Background and Objectives
On April 26, the mujahedin leaders announced a new peace and power-sharing agreement, the Peshawar Accords. During the period discussed in this article, the sovereignty of Afghanistan was vested formally in "The Islamic State of Afghanistan," an entity created in April 1992, after the fall of the Soviet-backed Najibullah government through the Peshawar Accords. The legitimate representatives of the government were President Burhanuddin Rabbani and minister of defense Ahmad Shah Massoud.
With the exception of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i Islami which to a very large extent was controlled by the regime in Pakistan, all parties were ostensibly unified under this government in 1993. Hekmatyar shelled Kabul with tens of thousands of rockets in 1992 to gain power for himself. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar repeatedly was offered the position of prime minister but he did not want to share power.
After several at first successful but then failed attempts of mediation by Ahmad Shah Massoud a brutal war broke out between the Saudi-backed Ittihad-e-Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and the Hezb-i Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari. According to Human Rights Watch numerous Iranian agents were assisting Wahdat forces, as Iran was attempting to maximize Wahdat's military power and influence in the new government. Saudi agents, private or governmental, were trying to strengthen Sayyaf and his Ittihad faction to the same end. Rare ceasefires, usually negotiated by representatives of Massoud, Mujaddidi or Rabbani, or officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), commonly collapsed within days.
In December 1992 Abdul Ali Mazari's Wahdat entered in an alliance with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. With his newly created alliance with Hezb-i Wahdat, Hekmatyar increased his rockets and shell attacks on the city. Human Rights Watch concludes:
Shells and rockets fell everywhere.The Afghanistan Justice Project gives the following objectives for the military operation:
There were two tactical objectives to the operation. First, Massoud intended, through the operation to capture the political and military headquarters of Hezb-i Wahdat and to capture Abdul Ali Mazari, the leader of Hezb-i Wahdat. Second, the ISA intended to consolidate the areas of the capital directly controlled by Islamic State forces by linking up parts of west Kabul controlled by Ittihad-i Islami with parts of central Kabul controlled by Jamiat-i Islami. Given the political and military context of Kabul at the time, these two objectives (which were largely attained during the operation) provide a compelling explanation of why the Islamic State forces attacked Afshar.Ahmad Shah Massoud did not want crimes to take place during the operation. A journalist from the Associated Press and the Economist who was present in Kabul and Afshar during that time reports:
When Iran-backed Hazara militiamen who had also been involved in ethnic cleansing and were allied to Hekmatyar began shelling Kabul's northwestern neighborhoods, Massoud worried aloud to his aides that driving them from their positions would risk allowing some of his allies' camp followers to commit atrocities against Hazara captives. On the other hand, he noted, the alternative was to allow Hazara militiamen to continue shelling much more heavily populated araeas, and killing many more noncombatants,on the other side of the town.Read more about this topic: Afshar Operation
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