Afghan PDPA land reform

Background

Farmland ownership was highly skewed: a small upper minority held a disproportionate share of the total land area (one 2002 survey: 2.2% owned 19%). Outright and near landlessness was a real feature, and the landless and near-landless supplied a highly significant part of production as sharecroppers, workers or tenants while bound by high-interest debt. The PDPA set out to abolish feudal land relations and usurious debt.

Course of implementation

Eight months after implementation began, the government announced that 250,000 families had received 600,000 hectares; how many peasants actually took up the land is unknown. Land requisitioned without compensation, disrupted lines of credit and boycotts of reform beneficiaries by some crop buyers caused harvests to plummet and discontent to rise. Realising the degree of popular dissatisfaction, Taraki began to curtail the policy, and much of the land reform did not get implemented nationwide.

The reform was one plank of a radical programme to abolish feudalism alongside cancellation of debt, equal rights for women and co-education. It was deemed 'anti-Islamic' in parts of a still overly religiously conservative population, and the revolutionary cadres suppressed resistance against practical implementation with violent means while the regime carried out mass repressions. In a new outbreak of factionalism the Khalqis accused the Parchamis of plotting in summer 1978; by November 1978 their most important leaders had been imprisoned or sent abroad as ambassadors. Five political groups were declared enemies and many people in those categories were arrested, killed or 'disappeared', with the former elites, among them mullahs, landlords and intellectuals, becoming targets.

After the Khalq phase (1978–1979), the leadership under Karmal (1979–1986) promised an end to executions, democratic institutions and free elections, a constitution, legalisation of parties other than the PDPA, and respect for individual and personal property, and prisoners held under the two previous governments were freed in a general amnesty. This is a change of emphasis and should be attributed rather than asserted as a full reversal.

Distinctions and assessments

Daoud's moderate 1970s reforms placed a ceiling on private landowning but required compulsory sale of the excess to the state, with progressive taxation on the basis of holding size. The PDPA reform is distinguished by dramatically reducing that ceiling and redistributing the excess without compensation; it was carried out by Taraki and Amin (1978–1979).

Sources differ on emphasis regarding political responsibility. The Afghanistan Analysts Network (Ruttig, 2025) stresses PDPA-initiated radical reform and mass repression while noting that decision-making on the ground, and subsequently political responsibility, were shared between Afghans and Soviets, with 'no Soviet domination'. Wily (2003) characterises the reform as well-meaning but brutally implemented, and argues that its failure, together with concurrent radical educational reforms, fed the rebellion that led to the Soviet invasion and occupation (1979–1989); all four historical tenure strategies, including this one, failed in their objectives. Rather than flattening these into a single verdict, both assessments are presented.

Source limits

The wheat-output claim from the 1982 document carried in the earlier entry could not be re-verified in this review because that source was not readable; it remains to be checked against another copy in a later stage.