The most ravaged district of Kabul is a ghostly testament to the folly of war, waged without pity.
There is nothing left intact, just the detritus of siege: Jagged bits of masonry, husks of buildings, crumbling walls pockmarked with artillery fire.
The Soviets didn't do this. The Taliban didn't do this.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar did this.
With his militia entrenched in the southern quadrant of the capital, unwilling to share power with other mujahideen leaders – offered the prime minister's job, he demanded the presidency – Hekmatyar rained rockets on Kabul. An alliance that had successfully and improbably driven Soviet might off Afghanistan soil shattered, as the squabbling warlords fell on each other.
But the continuous bombardment of Kabul in the early '90s was very nearly all Hekmatyar's doing. In one single rocket attack, 1,800 civilians were killed. In the first year of civil war, 30,000 Kabulis died under Hekmatyar's shelling, 100,000 wounded.
Hekmatyar is not a foreigner, not an infidel, not part of an invading imperialist army. He's an Afghan and he has more blood on his hands, arguably, than even the Taliban, with which he has variously fought against and yoked himself to, depending on strategic ambitions. And he's always been a most ambitious man.
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