Reign of Terror

When the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan overthrew and executed Mohammad Daoud Khan (the former President of the Republic of Afghanistan), the country fell under the control of a delusional ultra-left wing Pashtun ultra-nationalist government. While the regime's leaders, Nur Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, ramped up their rhetoric towards Pakistan on the 'Pashtunistan' issue in their effort to secure a Greater Afghanistan, they simultaneously conducted an awesome internal campaign against perceived enemies. Thousands of Afghans, among them (but not exclusively) political opponents, Shi`as, left-wing opponents, land owners, and religious figures - were arrested, executed, and buried in unmarked graves throughout the country. In many cases, these individuals' families still know nothing about the fates of their loved ones.

This section of the exhibit explores the process of mass killing in Afghanistan under the PDPA - but before the December 1979 Soviet invasion - on the basis of novel sources, the so-called 'Death Lists' released by the Dutch National Prosecutor's office in September 2013. By re-formatting the Death Lists into computer-readable formats and conducting geo-informational analysis of them, this section provides the user with a newly spatial view of the terror of 1979. (Of course, it remains a highly incomplete picture of the trauma due to our larger lack of sources and the current situation on the ground in Afghanistan.)