QK Archives: Dr. Mohammed Najibullah: The Afghan Prometheus

Op-Ed On September 24, 2014 orginally Published by the Daily Times
Dr Mohammed Najibullah: the Afghan Prometheus



“

Strike harder, squeeze him, don’t leave any slack!

He’s very clever at finding ways out of impossible situations” — Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound.

Seeing the artist Dirck Van Baburen’s painting Prometheus Being Chained by Vulcan on a recent visit to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum brought to mind the above lines from the Greek tragedy and then immediately the imagery of the September 26, 1996 assassination of former Afghan President Dr Mohammed Najibullah by the Taliban. In Aeschylus’ work, the ‘power’ is giving instructions to the Vulcan to pin the mythical revolutionary down. There also seem to have been instructions in the case of Dr Najibullah’s assassination from a menacing power to its quislings. Peter Tomsen, the former US special envoy to Afghanistan, notes in his book The Wars of Afghanistan, “Najib’s entrapment and execution carried the hallmarks of a classic intelligence operation. The Taliban, on their own, would not have taken such elaborate precautions to avoid violating the UN’s diplomatic premises (where Dr Najibullah had taken sanctuary since stepping down in 1992).”

Ambassador Tomsen has also noted, “Four Taliban, including, by one account, a Pakistani ISI officer disguised as Taliban, drove directly to the UN compound in a Japanese Datsun pickup. Their mission was to lure the former Afghan president out of the diplomatically protected UN premises.” Mullah Abdul Razzaq was the Taliban ringleader who carried out the torture, killing, mutilation and desecration of the corpses — a war crime by any definition — at the behest of his Pakistani minders. In her recent book The Wrong Enemy, the New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall has corroborated the US diplomat’s detailed account of murder most foul. The Pakistani security establishment did not want the Afghan Prometheus out alive. He had withstood the combined Pakistani-Arab-US onslaught through Afghan rebels and Arab mercenaries even after the Soviet withdrawal. In fact, Dr Najibullah inflicted the most humiliating defeat on the ISI-backed mujahideen in the March 1989 battle of Jalalabad after the Soviet pullout. But the Pakistani junta was perhaps more wary of Dr Najibullah’s Afghan nationalist credentials and a larger than life stature that he had attained on both sides of the Durand Line after the Soviet departure. His opponents knew that, if left alive, Dr Najibullah would continue to stand resolutely against Pakistani meddling in Afghanistan.

Dr Najibullah was born in Kabul in 1947 to Mr Muhammad Akhtar, an Ahmadzai Pashtun of the Ghilzai tribal confederacy. The family originally hailed from Paktia. Dr Najibullah spent a few years in Peshawar where his father was posted as a trade attaché with the Afghan consulate. Dr Najibullah went to the Habibia High School and then to the faculty of medicine at Kabul University. He was one of the leading lights of the student wing of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). His Kabul background drew him to the rather Persianised Parcham (the flag) faction, named thus after its party organ, of the PDPA. He was imprisoned at least twice during King Zahir Shah’s era for political activities on campus. He, along with his schoolmate Mahmud Biryalay — a stepbrother of the Parcham leader Babrak Karmal — contributed prolifically to the party organ. He got his medical degree in 1975 but never did practice medicine. Dr Najibullah became a member of the unified PDPA’s central committee in 1977, member of the Revolutionary Council after the Saur Revolution in 1978 and was elevated as a full member of the politburo in 1981. When the Khalq (the people) faction of the PDPA purged the Parchamites, especially Babrak Karmal’s confidants, after the 1978 revolution, Dr Najibullah was exiled to Iran as an ambassador. He was drawn closer to Babrak Karmal perhaps due to similar backgrounds but had a diametrically opposite style of leadership.

While Karmal was rather standoffish, Dr Najibullah was a people’s man who could relate to the Afghans in Kabul and the countryside with equal ease. Dr Najibullah had the intellect of the Parcham ideologue ustad (teacher), Mir Akbar Khyber, finesse of a western democrat and craft of a tribal leader. His linguistic prowess in both Persian and Pashto was breathtaking and his oratory remains unmatched in contemporary Afghan history. Dr Najibullah had the voice and delivery command of a seasoned broadcaster. He was at equal ease talking in Marxist jargon at a PDPA plenum, to the Afghan troops in Jalalabad garrison and to the tribal assemblies (jirgas). The doctor sure knew how to take his audience and indeed his people’s political pulse. The Parcham faction was certainly a numeric minority in the PDPA when Dr Najibullah became the Afghan president in 1986 and the party’s general secretary. His knack for understanding the ethno-tribal complexities of Afghanistan was remarkable and was the primary reason for the support that he did manage to muster, especially after the Soviet exit.

From encouraging non-Marxist nationalist groups to eventually changing the PDPA’s name to the Hizb-e-Watan (National Party) with a clear national democratic charter rather than an overtly communist agenda, all contributed to Dr Najibullah’s longevity at the helm in Kabul. I would venture to say that the only modern Afghan leader, whether monarch, Marxist or republican, that comes close to Dr Najibullah’s leadership style and ability was Sardar Muhammad Daud Khan, whom the PDPA had toppled and replaced.

Like Daud Khan, Dr Najibullah was an Afghan first and foremost. His creed most certainly was Afghan nationalism and his ultimate agenda was national reconciliation that he pushed with utmost sincerity. He was prophetic in warning about the dangers of the Pak-Saudi-US backing of the jihadists and foretold its disastrous impact on Afghanistan and the region in speech after speech. His National Reconciliation Policy and the 1988 Geneva Peace Accords have even more relevance today to negotiate peace within Afghanistan and to keep the intruders out.

Dr Najibullah was immensely popular among the Pashtun nationalist rank and file in Pakistan. However, while many of the Pakistani Pashtun leaders stood by him, the top ones did not take up his languishing in the UN compound seriously. Not so much as a strike was called in the almost five years that Dr Najibullah remained confined in that ill-fated building. Those who routinely talked of greater Afghanistan and Pashtunistan were perhaps too vested in Islamabad’s politics to see how and why the Afghan Prometheus was being tied down. A full treatise is in order to discuss the orientation of Pashtun nationalism in Pakistan but suffice it to say that both major Pashtun parties, minus a few individual leaders, let Dr Najibullah down.
RIP Dr Najibullah.
To rephrase Aeschylus, you were too audacious and unyielding in the face of bitter pains, and you spoke too freely.



The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki

Fatehullah Gandapur Dams' advocate

Fatehullah Gandapur

Dams' advocate
Interview published by THE NEWS on Sunday circa 2006

I emphasise on the construction of Katzara Dam because it costs nearly as much as Kalabagh Dam does but it can store 35 million acre feet of water and generate 15,000 megawatts of power.

By Raza Rahman Khan

The News on Sunday: Why do you oppose the construction of Kalabagh Dam?

Fatehullah Gandapur: I am opposing Kalabagh Dam purely on technological grounds. Being a professional, I will only give professional reasons for my opposition.

The life of its reservoir will be very short, 20 years to be precise, and it will not add any acres to Pakistan's irrigated lands. Claims in this regard are wrong. It will only make up for the storage losses caused by the silting up Tarbela and Mangla dams. In this sense, it is a replacement dam. It will not generate 3,600 megawatts of electricity, as is wrongly claimed by the government. It will only produce 1,460 megawatts, which will be its dependable power-generation capacity. To generate the additional 2,000 megawatts of power, the government has a plan to install a thermal power plant near the dam site.

Moreover, the area earmarked for Kalabagh Dam falls in a high risk seismic zone. The dam's consultant agrees that its foundation will be unsafe for any structure 160 feet high. The height of Kalabagh Dam is 260 feet. So, I suggest to the government that if it still wants to utilise the site, it should instead construct a raised barrage there. This barrage will have a capacity to store 3.5 million acre feet of water. But unlike Kalabagh Dam it will last forever. Its power generation capacity will also be same -- 1,460 megawatts -- as that of Kalabagh Dam. Above all, the construction cost (of the barrage) will be relatively very low and it can be completed quickly.

On the other hand I emphasise on the construction of Katzara Dam because it costs nearly as much as Kalabagh Dam does but it can store 35 million acre feet of water and generate 15,000 megawatts of power. The life-span of Katzara Dam will be more than 1000 years because it is out of the monsoon range and, therefore, will not be flooded with silt. (The water flowing into it) is snow-fed. Katzara Dam can control floods and can be helpful in coping with calamities expected in future as a result of environmental degradation. Above all, if this dam is built, it will stop soil erosion in Skardu valley, the most susceptible place for soil erosion. This will, in turn, stop silt from flowing downstream the Indus river -- something which silts up Tarbela Dam. Had Katzara Dam been constructed before Tarbela Dam, the latter's life-span would have been 1000 years instead of the present 50 years.

The life-span of Bhasha Dam, according to its consultant, is 80 years. But if Bhasha Dam is built after Katzara Dam, then this period will stretch to almost 1000 years.

I may add that in Kalabagh Dam, silt will not come from the Indus river alone. It will also flow into the dam from the Kabul river. Priority should be given to building dams in the upper riparian areas of the Indus river in order to control silt.

TNS: When you say that Katzara Dam should have been built before the Tarbela Dam, are you suggesting that the danger of silting was not properly calculated?

FG: No, they were not. I did a pre-feasibility study on Katzara Dam in 1962 but nobody was interested.

TNS: Are dams good or bad?

FG: The argument put forward by Sindh against the construction of dams is completely illogical. Dams are good; they must be built. They do not consume water. They are like banks. You can withdraw whatever amount of water (after it is stored by a dam) whenever you need it. They also generate power at a low cost.

Pakistan should have constructed at least 20 dams by now. No (big) dam has been built after the commissioning of Tarbela Dam in 1974. The government should have put Kalabagh Dam aside as soon dispute arose over it. Another dam should have been built instead to overcome the scarcity of water.

Now, Pakistan is facing critical times ahead. If (big) dams are not built within a decade, famine will sway the country. Planning (for big dams) should immediately start because water projects are time consuming and costly.

TNS: So you are not concerned with the social impact of mega dams...

FG: In China, the construction of one mega dam displaced 1.5 million people. But they were given alternative places to live even before they were dislocated. People do everything they can for their countries. If some populated area comes under water as the result of a dam's construction, no one should raise hue and cry because (people living in these areas) can be shifted to other places.

TNS: You have worked as Irsa's chairman. What do you say about the authority's working? Is it sloppy? Does the authority lack mechanism to enforce its writ?

FG: Irsa simultaneously have too much powers and no powers at all. It is Irsa's mandate to implement the 1991 water accord but the authority does not have financial, administrative or judicial powers to get it implemented. Irsa is dependent on the finance department for its salaries and other running expenses. It was founded in good faith but due to the lack of these powers it has been rendered ineffective. Irsa should have powers to build dams and resolve water-related disputes.

TNS: If Irsa is that powerless, how can the provinces resolve the issue of water pilferage?

FG: Though the government has installed telemetry system at the cost of Rs 25 crores (to measure water levels at various dams and barrages) but this system has failed to end the allegations of water pilferage. There have been instances when 80,000 cusecs of water were pilfered out of 100,000 cusecs flowing through the Indus system but the equipment did not register it. Now if (the federal government) wants to stop water pilferage and distribute water among provinces honestly, it needs to thoroughly investigate who is stealing how much water, where and when. The mere setting up of a measuring system cannot deliver on its own.

TNS: What do you say about the observation that the 1991 Accord was unjust?

FG: The basic formula of the 1991 Accord was that the area already under cultivation will not be touched. Also, the accord did not change water schemes that were being executed and the water that was being historically used by different provinces. It meant a large amount of water given to Sindh and Punjab for irrigation without having to increase allocation of water to the Frontier and Balochistan, which do not have vast tracts of irrigated land and elaborate canal systems. I favour a first come, first serve formula. As water goes away from the source, losses increase both through seepage and evaporation. If the upper riparian lands are irrigated on priority basis, losses will will be little. It is not enough that we irrigate our lands only through gravity flow. We should also use lift irrigation techniques. Under the current situation, the Frontier province is at an extreme disadvantage because most of its land is located above the gravity level.

There is another gross mistake committed in the 1991 Water Accord. It divides 117 million acre feet of water while the actual available amount is 105 million acre feet. Thus 12 million acre feet of water have been distributed without their being present in the system. What was the purpose of this trick? Was it meant to create room for the construction of new dams or was it aimed at making every province feel happy?

TNS: You are the originator of a Grand Pakistan Canal idea. What's that?

FG: I suggested the construction of a barrage at Chashma in 1960. It was subsequently built. When Katzara Dam gets built, the water flowing through the Indus should be divided at Chashma or at some other place close to it. On the right side of the Indus, a mega-canal -- Pakistan Grand Canal, as I named it -- should be built to carry the divided waters to irrigate Dera Ismail Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Kachhi area of Balochistan and even upper Sindh. This will be a lined canal which minimises water losses. The rest of the water in the river should be properly channellised, by reducing the width of the river from 14 miles and confining the flow in the old river bed. This would speed up the velocity of water. It will create the added benefit of four million acres of reclaimed land on both sides of the Indus. Moreover, due to channelised bed, no one will be able to steal the water.