January 1992. And this was exactly what happened. Ironically, the
Soviet Union itself ceased to exist on that date. Najibullah could at
least claim to have outlasted the power on which he had depended
for so long. But for him it was little comfort.
The revolt in the north
Shorn of resources, Najibullah turned to the manipulation of eth-
nicity as a way of boosting his position. It proved to be a serious
mistake, although his options at the time were extremely limited.
In January 1992, he attempted to replace the Tajik commander of
the Hairatan Garrison, General Abdul Momen, with an ethnic
Pushtun Khalqi, General Rasul. Momen had been providing intelli-
gence to Massoud and aid to Dostam (Rubin, 1995a: 269), which
did give Najibullah some rationale for trying to replace him, but
the result was instead that Dostam joined Momen in opposition to
Najibullah, and for good measure lured Sayed Mansur Nadiri’s
Ismaili militia in Baghlan into opposition as well. The consequence
was an unravelling over the next two months of the regime’s mili-
tary position in most of northern Afghanistan, and a significant
nationwide shift in the correlation of forces. On 18 March, Mazar-
e Sharif fell to the anti-regime forces.
Splits in the regime and the Afghan Army: ideology and ethnicity
On 18 March, Najibullah finally signalled that he would step
down, agreeing ‘that once an understanding is reached through the
United Nations process for the establishment of an interim govern-
ment in Kabul, all powers and executive authority will be trans-
ferred to the interim government as of the first day of the transition
period’ (Gargan, 1992a). He made this statement under great pres-
sure from Sevan, who in turn acted with the support of Secretary-
General Boutros-Ghali. The aim was to clear the way for
agreement on the specifics of the UN plan, and in part it did do
this. However, Najibullah’s announcement also prompted numer-
ous people in his regime to recalculate what was in their ownbest
188 The Afghanistan Wars