Vulnerability of the City: The Mujihadeen and Urban Destruction in Kabul, Afghanistan

The Mujahideen

Civil unrest, particularly unrest motivated by religious or ethnic factors, has become a threat to many cities in the developing world in the last half century. Political instability, totalitarian rule without representation, and a conspicuous lack of concern for human rights issues have combined to incite the formation of hundreds of opposition groups in dozens of countries. Many of the rebel factions are small and disorganized, specific to their own locale. However, one radical Islamist guerrilla force has become active all over the world.

The Mujihadeen, a loosely organized ideological alliance of Muslim jihadists, has laid siege to a small but significant number of the world’s cities on several continents. The Mujihadeen have played an important role in the Chechen-Russian conflict, where they quashed a Chechen incursion into Dagestan in 1999. The Mujihadeen are active within the Iraqi insurgency, and there is discussion of their involvement in the Somali Civil War. The Mujihadeen are undisputed warlords of the Pakistani-Kashmiri conflicts. They are active in Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and they are instrumental in HAMAS, in Palestine. From Myanmar to the Philippines, and throughout Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bosnia, these jihadist forces wield extreme power and promote insurgency and guerilla warfare. (Wikipedia)

Arguably, no country has been more damaged by the Mujihadeen than Afghanistan, and no city rendered more vulnerable by the Mujihadeen than Kabul. Due to the excessive damage to urban infrastructure and built environment, the absolute collapse of critical city institutions, and the absence of municipal governance leading to the erosion of human rights, post-Soviet Kabul stands as a terrible and chilling example of the threat that the Mujihadeen and other extremist factions pose to the development and survival of the modern city in the developing world.

Politics and Urban Development in Kabul

Kabul’s history begins with its role as an important urban settlement along the Central Asian silk route. The Kabul Valley stretches along the Kabul River where settlers and caravan traders have long enjoyed its hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters. However Kabul’s urban history is replete with invasions and unrest dating back to 522 BC, when Kabul was annexed into Persian Empire of Darius the Great, and rebel tribes staged constant violent revolts in opposition. Kabul then fell to the Greeks, the Bactrians and Parthians, and then became part of the Kushan Empire before it fell into the control of fragmented petty kingdoms by 220 AD. After the invasion of the White Huns in 400 AD, the city was almost completely destroyed. Kabul fell to the Yaftalees, back to the Persians, until finally the Islamic period began with the Ghaznavid Dynasty which ruled from 962-1140. (Gandhara 2001)

Traditional residential structures in Kabul and the surrounding region were made of mud brick, mostly constructed ad hoc by the families who lived in them. The houses were built with flat roofs and wooden drains to lead water and melted snow into ditches at the side of the rudimentary abode. Charles Masson observed wryly in the early nineteenth century, “The appearance of Kâbal as a city has little to recommend it beyond the interest conferred by the surrounding scenery. […] The houses of Kâbal are but slightly and indifferently built, generally of mud and unburnt bricks. […] There are no public buildings of any moment in the city.” (Issa & Kohistani, 2007)

Kabul has long inspired a sense of local pride in its royalty. In the 16^th century, Babur, founder of the Mughal Dynastry of Central Asia, filled Kabul with ten magnificent city gardens and made Kabul his capital. For the most part, however, the various Shahs and dynastic rulers that held power prior to the twentieth century had little impact on the built environment of Kabul. A notable exception to this trend was Amir Abdurrahman Khan’s palace, known as the Arg, built at the turn of the twentieth century in the British style. It still stands today and houses Hamid Karzai’s government in spite of decades of destructive uprisings that have destroyed most of the city’s structures. (Issa & Kohistani, 2007)The British invasion and the first Anglo-Afghan war (1842-1845) caused massive damage within the Kabul city walls. British troops symbolically bombed the Char Chatta Bazaar, which at that time served as the financial, communication and market center of not only Kabul, but Afghanistan as a whole. This purposeful “obliteration of an important symbol of national identity” became a theme that reinforced the city’s vulnerability war after war. (Issa & Kohistani, 2007) This tactic was used repeatedly by the Mujahideen during the post-Soviet civil wars (1992-1994) and by the Taliban during years of their factional supremacy (1994-2001). (Burns, 1996)

The first wave of significant modernization of infrastructure was introduced by Abdurrahman’s son Habibullah I (1901-1919), and continued by his son, Amanullah Khan (1919-1929). Their reigns saw the introduction of a modern postal service, photography, electricity, the telephone, and automobiles into Afghani culture. (Tanin 2006) After a visit to Europe, Amanullah Khan developed plans for transforming Kabul into a world class capital city along the lines of Paris, Berlin, or London. (Issa & Kohistani, 2007) Amanullah hired European engineers and builders to craft Darulaman Palace as “a centre for governmental institutions in big circular blocks, with central courtyards integrating the entrances to the different departments”. (Wild 1932) Amanullah’s vision for his capital was welcomed by most Kabul residents, but religious factions rose up in violent opposition. Amanullah was ousted in 1929, when he fled to a life of exile in Italy.By 1959, when Prince Mohammad Daoud was elected Prime Minister, Kabul was becoming a modern city. Women were being enrolled in University, and the birkah was ruled optional. Further reforms were made after the coup that gave Daoud Khan power in 1973, and a new Afghan constitution was written that confirmed the rights of women. (Gandhara, 2001) Underneath the progressive modernization movement, however, a communist opposition was beginning to form. On April 27, 1978 another coup was organized and carried out by supporters of communist Soviet sympathizer Hafizullah Amin, and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was formed. (Gandhara, 2001)

Soviet Era

The Soviets quickly determined the situation directly to their south to be radically unstable. In December of 1979, Soviet troops invaded Kabul, killed Hafizullah Amin, and installed Babrak Karmal as head of a puppet Afghan government under direct Soviet control. This historical invasion came after an extended period of official cooperation between the USSR and Afghanistan. The motivations that drove Soviet forces into Afghanistan have been debated by scholars and political scientists for decades; however, Asian Studies experts Halliday and Tanin (1998) describe the situation thus:

“The communist regime in Afghanistan was an example of what has been termed ‘revolution from above’, i.e. the introduction and imposition of a set of changes by a radical group within the state apparatus committed to a forced modernization of the country.”

Modernization was indeed a central strategy of the Soviet regime. The decade of Soviet occupation saw the introduction of urban development projects that generously referenced Soviet ideological aspects. (Issa & Kohistani, 2007) Soviet officials managed the construction of factories known as “Fabrik-e Khanasazi”, or “House-Building Factories”. The factories built government offices, schools, and residential super-complexes. One Kabul housing complex spanned sixty blocks and contained 11,000 individual apartments, a 500-seat cinema, a mosque, a swimming pool, a restaurant, and a retail mall. (Issa & Kohistani, 2007) Dozens of apartment buildings were erected in block formation throughout the city, although they primarily housed Russian troops and specialists, and the upper echelons of Kabul society which was made up of Soviet sympathizers and government administrator puppets. Kabul’s poor did not have access to the modern apartment blocks. Left without housing and services, this portion of the population was forced to build a village of makeshift tents that was torn down by Red police forces almost as soon as it was erected. It took several years for the occupation to tolerate the makeshift slums, which were known as “Zour Abad”, or “a quarter built with force. (Issa & Kohistani, 2007)

In the end, Soviet strategists underestimated the strength and numbers of the opposition forces, and the vast power of the armed faction “warlords”. The warlords and mujahideen were supplied with weapons by powerful friends, the United States. Both the Carter and Reagan administrations viewed Afghanistan as a vital foothold in the global struggle against communism, and the mujahideen were portrayed as freedom fighters. Armed with sophisticated weaponry covertly provided by the United States CIA valuing nearly $3 billion dollars, the rebel factions were able to keep the Soviets constantly on the defensive. (Draggon, 2003)

When the Soviets left Kabul in 1989, it was portrayed as a Red Army victory. After a violent struggle between the Soviet Occupation forces and the rebel mujahideen militias lasting nearly ten years, the Soviets were relieved to wash their hands of Kabul. An estimated 15,000 Soviets were killed, while an estimated one million Afghans lost their lives over the decade. (Keller, 1989) The period after the Soviet withdrawal was a return to the dark ages for Kabul and the Afghani people. The American Embassy in Kabul closed its doors on January 30, 1989. For three years there was a bloody struggle for power that raged between the communist government of President Najibullah and the mujahideen. The country was loosely governed by a constantly warring group of guerilla leaders. Abdul Rashid Dostum was the defected head of Najibullah’s military. Ahmed Shah Masood was the leader of the Jamiat-i-Islami party, known for its radical Islamist leanings. And even Osama bin Laden was active as an organizer and financier of mujahideen activity within Afghanistan. The warlords formed alliances and broke them in a relentless rain of rockets on Kabul that killed civilians and leveled the city structures.

Physical Damage and Cultural Losses

The result of a decade of open war in Kabul was an almost complete devastation of urban infrastructure. At the time of the Soviet pullout in 1989, public transportation was sporadic and unregulated, waste disposal was carried out largely by human and animal scavengers, the water supply was scarce and contaminated, and energy and utilities were unreliable and not generally accessible. (Mumtaz & Noschis (Eds.), 2004) By 1993 electricity in Kabul was entirely cut off. By 1994 an estimated 1.5 million Afghans had been killed and more than 2 million were seriously injured. 6 million Afghans had fled the country as refugees, and 2 million more were “internally displaced”. (Goodson, 2008) The destruction that the ongoing civil unrest unleashed on Kabul’s municipal institutions was, in most cases, fatal to the institutions. By the mid 1990s the warlords had obliterated Kabul’s education system, police force, public transportation system, religious community, social services, and utilities. The persistent use of sophisticated weaponry resulted in a capital city strewn with rubble. Goodson describes the Kabul of 1992-1994 as a city ruled by anarchy. While one small section of the city would be controlled by one warlord and his forced recruits, the very next street would be a demarcation line; a no man’s land where rockets whistled through the sky into homes as the neighboring warlord attempted to gain ground into enemy territory. Kabul’s citizens would be forced to relinquish food, valuables, and family members through the lawless methods of “extortion, robbery, rape, and murder”. (Goodson, 2008)

The cultural losses that occurred as a result of the infighting in Afghanistan had an immeasurable toll on the people of Kabul as well. The ruin of the National Museum in 1992 was an attack on Afghani identity. Nancy Hatch Dupree of the Archaeological Institute of America estimates that 70% of the artifacts exhibited in the museum were looted or destroyed.  (Dupree, 1998) An even more senseless act of terrorism was the obliteration of the historic Buddhas of Bamiyan. More than 1,500 years ago Buddhist monks spent decades carving remarkable monuments out of the side of sandstone cliff walls in the Bamiyan Valley. As a targeted act of cultural destruction, the Buddhas were completely destroyed by the Taliban forces on May 2, 2001 even as religious leaders and academics around the world cried out for their preservation. The jihadist strategy of targeting a central symbol of cultural heritage was becoming familiar by September 11, 2001 when Mujihadeen rebels flew planes into the heart of the largest city in the United States, destroying a built representation of American, and even Western, central ideology. The city as an ideological concept, the city as a cultural identity, and the city as a built reality is vulnerable indeed.

Hope for the City: Plans for Reconstruction

Political opinion on the United States’ recent role in Afghanistan is varied and controversial. Regardless of the arguable political implications for the long term, the short term effects on urban development in Kabul have been unassailably positive. Scholars and professionals from Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas have come together to form solutions for sustainable city growth and planning. As recently as 2004 the Old Town section of Kabul was a disease and refuse infested slum full of makeshift structures. (Issa & Kohistani, 2007) The plans are not simply for wholesale  modernization without thought to future sustainability.

Participants in the10th Architecture & Behaviour Colloquium on the Development of Kabul addressed the need to prioritize social and cultural considerations in the redevelopment planning process. The colloquium brought to the table “a multiplicity of initiatives that are currently advancing performance in areas ranging from poverty reduction, social capital formation, employment generation, gender equality, and environmental sustainability, through to good governance processes and partnerships, effective planning and management, and the socially just and equitable distribution of resources to those who need them most.” (Issa & Kohistani, 2007) As a cornerstone to the body of research presented at the colloquium, much consideration was given to the concept of “urban vulnerability”. Stefan Schutte of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit determined four main forms of urban vulnerability:

• Vulnerability to income failure

• Vulnerability to food insecurity

• Vulnerability to bad health

• Vulnerability to social exclusion and disempowerment

(Issa & Kohistani, 2007)

Schutte goes on to explain that that “current forms of globalisation and market-triumphalism bypass the interests of a majority of global populations – often leading to huge dissatisfaction and the readiness to use violence as a means of protest.” Since sustained violence has been historically the biggest threat to Kabul, and will likely continue to be, care must be taken to preserve and protect the interests of the population, therefore minimizing the vulnerability of the city into the future.

Conclusion

The consequences of twenty years of ongoing warfare are the breakdown of all the things that make Kabul a true city in principle. A settlement of people without governance, infrastructure, cultural heritage, human rights, and a built environment is not a city at all. The Mujihadeen and other radical violent factions are a persistent threat to the world’s cities, as evidenced by Kabul’s recent history and the histories of so many other cities in the last fifty years. Kabul will be rebuilt with the help of the world community, but it must be done according to the principles of sustainable development, and a constant awareness of the needs of its population, or the cycle of intervention, disenfranchisement and violence may yet repeat. 

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