came as much as anything from a perception of falling behind, of `backwardness' vis-a-vis other comparable regional and third world countries: the fact that Afghanistan had not been colonised meant that this perception was both belated and intense, a feature it shared with Ethiopia, Yemen, Nepal and, in an earlier epoch, Thailand. Equally, the course of such an authoritarian modernisation programme encountered obstacles comparable to those of other such cases: a precipitate introduction of change produced widespread resistance within the society; the modernising ideology of the group in power was countered by alternative radicalisms that grew amidst popular discontent with the state; the very intensity of the state's transformation drive produced fissures not only within the society but within the state itself; over time that state sought to compensate for weakness and setbacks at home by reliance on external financial and military assistance.(n6)
The Afghan case was an extreme case of this type of precipitate reform, and occasioned a particularly violent resistance, internally and internationally. What Migdal has termed the `weblike' character of the society, its fragmentation, certainly allowed a wider opposition to develop, turning, as it had done in Yemen, elements of ethnic, tribal and other solidarity into the basis for an effective military and political movement.(n7) It is easy, in retrospect, to argue that it could never have succeeded, that the regime so antagonised the society of which it was an expression that in the end it was bound to fail. Certainly throughout the Afghan war, up to 1992, the Islamist opposition and their external backers were constantly saying that the Kabul regime would fall. Yet this is to simplify what was in effect a much more complex story. The Afghan state was, in the first place, extremely weak prior to 1978: as a consequence of its particular history, without the consolidation of state power associated with colonial rule, the Afghan state was confined to the major cities and lines of communication. Of a population estimated at 17 millions, an estimated 85% worked in the rural sector. The state ensured a minimal order in the cities, while for the rest of the country it relied on a series of alliances with tribal, ethnic and religious leaders. It raised exiguous taxes--domestic revenue as a percentage of GNP was around 6% for the last two decades of the regime, a very low figure compared with the 20-30% generally considered to be needed for a modern state.(n8) It was to a considerable extent already dependent on foreign revenue and, more broadly, on an international balance of power. It never aspired to effective control of population or territory, its frontiers were open, nor did it have anything approaching a monopoly of the means of violence. As in Yemen, large tribal formations retained both political and social control, and large quantities of weapons.
This was, by any standards, a weak state, without, in Mann's terms, infrastructural power, and with very limited despotic power. In Ayubi's terms it was not, prior to 1978, even a `fierce' state, since it lacked the wherewithal to be so: it was after 1978 that, precisely to compensate for its weakness, it aspired to be a `fierce' state, and, in so doing, provoked an ultimately catastrophic response, internally and from without. The seizure of power by the PDPA in 1978 was designed to alter this situation but in the very process of attempted alteration it provoked even greater resistance, from within and, via Pakistan and the USA, from without. The introduction of Soviet forces in December 1979, initially with only a limited mission, later with a broader counter- insurrectionary one, redoubled this conflict--providing greater means for the state to protect itself but simultaneously exacerbating opposition. The subsequent policy of `national reconciliation', initiated in 1987, combined with Soviet withdrawal in 1989, produced equally contradictory effects: while the regime may have gained some ground by dispensing with the alien forces, it also exposed itself to pressures from tribal and political forces that increased the divisions within its own ranks.
The PDPA in power, phase I: the Khalqis,
ultra-radicalism and fragmentation <SNIP>