Afghans were horrified by the murder of Amin and his family and the Russian invasion of their country. In an attempt to win support, Karmal released thousands of prisoners from Pol-i-Charki Prison, including my cousin Abbas. We were all overjoyed to see Abbas, especially his wife, Nadara, who had suffered so much in his absence. Nadara had worked for USAID, an American agency that pulled out of Afghanistan when the PDPA came to power. Now that the Russians had arrived, everyone feared her connection to the Americans would prove dangerous. No sooner had Abbas and Nadara been reunited than Nadara fled with her sister to Germany. Abbas was devastated. He wanted to go with Nadara but feared he would be arrested, imprisoned, and tortured again if he tried to leave the country.
Late one night Abbas and I were sitting in the darkness of my living room.
“When I was in prison,” Abbas said, “I’d given up all hope of being released. There were fifty prisoners packed in a small cell. There was no space to lie down. Over time you became too weak to care. Every night a guard appeared and called out ten or fifteen names. Then these prisoners were taken to the ‘cleaning room.’ We never saw them again. There were always others to take their place. One night a guard called out my name. I knew it was my turn for the cleaning room. The guards were walking us down the corridor when someone called out, ‘What’s he doing here?’ It was a high-ranking Communist Party official visiting the prison. The guard said he was taking me to the cleaning room. The official told him, ‘Nay. Not him. I know him. Take him back.’
“I looked hard at the official, and though his name escaped me, I recalled his face from my military days. Then they took me back to the cell.
“I thought that after I was released, I would never be sad again. Walking out a free man into the blinding light, I felt reborn. But my time there, the faces never to be seen again, are always with me, ready to pop into my head, and I feel like I’m still in prison.”
Russian Special Forces and troops seized Bagram Airfield north of Kabul. They found themselves surrounded by mujahideen. Russian helicopter gunships staged major attacks in the countryside. In the Kunar Valley near Jalalabad, more than a thousand men, women, and children were killed. But the only part of Afghanistan the Russians occupied was Kabul. They did not control Herat to the west, they did not control Kandahar to the south, and they did not control Mazar-i-Sharif to the north. As foreign powers have discovered over the centuries, taking charge of Kabul is like grabbing an octopus by one tentacle and thinking you have the octopus securely in your grip. Your fight has only begun.
The Russians were facing fighters who knew the mountains, caves, and deserts far better than any outsider. These men lived to fight. When they weren’t battling an invader, they were fighting each other, as they had been doing for centuries. To the mujahideen, who were fervently religious and intent on establishing an Afghan government ruled under Islamic law, the Russians were worse than the British. The British believed in God and had many of the same prophets, but the Russians were atheists. The mujahideen would never rest while the Russians occupied Afghanistan.
As the months dragged on, I said to Baba, “This is a crazy war the Russians have started. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars but have no chance of winning.”
“You’re right, Bari,” Baba replied. “We have an old saying: ‘You can occupy Afghanistan, but you can’t keep it.’”
“What really worries me, Baba,” I said, “is another saying you taught me: ‘What the bear takes into its mouth, it never spits out.’”
That night my father and his brothers got into a debate. Baba said the Russians could not hold on for long, but Uncle Ali disagreed. “I don’t believe that. Why do we read history? To learn from it and know the future. Whenever Russia has invaded a country, it has never pulled out.”
Baba was not impressed. “Show me a country the Russians have ever invaded that is like Afghanistan. We are a country of high mountains and few roads. Those other countries have networks of highways and railroads and countryside suitable for the movement of tanks and military vehicles. And the people are educated and not driven by religion.”
Uncle Ali quickly replied, “Chechnya.”
Baba laughed. “Where are the mountains? Show me on the map of Chechnya how the mountains interfere with occupation. They are in the South, where few people live. The rest of Chechnya can be occupied as easily as Hungary or Czechoslovakia. Russia will not last more than a few years here.”
But even Baba did not understand the crazy will of the Russian leaders or how much money Russia was willing to spend to save face. It was only when the money started running out that Russia was forced to leave.
That took ten long years.