Afghanistan had an intelligence agency known as the Istikhbarat (Persian: استخبارات), Intelligence or the Intelligence Report Directorate.[6][7] However, observers have stated it was incompetent with Afghan leaders since it was ineffective as they preferred to use their personal connections instead.[8]
After the events of the Saur Revolution, the PDPA established AGSA (Da Afghanistan da Gato da Saatane Adara or Afghan Agency for Safeguarding National Interest) as its domestic/foreign intelligence agency[4] with Assadullah Sarwari serving as its first director.[9] Sarwari was known for torturing anyone who disagreed with the PDPA.[10] AGSA operations eventually led to an anti-PDPA insurgency.[11] AGSA additionally had a secret code between members Meera Jan, Fazil Qadir and the head of AGSA’s investigation committee which was intercepted by Rahmatullah Omid, used for killing anyone who the Khalq deemed an enemy. The killings would take place at night. The code was used via telephone and was in the Russian language, with the transcript reading “How’s the weather like? Are we going to shoot, are we going to kill?”.[12]
AGSA was additionally involved in the hangings of Parcham members in 1978 and the executions of the following people:[13]
In September 1979, AGSA was replaced with KAM (Komite-ye Amniyat-e Melli or National Security Committee)[a] under Hafizullah Amin's direction.[4][9] Several AGSA officials were either placed under surveillance or were arrested.[11] KAM had a total of 7000 employees.[1][2]
Aziz Ahmed Akbari was called in to take over from Sarwari when he took refuge in the Soviet Embassy.[14] After two months, Assadullah Amin was appointed by his uncle to lead KAM.[14] KAM did not last long after the Soviets officially entered Afghanistan in 1979.[11]
KhAD (1980-1986)
KHAD was created on 10 January 1980[15] and was officially announced by President Babrak Karmal, with 1,200 personnel inside the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan who took over intelligence responsibilities from KAM in December 1979, with most of them being pro-Parchamites. The group was known as “the activists”[16] and was active until March 1980,[4] being initially headed by Mohammad Najibullah,[17] alongside Dr. Baha[4] who worked on establishing the structure that would later be referred to as KHAD.
After Soviet troops were deployed in Afghanistan, KhAD was expanded with Moscow's assistance, which includes sophisticated torture equipment.[10] Najibullah took the opportunity of his post to rise within the PDPA before Major-General Ghulam Faruq Yaqubi took over KHAD duties in November 1985.[18]
Soviet advisors were known to work alongside KhAD personnel and major decisions are not made without their input.[4] In some instances, KHAD agents accompanied KGB Kaskad (Cascade) operators on anti-mujahideen infiltration ops.[19][20] KhAD personnel were also authorised to use any strategies necessary to ensure they did not disclose their identities as officers of the agency, as a former KhAD advisor stated that Pakistanis did not want to capture KhAD Special Forces operatives alive.[21][22]
The agency's manpower increased from 1,200 to nearly 70,000 personnel.[20] KHAD was able to turn some mujahideen groups to work with the PDPA by providing incentives such as small arms or money in return for their loyalty by attending loya jirgas and other pro-PDPA activities.[23][20]
They've worked with the KGB to fund and assist Murtaza Bhutto for his involvement in the hijacking of Pakistan International Airlines Flight 326 and with Baluchistan and Sind dissidents, according to files obtained by Vasili Mitrokhin from KGB files.[24][20] KHAD's infiltration of various mujahideen groups did help to contribute to some of the infighting.[24][20]
WAD emblem from 1987 to 1992
Post-KhAD (1986-2001)
On 9 January 1986, KhAD was changed with its name to WAD (Wazarat-e Amaniat-e Dowlati or Ministry of State Security).[18] It was reported that WAD was placed in charge of controlling the Kabul Garrison.[18] Its budget and size were expanded.[11] However WAD would still often be referred to as KhAD by the US government and the CIA. In 1987 KhAD was behind many terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil including the Karachi Car bombing and an attempted car bombing on the US Consulate in Peshawar which ended up killing over 30 people.[25]
In 1989, WAD-led forces, more specifically the Special Guard and the 904th Battalion, fought in the Battle of Jalalabad.[26] In March 1990, Lieutenant-General Shahnawaz Tanai attempted a coup, which was suppressed by the WAD-led National Guard (Gard-e-Mili) paramilitary force, not to be confused for the Afghan National Guard, General Khushal Peroz and Mohammad Aslam Watanjar.[18]
During the civil war in the 1990s, Hezb-i-Islami, the Northern Alliance and the Taliban all recruited ex-KhAD officers and agents to act as their moles operating behind enemy territory.[9]
Recruitment
Before KhAD approached potential candidates for the agency’s officer base, they extensively screened the candidate beforehand, as well as secretly probing their entire family. Only PDPA members who were extremely loyal and belonged to pro-government families qualified for admission as an officer. Women were also employed as NCOs and officers, although they were underrepresented in senior officer ranks.
Once recruited, KhAD NCOs and officers received intensive training known as “Parawachi” or “Parwareshi” and after the training was completed, recruits went through a trial period known as “Azmajchi” or “Azmayeshi”, where they’d have to prove their loyalty by spying on their family members, arresting friends, partners and subjecting them to torture. Over time, the tasks seasoned recruits were asked to perform would only become more intense, being ordered to infiltrate the ranks of the Afghan mujahideen.[28] On their first assignment, the recruits were transferred to KhAD/WAD sections actively engaged in tracking down “subversive elements”. Only those who proved their worth were promoted or transferred to sections with more administrative or technical activities.[29]
Potential applicants may have been prompted to join KhAD as the role of officer provided material benefits, such as a salary ten times higher than that of a government official. KhAD officers were additionally exempt from conscription and had free access to alcohol and even prostitutes.[30] If a KhAD officer was killed in action, their family would also receive financial compensation and benefits from the government.[31] One former officer, believed to have used a ZSU-23-4 Shilka—a weapon used to target aircraft—on human targets of Mujahideen fighters, also recounts “living like a king” due to having access to any form of weaponry and vehicles upon arrival to Kabul.
Training
Kaskad operators were responsible for training KhAD personnel.[20] KhAD officers had to go through a mandatory training course in Kabul where they were taught about military logistics, how to recruit potential officers, organisation and how to identify covert meetings and networks. KhAD officers, starting from first lieutenant to lieutenant colonel, were given mandatory training at the KGB School at Balashikha, Uzbekistan, and other KGB training facilities.[32] Unlike the mandatory training in Kabul, the course in Tashkent included interrogation and criminal investigation techniques. High-ranking KhAD officers, starting from the rank of colonel and upwards, received additional mandatory training in Moscow. Unlike other techniques taught to officers in Kabul, Balashikha and Uzbekistan, the higher-ranking officers would receive training on management and policy issues, as well as financial affairs.[33]
Psychological Warfare and State-Sponsored Terrorism
Prostitution Spy Rings
In mid-1985, the Soviet Union and Kabul launched psychological warfare against Pakistan in an attempt to morally destabilize society. As part of this strategy, the KGB and KHAD deployed hundreds of young girls of Afghan, Central Asian, and Russian origin to corrupt Pakistani society. This influx initially targeted the major urban centers such as Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Faisalabad, Multan, and Quetta.[34] These groups of prostitutes strategically selected affluent areas in these cities and operated within a well-organized structure. Many of these prostitutes had connections to KGB and KHAD agents, with high-ranking government officials and Pakistan army officers being their primary targets.[35] This led to the emergence of a "galemjum (prostitute) culture" in Pakistani society, which attracted professionals, the local commercial class, and frustrated youth in various urban centers.
State Sponsored Terrorism
According to a report by the US Defense Department, approximately 90% of the estimated 777 acts of international terrorism committed worldwide in 1987 took place in Pakistan.[36] By 1988, KGB and KhAD agents were able to penetrate deep inside Pakistan and carry out attacks on mujahideen sanctuaries and guerrilla bases.[37] There was strong circumstantial evidence implicating Moscow-Kabul in the August 1988 assassination of Zia ul-Haq, as the Soviets perceived that Zia wanted to adversely affect the Geneva process.[38] WAD/KhAD has also been suspected behind the assassination of Palestinian jihadist Abdullah Yusuf Azzam alongside his son in 1989.[39][40]
Afghanistan's KHAD was one of four secret service agencies accused of perpetrating terrorist bombings in multiple Pakistani cities including Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, and Rawalpindi during the early 1980s resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties.[41] By the late 1980s, the US State Department blamed WAD for the perpetration of terrorist bombings in Pakistani cities.[42][43] Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, Afghanistan security agencies supported the terrorist organization called al-Zulfiqar, the group that hijacked a Pakistan International Airlines plane from Karachi to Kabul in 1981.[44] Notable attacks include the Karachi Car bombing and an attempted car bombing on the US Consulate in Peshawar which ended up killing over 30 people in 1987.[25]
The Hathora Murders of Karachi
Around some time in 1985, Pakistani police in the city of Karachi were becoming alarmed by an increased number of killings. While the murders took place in different areas of the city, an investigation found these murders to be done in the same manner; a single blow to the head with a hathora (the word for "hammer" in Urdu). Upon investigation of the victims and their backgrounds, it was found that they were all street urchins or beggars on the streets.
None of the victims of the Hathora group survived apart from one person, who described the murderers as men in “white suits and black masks” who drove a white Suzuki vehicle. Upon realization that these murders were being committed by a group. newspapers across the nation began to report the victim's story and referred to these men as "the Hathora Group" oweing to their method of using hammers to murder their victims. Police didn’t know who these men were and what motives they had to do commit these murders. For a while, these cases of murders stopped and then finally resumed around some time in mid-1986. For nearly 2 years, the city of Karachi was terrorised by the horrors of such group, with civilians fearing they would enter their homes and be killed by the Hathora group.
Some Pakistani newspapers alluded that the Hathora group was actually made up of members of the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, and KHAD, who were striking back due to the Pakistani government backing the Afghan mujahideen against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.[45] A sociologist, when asked about these killings, mentioned that the chaos that was occurring in Karachi was easily manipulated by groups for their own motives. The sociologist strongly believed that these killings were planned to spread more fear in the city, which could be the intention of KHAD and the motive behind the murders, although it is unknown if KHAD was behind these murders.
Structure
KhAD
KhAD was known to have the following organizational structures in place:[4]
Headquarters
Directorate of Administration and Finance
Directorate of Cadre / Personnel
Directorate of Interrogation
Directorate of Intelligence and Afghan Diplomatic Missions Abroad
Directorate of Post and Parcels
Directorate for Operative Activities for Internal Control of KhAD Personnel
Directorate for Economy and Anti Corruption
Directorate for Counter Rebellion: Two Sub-Directorates covering 16 provinces each. Known to have three military battalions based in Kabul to assist with arrests and other investigative work.
Directorate for Surveillance of Foreign and National Suspects
Directorate of the Press and Educational Institutions
Directorate for the Protection of the Government and its Representatives
Directorate of Propaganda and Counter-Propaganda
Directorate of Telecommunications and Decoding
Directorate for Activities Linked to Infiltration of Mujaheddin
Directorate of Logistics
Directorate for Agents and Informers
Directorate of Analysis and Reporting
Military KhAD: Embedded in the Ministry of Defense to prevent infiltration by mujahideen groups.
Police KhAD: Embedded in the Ministry of Interior to prevent infiltration by mujahideen groups.
Provincial
Administration and Finance
Cadre / Personnel Directorate
Surveillance of foreign and national suspects
Interrogation
Post and Parcels
Operative activities for internal control of KhAD personnel
Propaganda and counter-propaganda
Economy and Anti-Corruption
Press and Educational institutions
Logistics
Counter-Rebellion: 2 Sub-Directorates covering 16 Provinces each
Protection of the government and its representatives
Telecommunication and Decoding
Activities linked to infiltration of Mujaheddin
Agents and Informer Unit
Analysis and Reporting
City District Offices
Rural District Offices
Military and Police KhAD within the respective ministries' structures
While not part of the KHAD structure, militias recruited from tribal and anti-government militias who agreed to work with them, are finally supported by the agency.[4] KhAD also had its own special forcesbattalions attached to each province which included between 250-300 personnel.[20]
WAD
The WAD was known to have the following organizational structures in place:[4]
Directorate-General for Security: Ensure WAD's internal/external security.
Directorate-General for Military Security: Successor of Military KHAD forces.
Directorate-General for the Interior: Successor of Civilian KHAD activities on monitoring anti-government activities in and out of Afghanistan.
Human rights abuses
KHAD was also accused of human rights abuses in the mid-1980s.[20][18] These included the use of torture, the use of predetermined "show trials" to dispose of political prisoners, and widespread arbitrary arrest and detention. Secret trials and the execution of prisoners without trial were also common. By 1989 KhAD had arrested nearly 150,000 people (although many were released).[20]
It was especially active and aggressive in the urban centers, especially in Kabul. Organizations such as Amnesty International continued to publish detailed reports of KhAD's use of torture and of inhumane conditions in the country's prisons and jails.[46] In 1989, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights visited both Sedarat and Shashdarak, one of many prisons for those arrested by the agency, and found out that the hygienic conditions in these prisons somewhat improved.[47]
KHAD also operated eight detention centers in the capital, which were located at KHAD headquarters, at the Ministry of the Interior headquarters, and at a location known as the Central Interrogation Office. The most notorious of the Communist-run detention centers was Pul-e-Charkhi prison, where 27,000 political prisoners are thought to have been murdered.[48][49] Recently mass graves of executed prisoners have been uncovered dating back to the Soviet era.[50]
On 29 February 2000, when The Netherlands had no diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a disputed report on the involvement of the KhAD on human rights abuses, partly based on secret sources, allegedly biased political sycophants from the side of the Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI. Some of its conclusions were already published in the Dutch press before the official publication of the full report.[51] This report, quoted frequently in the cases of Afghan asylum seekers to support the exclusion ground of article 1F of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in the national refugee policy of the Netherlands, was also published in an English translation on 26 April 2001.[18] In 2008, another report on this matter was published by the UNHCR. In this report, some conclusions of the Dutch report were contested.[4]
On 14 October 2005, the District Court in the Hague convicted two high-ranking KhAD officers who sought asylum in the Netherlands in the 1990s. Hesamuddin Hesam and Habibullah Jalalzoy were found guilty of complicity to torture and violations of the laws and customs of war, committed in Afghanistan in the 1980s.[52] Hesam was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. He was the head of the military intelligence service (KhAD-e-Nezamy) and deputy minister of the Ministry of State Security (WAD). Jalalzoy was the head of the unit investigations and interrogations within the military intelligence of the KhAD. He was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment.[53]
On 29 January 2007, the Dutch appeal court upheld the sentences.[54] The judgements were confirmed by the Dutch Supreme Court on 10 July 2008.[55]
On 25 June 2007, the District Court in the Hague acquitted another senior KhAD officer. General Abdullah Faqirzada was one of the deputy heads of the KhAD-e-Nezamy from 1980 until 1987. Although the court held it plausible that Faqirzada was closely involved with the human rights abuses in the military branch of the KhAD, it concluded there was no evidence for his individual involvement nor his command responsibility for the specific crimes the charge was based upon.[56] On 16 July 2009, the Dutch appeal court upheld the acquittal.[57]
In a June 2005 report that was published by the UNCHR, it was stated that members of KhAD were not only at risk of reprisals from those who held positions of power in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, but also the families of those who were affected by human rights abuses committed by KhAD.
Heshamuddin Hesam, Convicted of warcrimes at the Hague in 2005
Habibulla Jalalzoy, Convicted of warcrimes at the Hague in 2005
In popular culture
The unreleased 1991 Afghan Film "Agent" was based around a KhAD operative hunting down a Narcotics ring.[58][59] In the Russian war movie Leaving Afghanistan the character “Majed” is a KhAD intelligence officer. KhAD is also mentioned in the Russian mini series Caravan Hunters and the film Afganets.[citation needed]
^Some other sources mention that KAM stands for Kargari Astekhbarati Muassessa or Worker's Intelligence Institute[14] and Kargarano Amniyati Mu’asasa or Workers' Security Institution.[11]
^ abHyman, Anthony (1982). "Afghan intelligentsia 1978-81: For four traumatic years all independent thinkers have been under attack". Index on Censorship. 11 (2): 8–9. doi:10.1080/03064228208533353. S2CID143952115.
^The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World By Christopher Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin. Basic Books, 2005. ISBN0-465-00311-7p. 408
Hänni, Adrian; Riegler, Thomas; Gasztold, Przemyslaw, eds. (2020). Terrorism in the Cold War: State Support in the West, Middle East and Latin America. New York, USA: I.B. Tauris. ISBN978-0755600236.
Landsford, Tom (2017). Afghanistan at War: From the 18th-Century Durrani Dynasty to the 21st Century. USA: ABC-CLIO. ISBN9781598847598.
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