MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT FROM STANSFIELD TURNER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81B00401R000600170006-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 8, 2005
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: January 3, 1980
• Content Type: MF

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Central Intelligence Agency.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
The Vice President
Secretary of State
Secretary of Defense
Assistant to the President for/
National Security Affairs J
Attached-is a CIA study entitled, "Tribalism
Versus Communism in Afghanistan: The Cultural Roots
of Instability." Although originally drafted in
October, it has now been revised and published.
I believe it provides an excellent background
perspective to political events in Afghanistan
today. (c)
Attachment:
SI 80-10001
Copy 141 - Brzezinski
140 - Defense
139 - State
138 - Vice President
One._V/Atch Each Addressee
.w/o Atch DCI
1?'.~ W/Atch DDCI
- W/Atch ER File
W/o Atch' t D/NFA
Atch OSI
(WITHOUT ATTACHMENT, THIS MEMORANDUM -IS. CLASSIFIED CONFIDENTIAL)
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ITIONS IOUS
SE PREV
'ORM
5-75 161 ED
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 4 A fr, Mi'Ytu
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Foreign
Assessment
Center
Tribalism Versus Communism
in Afghanistan:
The Cultural Roots of
Instability
Secret
SI 80-10001
January 1980
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Foreign
Assessment
Center
Tribalism Versus Communism
in Afghanistan:
The Cultural Roots of
Instability
Information as of 16 October 1979 has been used
in preparing the major part of this report.
Information concerning the recent coup is
reflected but does not change the basic judgments.
The author of this paper i
Office of Scientific Intel igence. t has
been coordinated with the Offices of Political Analy-
sis, Geographic and Cartographic Research, and
Central Reference, the Directorate of Operations, and
the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East
and South Asia.
Secret
SI80-10001
January 1980
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Tribalism Versus Communism
in Afghanistan:
The Cultural Roots of
Instability
Overview The execution of Hafizullah Amin and the installation of the more pliable
Babrak Karmal as President of Afghanistan, will not significantly alter the
prospects for prolonged insurgency. Despite increase Soviet aid, the new
regime will be a government under siege, continually attacked by fiercely
independent, but poorly organized, Pashtun tribesmen. II 25X1
The Communist regime in Afghanistan and the Afghan tribesmen have
been in conflict since the Communist seizure of power in 1978. Although the
tribesmen are not unified, they will continue to keep the countryside in a
state of instability. The regime, despite only a thin layer of public support,
probably will maintain control of the major cities. Indeed, the Soviets and
their puppet regime are likely to face the same long resistance that an earlier
generation experienced when the Soviets required a decade to subdue the
Muslim populations of Central Asia.
For thousands of years, the topography and Afghan cultural mores militated
against the formation of a strong central government and even against a
strong union of the tribes themselves. The only characteristics common to
the tribesmen are martial values, an egalitarian tradition, a theologically
unsophisticated version of Islam, and a distrust for authority. II 25X1
Successful Afghan monarchs mustered popular support by drawing upon the
people's fears of invasion by a foreign power with an alien religion and bent
tradition to their side through the skillful exploitation of such traditional
values as defense of personal and tribal honor, attachment to religion, and
intense dislike of foreigners.
In contrast, the Communist revolutionaries have tried to overturn tradition
rather than adapt it, to eliminate local autonomy, to destroy the elite class by
confiscating its land, and to undermine the authority of the Muslim religious 25X1
establishment. These actions have aroused the resistance of the fiercely
independent Afghans. The present no-win situation-persistent insurgency
and fragile Communist control of urban areas-is expected to continue.
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Major Ethnic Groups in Afghanistan 2
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Tribalism Versus Communism
in Afghanistan:
The Cultural Roots of
Instability
Afghanistan is a small, extremely poor, landlocked
country that never has been effectively modernized.
Because it is divided by high mountain ranges, and
plains, and often unfordable rivers, communications
and transportation networks have remained rudimen-
tary.
Afghan during the first five years of life is 40 percent.
Barely 10 percent of all Afghans are literate. Less than
a million people live in the country's five major cities;
some 2 million or approximately one-e1
population still are nomadic tribesmen. 25X1
The topography of mountains and desert has tended to
isolate Afghan ethnic groups from one another. In-
deed, some groups have a closer affinity with kindred
groups across the border than with their fellow
nationals: Uzbeks, Turkmens, and Tajiks share a
similar culture with like people across the Soviet
border; Persian-speaking people or Farsiwan live
alongside Iran; Pashtun and Baluchi tribes straddle the
border with Pakistan. There are also Mongoloid
Hazaras, Persian-speaking Qizilbash, Turkic-related
Aimaq, along with other, smaller numbers of peoples
scattered through the country. What unity Afghani-
stan possesses derives from the dominance of Pashtun
tribesmen, who make up half the population; the use of
the Persian-related language,.Dari, as a lingua franca;
a shared belief in Islam; and a historical distrust of
For 200 years, succeeding monarchs have done little
more than consolidate their own power for short
periods of time; major attempts at reform and central-
ization have usually failed. The principal Afghan
ethnic groups tend to live apart from each other under
the hegemony of Pashtun tribesmen, who share martial
values, an egalitarian tradition, and a distrust of
authority. The ideological unity of the country is
provided by a theologically unsophisticated version of
Islam, permeated by tribal ways.
Afghanistan's 640,000 square kilometers are located in
a mountainous-desert terrain surrounded by the Soviet
Union, Iran, Pakistan, and China. The Hindu Kush
mountain range divides the country in two, and
subsidiary ranges bisect other localities. There is but
one nationwide network of roads linking the principal
cities with Kabul. The major north-south road was
unusable in the winter until 1964, when Soviet
engineers constructed a covered road along the 3,400-
meter-high Salang Pass (figure 1). Four-fifths of the
country is mountainous; the remainder slopes away to
and plains. Cultivation is limited mainly to irrigated
valleys. Industrial development, telephone lines, medi-
cal facilities, and educational opportunities are mini-
mal; there are no railroads.
Most of Afghanistan's estimated 15.5 million
people-the first national census was taken as late as
1979-live a hard life near subsistence level. Ninety
percent are small farmers, mountain herdsmen, or
both, with average annual per capita incomes so low
and from such primitive sources that they have not
been calculated. The mortality rate for the typical
foreigners (figure 2).
By virtue of their martial tradition and ability,
Pashtuns have held sway in Afghanistan since Ahmad
Shah Durrani established the first Afghan Empire in
1747. Ahmad Shah built his regime carefully, using
the mechanisms by which each larger tribe ruled itself,
indeed the same systems that guided relations within
subtribes, clans, and family groupings. These same
mechanisms, however, also promoted independent
attitudes among men, egalitarian lifestyles, and a
pervasive distrust of authority. Governments and
Pashtun culture have coexisted uneasily ever since. fl
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To set up his monarchy, Ahmad Shah had to mobilize
support among his own tribe, the Durrani, and wage
war against other strong tribes, such as the Ghilzai and
Afridi. To maintain the loyalty of his fellow tribal
chieftains, as well as the allegiance of those he
conquered, he used a combination of bribery or subsidy
and patronage. He consolidated his rule by relying on
traditional decisionmaking processes of cooperation
and co-optation, and by skillfully exploiting Pashtun
martial values, the tribesmen's attachment to religion,
and their dislike of foreigners. With varying degrees of
success, Afghan rulers continued to use the same
techniques until President Mohammad Daoud was
overthrown in 1978.
Bribery and Patronage
Ahmad Shah founded his reign with the captured
treasury of the Persian Emperor Nadir Shah, in whose
army he served. He used his acquired resources to buy
the allegiance of tribal chiefs who had personal
military followings. As rival tribes were conquered,
Ahmad Shah included their chiefs in a widening circle
of military collaborators who were personally loyal to
him because he offered them important positions at
court in order to keep an eye on them and to provide
them with means to accumulate wealth in land and tax
exemptions. For funds to support allied chieftains and
personal armies, kings over the next century taxed
burgeoning trader groups of Hindus, Sikhs, and Jews
at the cost of eventually destroying the commercial
urban bases of the Afghan economy.
This system of rule diminished the monarchy. Because
each tribal chief retained his own local power base, a
chief's loyalty was not automatically kept by an
emperor or passed on to his successor, and the rate of
succession was rapid. Of the 26 men who reigned in
Afghanistan after Ahmad Shah, only four died of
natural causes. The system persisted through the
1950s, when Daoud was able to create a centralized
army with the help of Soviet aid.
Cooperation and Co-optation
To secure the legitimacy of their dynasties, emperors
traditionally have used the decisionmaking procedures
of Pashtun society. Even today, at all levels from
village to clan to tribe to tribal confederation, male
representatives from the relevant group are obliged to
participate in jirgas or councils. The jirgas are formed
ad hoc as socially divisive issues arise; they sit until a
consensus or "sense of the meeting" has been reached.
Representatives are selected on the basis of talent and
respect rather than age. Moreover, each man's honor,
as well as that of the family or tribe for which he
speaks, is committed to enforcing the jirga's decision.
The style of the jirga is egalitarian: there is no
presiding officer; everyone has a right to speak; and
decisions must be unanimous. 0 25X1
From Ahmad Shah on, succeeding Afghan kings have
used the loya jirga, or meeting of tribal chieftains, to
gain support for new policy directions. The strongest of
the Afghan monarchs, Abdur Rahman, the "Iron
Amir," convened a loya jirga when he set out to
establish a centralized bureaucracy in the 1880s; the
reforming Emperor Amanullah used another loya
jirga in the 1920s to gain a modicum of approval for his
modernizing policies; in the 1930s, Nadir Shah called
one to gain approval for a new constitution. The term
was used again in the 1960s to describe Afghanistan's
short-lived attempt at a parliamentary body. In the
traditional jirga, the emperor was only first among
equals, and centralized authority was constrained by
locally entrenched interests. I 25X1
Martial Tradition
At the heart of the Pashtun code of Pakhtunwali-
consisting of revenge, hospitality, and the right to
asylum-is the martial tradition. Every man must be
strong enough to protect his interests-generally
defined as gold, women, and land-and each man is
raised to take pride in his fighting ability. Indeed, the
martial arts are taken so seriously that Pashtun boys do
not play war games, but from a very early age are
trained by their male elders in military skills such as
stalking and the use of arms. These skills are regarded
as personal and not subject to uniform or externally
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 or another of the dynastic contenders-and these
persistent rebellions over time have prevented the
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imposed discipline-most youth disdain military ser-
vice, and the Army, in fact, is filled with soldiers from
minority groups and draftees. To the Pashtun, the
martial arts are to be exercised for personal, family, or
tribal honor, pleasure, and/or gain. So ingrained are
these attitudes that today each generation still looks
forward to a major battle in order to demonstrate its
self-worth and bands of men form a lashkar or war
party. Historically, tribal armies often have taken
arms against each other-sometimes siding with one
emergence of a strong central authority.
The Pashtun martial tradition, therefore, has played
an ambiguous role in Afghan history, directed as it is
toward parochial loyalties. On the one hand, some
kings have used successfully the popular propensity to
war to get military support from tribal chieftains
against external enemies, as well as to shore up their
dynasties; this was especially true in the 19th century
when the British were encroaching on Afghan terri-
tory. On the other hand, tribal armies have just as
frequently turned against central authority when the
latter appeared to overstep the limits of local auton-
omy. In 1924, the Mangal tribes of Khost Province
rebelled against the imposition of taxes and social
reform by King Amanullah. Rarely, however, have the
tribes been able to coordinate their activities to bring
down authority; 1929 was one of the few times it
occurred, but the tribes' inability to unite after
bringing down the King led to a period of national
anarchy.
Religion
Afghan Islam is a peculiar blend of orthodoxy and
tribal mores. Although officially of the Hanafi school
of the Sunni sect, Afghanistan has been isolated from
the great centers of Islamic learning and has produced
neither great schools nor profound religious philos-
ophers. The majority of religious leaders are local
mullahs, haphazardly trained, who approach their
religion in a simple way. Entrenched in their localities
as teachers, "learned" members of jirgas, and land-
owners through their control of mosque lands, they
have accommodated the strictures of the Sharia
(religious law) to coexist with the values Pashtun
tribesmen place on their code and local independence.
Consequently, Afghans are passionately attached to
their religion.
As with their martial views, the strong religious beliefs
of the tribesmen have worked both for and against
central authority. In some periods, mullahs have raised
the cry of jihad (war against the infidel) to aid
emperors in fighting external enemies; in other periods,
they have roused the tribes against monarchs who
seemed to have encroached upon the religious leaders'
local influence. Perhaps Abdur Rahman was the most
successful of all monarchs in coping with the Afghans'
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religious feelings. The Iron Amir attracted the support
of religious leaders and tribal armies in the 1890s by
raising the cry of jihad, conquering Kafiristan,
renaming it Nuristan or "Land of Light," and forcibly
converting its inhabitants to Islam. At the same time,
he undercut the autonomy of the mullahs by co-opting
them into his regime; to control them, he employed
them as teachers, minor administrators, and judges on
full pay while cutting off their independent sources of
income. Yet even the Iron Amir was careful not to
interfere with the religiously sanctioned customs of
everyday life.
In contrast, his grandson Amanullah overstepped the
limits of custom and incurred the wrath of the mullahs
when he emancipated women, secularized some legal
codes, and attempted to introduce Western education.
As a result, when Nadir Shah captured the throne
after Amanullah's overthrow in 1929, he felt com-
pelled to introduce a constitution that reinstituted the
primacy of Islamic law, the authority of the mullahs,
and the seclusion of women. Nadir's successors did not
feel confident enough to initiate reforms again until
nearly 30 years later. Female emancipation, for
example, did not receive official sanction until 1959.
Xenophobia
Afghanistan's culture, geography, and history have
fostered an intense dislike of foreign interference.
Since ancient times, Afghanistan has been a stamping
ground for conquerors on their way to other places.
Afghans have seen their once-great cities and monu-
ments destroyed. Even when Afghanistan withstood
British invasions from India in the 19th century,
emperors used the ever-present threat of encroachment
by a power with an alien religion to gain support,
heightening the sense of isolation and independence
already present among Afghans. These feelings were
further sharpened by the Russian Revolution of 1917
and the Soviet subjugation of the Muslim Khanates to
the north in the 1920s. The demise of their Islamic way
of life brought many Uzbek and Turkmen refugees to
Afghanistan. The emigres contributed to Afghan
distrust of the atheistic regime, and one of King
Amanullah's fatal errors that alienated his people was
to use Soviet planes in putting down the Khost
Rebellion. His successors were careful to keep their
distance from foreign powers until Daoud as Prime
Minister brought Kabul closer to the Soviet Union in
the 1950s.
In sum, although one subtribe-really one
family-reigned in Afghanistan for over 100 years, the
longevity of the Mohsiban dynasty depended upon the
ability of succeeding monarchs to recognize the limits
placed upon the exercise of power and bend tradition to
their side. The king was no more than the chief tribal
leader-and probably not significantly richer than the
country's major landowners-using his resources in
the way chieftains used theirs: to cement the loyalty of
dependents with rewards, jobs, and tax exemptions; to
exchange favors; and to avoid pushing too hard on the
independence of subordinates. Underneath the facade
of modern institutions that kings set up around
themselves, a network of personal relations and con-
nections kept the country governed in a minimal way.
A king's writ or authority did not extend far beyond
Kabul and some other urban centers.
In 1978, Communist revolutionaries captured the
government in Kabul and tried to change the course of
Afghan history. Through a disciplined party and
committed members of the military officer corps, the
new leaders have tried to assert totalitarian control.
They have attempted to alter the patterns of local
tribal life by destroying the elite class through land
confiscation, by undermining the authority of the
Muslim religious establishment, and by eliminating
local autonomy. The Communist leadership is relying
upon the support of a comparatively small group of
young people with modern educations who,
discomfited by the backwardness of their country,
believe that they can make a contribution to national
development. In effect, the Communists and their
youthful supporters were an unintended outgrowth of
bureaucratic reforms initiated in the 1950s. 25X1
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Fiercely independent Afghan
tribesman keep the
countryside in a state of
instability.
The New Modernizers
Afghan rulers traditionally maintained small bureauc-
racies for the narrow purposes of keeping the peace and
collecting taxes. This was altered somewhat in the
early 1900s when King Amanullah started to modern-
ize the country. Sensing the need to equip bureaucrats
with modern skills, he began sending small groups of
Afghans to study abroad, as well as setting up a
European-like educational system in the country. For
most of the 20th century, the educational network
grew slowly, and there was sufficient expansion in
government departments to employ the relatively few
graduates being produced. Moreover, although the
most important positions were virtually monopolized
by relatives of the royal family or sons of the wealthy
elite, the system offered a fair degree of mobility to
children of lesser Pashtun families who, by virtue of
their talent or personal connections, obtained a foot-
hold in the modern educational establishment. Because
their futures were assured and they could for most of
their careers lead a comparatively comfortable life in
Kabul-often with the opportunity for foreign study at
the regime's expense, as well-members of the Afghan
intelligentsia tended to remain apolitical.
The equilibrium in the system shifted when Daoud, a
cousin of King Mohammad Zahir, served as Prime
Minister from 1953 to 1963 and as President from
1973 to 1978 after he had successfully overthrown
Zahir. Daoud's inclinations were autocratic, and he
sought to enhance the bureaucracy and officer corps in
order to centralize Afghanistan effectively. More
students were sent abroad, especially to the Soviet
Union; the training of professional officers occurred
almost entirely under Soviet auspices. The size of the
student body within the country also grew, reducing
employment opportunities proportionately. Daoud's
policies made the Afghan intelligentsia aware of its
own importance and politicized some of its members.
More members of the tiny literate class came to
resent-and, perhaps, to be ashamed of-
Afghanistan's extreme backwardness. They also
became antagonistic toward the continued dominance
of the royal family, which they associated with the
perpetuation of Afghanistan's backwardness and their
own growing lack of opportunity and political freedom.
Thus, slowly during the Daoud era, leftist viewpoints
came to be taken more seriously.
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Afghan Communism
While many in the professional class probably re-
mained indifferent, local Communist parties filled a
political void during Afghanistan's short-lived experi-
ment with parliamentary government. From 1964 to
1973, a Parliament with two houses was formed under
the sponsorship of King Zahir. The King's choices for
Prime Minister were ineffectual leaders, almost no
legislation was enacted, and political parties were not
allowed to exist legally, but elections were held
throughout the country and the legislature provided a
national platform of sorts. (Surveillance, as well as
censorship of political publications, continued through-
out the period.)
The Communists took advantage of the electoral
opportunity and were virtually the only group to
present a coherent political viewpoint. In consequence,
their speeches were well received by the expanding
body of students in Kabul, who were just beginning to
gain a sense of their own political strength; at this time,
the first student strikes took place at Kabul University.
Beyond the capital, Communists-often sent by the
regime to the provinces as punishment for their
activities in Kabul-found an equally receptive audi-
ence among secondary school students in the expand-
ing provincial educational system. Younger members
of the officer corps who had been trained in the USSR
also found the Communist viewpoint congenial. The
Communists never stopped propagandizing and re-
cruiting among these groups-playing upon their
fears, making promises about a better future, and
appealing to their ideals in an atmosphere that
continued to be mildly repressive.
Although the Communists were the only political force
organized in a modern sense, the leadership of the
movement was characterized by factional divisiveness,
with members lining up with one or another set of
leaders to form two permanent factions. The People's
Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was
founded formally at a secret congress of Afghan
Communists in 1963; by 1967 it already had split into
two factions; the two groups merged again in an uneasy
alliance in 1977. The Parcham (Banner) faction,
headed by flamboyant orator Babrak Karmal (just
installed by the Soviets as President), drew many of its
more important members from the old landowning
elite among the major Pashtun tribes, who used their
share of family wealth to help Parcham; a number of
the Parcham leaders were related to one another. The
Khalq (People) faction, led by author and literary
figure Nur Mohammad Taraki, tended to attract its
leaders from tribal groups of less stature and wealth.
Both groups were allied with Moscow-although the
Parcham took a more evolutionary approach toward
revolution than the Khalq, in contrast to a smaller
group of Communists who looked to Beijing for their
model. The two factions supported Daoud in 1973
when he abolished the monarchy; because of his
pro-Soviet leanings and plans for a more centralized
bureaucracy, the Communists hoped they would have
a greater role in his new regime. I 25X1
The Communists' expectations were only partially
fulfilled, and their opportunities for participation in
the Daoud government diminished over time. By April
1978 the Communists felt compelled to act. Mir Akbar
Khaibar, a senior Parcham leader, was killed on 17
April, and the old PDPA-the two factions were
tenuously united again-responded by vociferously
lashing out at the regime. When Daoud cracked down
and ordered the arrest of the PDPA leaders, the
Communists in the officer corps and key Kabul
regiments turned against Daoud and his allies; all were
executed brutally. It quickly became apparent that the
Khalq faction was dominant, and the top Parcham
leaders, including Karmal, were soon exiled-to am-
bassadorships, at first-and the party purged of its
Parcham members. Taraki was declared President of
the new Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, and
Hafizullah Amin was named Vice Prime Minister and,
a few months later, Prime Minister; the Khalq also
retained control of key PDPA positions.
The top leadership was composed of staunch
ideologues who quickly took Afghanistan into the
Soviet camp-a friendship treaty was signed in
December 1978 that linked Moscow intimately to the
future of the Kabul regime-and decreed a major
reform program. Taraki, who was deposed and ex-
ecuted under still-mysterious circumstances in Sep-
tember 1979, was the father figure of the revolution.
Amin, while working in Taraki's shadow, slowly
stripped him of his real power. With Taraki's death,
Amin became President and head of the party, and the
strongman of Afghanistan. 0 25X1
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Amin was a ruthless, dedicated man who liked to be
firmly in charge. After the coup, he steadily eliminated
competitors and rival centers of power, even risking an
extreme reduction of support for the Khalq in the party
and military; alleged enemies of the regime were jailed
and tortured in ever-larger numbers. With the purging
of Taraki and his closest aides-most of whom had
already been stripped of their power-Amin sur-
rounded himself with trusted subordinates and placed
members of his family in key military and internal
security positions. Like many Afghans, he was
suspicious and distrustful of the motives of others,
including Soviet backers. His absorption in consolidat-
ing his own power and his independence finally cost
him the support of the Soviets.
Goals and Program
When Amin and Taraki first came to power, they
embarked upon a program of modernization, designed,
in part, to attract the support of ambitious youth who
like themselves had been excluded from power. They
expanded the responsibility of the bureaucracy and
made Pashto, rather than Dari, the language of official
business so that their new constituents from humble
Pashtun backgrounds would have more opportunities
in the government service. At the university, they
purged the faculty, filled the empty slots with Khalq
loyalists, and dramatically increased the size of the
student body.
older opposition elements eventually will disappear
from the stage." In the eyes of Afghanistan's new
rulers, support of party goals by the country's young
people would help the regime survive the upheavals
caused by the its wide-ranging reform programs.
The PDPA set out to change Afghanistan quickly. To
symbolize their intent, the party leaders eliminated the
time-honored green flag associated with Islam and
substituted a red flag of the future. Taraki, in his role
as party elder statesman, decreed the party's major
reforms: education was to be secularized and females
admitted to all schools throughout the country; the
estates belonging to lay and religious families were to
be confiscated and the land redistributed to peasant
farmers; and the bride price as a regular feature of
marriage arrangements was to be virtually abolished.
Amin, the party strongman, sent military
contingents-some with Soviet advisers-party loyal-
ists, and dedicated cadres of young people to the
provinces to see that the reforms were enacted. In a
land where "no government has ever tried to govern the
countryside directly," the vast majority of the popula-
tion saw a threat to their way of life.
In their efforts to demonstrate their revolutionary
authenticity and establish control, the Communists
overstepped the limits by which Afghan governments
traditionally had legitimated their rule. Although
Amin shared his ruthlessness with past rulers, he
sought-in contrast to his predecessors-to eliminate,
rather than to compromise with, the old elite, to
enhance the prestige of the Army over the fighting
habits of the tribes, and to diminish the stature of
Islam. He ended by affronting the Afghans' pride of
national independence by relying on thousands of
hated Soviet civilian and military advisers. Although it
retreated somewhat (to save face and concentrate on
fighting, the regime declared that land and educa-
tional reforms had been achieved), the regime brought
upon itself tribal wrath and civil war. With the even
greater dependence of President Karmal upon the
Soviets and his continued commitment to consolidate
central authority, tribal resistance will persist and
The regime adopted a new language policy (copying
that of the Soviet Union), which promoted the
languages of Afghan minority groups to national
status, and created more government places for the
younger generation of the traditionally oppressed
groups. Taraki and Amin also appointed more minor-
ity group members to their first Cabinet than ever
before. The Khalq launched extensive youth programs
and created a network of organizations among the
young, propagandized among them, and sent the more
promising to the Soviet Union for training. It continues
to control young Afghans through the party. The
Communist leaders calculated that any short-term
lags in bureaucratic efficiency could be made up with
large numbers of Soviet civilian advisers and that "in a
country where the life expectancy is only forty ... the
indeed grow.
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Afghanistan is in a state of insurgency. The govern-
ment controls major urban areas and main road
connections-at least by day, in some places-with an
Army and party thinned out by purges and defections,
and supported by increasing amounts of Soviet advis-
ers and aid. Throughout most of the countryside there
is armed resistance to the regime's will, and military
incursions occur from refugee bases in Pakistan.
But tribal society is responding to a modern,
well-organized threat in traditional terms. The tribes
are fighting as they have fought for centuries: inde-
pendently, locally, and with a minimum of leadership.
Prominent oldtime leaders have sought refuge in
Peshawar in Pakistan, where they remain poorly
organized and disunited. Drawn mainly from the old
elite of tribal chieftains, landowners, and prominent
religious families, they appear unable to come together
without a strong figure having the political skill to
contain their mutual competitiveness. Former King
Zahir remains aloof in Rome; there appears to be no
one on the scene with the adeptness of his father,
Nadir, who assiduously cultivated supporters from
attack a passing truck loaded with goods, and then
disappear into a remote, inaccessible gorge. Without
leadership, the tribesmen are far more likely to bring
Afghanistan to anarchy, rather than to defeat or to
impose their will upon Communist-controlled Kabul.
The Soviets saw that Amin's greatest threat was a
sapping of his regime from within. His Communist
party and military forces had been ruthlessly purged 25X1
and repurged so that only those personally loyal to him
dominated, and the cities-after revolts in Herat,
Jalalabad, and the capital itself-were controlled
through somewhat totalitarian means. In addition to
the civil war in the countryside, Amin faced the dual
challenge of growing defections from the government
and Army, and increasing public apathy and resent-
ment. The Soviets are trying to recoup the situation
with a new President, but Karmal's government will
also remain isolated in a traditional environment, with
no resources other than its own determination and vast
amounts of Soviet aid. 25X1
There will probably be a lull in the fighting during the
hard Afghan winter; when the snows come, ground
movement will be difficult in the mountainous, and
terrain, and the tribal fighters might lack sufficient
food and shelter in their mountain hideouts. Further-
more, the exhausted population will need food-
farmers fought, rather than planted, this past spring-
and the Karmal regime can supply urban and provin-
cial centers by means of aid delivered by Soviet planes.
During the lull, it will need to shore up military and
urban bases in preparation for the renewal of insur-
gency in the spring. So long as the population responds
to his government in traditionally fragmented
ways-and there is no indication that it is responding
otherwise-Karmal has a good chance of hanging on
among the old elite during Afghanistan's last period of
upheaval in 1929. Today, anyone from this old upper
class-with its associations to Daoud and the old
regime-probably would have little appeal to the
relatively small but crucial group of young people who
have acquired the modern skills necessary to run a
bureaucracy and wish to avoid the appearance of
moving backward in time.
Within Afghanistan, local tribal groupings have taken
up arms to regain their time-honored autonomy and
throw off controls that began even under Daoud. The
fighting men are joined not into a disciplined cohesive
force but rather into spontaneous formations of small,
local lashkars (war parties), with members motivated
not only by political and religious reasons but also by
the exhilaration of a call to arms, the chance to even
some old personal scores, and sheer banditry. (A recent
European captive never saw groups larger than 10 to
20 fighting men.) In the mountainous terrain of rural
Afghanistan, it is easy enough to take up a
village-made Enfield rifle, besiege a military outpost or
with continued Soviet assistance. I 25X1
The Communists, however, have paid a high price for
attempting to overturn-rather than compromise
with-tradition. Like a politically isolated colonial
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power, Karmal now rules in a state of siege, albeit in
his own society, heading a party that now is character-
ized by fear and internal distrust, limited to hegemony
in cities, and dependent for the very long term on
external military and civilian aid. As long as the
fighting continues, Afghanistan will not be ruled very
much differently than it was in the past-the writ, or
authority, of the government will not run far beyond
urban areas, and the government's plans for reform
will take second place to its efforts to secure control of
the country.)
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Sources of Copyrighted Photographs
Page
4:
Associated Press
Page
6:
New York Times News Service
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