Afghan student protesters beaten, say diplomats

Press, 13 May 1986, Page 6

Afghan student protesters beaten, say diplomats

NZPA-Reuter Islamabad The children of Kabul’s top families have been active in protests against the demotion of the former Afghan leader, Babrak Karmal, reports from Western diplomats indicated yesterday. Students at Islamabad’s elite Westernised high schools led most of at least eight — unusual in Afghanistan — demonstrations backing Mr Karmal, who was replaced as party chief eight days ago, the reports said. In a surprise twist for a Muslim society, female students were as active as males in the protests. In spite of their social standing or sex, the students were not spared by the secret police who used force to break up the protests, the diplomats said. The police beat up and hauled away two busloads of girls from the Frenchlanguage Malalai Me

last week after the students chanted: "Death to Najibullah. We want Karmal. Out with the Soviets. We want an Islamic Government.” The former secret police chief, Muhammad Najibullah, aged 39, was chosen to replace Mr Karmal at a tense three-day party meeting guarded by Soviet tanks and attended by Moscow’s ambassador. Mr Karmal, who had been accused by Moscow of failing to introduce reforms quickly enough, retained the largely ceremonial post of president. The secret police also used force against boys protesting last week at a school in Shar-i-Nau, a fashionable residential area north of the city centre, the diplomats said. Afghan exiles said the students’ families were not necessarily communist. The assumption was that teachers belonging to

Mr Karmal’s Parcham faction, the more urbanised Persian-speaking wing of Afghanistan’s divided Communist Party, led the protests. The rival Kalq faction is made up mostly of like

Muhammad Najibullah, from tribal areas bordering Pakistan. Most are more nationalist and less educated than the Parchamis. Diplomats said it was ironic that Mr Karmal, installed in power by Moscow during its armed intervention beginning in 1979, should now become a symbol of resistance to Soviet domination. As the exiles noted, Mr Karmal may have more in common with the privileged students supporting him than with the energetic Pashtun who took over his party post. Mr Karmal, the son of a general in the former royal army, is a Persianspeaking Kabuli educated at another of the city’s elite institutions, the Ger-man-language Amani School which was occupied by Afghan troops as barracks during the party meeting that decided his fate.