In 1980, Edward Girardet wrote in the Christian Science Monitor about the massacre of over one thousand people in Kerala, near Assadabad, Kunar province. He had gathered the story from survivors, who were refugees in Pakistan.
It was an unforgettable five minutes. "They forced all the men to line up in crouching positions in the field just outside the town and then opened up with their machine guns from behind," recalls Abdul Latif, a bearded Afghan traffic policeman. "Then they spread out through the town gunning down all the remaining men they could find."
A grim chapter in Afghanistan war, Edward Girardet, Christian Science Monitor.
Girardet referred to Lidice, and to My Lai, to convey the scale of the killing.
And far more people were killed in this Afghan massacre than when the entire male population of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, was slaughtered during World War II by the Nazis or when American troops killed civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai in March, 1968.
In his book from 2012, Girardet said that his 1980 hopes might have been naive.
This was the first time that I felt my journalism had achieved something concrete. Naively perhaps, I figured that history would now remember Kerala much in the same manner as it remembered Lidice or My Lai. Unfortunately, the Kerala massacre quickly receded into oblivion.
Killing the Cranes: A Reporter's Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan, Edward Girardet
The massacre occurred under the Khalq faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Parcham faction members, along with many others, were the target of Khalqi purges.
After the Parcham faction gained control with the assassination of Hafizullah Amin at the Soviet invasion, many Khalq faction members were executed.
A Khalqi cabinet minister, Sidique Alamyar, was among them.
Afghanistan's Marxist government executed three former cabinet officials who were convicted of torturing and killing thousands of Afghans, Radio Kabul reported Saturday.
...
The three, who served under the late President Hafizullah Amin, were convicted by special court, according to the broadcast heard in India.
They were identified as former Communications Minister Mohammed Zarif, Sahib Jan Sahrayee, who had been in charge of tribal affairs, and Mohammed Siddiq Alamyar, former minister of planning.
Ex-Afghan leaders executed. Associated Press (1980).
A brother, Saddiq Alamyar, fled to the Netherlands. Saddiq has been identified, by witnesses, as having direct responsibility for the Kerala massacre.
Saddiq Alamyar has now been arrested in the Netherlands for the 1979 killings in Kerala.
The Netherlands National Police arrested 64 year-old Dutch national of Afghan origin Sadeq A. at his city of residence, Rotterdam, last Tuesday. He is suspected of having committed war crimes in Afghanistan in 1979. Today, the Investigative Judge in The Hague has extended the pretrial detention of A. by 14 days.
As a former commander of commando unit 444 of the Afghan Army, Sadeq A. is believed to have been involved in killings in and around the Kerala area of Assadabad, the capital of the Afghan province Kunar on 20 April 1979.
Killings
The commando unit under A.’s orders took part in several killings. The Dutch Afghan allegedly fired shots himself as well. The elite unit of the communist regime at the time is believed to have been involved in repelling an attack by Mujahedeen on the provincial capital in the night of 19 to 20 April 1979 under command of the suspect. In the wake of this attack, government troops are said to have dragged large numbers of men and boys from their homes and to have killed them. Some are said to have been shot on the spot, others taken away by soldiers and killed elsewhere.
Afghan War Crimes suspect arrested in The Netherlands, Landelijk Parket, Public Prosecution Service
In Afghanistan’s wars, there have been thousands of killings, systematic torture, rapes, and a litany of other war crimes and grievous human rights abuses. Many Afghans have called for accountability, but few perpetrators have ever faced justice. Human Rights Watch has documented similar cases over the years, and Alamyar’s prosecution would give hope to victims everywhere that they too might one day see justice.
The Netherlands has been one of the leading countries to proactively implement universal jurisdiction, an international law principle that allows the courts of one country to prosecute grave international crimes even if they were committed abroad, by foreigners and against foreigners. With its specialized war crimes unit, the Dutch have dedicated significant resources to ensuring the country does not become a safe haven for war criminals. For more than a decade, it has pursued cases against Afghan officials who settled in the Netherlands, as Alamyar did, in the 1990s.
Dutch Arrest Holds Hope for Justice in Afghanistan’s Dark Past, Patricia Gossman, Human Rights Watch
The Dutch police, which has a specialised war crimes unit, has a terrier-like record of pursuing suspected war criminals living in their country. In 2005, police investigations brought about the conviction, of two Afghan generals, Hesamuddin Hesam and Habibullah Jalalzoy, who had worked with the PDPA’s intelligence service, KhAD, for torturing detainees during the 1980s and 1990s. Another Dutch investigation into enforced disappearances in Afghanistan was closed prematurely in 2013 after the suspect, who was living in the Netherlands, died. However, as part of that investigation, the Dutch police uncovered and published an official Afghan government list of almost five thousand Afghans whom the state had forcibly ‘disappeared’ in custody during the first two years of the PDPA regime. After this publication, many families finally found out what had happened to their relatives and, decades after they were lost, could hold mourning ceremonies for them (see AAN reporting here). The importance of this cannot be underestimated. One relative, Nushin Arbabzadah, spoke of finding her uncle’s name on the death list. “I learned a lesson today,” she wrote “that without facts being established, there’s no freedom from the prison of history. Without justice, there’s no chance for peace.”
A 36-Year Wait for Justice? Dutch arrest suspected Afghan war criminal, Kate Clark, Afghanistan Analysts Network
Here is an account, from the Afghanistan Justice Project, of the Kerala massacre.
3.6 The Kerala Massacre
In early 1979, organized resistance to the PDPA had gained considerable ground in Kunar province. By March, this resistance, known as the mujahidin, had captured the district centers of Kunar, leaving only the provincial capital, Asadabad, within the control of the PDPA. Dagerwal Shahnawaz Shewani, of Paktia, was the governor of Kunar. The mujahidin forces had launched sustained attacks on Asadabad. The besieged provincial personnel contacted Kabul and requested urgent military assistance. The principal military forces deployed to take action against the resistance were the 444 Commando Force commanded by Saddiq Allamyar and a unit from the 11th Division.
According to witnesses interviewed by the Afghanistan Justice Project, on the night of 15 Hut 1357, (March 6, 1979), a large force of mujahidin that had come from Darra Petch attacked Asadabad from the east. They entered the town through Kerala, a village on the eastern approaches to Asadabad. The mujahidin were able to penetrate the outer defences of the town, and mount an attack on the provincial headquarters. However, they were unable to overcome the main government posts and by morning had to retreat. The government forces were able to establish a cordon, trapping some of the retreating mujahidin within the town outskirts, in particular in the village of Kerala. Saddiq Alamyar and associates moved rapidly to organize a clean-up operation and reprisals.
Accounts differ on when precisely the reprisals took place. Survivors interviewed by AJP invariably stated that the government responded immediately after the mujahidin attack. Press reports that appeared almost a year later stated that the massacre took place on April 20, 1979, but do not specify when the mujahidin assault took place. Without further research, it will be impossible to pinpoint the date exactly. The details of the government’s response are consistent.
The government forces launched house to house searches in Kerala village and summoned a public meeting on open ground on the river bank, next to the bridge which links Kerala to Asadabad. The main massacre took place at the public meeting, when, according to the testimony, Saddiq Alamyar had ordered his troops to surround the crowd and then to fire indiscriminately into it. Testimony describes how Saddiq Alamyar’s forces then used a bulldozer to dig a trench to bury the casualties from the massacre by the bridge. According to witnesses, many of those buried were not dead but only wounded, and were then buried while still alive. The main mass grave is still visible in this location.
The troops then mounted a search operation in the residential area of the village. They had orders to shoot on sight while they searched houses. The operation resulted in many civilian casualties, as they shot indiscriminately. Testimony describes the killing of women, children, the aged and infirm during this search operation. Two mass graves of the victims from this search operation are located in the residential area. Accounts place the total number killed at over 1,000. The graves have never been exhumed, and most of the remaining residents fled to Pakistan.36
Witnesses interviewed by the Afghanistan Justice Project identified the following figures as present in Kerala during the events and directly responsible for planning and directing the massacre:
- Jagran Saddiq Alamyar, commander of the 444 Commando. As of 2005 he was believed to reside in the Netherlands.
- Jagran Bahramuddin, officer of the 11th Division and operational commander in Kounar, subsequently killed in a mutiny in Jalalabad.
- Jagran Gul Rang, officer of the 11th Division, who lived in Peshawar and Kabul until 2004, now reportedly deceased.
The testimony consistently indicates that the provincial governor was not involved in the massacre and indeed that the perpetrators actively prevented the governor from intervening. A significant factor in allowing these officers to commit a large scale massacre was their political links. The massacre took place at a time of revolutionary upheaval within the army. The troops responsible belonged to the Khalqi faction of the PDPA. Saddiq Alamyar in particular enjoyed the confidence of Amin. His brother, Sidique, was a cabinet minister. The relatively junior officers were able to command troop formations beyond their normal authority and felt empowered to act with impunity.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity: 1978-2001, Afghanistan Justice Project