afghanistanpdpa supporters and state security organs. Its leaders, Akram Yari and his
brother Siddiq Yari, were Hazaras from Jaughuri whose father, ‘Abd Allah
Yari, had been director of the Darra-yi Shikari Highway Project. The Yari
brothers’ paternal uncle, Nadir ‘Ali, was one of the few Hazaras to have
been elected to parliament. Both ‘Abd Allah and Nadir ‘Ali were devoted
to King Zahir Shah, who treated ‘Abd Allah Yari like an adopted son – a
loyalty not shared by his offspring.
Sitam-i Milli (National Oppression) was another Maoist party that
split from the pdpa in 1967. Its founder, Tahir Badakhshi, was a Tajik from
Badakhshan who had studied law and economics at Kabul University.
He also founded saza, a revolutionary workers’ party. Tahir opposed the
government’s promotion of Pushtunism and his following came mostly
from ethnolinguistic minorities. One of Sitam-i Milli’s key demands was
greater autonomy for Afghanistan’s northern provinces. Other pdpa splin-
ter groups included Goroh-i Kar (The Workers Group) and Jawanan-i
Zahmatkash (Toiling Youth).
Afghan Millat, or the Afghan Social Democratic Party, founded
in March 1966, was the leading Pushtunist party. Its founder, Ghulam
Muhammad Farhad, had studied engineering in Germany during the
1920s, where he had embraced the roots of National Socialism and Nazi
Aryanism. The membership of Afghan Millat also included several former
associates of Wish Zalmiyan. The party’s policies included support for
Pushtunistan, the Durrani monarchy and Pushtun domination of
Afghanistan’s political and cultural life.
Islamist parties, on the other hand, fought to retain Afghanistan
as an Islamic state ruled by the shari‘a and opposed the government’s
move towards secularism and gender liberalization. They also opposed
Communist and Leftist parties and sought to revert to Nur al-Mashayekh’s
1931 Constitution. By 1964 Nur al-Mashayekh had died but his successor,
Muhammad Ibrahim Mujadidi, who took the title of Zia al-Mashayekh,
and his relative, Sibghat Allah Mujadidi, continued the family’s struggle
to uphold the supremacy of Islamic law in state affairs. At the same time
a new generation of politically aggressive and radical Islamic scholars
was emerging, many of whom had studied at Egypt’s al-Azhar Islamic
University, where they had embraced the political philosophy of the
Ikhwan al-Muslimin, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949), an Egyptian school-
teacher, this pan-Islamic movement was a radical and militant organization
that became involved in the political assassination of Egyptian leaders after
the Second World War, but also engaged in social action providing material