By Phillip Bonosky

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

As we hit the main highway leading out of Kabul —
this was the morning of the 11th of January — we saw
coming from the opposite direction a strange cara-
van. It was made up of almost anything on wheels:
taxicabs, old cars, trucks; buses. And inside them
were very joyous people: Afghan men, women and
even children who had just been freed from Pule-
Chakhri where they had been imprisoned for months
on no charge whatsoever except that they were sus-
pected of opposing Hafizullah Amin’s tyrannical and
bloody regime.

In eight days in Kabul (between Jan. 9-17), this
reporter and his guides attended two press confer-
‘ ences with Prime Minister Babrak Karmal. We had

meetings with two other members of the central
committee of the People’s Democratic Party of Af-
ghanistan (PDA) who had helped direct the under-
ground struggle against the Amin regime. We inter-
viewed the minister of education, Dr. Ahahita Rateb-
zad, who is also a member of the politburoof the PDA.
We talked to the editor of the Kabul New Times. We
visited Kabul University and spoke to students and
professors there. We talked to the head of the Demo-
cratic Women’s Organization and to the leader of the
youth organization.

We talked to prisoners, ‘“‘ordinary” le, stu-
dents, to merchants in the See eee ies
taxicab driver, bourgeois correspondents from the
West, prison guards and those they guarded. We
talked to Afghan soldiers. We talked even to children.

ARABIAN
SEA

(AUGUST 1979 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

We toured the streets and looked at the city and
the people. We went outside the city into the coun-
tryside. We visited the prison — Pule-Chakhri — and
went inside. We interviewed relatives of those prison-
ers whose whereabouts were unknown — we saw their
grief, we heard their cries of pain and despair. Wesaw
the faces of relatives who were reunited with their
sons and fathers, mothers and daughters who had
been arrested by Hafizullah Amin. They were trans-
ported with joy. =

Less than two weeks before, supporters of the
central committee of the People’s Democratic Party
had stormed the palace where Amin — the murderer
of Noor Mohammid Taraki, the president of Afghanis-
tan — deserted by everyone except his personal
guard, made his last stand. He surrendered, the Re-
volutionary Council met, put him on trial, and con-
demned him to death. :

That’s why these men, women and children, cry-
ing, laughing, still dazed, were alive. Thousands, it is
said — nobody yet has the exact number for there’s
not enough time to uncover the secret graves and
count all the missing in the entire country — were
killed on Amin’s orders. Now called ‘the bloody
butcher,” Amin had been arresting thousands of loyal
members of the PDA. After ordering the murder of
Taraki and assuming complete power in September,
Amin stepped up the terror, aware that PDA mem-
bers had gone underground. Despite offers of 50,000 to

two million Afghani for any information leading to the
discovery of the secret central committee members,
nobody came forward to claim the money.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 22, 1980—Page 6

On the morning of Dec. 27, the revolt began and in
a few hours Amin’s bloody regime was toppled. The
entire army had joined the rebellion. Babrak Karmal,
now general secretary of the PDA, prime minister,
and president of the Revolutionary Council, who had
returned secretly from Czechoslovakia where Amin
had sent him as an ambassador to get him out of the
way, issued a statement to the people in which he
declared that the Saur (April) revolution had entered
a “new phase,” and that the bloody repression of the
Amin regime was now over. As one of his first acts he
declared a general amnesty and almost 10,000 prison-
ers were freed from Amin’s jails all over the country
in three stages the following week.

We were there to witness the third stage. With us,
as one of our leaders, was 27- year- old Ahmad Shah
Taghian, an advanced student: at the faculty of
medicine of Kabul University, who had been one of the
first to be released from prison — from this very
prison, Pule-Chakhri — a few days earlier, where he
had spent six months.

Ahmad took us to his cell. He showed us where he
. had spent six months crammed together with about 10
- men in a cell meant for two. He also showed us his

slogan written (in English) on the wall: ‘Long Live
Freedom of Menkind’’ (sic). ‘I’ve mispelled man-

’ kind,” he said. He grinned at me. “I was excited.”

Eyewitness report:

Hope renewed —
in Afghanistan

It seemed ridiculous that anybody would want to
kill this young medical student. When he was arrested
by the KAM, Amin’s secret police, he was put to tor-
ture, including electrical shock to his ears and testi-
cles, and then was thrown into this bleak prison. Not
only was the brutality of it fearful to bear, but more
fearful, more disheartening, was the fact that he knew

his party had been betrayed and the betrayer was in

power.

There were other slogans on the walls: ‘I’ve fal-
len in love with you, Freedom!” And: ‘‘Humankind.is
born free!’’ And: ‘‘Damn those who arrested and exe-
cuted innocent people!’’ And, in Russian, ‘‘Death to
fascism.” f

' The night of the 27th of December, Ahmad told us,
he knew something was afoot because at 7 the radio
in the prison went dead. Then, at 10, Kabal came on
the radio with his proclamation of victory and am-
nesty. And soon after, military men arrived at the
prison, shot open the gates and he was free, and alive,
and he ran to the wall and wrote his cry there.

At the prison, as we watched in surprise, Ahmad
suddenly saw one of the guards, who saw him at the
same time, and they fell into each other’s arms.
Habib, the guard, had been friendly to him in prison;
in fact, he had been opposed to Amin’s programs. He
had helped Ahmad, as he had helped other prisoners,
paying for it with 19 days in prison himself.

Now, he said, although he and the other guards
were “‘unemployed,”’ he would do anything, go on any

. assignment, for the new government. Hardly more

than 22, he had finished his army service and was

inveigled into prison guard duty without being aware

of what he was getting into.

Prison cells empty, guards guarding the empti-
ness and the chalked slogans on the walls. The guards
remained because nobody had told them to go. Béside
them, work on a section of a new prison wing had
stopped. ‘“‘What will you do with it?”’

“Make a factory of it,’’ Moneer, another Afghan
medical student, 19 years old, told me.

I knew that he, too, had gone underground, but

had been expecting arrest any moment. Looking at
the grim cells, the high prison walls, I said to him:
“Moneer, how do you feel now, talking here in this
prison.”’

_. Afghan army units. Unconfirmed (!). accounts sal

~ The diplomats reported hearing aircraft flying ové
_and a lot of shooting, which they thought was co

“fighting”? between Afghan and Soviet troops wé

jan women are assured equal rights by law

“Free,”’ he burst out. ‘ |
And that is how the entire country felt — viet
Free of oppression, free of fear, and — with the Sov”
troops guarding their frontiers — free of the memae
of invasion. 9
There was no question about this — the gene! a
feeling among the people that the new governmée's
was truly a democratic and humane government alt
that the Soviet troops had come, in the nick of fmé
not only to save the life of Anmad and Moneer, bu!
the country itself.
While we listened to the stories of many peop
and saw with our own eyes how a tormented count
was at last finding its soul, we heard with disbelief ¢
amazement quite another version of those very evel!
from the foul ‘‘voices” coming to us over the unres}>),
ing air. 2 a alt
During his press conference with the Westel.
correspondents Karmal answered a provocati\,
question by BBC crying: ‘‘Very well, you BBC corr,
spondent! Suffice it to say, your organization IS
biggest fabricator of lies in the world.”
And it was precisely this BBC (seconded by Voll
of America) that broadcast the most shameless 1}
ventions about ‘“‘clashes’’ between Soviet and Afgh
troops — “‘clashes”’ claimed to have taken place, s0
speak, right under my window! — but which somehd,
had been so muted, so discreet, that nobody but ¥
BBC had heard them! i
American correspondents, however, were me
vicious of all. “‘Vicious”’ is the right word. They cai
into Kabul like an army of thugs. They.didn’t care al
about the real situation here. They came to frame?
this country and the Soviet Union’s relationship to!
and this is all that concerned them. 3
Take the following piece of non-reporting whi
appeared with a Kabul dateline in the Jan. 18 issue¢
the International Herald-Tribune (which is join
owned by the New York Times and the WashingW
Post): ‘‘Meanwhile reports reaching diplomats
Pakistan (in Pakistan!) said that fighting broke 0
today near Kabul airport between Soviet troops af

U

that clashes also took place near the Bala Hissar fort
the site of the Afghan Army mutiny last August. En
bassies near the airport were reporting fighting thert

from the planes although they were not certain,”
This is what passes for reporting! There is not
fact in it! I was in Kabul airport half the day whe

“reported’’ by “‘diplomats” in — Pakistan! And
heard nothing — not even a bird chirping. Nor did af
of the reporters who were with me hear or see ar
thing, except commercial planes coming in and out¢
the airport, as they had been doing all week.
The aim of the horde of Western newspapermé
who came pouring into Kabul after the governme!
had agreed to let them in was to try to convince wo:
opinicn that Soviet troops were a repressive occup}