By www.hazarainfo.tk and www.hazarainfo.co.cc 

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF SULTAN ALI KESHTMAND

Sultan Ali Keshtmand was born in 1935 in an agrarian family, ethnically Hazara and Shi,a in a village in suburbs of Kabul. Keshtmand was the second son of his farmer father and his caring mother among his five brothers and two sisters.

Keshtmand in his youth at the rural community was bewildered by the great differences in life style between the few rich and the many poor families and the unfair distribution of farming products between the toiling peasants and the sponger landlords. It was the first political lessons that he had learned in his formative years.

He went to school and received his primary education rather far from his family home and his secondary education in Ghazi College, in the city of Kabul, both in excellent results. Keshtmand had been acquainted with primary political ideas and methods of struggle at the college, in addition to regular school lessons. He had studied economics at Kabul University and in the meantime acquainted and joined with the semi-secret political study and organisational circles. Then he worked in the field of economics, in parallel with political and organisational responsibilities. For twelve years he had an official job in the field of industrial management at the Ministry of Mines and Industries of Afghanistan.

S. A. Keshtmand took part at the Founding Congress of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan held in Kabul in January 1965 and he was selected as one of the seven original members of the Central Committee of the Party. At the same year, he made an effort to get a seat at the lower chamber of the parliament, but due to overt and covered interferences, he did not succeed to score enough votes.

The day after the events of Aqrab the 3^rd  (25^th of October 1965), under the kingdom of Mohammad Zahir, Several intellectuals (four), among them Keshtmand had been imprisoned due to their participation at the demonstrations. The peaceful demonstrators, who were campaigning for the openness of parliament sessions, particularly on the occasion of voting to the new government, came under fire by the armed forces and three people reportedly were killed. Following this incident, the students of Kabul University embarked on continual strikes and demonstrations. When Premier Dr. M.Yosef  was forced to resign and a new government came into power. The Prime Minister, M. H. Maiwandwal, vowed to release all the prisoners of the said event and to investigate the shooting incidence. Then, Keshtmand and other prisoners were released.

In 1967 the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan had been split mainly in two factions, afterwards known as Parcham and Khalq. Later on, Keshtmand had been elected as a member of the Politburo of the PDPA Central Committee (Parcham faction).

S. A Keshtmand got married in 1966 and his wife, Karima Keshtmand had been working with the Women Democratic Organisation and child caring institution up to February 1992. Now, they have four children and from them ten grandchildren and one great grandchild.

From 1966 to 1977, while working for some time as a civil servant with the government, Keshtmand was active in political work for the party and used his spare time and extra efforts to co-operate with the party mainly in cultural - theoretical and economic issues. He wrote and translated articles for the party training courses unofficially, and for government running newspapers and periodicals openly. Then he heavily contributed to the party paper, Parcham, by writing articles (more than one hundred under his name and other names in almost one hundred issues of the paper), particularly about the socio-economical aspects of life style in Afghanistan society, mainly in relation to the living condition of the toiling, deprived, discriminated and oppressed peoples in the country.

Following the military uprising of April the 27^th, Keshtmand worked as the Minister of Planning only for a short period of time, while he had fundamental ideological and political differences with the new regime. Then in pursuance and in parallel to sending abroad, massive cleansing and imprisonments of the Parcham members and other intellectuals in 1978, an open plot fabricated against Keshtmand, he was arrested, severely tortured and imprisoned by the Khalqi regime.

Keshtmand, without any fair trial, was sentenced to death. Later on, this sentence was reduced to twenty years of imprisonment. However, he was released in the last days of December 1979 together with more than other sixteen thousand prisoners of conscience when the autocratic and oppressive regime of Hafizullah Amin was overthrown by the party, mainly Parchamis, participated by the Soviet armed groups. It is to be mentioned that, Keshtmand still was in prison when large numbers of the previous Soviet Union forces entered to Afghanistan, in continuation to their previous presence with smaller contingents.

S. A. Keshtmand, from January 1980 up to the June 1981, worked as the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Planning. During the first months, he had been under complex procedures of treatments, because of his diseases inherited from the prison. The main infection was the Hepatitis viruses transmitted to his blood by injection in prison just a few days before his release.

Then, Keshtmand served as the Prime Minister of Afghanistan for almost ten years in the whole decade of 1980’s. Keshtmand had been the first person from among the most discriminated ethnic and religious group in Afghanistan, namely Hazara and Shi,a, and from a poor family that worked as a prime minister in the whole history of the country ever known. Although there were other candidates too for this post, but Keshtmand had the necessary experiences, knowledge and qualifications for this appointment. Keshtmand once had said that: “when I agreed to take up the post of the prime minister it was in the full knowledge that my responsibilities would be purely of a humanitarian, cultural and social nature. My sole purpose accepting to be the prime minister was to do something good for the benefit of the toiling and needy people of Afghanistan”.

In practice, the system in Afghanistan was one of the types of presidential rule. The president was at the mean time, the head of the party, the state and the armed forces which comprised in the ministries of defence, interior and security. The prime minister of the country was responsible for socio-economic affairs. The latter was dealing with financial policies and problems plus trade, transport, industries, agriculture, health, education, housing, art and cultural heritage and other governmental civil affairs. Keshtmand served as an effective prime minister at his first term for more than eight years and left this position for a non-party person and he engaged in consultation work for the party as one of the secretaries; but the war-torn economy of Afghanistan severely deteriorated in just a few months in absence of Keshtmand as the prime minister.

However, simultaneously with the final withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan in February 1989, under the Geneva Agreements, Keshtmand was appointed for the second term as the Prime Minister of Afghanistan. He served in this post for more than one and a half year, after putting back the derailed economy of Afghanistan on the track. He stepped down for the second time as the prime minister in mid 1990 to evacuate this position for a probable leader of opposition in accordance with the programme of the national reconciliation declared by the government, but unfortunately the reconciliation did not happen.

Keshtmand, during his premiership, has always been engaged in social and economic affairs of the country professionally, as well as, to the nature of his job. He had never been involved in military, security or judicial issues or the sections that were in human rights interactions. Under the leadership of Keshtmand the Government of Afghanistan during 1980’s brought relatively great changes for better in social and economic aspects of the life of the people of Afghanistan. Taking into account the possibilities and the specific conditions of that time in Afghanistan, he had conducted and co-ordinated a huge task of implementing the socio-economic and cultural programmes. The aim of the programmes was to preserve a better life, to create jobs, to supply material goods and to maintain shelter for the people. The main targets were to eradicate or at least to reduce poverty, unemployment and injustice in the country. All these that had been popular in their essence, had been accomplished by collective efforts of the governmental employees, the dedicated party workers and the members of the social organisations, particularly the trade unions. Of course, all these efforts were coordinated and guided by the Council of Ministers, at the head S. A. Keshtmand.

During the time that Keshtmand had been in office, he really worked hard and served his people honestly and enthusiastically. In those years, although certain factors hampered the process of work, but in social and economical life of the people considerable changes happened for good. The disturbing factors were the presence of Soviet troops that were used as an excuse by the militants and insurgency backed by foreign influences and political - financial support through certain circles in Pakistan; the political system that was under pressure by internal and external armed opposition; the ongoing war and the constant obliterate ambushes carried out by armed groups particularly on the public social and economic facilities. However, as Keshtmand said that: “my job was in its essence to participate in pro-humanitarian efforts, for building up a new life for the people of the country, for renovation and rehabilitation of the ruined institutions. Through the efforts of my office, at the very difficult years of the imposed war, the most people in need were supplied and provided with jobs, food, shelter, schools and medical facilities and other material and moral means for living”.

In mid 1990, Keshtmand was elected by the parliament of the country as First Vice President of Afghanistan supervising the economy and social affairs, but soon he left that position, due to his differences of opinion and perspectives with the President Najeebullah on political grounds.

In July 1991, Keshtmand resigned from the ruling Watan Party (previously PDPA) and from its Executive Committee. Afterwards he inhabited at home, virtually in detention, until that, an assassination attempt was made upon him in February 1992 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Consequently, he was severely wounded, but amazingly his life was saved. In relation to the wounds, Keshtmand up to now has had five surgical operations in Kabul, in Moscow and in England, and his facial and ear nerves are paralysed. Keshtmand is yet very grateful for the very sincere support and sympathy that he received on those grim days from the people of Afghanistan, particularly from the near and dear social groups. He has immense memories of that occasion.

S. A. Keshtmand and his family have been living in abroad since February 1992. As, Keshtmand had used to write, he even wrote his own speeches and some documents of the government when he was the Prime Minister. During the last few years he has been busy writing about the history and economy of Afghanistan. He has published his memoirs in three volumes (1024 pages) in 2002 in Persian (Farsi) language. Now he is carrying on a research work on “socio-economic history of Afghanistan” that includes the old days up to the present.