a house divided, 1933–73Allah Mujadidi condemned the poem as blasphemous and called on the
Wolusi Jirga and the king to punish the author and Parcham’s editor. When
their demands were ignored, Niyazi’s followers took the law into their own
hands, attacking known Marxists and throwing acid in the faces of unveiled
women. Women’s organizations responded with demonstrations demanding
justice and changes to new marriage laws that endorsed polygamy.
The protests continued into the spring of 1971. In May left-wing
students at Kabul’s Teachers’ Training College staged a sit-in. ‘Etimadi
ordered the security services to arrest the ringleaders, only for this to
cause a riot that spread to every educational institution in the capital. In
an attempt to suppress the protests, the security forces shot dead at least
fifteen protestors and wounded or arrested many more. On the following
day students and teachers assembled at the Maiwand Memorial in down-
town Kabul to protest state violence and demand the release of prisoners
and punishment for those who had fired on protestors. A second group of
students assembled at the monument to Jamal al-Din al-Afghani on the
university campus, intent on marching to Jadi Maiwand. ‘Etimadi sent in
the Ghund-i Zarba, the Strike Force, an elite German-trained riot squad,
which proceeded to live up to its name by beating protestors ‘unmerci-
fully and indiscriminately’ and attacking bystanders and shopkeepers. 50
The protestors retaliated with a hail of rocks and missiles, turning one of
Kabul’s main thoroughfares into a war zone. Faced with a no-confidence
motion in the Wolusi Jirga, ‘Etimadi threw in the towel and resigned. In the
words of a senior State Department official, his government was ‘lethargic’,
‘lacklustre’, had ‘died slowly’ and ‘achieved little’. 51
‘Abd al-Zahir, the new premier, was a Pushtun and an American-
trained medical doctor, but his appointment was due primarily to the fact
he was a royalist and a personal friend of the king. His cabinet too was
packed with Muhammadzais, including two members of the Seraj family
and, for the first time, a woman, Shafiq Ziyai, a descendant of Sardar Nasr
Allah Khan. This time it took seventeen days for the Wolusi Jirga to vote in
the new administration and while the debate raged in the Chamber, outside
Rome continued to burn. Following the riots of 16 and 17 May students and
teachers had gone on indefinite strike, and when there was no sign of the
protest ending, ‘Abd al-Zahir closed all of Kabul’s schools. A month later
he shut down the university as well, only for the students to resume their
campaign when the new academic year started in March 1972. This time
there were violent clashes not just between anti-government protestors
and the security forces, but between Leftist and Islamist students, which
led to the deaths of at least two members of Sho‘la-yi Jawed.