Mujahideen rule

Mujahideen rule in Afghanistan began in April 1992, when the communist president Najibullah surrendered and was given sanctuary in the UN compound near Darulaman Palace. For Mammy, Laila's mother, this was the day she had longed for—the culmination of more than a decade of waiting for her sons' sacrifice to be vindicated. She rose from her bed a new woman, put on a cobalt blue dress with white polka dots, and declared a party. But the victory was short-lived and bitterly ironic: the Mujahideen, armed to the teeth but now lacking a common enemy, had found the enemy in each other.

The Fracture of the Mujahideen

The leadership council was formed prematurely and elected Rabbani president, a move that other factions immediately cried nepotism. Hekmatyar, who had been excluded, was incensed. The Hazaras, with their long history of oppression, seethed. Insults were hurled, fingers pointed, and meetings angrily called off. In the mountains, loaded magazines snapped into Kalashnikovs. The various commanders—Dostum, the flamboyant Uzbek leader of the Junbish-i-Milli faction; the intense, surly Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the Hezb-e-Islami; Rabbani of the Jamiat-e-Islami; Sayyaf of the Ittehad-i-Islami; Abdul Ali Mazari of the Hizb-e-Wahdat; and the brooding, charismatic Ahmad Shah Massoud of the Jamiat—each commanded loyal militias, and their rivalries quickly turned Kabul into a battlefield.

The Devastation of Kabul

When the rockets began to rain down on Kabul, people ran for cover. Mammy changed back into black, went to her room, shut the curtains, and pulled the blanket over her head. The city that had been largely at peace during the Soviet war now became a war zone. Laila learned from Tariq the treacherous, shifting boundaries within Kabul: one road, up to the second acacia tree on the left, belonged to one warlord; the next four blocks, ending with the bakery shop next to the demolished pharmacy, was another warlord's sector; and if she crossed that street and walked half a mile west, she would find herself in the territory of yet another warlord and, therefore, fair game for sniper fire. The Mujahideen were now called "warlords" and "tofangdar" (riflemen), and the word "Mujahideen" itself was uttered with a sneer, reeking of deep aversion and scorn, like an insult. In June 1992, heavy fighting broke out in West Kabul between the Pashtun forces of Sayyaf and the Hazaras of the Wahdat faction. The shelling knocked down power lines and pulverized entire blocks. Pashtun militiamen attacked Hazara households, breaking in and shooting entire families execution-style, and Hazaras retaliated by abducting Pashtun civilians, raping Pashtun girls, and killing indiscriminately. Every day, bodies were found tied to trees, sometimes burned beyond recognition, with their eyes gouged out and tongues cut out.

The Collapse of Civil Life

The war destroyed the fabric of daily life. Laila's friend Giti was killed by a stray rocket while walking home from school; her mother ran up and down the street collecting pieces of her daughter's flesh in an apron. The streets became so unsafe that Babi did an unthinkable thing: he had Laila drop out of school. He took over the teaching duties himself, discussing the ghazals of Hafez and the works of Ustad Khalilullah Khalili as Hekmatyar launched his rockets at Massoud from the southern outskirts of the city. Almost everyone Laila knew packed their things and left. Hasina's family fled to Tehran, Wajma's clan to Islamabad, Giti's parents to Mashad. After people left, their homes sat unoccupied for a few days, then either militiamen took them or strangers moved in. The Mujahideen, who had once been heroes to Mammy, had become the source of the city's destruction, and their rule created the conditions of chaos and despair that the Taliban would exploit to seize power in 1996.