THE COLLAPSE OF THE REGIME
In August 1991, Najibullah reiterated that he ‘would not resign to
allow an interim government to be established prior to elections, a
consistent demand of the Americans’ (Thomas, 1991). At the time,
I wrote that ‘Najibullah is well aware, however, that his regime
cannot survive without Soviet aid’ and that ‘his moment of truth is
approaching’ (Maley, 1991c: 15). His grasp that the writing was on
the wall was reflected not in his public statements, but in his treat-
ment of his immediate family. In 1989, when Eduard Shevardnadze
had suggested that Najibullah’s family move to Moscow,
Najibullah’s wife Fatana, a former school teacher and a member of
the royal line of King Amanullah, had responded: ‘We would prefer
to be killed on the doorsteps of this house rather than die in the
eyes of our people by choosing the path of flight from their misfor-
tune. We will all stay with them here to the end, whether it be
happy or bitter’ (Shevardnadze, 1991: 69). In 1992, Fatana and her
children left for Delhi (Rashid, 2000: 49). What brought this about
was a fundamental change in the position of the regime as a result
of developments in Moscow.
The August 1991 coup and Soviet aid
In summer 1991, Moscow simmered with discontent. Gorbachev’s
swing to the right had alienated his liberal supporters, but failed to
appease his hardline critics, who felt betrayed by his failure to
back a military crackdown on independence movements in
Lithuania and Latvia. On 23 July 1991, the newspaper Sovetskaia
Rossiiaprinted an article entitled Slovo k narodu(‘A Word to the
People’) which called on the Soviet armed forces to act as ‘reliable
guarantors of security’. The signatories included two generals
closely associated with Afghanistan – Boris Gromov and Valentin
Varennikov – as well as two other conservatives who were shortly
to gain considerable notoriety, Aleksandr Tiziakov and Vasilii
Starodubtsev. Four weeks later, the blow finally fell, as Gorbachev,
vacationing in the Crimea, was detained at the instigation of the
186 The Afghanistan Wars