Democracy period, but Daoud’s coup undermined these achieve-
ments, and the April 1978 coup contaminated the institutions of the
state by harnessing them to the service of a Marxist party. While
bargaining and manipulation of interests remained an important
political device, coercion through the deployment of force had
surged in significance (Goodson, 2001: 97–104). Thus, the state
was confronted not simply with fiscal challenges, but the challenge
of how to re-institutionalise and re-legitimate the state after years
of politics based on ideology, personality, and the threat of vio-
lence. It was a challenge it was to prove incapable of meeting.
Third, Afghanistan’s political elites had been significantly recon-
figured, with traditional authority figures to a significant degree
displaced in favour of party cadres on the regime side, and mili-
tarised and militant activists on the resistance side (Rubin, 1995a),
although with local variations according to the extent to which par-
ticular localities had been insulated from the wider war.
Furthermore, the new elites were separated by a gaping chasm. Not
a single resistance leader of significance regarded Najibullah as an
acceptable formal partner in any political transition. Therefore, any
such transition would at the very least require a restructuring of the
PDPA elite. Yet given the persistence of antagonisms between
Khalqis and Parchamis, and between different elements of the
Parchamfaction, any attempt to change the leadership was likely
to have unpredictable ricochet effects. Should Najibullah show any
sign of weakness, his party enemies would descend upon him like
a pack of angry piranhas. This limited his own room to manoeuvre.
Fourth, ethnic shifts during the course of the war were of potent-
ially momentous import. While the lack of hard data makes it per-
ilous to offer firm conclusions, the fiercest bombardments, and the
highest levels of mortality, appear to have been in the areas bor-
dering Pakistan which were largely populated by Pushtuns. While
many exercised the option of exit as refugees (Sliwinski, 1989b),
others perished without having the chance to do so. The net effect
may well have been to reduce the proportion of Pushtuns in the
overall population. This shift was paralleled by increasingly politi-
cised ethnic consciousness amongst groups such as Tajiks (for
158 The Afghanistan Wars