Editorial: April 27 – a day of blood and rebellion

The turbulent history of Afghanistan has seen many ups and downs. One of the latter is the Red Army’s crude invasion of our country. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on April 27, 1978, in contravention of UN conventions and international accords. Shouting “God is great”, thousands of brave sons of the soil came out of their houses and marched in the streets to express their disgust at this inhuman act. They started courageously fighting against the superpower with their bare hands. This resistance to a well-equipped army came as a surprise to the international community. But as a result, more than one million people were martyred and thousands other were left crippled. Large numbers of Afghans took refuge in other countries, and many others were impoverished. The invasion force was badly defeated, resulting in the break-up of the Soviet Union. After all this misery, the communist puppet regime was ousted by the mujahedin - but this victory did not last for long, because the enemies of Afghanistan never gave up. They sowed discord among the mujahedin factions, and an internecine civil war broke out which left half of Kabul city destroyed.