Dealing with tribes was a major challenge for the regime, espe-
cially after August 1980 when its Minister for Tribal Affairs, Faiz
Muhammad, who had occupied the same ministerial position from
1975 under President Daoud, was murdered while negotiating with
Jadran tribesmen during a jirgah. A structure which was used to assist
the cooptation of tribes was the ‘National Fatherland Front’ (Jabhe-i
Melli-i Padarwatan), set up on 15 June 1981 under the leadership of
Dr Saleh Muhammad Zeray, a Kandahari Pushtun and Khalqiwho
headed it until he was replaced by Abdul Rahim Hatif in March
- The Front was of very limited value, since it was transparently
no more than a mask for the PDPA (Bradsher, 1999: 134; Giustozzi,
2000: 143). Other mass organisations were established for youth (the
Democratic Organisation of the Youth of Afghanistan, based on the
Soviet Komsomol) and women (the Democratic Organisation of
Afghan Women, based on the Union of Soviet Women). The youth
organisation claimed 20,000 members in July 1980, and 200,000 by
September 1986 (Giustozzi, 2000: 252), while the women’s organisa-
tion claimed 8300 members in 1981–82, and 108,931 in 1987
(Giustozzi, 2000: 47). Neither proved of much value in winning the
wider population over to the regime, although activists of the
Democratic Organisation of Afghan Women, notably Dr Anahita
Ratebzad, Masuma Esmaty-Wardak, and Jamila Palwashah, were
made available to the odd visiting feminist to preach the regime’s
virtues. But the organisations of youth and women had no influence
at all on Soviet military strategy, which caused enormous suffering
for rural women and children (Maley, 1996).
THE AFGHAN SECRET POLICE
The organisation of KhAD
The struggle against ‘enemies within’ was one of the key dimen-
sions of the Soviet–Afghan War, and the body charged with
pursuing it was the ‘State Information Service’ (Khedamat-e
Ettalaat-e Dawlati, or KhAD). Established on 11 January 1980 as
The Karmal Period, 1979–1986 97