Fall of Najibullah

At the end of winter in 1992, Kabul's military units were supplied well enough to fight , but its Soviet ideology had been overturned at its source. In mid-January 1992, within three weeks of demise of the Soviet Union, the non-Pushtun generals based in Mazari-i-Sharif feared removal by Najibullah and as they rebelled, the situation was taken over by Abdul Rashid Dostam. He and Ahmad Shah Massoud reached a political agreement, together with another major militia leader, Sayyid Mansor, of the Ismaili community based in Baghlan Province. These northern allies consolidated their position in Mazar-i-Sharif on March 21.
When Najibullah lost internal control of the government on March 18 it broke into several factions. For more than a week Massoud remained poised to move his forces into the capital, awaiting the arrival of political leadership from Peshawar. A group of Parchami generals and officials declared themselves...