Doomed in Afghanistan: A UN Officer's Memoir of the Fall of Kabul and Najibullah's Failed Escape, 1992

266 Pages·2002·0.72 MB·English

by  Phillip Corwin

Doomed in
Afghanistan

Doomed in
Afghanistan
A UN Officer’s Memoir
of the Fall of Kabul
and Najibullah’s Failed
Escape, 1992
Phillip Corwin
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Corwin, Phillip.
Doomed in Afghanistan : a UNofficer’s memoir of the fall of Kabul
and Najibullah’s failed escape, 1992 / Phillip Corwin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8135-3171-3 (alk. paper)
1. Afghanistan—History—Soviet occupation, 1979–1989—Personal
narratives. 2. Najib, 1947– . 3. United Nations—Afghanistan.
4. Corwin, Phillip. I. Title.
DS371.3 .C67 2003
958.104'6—dc21 2002024831
British Cataloging-in-Publication information is available from the
British Library.
Copyright © 2003 by Phillip Corwin
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue,
Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is
“fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Manufactured in the United States of America
O piteous spectacle! O bloody times!
Whiles lions war and battle for their dens,
Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.
William Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI,(II, v)
v

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Glossary xvii
Waiting for the end: Kabul, 4/92 (poem) xx
1 Setting the Stage 1
2 The Journal: April 1992 33
3 The View from UN Headquarters 147
4 Seven Years After: An Interview with
Afghan Expatriates 189
Epilogue: After the Events of 11 September 2001 197
Notes 219
Selected Bibliography 223
Index 227
vii

Preface
This story begins on a wintry morning
in March 1992, when a colleague in the United Nations
approached me to ask if I would be interested in going on an
urgent mission to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan! I knew very little about the country. Beau-
tiful carpets, empyrean mountains, vast deserts, and a
people legendary for their resistance to colonizers. People
who could be both sentimental and fierce. A nation of
traders and warriors that had resisted the great British
armies of the nineteenth century and only recently had
repelled the great armies of the Soviet Union.
I would gladly have gone to Afghanistan for no reason
at all. Just to learn, to view, to add perspective to my under-
standing of the world. And to take a break from the urban-
ized existence of a New York City office, as much as I loved
Manhattan. But here, I realized immediately, was an oppor-
tunity that was more than frivolous or fortuitous. Here
was an opportunity to go to an exotic country, not as a
tourist, but as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mis-
sion, a mission no doubt intended to help relieve the suf-
fering of a population that was in deep pain.
It was almost as if I had no choice. I had to go to
Afghanistan. How could I not go? Before I even knew the
details of the assignment, how long it would last, or what
ix