Thirty years had separated the moment since Pacha Mir last stood at the secret
grave in a desert wasteland on the eastern side of Kabul and his return 12
days ago.
In 1978 he had been a young major in the Afghan Army, ordered in the dead of
night to perform a clandestine mission by the Communists who had just seized
control of his country in a coup.
Despite the passage of time, Pacha Mir, now 60, remembered how to find his way
back to the spot. He told The Times at the weekend: “I knew that, just as
day follows night, at some point in the future I would have to recall the
place.
“So I had paced its position from a mark in the track. And I remembered those
65 steps for all the years that followed.”
On the morning of June 25, accompanied by members of a special Afghan
commission, Pacha Mir took the 65 steps again and directed a group of
labourers to the small knoll at his feet. They began to dig.
Shortly after 11am they found a shoe barely 3ft beneath the ground. By early
afternoon they had found the first bones, and by the close of day they had
discovered 29 skeletons in two graves: men, women and children. Pacha Mir
had been among the men who buried them. Now he had helped to exhume them.
His memory, the turning of the earth and the bones, may have ended one of
Afghanistan's greatest mysteries. The dusty human remains, the women's shoes
made in France, the frayed scraps of clothing and children's dress, the gold
teeth, a leg brace, bits of uniform and jewellery - all suggest the grave to
be the final resting place of the country's first President, Sardar Mohammad
Daoud Khan, killed with his family and entourage in the bloody coup of April
1978. It was an event that precipitated the nation into the era of violence
from which it has yet to emerge.
The skeletons, now shrouded and placed in coffins, are under lock and key in
the special hospital of Afghanistan's intelligence service, pending DNA
tests and an identification process that began yesterday. One corpse is
already thought to be that of President Daoud: his patent black leather
shoes and the remains of his favoured dark suit have apparently survived.
The murdered family's servants, ageing in exile across several continents, are
being contacted to help with the identification, as they know better than
any the family's clothes. The Afghan authorities are discussing the
organisation of a funeral ceremony befitting a head of state.
Yet not everyone will be so happy with the end of the mystery. Today Daoud is
regarded by many Afghans as a progressive, even heroic, ruler, who famously
stood up for the country's independence by thumping his fist on the table in
front of the Russian President, Leonid Brezhnev, during a state visit to
Moscow, when he objected to the Soviet demands being placed on his country.
The act of defiance was to cost him his life.
But Daoud had Afghan enemies, too. Though a member of the royal family, he
deposed his cousin, King Zahir Shah, in a bloodless coup in 1973, ending
Afghanistan's monarchy with the establishment of a republic over which he
presided.
While many of the royal family forgave him, some did not. He later suppressed
both Islamist and Marxist opposition groups. Today elderly Afghan
communists, who for so long sought to keep secret Daoud's unmarked grave,
are again numbered among the Government. A re-examination of who did what in
the 1978 coup is the last thing they wish for.
Pacha Mir has stark memories of his participation in the burial. A day earlier
a battalion of tanks loyal to the Marxist plotters, backed by jets and
helicopters, had besieged President Daoud, along with his special guard and
family, in their palace. The death toll was huge as tanks blasted the palace
walls and jet aircraft strafed the city streets.
Zahra Ghazi, Daoud's granddaughter, was only 16 at the time and was one of the
few to survive. She flew into Kabul two days ago from Switzerland to help
with the identification process.
In an interview with The Times yesterday she described her family being
whittled down in murderous volleys of fire that sent bullets ricocheting
among the marble columns of two rooms in which they had taken cover after a
request to surrender was apparently rejected by Daoud. She was shot three
times, and as she was finally led from the carnage she remembers passing the
bodies of Daoud and her father.
“The strange thing was that many of the soldiers were crying,” she said. “They
said they were sorry for having killed the father of their nation.”
That night Pacha Mir was on duty with his soldiers in a base at Pul-e-Chakri,
in the east of the capital. There was still sporadic fighting when a group
of the new Marxist regime arrived at the barracks. They ordered Pacha Mir to
gather a work detail and follow them to the nearby desert wasteland at Deh
Sabz. It was nearly midnight when they arrived.
Pacha Mir said: “They told me that they had some bodies for us to bury. I
asked, ‘Whose?' They didn't reply.” A truck arrived. All headlights were
extinguished. Pacha Mir's troops were told to unload bloodsoaked bodies from
the truck. There were 13 in the first batch, including three women. They
were laid in a fold in the ground.
Pacha Mir bent down to turn the faces of the dead towards Mecca, in accordance
with his Muslim faith. In the starlight one seemed familiar. “Seconds later
I realised that it was Nezam Ghazi, Daoud's son-in-law, whom I had known for
a long time. At that moment I knew we were burying Daoud's family. But I
said nothing. No one did.”
The soldiers were ordered to cover the bodies with soil. Then a Marxist
commander drove a vehicle over the mound to flatten it, jeering. “He said,
‘Daoud Khan, you wanted to bury me, but now I'm burying you'.”
The next night Pacha Mir's troops buried another 16 bodies in a second grave
at the same location. Most were women; three were children. Their numbers
correlate with those of the murdered presidential family.
Pacha Mir had still not told his wife what had happened when he fled to
Pakistan with his own family 34 days later, after hearing that the Marxists
wanted to kill him for knowing too much. “I told her nothing. It was a bad
story. Many Afghans loved Daoud. I couldn't admit to being part of such an
awful thing.”
Granted asylum in Pakistan, he joined the Mujahidin, attacking communist
forces in cross-border raids. The secret stayed with him.
In 2003, while attending the constitutional Loya Jirga in Kabul, Pacha Mir saw
surviving members of Daoud's exiled family who had returned to participate
in the political process. He mentioned to them that he knew the location of
the murdered President's grave. They contacted the Government.
Insiders say that further investigation was obstructed by Sardar Abdul Wali, a
government adviser and son-in-law of the deposed King, who was once jailed
by Daoud. But the elderly Wali became seriously ill and left Afghanistan for
treatment in Delhi this year.
When it became apparent that he was too sick ever to return - he died last
week - a commission was authorised to find Daoud's grave. They called Pacha
Mir, who travelled to Kabul from his home in eastern Afghanistan to lead
them to the spot.
If memories of the coup, the nocturnal burial party, the twisted limbs,
bloodied bodies and the years of war that followed haunt Pacha Mir, they
have not softened him.
“Because of those communists, Afghanistan lost its national leader,” he
concluded vengefully. “They have to be found. And executed.”
Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan: cruelty and reform
Daoud served as Prime Minister to his cousin, Zahir Shah, from 1953 to 1963
but was forced to resign, mainly because of his authoritarian style of
governing
His strong support for the creation of Pashtunistan from Pakistani and Afghan
regions led to a breakdown in relations with Islamabad, causing Afghanistan
to ally itself with the Soviet Union
Daoud encouraged the abandonment of the veil by Afghan women, granted them
equal rights to institute divorce cases and established family courts
During his presidency he largely abandoned other promised reforms and
curtailed democracy, imprisoning and executing hundreds of leftwingers and
Islamists without trial
By the mid 1970s he had turned Afghanistan away from the Soviet Union and
towards the West and Middle Eastern nations. It was a move which, along with
his brutal suppression of Marxist Afghans, triggered the 1978 Communist coup
Source: Times Archive
Ah yes, once more the communists have proven their stuipity and incompetence. At least they are consistent. Stupid that is.
W.W. Terry, Portland, USA
Seems the Presidential family was also murdered.This was not in the Stalinist era but under communism in relatively recent times.Both the communist left and the extreme right -Daoud had leftwingers & Islamists executed w/o trial - regard people as disposable pawns, not each as infinitely precious.
Joan Moira Peters, Whangarei UK Citizen, temp o/seas in New Zealand