Awareness Key to Success
Four days ago—on 27 December 2025—the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan was commemorated. On that day, a friend who had returned from Europe told me his daughter came home from school in tears after seeing museum photos and a documentary about Nazi atrocities.
I told him: this is how wise nations act. They document the crimes of oppressors and show them to new generations—even many decades later—because forgotten history repeats itself. In the West, schools and museums teach how dangerous tyranny, racial hatred, and blind obedience can be.
Three years ago, one of Hitler’s former soldiers—hidden in South America for seventy-six years—was arrested at the age of 102 and brought to court. He could barely stand, yet prosecution continued because crimes against humanity are not erased by time. “I was following orders” is not a defense.
Justice, even delayed, remains necessary. Condemning the oppressor honors the victims. Courts, media, museums, and recorded evidence become public warnings to future tyrants that one day people will hold them accountable.
But our own history was not preserved with the same seriousness. The British, the Russians, and the Americans committed devastating atrocities in Afghanistan, yet many crimes were never documented with the rigor needed for national memory, legal accountability, and intergenerational awareness.
We failed to preserve full records of the first British invasion; perhaps if we had, the second might have been deterred. We remember a few famous names from great battles, but we have not adequately recorded the sacrifices of the wider nation.
In the Soviet invasion, around one and a half million Afghans were killed, over a million were disabled, and nearly one-third of the population was displaced. Later, during the US/NATO era, more sacrifices followed. Yet again, we did not sufficiently institutionalize memory, justice, and historical instruction.
Even today, others urge us to forget words like “mujahid” and “martyr,” and to erase our suffering from education. Forgetfulness weakens nations. Awareness strengthens them.
I personally requested Afghan institutions to document both major periods of occupation, while veterans were still alive and evidence still recoverable. The opportunity remains valuable: to record truth, honor sacrifice, and prevent repetition.
The Nuremberg model showed key principles: no person is above law, official rank does not remove accountability, blind obedience is criminal when it serves injustice, and historical record must be built on verified fact—not rumor.
Islam also condemns oppression and rejects silence in the face of wrongdoing. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught that evil must be resisted by hand, by speech, or at least by heart. Social collapse begins when injustice is normalized and fear silences conscience.
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
The Soviet occupation and its internal collaborators produced long-term harm that still shapes Afghan life.
- Spreading fear: surveillance, suspicion, arbitrary arrests, and social distrust weakened family and community bonds.
- Arrests, prisons, disappearances: many were detained without trial; countless people vanished, and torture became widespread.
- Brutal bombardment: civilians, villages, farms, orchards, and forests were targeted under military pretexts.
- Collective punishment: entire communities were punished for alleged acts of individuals, including mass killings.
- Forced migration: roughly one-third of Afghans were displaced; families were separated and a generation’s education was disrupted.
- Opening the door to further interventions: sovereignty weakened, and competing external powers entrenched long-term instability.
- Landmines: tens of millions of mines were laid, killing and maiming civilians and damaging land use for generations.
- Attacks on religion and culture: mosques, scholars, and moral institutions were targeted, and ideological coercion deepened public trauma.
- Destruction of education: schools closed or militarized; teachers and students were killed, jailed, displaced, or intimidated.
- Economic collapse: agriculture, livestock, trade, and transport systems were shattered; unemployment and dependency rose.
- Ethnic militias and division: divide-and-rule policies inflamed social fragmentation and later state collapse.
- Brain drain: the departure of professionals removed national capacity and slowed long-term recovery.
- Rise of extremism: prolonged violence, poverty, and ignorance hardened radical attitudes.
- Psychological trauma: fear, loss, and displacement produced deep intergenerational wounds.
- Normalization of violence: weapons and force replaced dialogue and law in everyday life.
- Collapse of trust: war pressures and surveillance culture damaged trust between people and between citizens and leadership.
- Family fragmentation: migration and prolonged insecurity weakened kinship, social solidarity, and shared responsibility.
- Damage to justice: aggressors and collaborators often escaped accountability, while victims saw little remedy.
- Enduring wounds: war ends formally, but social, moral, educational, and economic injuries persist for decades without truth and justice.
Conclusion
From an Islamic perspective, occupation is oppression. Harm to civilians, women, and children is forbidden even in war. Terror, coercion, and destruction violate both moral law and religious principle.
Just as Europe documents and teaches the crimes of Nazism, Afghans must also record crimes committed in Afghanistan—by foreign occupiers and their local collaborators—truthfully and justly. This is not to spread hatred, but to build awareness, protect dignity, and prevent repetition.
If this had been done earlier, Afghanistan might have avoided repeated cycles of invasion and bloodshed. Awareness is key to success.
Thank you.