The Afghan Civil War of 1989–1992 (Pashto: له ۱۹۸۹ څخه تر ۱۹۹۲ پوري د افغانستان کورنۍ جګړه), also known as the First Afghan Civil War, took place between the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan on 15 February 1989 which ended the Soviet–Afghan War, and 27 April 1992, the day after the proclamation of the Peshawar Accords proclaiming a new interim Afghan government which was supposed to start serving on 28 April 1992.
Mujahideen groups, some of them ostensibly united as part of the Afghan Interim Government proclaimed as their conviction that they were battling the hostile "puppet regime" of the Republic of Afghanistan in Kabul. In March 1989, the interim government and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) attacked the city of Jalalabad and were pushed back three months later in what is known as the Battle of Jalalabad. Hekmatyar's Hezbi Islami pulled their support for the interim government following the defeat.
In March 1991 after a gruelling eleven-year siege, a mujahideen coalition managed to capture the regime's stronghold of Khost. In March 1992, having lost the last remnants of Soviet support, President Mohammad Najibullah began purging the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek militia commanders in Northern Afghanistan and replacing them with Pashtun Army generals, while simultaneously negotiating with the Pashtun elements of the mujahideen including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezbi Islami. This led to mass defections by Northern militias who allied with Massoud against Najibullah and began an offensive from the north that would topple his government. Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin refused to take part in or discuss a coalition government under the Pakistani-sponsored Peshawar Peace Accords and invaded Kabul with the help of Khalqist generals and other former officials of Najibullah's regime. This triggered a civil war starting on 25 April 1992, initially between three mujahideen groups before growing to five or six within weeks.
Background (1978–1989)
In October 1978, opponents of the reforms of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government, including modernizing traditional Islamic civil and marriage laws, changing the national flag to a Soviet-style red flag, and forcing land reform, started a revolt, and called themselves mujahideen.
In spite of a UN General Assembly resolution condemning the 1979 USSR invasion and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation demanding immediate Soviet withdrawal, the Russians fought until early 1989 in the Soviet–Afghan War. They managed to take control of major cities and strategic installations, thus acerbating nationalistic feelings among rebels who drew Soviet troops into war with urban uprisings and tribal armies. The Soviets leveled villages, destroyed irrigation ditches and laid millions of mines in an attempt to root out the mujahideen rebels. In those nine years, between 500,000 and 2 million Afghans were killed and millions were displaced, and in large numbers fled into neighboring countries. The new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, taking charge in 1985, in 1987 announced his intention to withdraw from Afghanistan, which took place between May 1988 and February 1989.
The mujahideen resistance movement had started chaotically in 1978 and had always stayed highly segmented along regional, ethnic, tribal and religious lines: after four years the mujahideen operated from an estimated 4,000 bases, a typical commander leading a few hundred men. In 1985, seven larger Sunni Islamic rebel groups had coordinated their fight against the Soviets, who were also known as the Pakistani backed Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen. After the Soviets had left Afghanistan in February 1989, some smaller groups put down arms or joined the government however the larger mujahideen groups continued their fight against the PDPA-government of President Mohammad Najibullah, who was still massively supported by the Soviet Union, and establish a Islamist government. Many of these larger Mujahideen groups such as Jamiat-e Islami (or Jamiat) had existed years before the PDPA seized power. Leaders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud and Jalaluddin Haqqani attempted uprisings (with Pakistani support) in 1974 against the government of Daoud Khan. These uprisings failed and many of these groups fled to Pakistan to be trained by the Pakistan intelligence service, ISI, in a future insurgency against the Daoud Khan government, which would be overthrown by PDPA military officers only 4 years later.
Attacks between mujahideen groups (1987–1989)
According to published reports during the 1980s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin developed a reputation for attacking other resistance forces, especially those of Massoud, and raiding or blocking their food and arms supplies as well as caravans of relief organizations. According to author Steve Coll, Hekmatyar attacked Ahmad Shah Massoud so often that Washington (who was supporting him through Pakistan) "feared he might be a secret KGB plant whose mission was to sow disruption within the anti-communist resistance." Reports suggest that Hekmatyar's commanders were saving their men and weapons to establish Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin as the dominant organization once the Soviets departed.
In 1989, Hekmatyar's forces once again conducted an attack on Massoud's forces, this time targeting Massoud and the senior leadership of Shura-e Nazar, Massoud's military and political alliance of 130 northern commanders. While they were not able to kill or injure Massoud, Hekmatyar's forces tortured to death thirty of his men, some of whom were his close friends. Survivors describe the torture as pulling their eyes out, cutting their ears and noses off, and cutting their stomachs open. Massoud consequently ordered an operation to hunt down the murderers. Shura-e Nazar were able to capture them, but instead of performing revenge killings, Massoud sent them to Peshawar to have them tried before a court. The courts sentenced them to death. For the sake of Afghan unity, Massoud declared: "My message to Hekmatyar's people is that without a united front we cannot succeed, we cannot achieve anything in Afghanistan." Roy Gutman of the United States Institute of Peace considered Massoud "the only Afghan leader with an integrated vision".
Through this period (1987–89) both Massoud and Hekmatyar had been frequently fighting each other and killing each other's officers, and Massoud's rhetoric was rarely matched by action. In 1988, for instance, Massoud's forces attacked Hekmatyar loyalists in Badakhshan Province. In 1989, Massoud arrested and executed one of Hekmatyar's local officers, Jamal Agha, whom he accused of having murdered a number of Jamiat commandants: Mohammad Izzatullah, Mohammad Islamuddin, Mulla Abdul-Wadoud, and Payinda Mohammad.
However, Hekmatyar's supporters accused Massoud of having killed these commandants to centralize his authority in Jamiat's ranks and framed Agha, whom they claimed had good relations with the victims. This was stated by Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin supporter Mohammad Tanwir Halim in 2013. However, this version of the story is uncorroborated and Hekmatyar was widely unpopular in any case for his vicious murders, though this was not necessarily true of his commanders some of whom like Abdul-Rauf Safi, Abdul-Sabour Farid and perhaps Agha enjoyed decent relations with other groups. Massoud later appointed Safi as Kabul commandant. Hekmatyar's supporters also accused Massoud of betrayal because of his ceasefires with Soviet forces and in this they had the support of Jamaat leader Mohammad Eshaq who also criticized Massoud for his ceasefire with the Soviets during the second half of the occupation. It appears that Massoud was trying to form a base independent of Pakistan, and in this endeavour, he did make deals with governments traditionally hostile to the mujahideen, including India and the Soviets. However, the Soviet forces, at the request of Najibullah, attacked Massoud's forces before withdrawing during Operation Typhoon, killing over 600 members of Jamiat.
The accusations of betrayal by both sides are disputed. The Pakistani coordinator, Mohammed Yousaf, does not challenge Massoud's version of Agha's story, despite Pakistan's hostility towards Massoud. Similarly, Palestinian mujahideen leader Abdullah Azzam claimed that Massoud was a legendary fighter, though Azzam notably rarely criticized any mujahideen leaders to avoid friction.
Main participants
Republic of Afghanistan
PDPA/Homeland Party government
After the Soviet withdrawal on 15 February 1989, Najibullah's government and the PDPA were on their own. The U.S. intelligence agencies expected the regime to collapse within three to six months. However, this estimation did not take into account several assets available to the Republic of Afghanistan government. The first of these was the large quantities of military hardware donated by the Soviet Union. In 1989, the army and pro-government militias and paramilitaries still had 1,568 tanks, 828 armoured personnel carriers, 4,880 artillery pieces, 126 modern fighter-bombers and 14 attack helicopters. Also, the DRA continued to receive massive Soviet aid, valued between two and six billion dollars a year, and Soviet military advisors were still present in Afghanistan. The government forces also came to rely on the use of large quantities of Scud missiles: between 1988 and 1992 more than 2,000 of these were fired by the 99th Missile Brigade of the Afghan Armed Forces. It was the largest amount of ballistic missiles used since World War II. This considerable amount of firepower was sufficient to keep the mujahideen at bay. The Republic heavily relied on keeping the Salang Pass open to supply its troops.
99th Missile Brigade
The 99th Missile Brigade was responsible for Kabul's Scud Missile arsenal; the Brigade consisted of Afghans as well as five Soviet volunteers. The Brigade launched around 2,000 missiles between 1989 and 1992. The brigade was founded in the 1980s during the Soviet–Afghan War, with resources to the brigade increasing drastically following the Soviet withdrawal. Members of the 99th participated in the Battle of Jalalabad, the Siege of Khost as well as a few retaliatory strikes against Pakistan for violating the Afghan airspace.
Abdul Rashid Dostum (Jowzjani militia)
Abdul Rashid Dostum's Jowzjani militia, officially called the 53rd Infantry Division, was the most effective pro-government militia. Numbering 40,000 men drawn from the Uzbek minority, it took its orders directly from Najibullah, who used it as a strategic reserve force and paramilitary. After 1989, this force was the only one capable of carrying out offensive operations.
Mujahideen
Ahmad Shah Massoud (Jamiat-e Islami)
The U.S. provided Massoud with little to no support. He instead got support from the United Kingdom, specifically MI6 and the Special Air Service. Part of the reason why he still got only minor support was that the U.S. permitted its funding and arms distribution to be administered by Pakistan which favored Hekmatyar, who considered himself Massoud's arch-enemy. Massoud was also seen as "too independent". The Pakistanis did however grant a base of operations in Pakistan and assisted Jamiat forces militarily during the Badaber Uprising. Primary advocates for still supporting Massoud instead were the U.S. State Department's Edmund McWilliams, and the U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Peter Tomsen, who were on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Others included two Heritage Foundation neoconservative foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of U.S. support under the Reagan Doctrine.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin)
During the Soviet-Afghan War, the U.S. had allowed Pakistan to funnel much American military aid to Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin.
The U.S. permitted its funding and arms distribution to be administered by Pakistan, which favored Hekmatyar.
According to Tomsen, Hekmatyar was hired in 1990 by the ISI to conquer and rule Afghanistan in the benefit of Pakistani interests, a plan which was delayed until 1992 as a result of U.S. pressure to cancel it.
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf (Ittehad-e Islami)
One of the beneficiaries of Saudi Arabian support, especially financial, was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and his army Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan (Ittehad-e Islami).
Jalaluddin Haqqani (Haqqani network)
Another beneficiary of Saudi support was Jalaluddin Haqqani, who had had strong contacts to Arab fighters in the Soviet–Afghan War.
Battle of Jalalabad
Prelude
In the spring of 1989, the Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen, supported by the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, attacked Jalalabad. The ISI's Director Gul wanted to see a mujahideen government over Afghanistan, led by Hekmatyar.
Analysts disagree as to whether Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was totally kept in the dark about the ISI's plan to overthrow the Afghan government or was one of the instigators of this attack. One analyst stated that also U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Robert B. Oakley was exhortating this mujahideen attack. The Americans reportedly were motivated by their wish to humiliate the Marxists and send them out of Afghanistan "clinging to their helicopters", and thus avenge the fall of South Vietnam; Pakistan wished to establish a friendly government in Kabul that would not back Baluch and Pashtun separatists in western Pakistan. The plan was for Jamiat forces to close the Salang Pass paralyzing the Afghan government's supply lines. An interim government, recognized by western nations as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, was to be established in Jalalabad.