a house divided, 1933–73Jami‘at in Kabul. The gamble, however, failed. When Jami‘at took control
of Kabul airport, Dostam withdrew beyond the Salang Pass and from this
point onwards he ruled the Wilayat-i Shamal, or Northern Provinces, as
virtually an independent ruler.
The factional fighting that took place from 1992 to 1994 left parts of
Kabul looking like London after the Blitz. According to the icrc, between
20,000 and 30,000 civilians died and thousands more were injured. The
fighting was fuelled by ethnic and sectarian hatred and marred by atroci-
ties including mass executions, rape, torture, looting and indiscriminate
bombardment of residential areas. In some instances prisoners were burnt
alive; others were locked in shipping containers and left to suffocate. The
tombs of the first Mughal emperor, Zahir al-Din Babur, Amir Timur Shah,
King Nadir Shah and Sultan Muhammad Tela’i were badly damaged,
while ’Aman Allah Khan’s palaces and state buildings in Dar al-’Aman
and Paghman were gutted. The Kabul Museum was hit by mortar fire, its
upper storey burnt out and many of its priceless treasures were looted.
The international community was powerless to prevent the anarchy,
and since the ussr had withdrawn and the Communist government had
fallen, the usa and Western countries showed little interest in the fate of
Afghanistan or its government. One of the reasons for this was that in
1990 both Hikmatyar and Rabbani had declared their support for Saddam
Hussein in the First Gulf War, rather than America, though the royalists
The war-shattered ruins of Kabul’s Old City as seen in spring 1996. The bitter fighting
between mujahidin factions and General Dostam’s Uzbek militia led to much of southern,
western and central Kabul being destroyed and the deaths of thousands of civilians.