Taher Badakhshi (October 30, 1933 – October 30, 1979) (Persian: طاهر بدخشی) has been a cultural and political personality in Afghanistan. He had performed a large variety of cultural and political activities in Afghanistan including organisation of different scale gatherings of authors, journalists and writers of the country and hosting meetings in which the intelligentsia of different cultural and political backgrounds came together for discussions, and he was the founder of "Revolutionary Organization of the Toilers of Afghanistan", (in Persian: سازمان انقلابی زحمتکشان افغانستان) a liberal leftist group with affinity to the Non-Aligned Movement that was founded in Yugoslavia in 1956, triggered by Josip Broz Tito, and promoted by the two most pivotal personalities in the global South: Jawaharlal Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser. The group has also had a firm touch to the liberal principles and heterogeneous ideas of liberalism and modernism, and of course in the very temporal and geographic context of the country, it had affinities to the leftist liberation and anti-colonial movements in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Biography
Taher Badakhshi was born in Fayzabad, Badakhshan to a native Ismaili Tajik family, originally from Ishkashim, although his father had a second wife from the Uzbek ethnic of Argo District. He completed his primary studies in the province Badakhshan, and then moved to Kabul for continuing his higher education, he completed high school at Habibia School at 1957. He entered the University of Kabul and studied economics and law. He completed his studies on economics at 1961 and started to work. He had worked in the research department of the University till 1967. Afterward he began to work in ministries: He went to the department (ministry) of education, where he was working till his detention by the regime at 1978. During all these years of political activities he was imprisoned many times: 1964 by the King Zahir Shah's regime "because" of organizing and leading a massive manifestation of student, scholars and regular folks in Kabul. In 1969 he was arrested "because" of subversive political activities by the same system. In 1975 by the President Daud's regime, a highly conservative ruler supposed by the leftist, "because" of political resistance, and finally in 1978 by the leftist regime of Muhammad Taraki.
In 1978 he was arrested by the secret service of the Muhammad Taraki government. He was kept in solitary confinement at Pole-charkhi prison and had to undergo massive torture by the secret service of the regime and, finally was murdered in prison by Hafizullah Amin in 1979. The scale of killings and torture for thousands of citizens was neglected by the global media at that time and ignored widely by regional governments and by Soviet Union and USA. The killings by the regime of Amin was the focus of war crimes investigation led by Dutch police and prosecutors, the result was a death list that was published by the Dutch prosecutor's office on 17 September 2013, finally you could read names.
His spouse Mrs Jamila Badakhshi and their children Walid Arsalan, Rudaba Nilab, Jawid Mazyar and Harun Rozbeh moved in 1985 to Germany and still live there.
Activities
During these times he was very close to a Kabul-based literature scene under the influence of Sufi poets Ghulam Dehqan and Khalilullah Khalili. He began contacting a broad circle of urban intellectuals with activities in the field of culture and politics. He was connected in long lasting friendship to the avant-garde intellectuals like the university professor, poet, linguist Wasef Bakhtari and the novelist and historian Azam Rahnaward Zariab, who were the primary sources of the contemporary poetics and fiction of Persian literature in Afghanistan. He was actively involved and proactive in literary and intellectual circles of Kabul.
He was a co-ordinator of the first congress of People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the first main leftist democratic party in Afghanistan. He left the party in 1967 after the membership of Hafizullah Amin who had a suspected prehistory of ethno-centric chauvinist activities in the south of the country and recently returned from the United States. He arranged a circle named "Mahfele Entezar" (Waiting circle) movement and later the "Revolutionary Organisation of Workers of Afghanistan" or SAZA Political movement, speaking out for the basic political rights for all citizens and for improvement of economic and educational conditions of the people.