Five Questions: An Interview with Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai

The constitution of Afghanistan was not approved by the Afghan Parliament and Senate as the Parliament and Senate did not exist at the time. In fact the constitution was approved by the “Loya Jirga”; although there was a large presence of the Warlords and criminals in both those Loya Jirgas, nevertheless they served their purpose.

Now, why would one argue that the tribal structure does not exist in Afghanistan or it’s a thing of the past? Closing our eyes from the truth does not mean the truth would vanish. We have a phrase in Pashto which means “One can not hide the sun with just two fingers”.

If one believes they need to find local loyalties in Afghanistan, the locals are the tribes. Why would some go around in [semantic] circles and confuse themselves? 

2.  In your interviews with Steve Pressfield, you discussed the presence of warlords in the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai, men with very bad records.  There have also been reports in the media, from time to time, of Ex-Khalqi Communists serving the regime. Are these men a similar problem to the warlords in your view?

When the Russians withdrew their forces in 1989 and left behind the Communist regime of Dr Najibullah, many thought that the regime would collapse in just days or in weeks, but Najibullah’s government survived for five long years despite the daily rains of rocket attacks on Kabul and only collapsed in 1992. Then the so-called Mujahideen took charge of Kabul and Afghanistan, but soon we saw that these power hungry men started fighting each other over the Throne of Kabul. Their bloody civil war of lasted from 1992 untill 1996 and turned Afghanistan into a pile of rubble.

 Many Afghans were turned against these so-called Mujahideen because these leaders and their commanders became involved in killing innocent men, women and children, looted people’s livelihoods and literally turned all of Afghanistan into a war zone. We witnessed that in just five years these “Mujahideen” warlords destroyed Kabul and all other major cities in Afghanistan. People started to hate them more than they hated the old Communists, so in a way, the crimes which were initially committed by the Communists were covered up when the Afghan people witnessed the subsequent brutality of these so-called Mujahideen leaders and commanders.

I strongly believe the Afghan civil war was also orchestrated by the  KGB/FSB in order to engage these Freedom fighters in Afghanistan and prevent them from crossing over to infiltrate the [formerly Soviet] Central Asian States, and also to cover the atrocities committed by the Red Army against the Afghans in Afghanistan. The KGB/FSB calculated shrewdly that if these “Mujahideen” leaders accomplished a united Islamic government in Afghanistan, it would spill over into the entire Central Asian countries. Although many believed in the West at the time that Russia was almost finished and gone, that was a mistake Westerners made in trying to understand the Russian mind set. 

I strongly believe that the Afghan Communists are responsible for the destruction of Afghanistan. They still have the Marxist-Leninist theory in their heads and we recently have witnessed that many of these Afghan ex-Communists are keeping close ties to Moscow. I believe these Khalqis and Parchamis are now part of the problem as they are now receiving support from Russia.   

3.  Afghanis, especially Pushtuns, have a well-deserved historical reputation as fierce fighters.  Yet there is more to life than war, even in a warrior society. What does a young Afghan man in his late teens or twenties hope for?  What would he see as “progress” or better times?

Much is been said about the Afghans, Pashtuns in the media and honestly I disagree with much of it because no nation, no tribe no people wish for a war as war only brings devastation, destruction and miseries.

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