The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation to Closed Frontiers and War

Epilogue: Coping with a Communist "Revolution," State Failure, and War

Epilogue: Coping with a Communist "Revolution," State Failure, and War DURING THE SUMMER of 1975, while I was accompanying a British Granada Television crew to film a documentary on the Kirghiz of Afghanistan, an Afghan army officer and a soldier rode into the camp of Haji Rahman QuI, the Kirghiz Khan (chief). The officer produced a letter from the governor of Badakhshan province offering Kirghiz families the chance to receive recently reclaimed land at a location near the provincial capital, Faizabad, more than a week's journey (by horseback and truck) from the Pamirs. After discussing the matter with some of the Kirghiz elders, the Khan asked me to write a reply to the governor, thanking him for the generous offer, but saying that at the moment, no one was interested . Should any Kirghiz show interest in the future, the Khan's letter went on, he would notify the authorities promptly. The officer was sent off with the reply in hand and some personal gifts for his trouble. This was not the first such offer that the Kirghiz had received from the Afghan government; they had been asked repeatedly to abandon the remote and inhospitable Pamirs. Villagers in central parts of the province of Badakhshan, where I grew up, wondered what kept the hardy Kirghiz herdsmen in that awesome land they referred to as bami dunya, "roof of the world." Some of the reasons why the Kirghiz preferred to stay in the high Pamir valleys have been discussed in the previous chapters at some length. 230 Epilogue 231 However, in April 1978, a military coup in Kabul installed a "revolutionary" regime in Afghanistan. In fact, this was the second such coup d'etat within the last five years. The first coup was staged in 1973, when Prince Muhammad Daoud toppled his- cousin and brother-in-law King Muhammad Zahir Shah, abolished the monarchy , and pronounced himself the president of the Republic of Afghanistan (1973-78). The Kirghiz, like most other rural people in Afghanistan, viewed the change of regime in 1973 as a simple dynastic squabble over succession to the throne within the royal household. In 1978, it was President and Prince Muhammad Daoud who was killed. Most of his family members were also brutally murdered by the new coup makers, who were not related to Daoud by blood. This time the Kirghiz and countless others in Afghanistan were alarmed by the developments in the distant capital , Kabul. Haji Rahman QuI was convinced that if the coup makers in Kabul were Communists, as he suspected them to be, his own and his family's safety would be in danger. He sent his eldest son, Abdul Wakeel, to the provincial capital of Badakhshan, Faizabad, to ascertain the true character of the political change in Kabul. After staying about ten days in Faizabad, Abdul Wakeel returned convinced, based on what he had seen and heard in the city, that the new regime in Kabul was indeed Communist and supported by the Soviet Union. The Kirghiz, twice displaced and forced to take refuge in the mountain ramparts of the Afghan Pamirs following the Bolshevik and Chinese Communist revolutions, were faced once again with another Communist revolution, this time in Kabul. Haji Rahman QuI met with some of the Kirghiz elders and informed them of the news his son had brought from Faizabad. He also told them that he had to take his family to the safety of Pakistan, just south of the Pamirs. In order to do this, he asked his kinsmen to help him and his family to cross the mountains over to Pakistan. However, he advised the Kirghiz elders themselves and their families to remain in the Pamirs and keep the Khan's herds, as they might not be in any immediate danger from the new regime. He told them that because of his past opposition to Communism, the Russians regarded him as their personal enemy and would not leave him in peace. Recalling their earlier flights from Communist Russia and China, over 1,300 Kirghiz, members of some 280 families, chose to join the Khan in his flight to Pakistan territory over tortuous, high mountain terrain. Only about ten very poor and disgruntled Kirghiz households from the Little Pamir valley, numbering about 232 Epilogue fifty individuals, chose not to join the exodus with the Khan and stayed behind. The Kirghiz of Afghanistan were, therefore, among the earliest refugees...