Free Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century by Christian Caryl Page A

(in slightly modified form) with a new design in basic red, that unmistakable signature of revolutionary intentions. This was deeply offensive to those Afghans who regarded the removal of the color of Islam (green) as a clear indication that the Communists were planning to reduce the role of religion in public life. The slogans and imagery at PDPA demonstrations included virtually no religious references, and the demonstrators often included women as well as men, which incensed conservatives. As political violence increased, the PDPA buried its deceased members in secular ceremonies and sometimes left the bodies of its opponents in the field without following the Islamic customs that dictated burial within a certain period.
    The plotters of the coup against Daoud also sowed the seeds of future problems with their Soviet patrons. Far from instigating the coup, as many in the West assumed, the men in the Kremlin had been caught completely off guard by the news—they learned of Daoud’s overthrow from a Reuters report. 3 They were nonplussed. No one had warned them what was afoot, and initially they were not entirely sure they approved. Moscow had been happy enough with the situation under Daoud. But the Soviet leadership nonetheless responded positively to Taraki’s initial requests for additional aid and advisers. Daoud’s overtures to the West in his last years had unsettled Brezhnev and his entourage, so the news of the coup seemed, at first, to offer reassurance that the new government would safeguard Soviet interests on the Hindu Kush. Taraki’s rhetoric did little to disappoint them. He increasingly larded his speeches with references to the example of the Great October Socialist Revolution and praised the Soviet Union’s selfless efforts toward the betterment of his country.
    But Taraki’s talk had an opposite effect at home. Afghans did not like to hear their leaders kowtowing to other countries. While many appreciated the aid that they had received from the Russians over the years, there were limits to their gratitude.Everyone knew that atheism was part of the Soviet Union’s official creed. Many Afghans, indeed, had personal memories of the 1920s and ‘30s, when the Soviet government had brutally suppressed an Islamic guerrilla movement in what later became the central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Many refugees from that campaign had fled across the border to the south and settled in ethnically congenial parts of Afghanistan, bringing with them a residual memory of heroic Muslims in revolt against atheist Russian rule. Afghans were quick to recall this poisonous legacy as Soviet involvement in their country’s affairs increased.
    I n June 1978, two months after the coup, Afghan government police in the remote Pech Valley, in the province of Kunar, arrested two local tribal elders, men who enjoyed considerable respect in the community. The reasons for the arrest remain unclear to this day: some say that the men were detained for opposing government policy, but other accounts suggest that the officials doing the arresting were abusing their power to settle a personal grievance. What we do know is the effect that the arrest had on the locals. As the jeep carrying the prisoners passed through the small town of Ningalam, an old woman cried out, “Is there no man among you? Two of our men are being taken away.” Someone in the crowd opened fire on the vehicle, killing an officer and two soldiers. The very next day the army invaded the town with tanks and artillery. According to local accounts, government forces set fire to the houses. They even burned the local mosque and the Qurans inside it. 4
    Out of these desultory origins was born the first uprising against the Communist government. The stream of disturbing decrees from Kabul stirred talk of heathen practices that would soon be extended to the entire countryside. It was said that officials of the new government had told people to abandon the