Settam-e-Melli (Pushto; Pashto: ستم ملي|lit=National Oppression) was a political movement in Afghanistan, led by Tahir Badakhshi. The organization was affiliated with the Non-Aligned Movement, and was opposed by both the Afghan monarchy and by the Soviet-aligned People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Its followers were mostly Persian speakers. Most of its members were non-Pashtuns - Tajik, Uzbek, and other minorities - and it has been variously described as an anti-Pashtun separatist group and as a Tajik and Uzbek separatist group.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] "Information on Settam-e-Melli is vague and contradictory, but it appears to have been an anti-Pashtun leftist mutation."[7]
The group was founded in 1968 by Tahir Badakhshi, a Tajik who formerly had been a member of the Central Committee of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and split with the party.[3] [6] The group emphasized "militant class struggle and mass mobilization of peasants" and recruited Tajiks, Uzbeks, and other minorities from Kabul and the northeastern provinces.[3]
Responsibility for the kidnapping and murder of the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, on February 14, 1979, at the Kabul Hotel is sometimes attributed to Settam-e-Melli,[1] [8] but the true identity and aims of the militants who kidnapped Dubs is uncertain,[9] and the circumstances are "still clouded."[10] Some consider the allegation that Settam-e-Melli was responsible to be "dubious," pointing to a former Kabul policeman who has claimed that at least one kidnapper was part of the Parcham faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan.[11]
During the Taraki-Amin period, the Setamis withdrew to the Afghan countryside, though as an urban movement this removed them from their powerbase. During the 1979-1986 rule of communist president Babrak Karmal, the Setamis became closer with the government, partially as Karmal had been a personal friend of Badakhshi (who had been killed in 1979).[12] A Setami leader, Bashir Baghlani, went over to the government in 1983, and was made Minister of Justice.[13]
The Setamis continued to play a prominent role among the non-Pashtun northeastern Afghan militias, playing a part in Ahmad Shah Massoud's defeat at Shahr-i Bozorg in 1990.[12]