The bloodied corpses of Soviet soldiers slumped over an armored tank. Burqa-clad Afghan women on a roof, cheering on fighters as helicopters burn in the sky above their heads.
These are scenes from a panoramic pastiche of Afghanistan’s war against the former Soviet Union’s invading army, brought to life by plaster of Paris figures for the centerpiece of the country’s first museum dedicated to the mujahidin.
“This is for the future generations so they can understand and see what their fathers did to defeat the invaders,” said Sayed Abdel Wahab Qattali, the founder of the People’s Museum, or Manzar-e Jahad, in Afghanistan’s western Herat city.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and propped up Kabul’s communist government until 1989, when the Soviets were overpowered by Afghanistan’s armed resistance — known as the mujahidin — and retreated.
“I was in the war, I saw a lot of dead Russian soldiers. It was a very hard time ... when you’re compelled to fight, you may be compelled to kill,” Qattali said.
The tribute is a brutal reminder that Afghanistan continues to be plagued with insecurity and is still hosting tens of thousands of foreign troops.
A long, well-lit corridor holds portraits of about 50 dead commanders. The final scene is a 360-degree diorama re-enacting the mujahidin’s triumph over the Russians in Herat, with fighters marching down one of its central boulevards.
The history ends with the Soviet pullout and does not go on to illustrate the brutal civil war that followed, in which competing Afghan factions fought each other, killing thousands of civilians in the process.
Qattali was himself a mujahidin fighter in Herat and at age 19 joined the legion of mutinous ethnic Tajik Afghan-army-commander-turned-militia-leader Ismail Khan, who recaptured Herat after the Soviet Union’s defeat, becoming its governor.
The museum is partly funded by Khan, but Qattali, who lost eight members of his family in the war, has paid for most of it using earnings from his own construction and security companies.
In one large room, Qattali has diligently displayed a huge collection of photographs of other fighters and commanders.
The familiar faces of Khan and anti-Taliban Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Masood — who was assassinated by al-Qaeda agents two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and is revered by many Afghans — are easily identifiable.
“I have many memories. For 10 years I was with the jihad to make sure we could keep our country. I want to make sure that Afghanistan does not go in that direction again,” Qattali said, standing before a picture of himself as a fighter in his early 20s with a bullet belt and an AK-47 rifle.
“I’m sad and concerned that all the forces that are here now can’t seem to have the same power that the mujahidin did. It’s not so much that the Taliban have more power now but that the government is so weak,” he said.
Rows of Russian rifles, clusters of grenades and an impressive collection of plastic land mines fill glass cases in the museum’s foyer.
“The Afghan security forces today don’t even have this level of equipment,” Qattali joked.
The gardens of the museum display some of his most prized memorabilia: Russian helicopters, fighter jets and rocket launchers, all captured by the mujahidin.
Human rights groups have accused militia leaders such as Khan of human rights abuses, but Qattali defends his record.
“In Herat there were no such problems. Ismail Khan always had respect. The mujahidin had its own system, its own schools and it taught respect,” Qattali said.
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