Weekh Zalmian

The third major policy focus of the immediate postwar period in Afghanistan was the experiment in political liberalization implemented by Shah Mahmud Khan. Encouraged by young, Western-educated members of the political elite, the prime minister allowed national assembly elections that were distinctly less controlled than ever before, resulting in the “liberal parliament” of 1949. He also relaxed strict press censorship and allowed opposition political groups to come to life. The most important of these groups was Weekh Zalmian (Awakened Youth), a movement made up of diverse dissident groups founded in Kandahar in 1947. As the new liberal parliament began taking its duties seriously and questioning the king’s ministers, students at Kabul University also began to debate political questions. A newly formed student union provided not only a forum for political debate but also produced plays critical of Islam and the monarchy. Newspapers criticized the government, and many groups and individuals began to demand a more open political system.

The liberalization clearly went further than the prime minister had intended. His first reaction was to ride the tide by creating a government party, but when this failed, the government began to crack down on political activity. The Kabul University student union was dissolved in 1951, the newspapers that had criticized the government were closed down, and many of the leaders of the opposition were jailed. The parliament elected in 1952 was a large step backward from the one elected in 1949; the experiment in open politics was over.

The liberal experiment had an important effect on the nation’s political future. It provided the breeding ground for the revolutionary movement that would come to power in 1978. Nor Muhammad Taraki, who became president following the 1978 coup d’etat claimed in his official biography to have been the founder of the Wikh-i-Zalmayan and the dissident newspaper, Angar (Burning Embers). Writer Beverley Male notes, however, that the claim appears exaggerated. Babrak Karmal, who became president after the Soviet invasion of December 1979, was active in the Kabul University student union during the liberal period and was imprisoned in 1953 for his political activities. Hafizullah Amin later claimed to have also played a role in the student movement, although his activities were apparently not so noteworthy as to bring about his imprisonment by the government.

The government crackdown in 1951 and 1952 suddenly ended liberalization and alienated many young, reformist Afghans who may have originally hoped only to reform the existing structure rather than radically transform it. As Male suggests, “the disillusionment which accompanied the abrupt termination of the experiment in liberalism was an important factor in the radicalization of the men who later established the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan.

References

• Mohammad Enam Wak