The awful logic of genocide

National Review, Oct 4, 1985 by Jean-Francois Revel

However, one must add to the official figures the number of those shot unofficially. Amnesty International estimates that 4,854 prisoners have been liquidated more or less clandestinely. And the United Nations report says that approximately nine thousand individuals "disappeared" in Kabul before the coup of December 27, 1979, much as happened in Argentina during the military dictatorship, but without touching off the same indignation in the free world.

As to the massacres of the civilian population, I cite several examples, all drawn from the UN report.

In addition, numerous cases of assassination of women and children were brought to the notice of the Special Rapporteur. They were described as having taken place frequently in villages, as reprisals following skirmishes between the troops and elements of the opposition movement.

Eyewitnesses told the Special Rapporteur of alleged massacres of civilians during the bombardment of villages. According to these witnesses, such acts were part of a deliberate policy, especially over the last two years, to force the people to take flight. In this connection, one witness declared that the country's economy had been completely destroyed by the systematic bombing of rural areas housing about 85 per cent of the population, and in fact occupied by the resistance and regarded as liberated zones.

On 13 September 1982, approximately 105 persons were killed in the village of Padkhwab-e-Shana in the province of Logar, including 61 victims from the village itself. In the course of an infantry operation in the village, the population, consisting of children, old people, and a few combatants, took fright and hid in an underground channel used for irrigation (Karez). To dislodge them, poured a whitish liquid mixed with white powder into three outlets of the channels and set fire to it. Charred and decomposed bodies were brought out by the villagers. The corpses were said to include 12 children.

On 12 October 1983, in the villages of Kulchabat, Bala Karz, and Mushkizi in the province of Kandahar, 360 persons were executed in the village square, including twenty girls and about twenty old people.

In March 1984, several hundred civilians were massacred in the villages of Dash-e-Bolokhan and Dash-e-Asukhan in the Kohistan region.

In November 1984, some forty civilians were massacred in the village of Zirvq situated in the Urgun region after two weeks of steady bombardment. According to the witnesses, several houses were destroyed and the cattle decimated.

Furthermore, the use of poison gas and booby-trapped toys and largely been proved, according to the report.

The devastation of the countryside and the villages, and the deportations of the people (in late 1980, the Soviets emptied Pamir of its entire population), have brought the expected and desired result: famine. This famine is a chronic fact of life for about half a million civilians (close in proportion to the Ethiopian famine). According to the group of doctors known as Medecins sans frontieres, infant mortality caused by malnutrition reached a stupefying 85 per cent in the winter of 1984-85.