I was sleeping in our dark room, the one with no windows to the outside, when my father’s voice jolted me awake. He spoke in a loud pitch. It was unlike him. It said something was seriously wrong.
Earlier, a tank shell had hit the entrance to our building, blowing away nearly half so at night, we used a thick log to brace the rest of it, hoping it would hold. And now, two strangers, standing at the threshold, shouted commands as they dragged my father out, past the debris from the collapsed staircase, broken doors, and shattered windows that had piled up at the main entrance.
It was difficult to hear them clearly.
We were still nearly deaf from the blast, our ears ringing off and on.
Our room was lit only by the flicker of an oil lamp casting long shadows. Since the start of the civil war, we had no electricity, no firewood, and no gas to heat our rooms, which smelled of dampness and gunpowder.
We huddled together under blankets, using our own breath to keep our noses from freezing. Sometimes, we left the lamp burning to fight off the chill, and by morning, our noses were smudged with black ash. Sleep was only a temporary escape; each rocket strike jolted us awake, sending us rushing to the basement. My mother kept a bag packed with food and clothes by the door, always ready in case we had to stay down there for hours.
Before I could make sense of anything, my mother whispered, “Stay still.”
Heat suddenly rushed through my body. I still remember the dryness fear left in my throat.
Mujahid (plural: Mujahideen) is an Arabic term meaning "to strive" or "to struggle." In Islamic theology, a mujahid refers to someone who engages in jihad, a struggle in the path of God. While jihad can take many forms, including spiritual and moral effort, the term is most commonly associated with armed struggle, especially in defense of Islam. In Afghanistan, the Mujahideen emerged after the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979, which was largely seen as an attack not only on their land and sovereignty but also on their faith. They fought a fierce war until the Soviets withdrew in 1989.
With the end of the occupation, their war had largely lost its original purpose. Still, they refused to stop fighting or accept any peace deal with the pro-Soviet government led by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) which eventually collapsed on April 28, 1992, and the Mujahideen took power.
Then, the war that was expected to finally end turned inward.
The Mujahideen, divided into several major and smaller groups, soon began fighting each other for power and control. They had an endless supply of weapons left behind by the pro-Soviet government and practically no one to rein in their unchecked power. The world, mainly the United States, was occupied with the collapse of communism and the fragile transition in post-Soviet Russia. At the same time, wars broke out in Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001, Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus between 1988 and 1994, and Chechnya between 1994 and 1996. With global attention elsewhere, Once hailed as liberators, the Mujahideen turned their weapons inward and plunged Afghanistan into a brutal civil war.
Mujahideen leaders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf, Ahmad Shah Massoud, Abdul Ali Mazari, and warlords like Abdul Rashid Dostum turned Kabul into a slaughterhouse by carving the city into war zones in the areas they controlled.
Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami, predominantly Pashtun, shelled the capital from the east, his war driven as much by ambition as by artillery. In the west, Mazari’s Hazara-led Hezb-e-Wahdat fiercely defended its territory. Massoud, a Tajik and the defense minister of a Tajik-led government, held the north and east, his legacy marked by battlefield heroics and the stain of the Afshar massacre in March 1993. Dostum, the calculating leader of the predominantly Uzbek Junbish-e-Milli, shifted alliances with precision, while from the east, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf, a mix of Pashtun and Tajik, led Ittehad-e-Islami, deepening the scars of urban warfare as he weighed his profits on both sides of the conflict.
By May 1992, just a month into power, the self-proclaimed holy warriors had already fragmented into bloodthirsty rivals, exposing how swiftly ideological unity gave way to political ambition. As the cause splintered, ethnic divisions became the new weapons of war.
And we, the civilians, were left trapped in fear and war, at the mercy of the Mujahideen.
When they took my father away, maybe it was helplessness that made me move, even though I was scared. I couldn’t just stay back. I couldn’t leave my father alone. I needed to see what was happening. As I crawled from our dark room to the veranda, I didn’t know I was about to witness one of the most haunting memories of my childhood.
My mother didn’t stop me and held my brother close as he cried quietly.
Perhaps she thought it was useless to stop anything now. Or maybe she thought I didn’t attract attention anymore, as I was so thin and small. I had lost all of my tummy, which I disliked a lot before the war, as it wouldn't fit into my school uniform. And I couldn’t be seen from the outside because of the veranda walls.
When the tank shell struck our building, it shattered both the veranda windows and the wooden plugs. By chance, my mother, a compulsive keeper of things, had stored some plywood from when our house had been rebuilt before the Civil War began. During the civil war, the dogs had become feral, even scavenging human flesh, so my father, confident in his own repair skills, had used it to patch the cracked, mainly to keep out dust, cold, and stray dogs.
I pressed my face against the gap in the plywood my father had nailed to the broken windows, looking out from our ground-floor apartment in the nearly deserted five-story building.
The early morning sun was rising, and I could not only see them but hear them clearly too, because the fighting had not yet begun. It was just after the morning prayer. Muslims are obligated to pray five times a day.
The Mujahideen fighters would usually stop fighting around prayer times, even if just for a brief moment, to pray. It was the only break we had from the constant bullets raining down on us.
During those times, my mother would often cook, clean, or fill water bottles from the well we had dug in front of our building during the early days of the war.
Both men who dragged my father out were carrying Kalashnikovs. At least I thought so, because in those days, the name Kalashnikov lingered heavily in our minds. It was synonymous with conflict and a painful reminder of the unjust and brutal Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and I assumed that any gun slung over a shoulder was a Kalashnikov.
One of the men, dressed in camouflage pants, a thick gray sweater, and a pakol, the traditional woolen hat, stepped forward and asked my father, “What did you tell the reporter?”
They were referring to Mirwais Jalil, a BBC reporter who had visited our neighborhood earlier to interview my father. In those dark days, the only people we saw on the streets were Mujahideen fighters. Ordinary life had vanished. When Jalil arrived, it felt as if something rare had broken through the silence, carrying a microphone and a bag slung over his shoulder. He was most likely the only Afghan reporter in the area during the early months of 1993. I immediately learned his name and couldn't forget it; it was the same as my brother's.
My father told the gunmen that he had no prior knowledge of the reporter in the area, nor did he know him personally. “We spoke about the attack,” my father replied, gesturing toward the debris where the staircase had once stood.
That staircase had once connected all five floors of our building to the basement, but now it lay in ruins, buried under cement slabs, twisted metal rods, broken wood, and shattered glass.
“I told him we were trapped,” my father said, explaining that he had called for help because we could no longer reach the basement to take shelter from the daily rocket fire and stray bullets.
“Don’t lie, knucklehead,” snapped the second man, dressed in camouflage pants, a black sweater, and a black-and-white scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. His tone was sharp, full of hostility. “You Pashtuns are the enemy. You’ll never change,” he sneered, raising his hand as if to strike my father.
“I’m not lying,” my father said, his voice calm but pleading as he instinctively stepped back.
“Did you even listen to the interview?” he asked, searching their faces for any sign of reason.
“BBC is evil,” the man retorted, claiming it was full of “radical Pashtun nationalists” trying to defame the non-Pashtun Mujahideen.
As the Civil War intensified, ethnic identity, once secondary, became a defining factor in how my family was treated. It underscored the political and social fracture in Afghanistan, where Kabul had fractured into pockets of control. Those caught in the wrong place, like my family, Pashtuns trapped in Tajik-controlled areas, were doomed.
The men’s words rang out louder than the fear already hanging thick in the air of our middle-class neighborhood in northeast Kabul, known as Microrayon. The gray apartment blocks, mostly five stories tall, had been built by the Soviets, identical to those scattered across the former Soviet republics.
During the Civil War, only these cement structures stood strong. The rest of Kabul, built from mud and brick, was collapsing into dust, with whole neighborhoods crumbling and the city stripped of life. The majority of Kabul’s populace had fled to the neighboring countries of Pakistan and Iran, both of which offered refuge to Afghans without requiring a visa.
My parents believed that Afghanistan’s neighboring countries, mainly Iran and Pakistan, had fueled the Kabul Civil War by supplying political support, weapons and funding to the warring factions. Seeking refuge there, they felt, would have been unethical. I also believe they stayed because they could not bear to abandon our home, which was their only material possession in the world.
Fragments of the horrors endured by people, including my parents, have been documented largely through the work of Human Rights Watch. The organization reported that tens of thousands of civilians were killed or wounded amid the fighting. In its accounts, bodies lay swollen and decomposing on the streets of Kabul, a grim corroboration of the oral histories passed down by survivors.
One of those survivors is Ahmad Khan (not his real name, for security reasons), a quiet man now in his seventies whom I met in the United States. A native of west Kabul, Khan spoke plainly, without embellishment, as if time had done little to soften the weight of what he had witnessed.
“They were insane and sick,” he said, speaking of the militants who ruled with unchecked cruelty. “I was arrested by Commander Shafi Dewana.”
Commander Shafi Dewana, Dewana meaning “madman” in Dari, was a feared militia leader, who operated mainly in west Kabul and was known for his violent and unpredictable conduct.
“At night, I could hear women crying—begging for mercy,” he recalled. “Decades have passed, but I still sometimes can’t believe I am alive. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’ve been dead since then.
He laughed, sudden, sharp, then fell silent, surprised by his own voice
How did they not kill you? I asked him,
“They kept us alive to dig,” he said. “Holes. Hideouts. Bunkers. Maybe they planned to kill us later. But somehow, somehow I escaped."
He pressed his hands together, slow and sun-darkened, as if the soil still clung to them. As we spoke, he flicked the lighter, on and off. His lips stained a deep burgundy, his skin weathered and thick with the weight of years.
Each cough rumbled deep, as if it came from the very core of his being.
"Did you ever hear about the Dance of the Dead?" he asked, his voice heavy.
He leaned in closer, lowering his voice.
"They would tie your hands," he began, his tone barely above a whisper. "Then they would throw you alive into a metal barrel and set it on fire. The heat, the burning metal, your body would twist and writhe from the agony. That is what they called the 'dancing dead.'"
I did not tell him that I had also heard another version: that they would peel the skin from the person's head and pour boiling oil on top, just to watch the body jerk in pain until death, a horrifying spectacle they called dancing.
During the conversation, he didn’t mention that he was a Tajik captured by the Hazaras. He avoided it, and I did too, but we both knew the truth. During the Civil War, it was astonishing how ethnic identity became the defining measure of who was seen as a victim and who as an oppressor, at least from the perspective of those with the guns. But that divide never reached our hearts, the residents of Kabul. Our neighbors protected us. For example, before fleeing, families left behind what they could: potatoes, rice, clothes, medical kits, books, whatever they had they gave us as they ran for their lives. We cared nothing for ethnicity or religious differences; all that mattered was that the next person survived in the city where the sky, once wide and open over acacia trees, was now torn apart by artillery. Even when we dared peek outside, the skies were barren, and even the little gray birds that once flitted through the foliage around our home, searching for scraps and seeds, had vanished, as if nature itself had fled the city, leaving only the occasional wails of stray dogs in its wake.
My father told the gunmen, who had arrived with suspicion, that the BBC reporter had simply spoken about how we were surviving the war.
We survived on scraps because there was not much substantial available to cook. My mother had collected a sack of breadcrumbs before the war to sell, and that we soaked in water for breakfast or lunch. Cooking was one of the most difficult tasks because we couldn’t light a fire at night; any smoke or light would attract the Mujahideen stationed in the hills, who would open fire. It was only possible during the day, when the fighters went to pray. So, we built a fire inside our home, burning stray papers, old clothing, and scraps of wood pulled from our broken windows. The fear of the Mujahideen was so intense that people discarded anything considered politically dangerous. We mostly burned books, albums, and magazines our neighbors had thrown out, including works by Tolstoy, Gorky, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and volumes on Lenin, Stalin, and communism. These items were discarded in a desperate attempt to avoid retribution, as people feared the Mujahideen would find them and punish them for possessing such material.
The constant fear of punishment was so overwhelming that people refrained from approaching the Mujahideen, even when it was their only option. When someone was injured, they often had no choice but to bleed to death, as medical help was inaccessible and seeking it could mean risking your life. The neighborhood was mostly deserted, and attempting to reach the hospital was often deadly. I remember the man who lay on the pavement behind our home. Hit by shrapnel, he had fallen face down, wearing a black shirt and black pants. At first, he moved, but then he lay still, unmoving, until the Mujahideen appeared from somewhere and removed him.
In an area controlled by Tajik Mujahideen, a Pashtun like my father could easily have been seen as an enemy if he said the wrong thing, made a statement that didn’t align with their views, or attempted to share information that could defame them, such as speaking to the media. He could simply vanish, be taken away, shot, and discarded in a dumpster. No one would have known or done anything. According to Human Rights Watch, thousands of people who were forcibly disappeared during the conflict never returned.
But that day, my father didn’t fear.
He spoke quickly now, his voice tightening, and then revealed the terrible truth: "Please help us. We have two dead bodies to bury. We cannot leave them for the dogs," he pleaded.
He explained that a couple in our neighborhood, a husband and wife, had been trying to reach the basement when a rocket hit. The blast tore through the building, leaving their bodies shattered and indistinguishable from one another.
My father had gathered what he could—fragments of their lives—into a single blanket.
They deserved a grave.
“We can’t move freely,” he said. “But you can. Please take them. Please bury them.”
For a long time, I believed the gunman’s shift, from hostility to quiet attention, was a response to my father’s calm and respectful plea, a rare human connection in the midst of Civil War’s chaos. Years later, my father suggested another reason: the dead were Tajiks, and they may have been stunned that a Pashtun was intervening.
The gunmen stood in silence.
Then my father disappeared into the hall and returned, carrying the blanket wrapped around what remained of two lives.
The men took it without a word and walked away.
They belonged to Ahmad Shah Massoud.
In 2017, I returned to Kabul as a visiting radio journalist.
The portrait of Ahmad Shah Massoud, revered as the “National Hero,” loomed over the airport. Abdul Ali Mazari had been declared the “Martyr for National Unity,” and, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar lived lavishly in the heart of the city. Abdul Rashid Dostum, still serving as vice president, had left for Turkey amid unresolved allegations of rape, torture, and kidnapping. And the streets of Kabul teemed with orphans and widows, most of them victims of the Civil War these men had waged, begging for bread. Despite years of international aid and generous support, the government teetered on the brink of collapse, a collapse that seemed inevitable. As I walked through my old neighborhood, I wondered how anyone could expect a system to endure when those responsible for so much innocent bloodshed remained in power, untouched by justice.
Kabul had lost so much: its peace, its innocence, its people.
Daily suicide attacks, explosions, and bombings tore through the heart of the city.
Ethnicity was shouted louder than ever, shamelessly wielded as a tool for politics, power, and profit. But those who lived under the weight of explosions and bombings, amidst poverty, and in the silence between raids and strikes, had no space for division, just as we had in the old days. For the ordinary people of Kabul, survival remained the foremost priority, and beneath the banners of war, Kabul’s neighborhoods whispered a deeper truth: that life, fragile, stubborn, and shared, endured beyond the lines drawn by men with guns.
I could hear my father's voice in my mind, steady and resolute, as he spoke to those men so many years ago: "We have two dead bodies to bury. Please help us." In that moment, I realized that he, a Pashtun, had asked for dignity for his Tajik neighbor, an act of humanity amidst the madness.
I thought of Mirwais Jalil, the radio reporter who had once come to our neighborhood to share the stories of our lives trapped by war. Jalil, 25, was tragically killed on 29 July 1994. He had traveled with an Italian reporter to interview then-prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar at his base south of Kabul. During their return journey, five masked men intercepted their taxi and abducted Mirwais at gunpoint. His body was discovered the next morning, having suffered at least 20 gunshot and stab wounds to the chest and head, as reported by the BBC. His reporting on the war, at a time when Kabul had been abandoned by the international community, was seen as a threat by the warring sides because it exposed human rights abuses and the appalling conditions people like us were enduring.
Neither side of the war welcomed the documentation of atrocities committed in areas under their control or the attention his work brought to their actions; therefore, the gunmen targeted my father, hoping to find out the details of his meeting. However, after questioning him, they may have been convinced that there was no deeper connection and that the meeting was merely a coincidence.
No one was ever brought to justice for silencing Jalil’s voice.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was, perhaps, stepping on his blood the day I joined a group of Kabul-based journalists in Kabul’s Chehel Sotoun neighborhood, once the front line of war, where Jalil’s bullet-riddled body had been found.
I was invited to speak about covering the human cost of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and was given a bouquet of flowers in recognition of my reporting, which I placed in a small stream winding through the nearby fields as a tribute to Jalil.
