Afghanistan Peace CampaignThirty years ago, on 27 September 1996, former president Dr Najibullah was killed alongside his brother, Shahpur, in the Afghan capital, Kabul. He had been sheltering in a United Nations compound since the mujahedin captured the city four years earlier, but on 26 September, the Taliban took Kabul. By the next morning, the two brothers had been seized and killed, their bodies hanged from nearby traffic lights. To mark the anniversary, we have compiled a new dossier of reports about Najib’s party, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which had seized power in the 1978 coup. The reports look back at the people and events that shaped this turbulent period of Afghan history and at the contested legacy of the PDPA and its rule.
This dossier follows our 2018 Thematic Dossier XVIII: The PDPA and the Soviet Intervention, which brought together AAN reporting on the 1978 coup and its aftermath, war crimes and resistance, the Soviet intervention and the PDPA’s successor parties. Here, we bring the collection up-to-date with the relevant reports we have published since then.
These two AAN dossiers trace a political party that profoundly changed Afghanistan and whose coup d’état led to half a century of conflict. The earlier dossier looked at how the PDPA seized power in 1978 and the repression that followed, including mass arrests, torture, forced disappearances and killings, and the resistance its government sparked. It also examined the relationship between the PDPA and the Soviet Union, whose forces invaded in December 1979, as the government in Kabul faced a growing rebellion, and the decade-long occupation and war that followed.
The reports featured in this second dossier revisit that history. Thomas Ruttig’s account of the PDPA on the 60thanniversary of its founding traces the party’s contentious history – from its beginnings in 1965 and its factional struggles to the coup and its years in power, including Najibullah’s attempt to remake it as Hezb-e Watan in 1990. Two reports marking the 40th anniversary of the Soviet invasion revisit December 1979 from different perspectives: one places the invasion in the wider history of the Cold War, while the other asks Afghans what they remember of the arrival of Soviet troops and how it changed their lives. Together, the reports show how the struggle over political power, modernisation and the direction of the country became entangled with the Cold War, with consequences that long outlasted the Soviet withdrawal.
Three obituaries examine the PDPA era through the lives of people who held prominent positions in the party but are also remembered for their achievements and commitments that went beyond their party membership: Sultan Ali Keshtmand as a senior politician and advocate of greater equality for Hazaras, Sulaiman Layeq as one of Afghanistan’s most highly regarded poets and Soraya Parlika as a lifelong campaigner for women’s rights.
Accountability, which featured prominently in the earlier dossier, remains an issue decades after the crimes were perpetrated. The reports in the war crimes and accountability section follow investigations and prosecutions in the Netherlands of former PDPA-era officials accused of crimes committed more than four decades ago, including the case of a former Pul-e Charkhi prison commander, whose war crimes conviction was overturned on appeal. AAN’s analysis uncovered several areas where the tribunal’s arguments appeared flawed, including it misunderstanding the role of the PDPA intelligence agency, KhAD, and not taking into consideration legal understandings reached by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR). Abdul Razaq Arif died in 2025 before Dutch prosecutors could appeal the court’s ruling. These reports illustrate both the possibilities offered by universal jurisdiction when alleged perpetrators have left Afghanistan and the legal difficulties of prosecuting crimes committed so long ago.
The war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the PDPA are detailed in the final publication for this dossier. The UN Mapping Report, authored by Patricia Gossman and Barnett Rubin, also covers the crimes committed by the mujahedin parties – in opposition and in government – and the first Taliban emirate, and by both the Soviet (1979-1989) and US (in 2001) armies.
The PDPA and the Soviet invasion
Between Reform and Repression: The 60th anniversary of PDPA
Thomas Ruttig, 20 January 2025
The leftist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) irrevocably altered the country’s trajectory with its coup d’état in 1978, setting off a chain of events that would have lasting repercussions. The debate surrounding the extent of the Soviet Union’s influence on the party prior to this, as well as Moscow’s desire to see its rise to power, continues to this day. What is clear, however, is that the PDPA’s takeover of power and the subsequent Soviet military intervention in December 1979 touched off a shift of seismic proportions not only in Afghanistan’s political landscape but also in the lives of ordinary Afghans. Along with Western support for the mujahedin who opposed the party, the PDPA internationalised Afghanistan’s internal conflicts over modernisation and governance – they would last four decades, marking it as the last ‘hot war’ in the context of the Cold War. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks at the party’s history, drawing from earlier AAN reports, as well as adding details from lesser-known sources.
“Our Lives Changed”: Afghans remember the coming of the Soviet troops
AAN Team and S Reza Kazemi, 27 December 2019
Forty years ago, Soviet forces entered Afghanistan, killed then President Hafizullah Amin from the Khalq faction of the ruling communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) on 27 December 1979 and brought to power Babrak Karmal, who was from the rival Parcham faction. The move was meant to be a relatively short-lived regime-change operation, but swiftly turned into a fully-fledged occupation that would last one long decade and plunge the country into an intricate, devastating armed conflict from which it has yet to emerge. AAN has spoken to a range of people about their memories of those days and how the Soviet invasion affected them and changed their lives (interviews by the AAN team, compiled by Reza Kazemi).
A Turning Point in World History: 40 years ago, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan
Thomas Ruttig, 25 December 2019
Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan 40 years ago today, on 25 December 1979. Two days later, on 27 December, they toppled and killed Amin’s Khalqi’s government which had called for the troops and had assumed they had come for their rescue. The resulting occupation that would last for more than ten years became the last direct Soviet involvement in a ‘hot’ war in the global Cold War of that era. What was meant to be a relatively short and limited regime change operation, ended up changing history. It became part of a larger configuration of events that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union and its dominance in Eastern Europe and what, at the time, was described as the ‘end of history’: the end of the Cold War and the final triumph of liberal democracy (an illusion that has become obsolete). In Afghanistan, armed conflict did not end with the Soviet withdrawal, making Afghans the main victims of this war. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig reminds us of the unfolding events and the history they were part of.
Lives and legacies
Thomas Ruttig, 21 March 2026
Few Afghan politicians from the era of the Soviet-backed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) regime combined technocratic skill with a clear focus on combatting ethnic inequality, as Sultan Ali Keshtmand did. Born into a modest Hazara family, he rose to the top echelons of the party, navigating imprisonment, internal PDPA purges and shifting Soviet strategies to twice become head of government during one of the country’s most turbulent decades. For some, he symbolised opportunity and the potential for political inclusion, but for critics, he remains inseparable from the broader record of the Soviet-backed PDPA – a loyal functionary complicit in its failures and excesses. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig, with contributions by Rohullah Sorush, examines Keshtmand’s legacy, which sits at the crossroads of ethnic politics, state-building and the Cold War, as well as his contested place in Afghanistan’s political memory.
AAN Obituary: PDPA leader and poet Sulaiman Layeq
Thomas Ruttig, 19 August 2020
Sulaiman Layeq, one of the last surviving founding members of the leftist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which changed the country’s history with its coup d’état in 1978, has died in late July. In 1992, he even made it to the top of the party, albeit in its final moments. The circumstances of his death were tragic and symbolic for the state of Afghanistan at the same time: Layeq, 90 years old, died of the wounds he had sustained in a suicide bombing in September 2019 in Kabul. AAN’s co-director Thomas Ruttig looks back at the two sides of his life – the life of a highly esteemed poet and of a controversial politician.
AAN Obituary: Unfaltering women’s rights activist Soraya Parlika (1944-2019)
Thomas Ruttig, 15 January 2020
Soraya Parlika, political and women’s rights activist, has died at the age of 75. She had, said Sahraa Karimi, Chair of the Afghan Film Organisation, who made a documentary about Parlika, “dedicated her life to the life of women of Afghanistan and never left her motherland even during the hard years of civil war and Taleban regime.” This earned her the respect even among many who opposed her for having been a leading member of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks back at her life.
War crimes and accountability
1980s Pul-e Charkhi Commander Walks Free: War crimes conviction overturned by Dutch Court of Appeal
Kate Clark, 19 August 2024
A senior figure overseeing the notorious Pul-e Charkhi prison in the 1980s who was convicted of war crimes in the Netherlands, where he had been given asylum, has seen his conviction overturned by the Court of Appeal. His lawyers successfully argued that Abdul Razaq Arif’s crimes – arbitrary deprivation of liberty, cruel and inhuman treatment, and assault on the personal dignity – were not admissible because they had no link to the armed conflict between the then government and the mujahedin and could therefore not be considered war crimes. The Public Prosecution Service has now asked the Dutch Supreme Court to consider the appeal judgement. Senior analyst Kate Clark, has, with other AAN colleagues, followed this and similar cases over many years and here delves into the substance and points of law made in the appeal court’s judgement that may now be considered by the Supreme Court.
War Crimes Trial Begins in the Netherlands: Former commander at Pul-e Charkhi faces justice
Kate Clark, 16 February 2022
The trial of an Afghan man suspected of committing war crimes in Afghanistan in the 1980s will start today in the Netherlands. Abdul Razaq Arif is believed to have served in leadership positions in the Pul-e Charkhi prison from 1983 to 1990 and is being charged with being an accessory to or allowing inhuman treatment and the deprivation of liberty. Arif was arrested in November 2019 in the Netherlands following a tip-off in 2012 from a Dutch Afghan citizen and a seven-year- long investigation. As AAN’s Kate Clark reports, the trial is a rare instance of an Afghan accused of war crimes facing a court.
Afghan War Crimes Trials in The Netherlands: Who are the suspects and what have been the outcomes?
Ehsan Qanee, 25 March 2020
At least six Afghan, or Afghan-Dutch, citizens have been investigated for war crimes and torture in Afghanistan by the Dutch authorities. Two were found guilty and received prison sentences, one was acquitted, one died during the investigation, one was investigated but released due to insufficient evidence, and the sixth is still under investigation. All were military officials belonging to the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) which governed Afghanistan from 1978 to 1992. The trials were conducted based on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows national courts to try the gravest crimes, even when they allegedly took place in another country. AAN’s Ehsan Qaane provides details about the identity of the six, the allegations against them, context about the PDPA’s era, as well as analysis about the significance of these trials for victims (with input from Thomas Ruttig and Rachel Reid).
15 August 2024
In 2004, a major report mapping the war crimes and human rights violations committed in Afghanistan between 1978 and 2001 was published by the United Nations before being swiftly taken down under political pressure, allegedly from then president Hamed Karzai, some of his ministers and foreign backers and from within the UN. What became known as ‘the UN Mapping Report’, authored by Patricia Gossman and Barnett Rubin, was subsequently made available to the public on a website. As the link is now broken, the AAN is posting this important report here.
Compiled by Nur Khan Himmat and Kate Clark
Edited by Roxanna Shapour