JPRS ID: 9264 USSR REPORT PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS

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• Content Type: REPORTS

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- JPRS L/9553
17 February 1981
Near East North Africa Re ort
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CFOUO 7/81)
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JPRS L/9553
17 Februar~~ 1981 -
. NEAR EAST/NORTH ~!FRICA REPORT
- cFOUO ~/s~)
CONTENTS
AFGHANISTAN
Battle for Ka.bul: Lessons of Soviet Afghanistan Intervention
(Wolfgang Berner; BERIQiTE DES BUNDESINSTITUTS FUER c
OSTWISSENSCHAFTLICHE UND INTERNA,TIONALE ST[JDIEN,
Jun 80) 1
TUNISIA
Significance of Oli~~e Production in Economy Viewed
(MARCHES TROPICAUX ET MEDITEkRANEENS, S Dec 8d) 30
- a_ ~ III NE & A- 121 FOUO]
. _ -
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AFGHANISTAN
BATTLE FOR KABUL: LESSONS OF SOVIET AFGHANISTAN INTEg3~EAi?TION
Cologne B:.~ICHT~ DES BUND~~~INSTITTJTS FtT4'~.~R OST4IISSII3SCHAFTLICHE tJND INT~. NATIQNALE
S1UDI'~~I in German No 14, Jun 80 pp I-IV, 1-50, 77-80
~Article by 'r~olfgang Berne:; ~~`t'he Battle for Kabul: Lessons and Perspectives of
the Soviet riilitary Intervention ir_ Afghanistan~~
^t ex] 'Pable of Contents Page
summa~y L=4
1. Consequences of tne Soviet Military Intervention 4
- 2. On the Yreliminary Decisions Taken in 1978 5
3. Causalities and 5oviet Atte.~pts at 3ustification ~
4. On the Revolutionary iheory Aspect of the Intervention
5. Phases of Soviet Afghanistan Policy, 1945-1979 11 _
6. T'he PDPA: Party of Afghan "Progressive Forces" 15
7. On the Thesis of Remote Control of the Coup in Apri.l 1q78 22
8. Armed Intervention as Last Resort 25
- 9. Afghanistan: Stepping-Stone or Problem Colony for Moscow? 28
- Summ ary
'1'he ~ruggle for Kabul. i,essons and Perspectives of the Soviet Military Interven-
tion in Afghanistan. ~3y Wolfgang Berner
Preliminary Observations
The pr-esent report is an ritvance print of a chapter to be included in a detailed
multidimensional presentation of the general setti.ng and important iDpical aspects
1
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of th e Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. The publication i.n question~
which is at present i.n prc:;;aration and will appear in book form~ is a compendium of
~ studies and observations made by a number of pa~ticularly qualified authors~ to-
gether ~ th supporting charts and diagrams.
This book is due to appear under the title ~~Die sovjetische Intervention in Afghan-
istan. E~tstehung und Hintergruende ei.ner ueltpolitischen Krise" (The Soviet Inte~-
vention in Afghanistan. Origins of and Backgroiuid to an International Political
Crisis) in mid-year 1980 as Vol 8 of the Federal Institute~s "Eastern Europe and
International Communism" series~ published by Nomo s Verlagsgesell schaft~ Baden-
Baden~ Federal Republic of G ermany.
Princip~l. Aims and Focuses of the Analysis
The present study deals primarily with the problem of uncovering the mai.n political
motivations whicn pn~vided the conceptional framework for the occupation of Afghan-
istan by SoviPt forces. Not even in the capitals o� Eastern Europe does Moscow's
endeavor to present this move as the externally provoked iesponse to an. American-
. Iraniari-Pakistsni-Chinese aggression against Afghanistan and the southern border of
Soviet Central Asia obtain much credence. It is all too evident that such attempts
to explain the invasion as a"defeasive offensive" could~ at best~ supply a very
scanty disguise for the incontestable reality ~f the serious use of force~ oontrary
to a11 conventions of international law~ of which the Soviet Union has made itself
guilty vis-a-vis its - technically even now still nonaligned smaller neighbor.
Thus it secmed even more expedient to mise the question of srhat kind of political -
strategy the Soviet leadership has actually been pursuing since the end of World
_ War II ~rith regard to Afghanistan. In this context~ attention had to be given also
to theories which are ~.sed on the assumption that Soviet policy toward Afghaniata~~
during the 1970~ s must necessarily be seen as a part and component of a Soviet =
regional strategy, the main obj ec-tive of which is said to be the systematic~ step-
by-step e~cpansien of the Soviet sphere of hegemony to reach the Indian Ocean. .
To find an answer to the question as to hou much method there is behind the uni-
versally evident Soviet drive for expension could become extremely important with
regard to the ultimate feasibility of all sfforts on the part of the West to contain
such tendencies effectively without having to opt a priori for a posture of perman-
e.~t military-political confrontation vi~~-vis the Soviet Union. Here the investi-
gation of the thesis that the putsch zrhich b'rought the ~'Peaple~ s D~ocratic Party
of Afghanistan" (PDPA) to power in gabul at the md of April 1978 was remote-con-
trolled from the ~oviet Union affords good starting points for a model analysis on
the basis of a suitable ~'test case."
From this angle~ the ~udy also deals in detail ~rith the relationship which existed
between this crypto-communist revolutionary party and the CPSU in the years between
- the foundation of the P]7PA in 1965 and its seizure of power. After all~ there were
indications enough to suggest that the Soviet leadership neither before nor snce
the coup regarded the PDPA as an absolutely reliable instrument of its own Afghan-
istan and regional policies. For any assessment of the nature of the conflicts
which broke open again and again and ultimately led to the violent overthrow of ~i,'rle
Hafizullah Amin regime by the Soviet military interyention~ it is important to lrnow
whether the PDPA with its policies may not at times have been at variance with the
general line of Soviet Afghanistan strategy. It must further be exemi.ned whether~
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by acting on its o~rn initi~tive~ the PI~'A was in a position to bring about develop-
ments which confronted the Kremlin ~rith situations of serious dilemma and which may
possibly have given rise to policy revisions or even conceptional changes of strat-
egy which had not originally been planned and might therefore have led to more or
less improvised actions.
r indings
l. Since the mid-1950~s~ the Soviet IInion has been pursuing an active policy on
Afghanistan, the expansive obj ectives of which manifested th~selves more and more
plainly as time went by. Out of this policy there e~erged in the early 1970~s a
strategy of inconspicuously p~ogressing~ multidimensional, economio-political inte- ~
gration of Afghanistan into the Soviet sphere of hegemony. All indications suggest -
that the seizure of power by the crypto-communist PDPA came as a surprise to
Moscow~ a surprise which necessitated a conceptional change of Soviet strategy to- ~
ward Afghanistan. -
2. A closer analysis of the events withi.n Afghanistan and o~ the evolution of
Soviet-Afghan relations tendslather to support the assumption that the main mo-
tives behind the Soviet decision to intervene (which may well have been taken in
September 1979) were based on considerations related to the specific bilatersl sit- ~
uation at that time~ while there are hardly any pointers substantiating the clue
that these motives might have originated pri.marily Srom a schedule of stages or
- goals pertaining to any expansionist noverall plann from any ~~grand design." At
- r~ny mte~ there is not sufficient evidence to discern~ e.~.~ the expansion of the
Soviet sphere of hegemony to the Indian Ocean as a main obj ective of any fully form-
ulated political strategy for Western Asi.a on the part o� the Soviet leadership. On ~
the other hand~ it must on no account be ruled out that the occunation of Afghanis-
tan could trigger new deliberations in the minda of some Soviet politicians and mili-
tary strategists~ deliberations which could now s et their sights more clearly on
Iran or the Gulf region.
- 3. Although it is highly i.mprobable that the successful oommunist putsch in Kabul
at the end of April 1978 was staged or rea~ote-controlled by the Soviet leadership
or its "services~" it must yet be observed that Moscow very soon expressed its most
emphatic solidarity with the victors and did all in its power to e~loit their
triumph to the full for the pux~oses of its ocm interest policy. The ~,ct that the
Western powers failed to obj ect energetically to this development was evidaritly in-
terpreted in Moscow as signaling their tacit acquiescence to the integration of
Afghanistan into the Soviet sphere of hege,mony.
From the very beginning~ Soviet experts on Afghanistan suspected the crypto-
communist PDPA of havi~g been infiltrated by ~cret poli�ee~ CIA and other secret
service agents. Up to t4ay 1978~ the leaders of the CPSU and the coordinating or�-
gans of international communism of pro-Soviet orientation denied the PI~A any form
cf acceptanc~ into the CPSU-controlled community of communist parties and of mutual
inten-party solidarity. The mistrust on the part of the CPSU organs involved ~a.s
so pronounced that even the publication of greetings and messages of congratulation ~
irom the leaders of the PDPA l.n the Soviet media and in the Moscow-oriented periodi-
cal publications of international communism was consistently prevented. Also, it
would appear that care was taken as a matter of principle not to admit any repres-
entatives of the PI)PA into the leadership organs of the Soviet-controlled auxiliary
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organizations of the international commim.ist movement. There is no conspiratorial
background to this practice of denial and discrimi.nation to be discerned.
5. The allegation propagated i,~ the Soviet media after the c~ath of Nafizu~.lah
Amin~ to the effect that the latter had been a CIA agexit traixied in the United
States, can apparently be traced back to old insinuations communicated by Babrak
Karoal and other "Parcham" leaders to their Soviet contacts after the splitting up
of the P17PA into tuo parallel parties in the summer of 1967. On the other hand~
there is evidence suggesting that Karmal was denounced to Sov~~et interlocutors by .
Taraki~ Amin and other 'rKhalq" party officials~ first as a royalist in disguise
and an agent of the royal ~cret police and later as a collaborator of Dar~ud Khan
_ and his police chief.
6. There are var~ous indications and events to suggest that the Soviet authorities
in charge attempted even at a.relatively early ~age to preve;nt Amin~s advancement -
to a po:~ition as absolute ruler in Kabul. A~umber of attempts made with Soviet
support to ~emove him from power or to physically liquidate him apparently mis-
carried. Since Amin' s( and Taraki~ s) reign of terror had~ besid~s~ fully discred-
ited the com~unist regime and brought it to the brink of' self-destruction~ the
point had obviously cone by mic~Sept~ber 1979 at which the Soviet leadership could
see .io other way out of the e~br~iled situation than that of amed intervention.
For an abysmal mu~ual distrust had built up between Amin~ in the meantime risen to
the position of dictator~ and the Sovi.et Union~ while~ on the other hand~ great
haate appeared to be required if there was to be any chance of smashing the anti-
communist rebellion of the Mojahedin mov~ent at the last moanent. In the light
of the circumstances under which the Soviet decision to intervene was taken~
the question as to who it was who was supposed to have requested the Soviet leac~
ership to s e�~d in the troops~ and ~rhen~ becomes completely ~rrelevant. _
7. Since the Kreffilin has forced on the Karmal ~egime a treaty concezning the 'sta-
tioning of Sovi.et troops (pres~ably in mid-March 1980)~ it can hardly be assumed
that there is any prospect of an early withdrawal of the 5oviet armed forces from
Afghanistan, Without doubt~ the occupation of this neighbor country has brought
about not only certain burdens and foreign policy proble~ms for the USSR but also
geostrategi~ advantages. The best way for it to consolidate tbese advantages in
the long term is to integrate Afghanistan into the Soviet-controlled hegemonial
system as a me~ber of the t' community of socialist states." This i.ntegration will
probably be i_mplemented after the pattern of the Mongolian Peoplet s Republic~
which has long been in.corporated into the Soviet e~pire.
l. Consequences of the Soviet Military~Intervention
The occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet troops that has been going on since the
last week of December 1979 has caused a shift in the balance of international
political forces. This observation refe~rs less to the milit~ry potential of the
superpowers and their alliance systema than to the general makeup of the political
sp ectrun.
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First of all in this regard, the objective effects and concrete results of the
= Soviet occupation of Afghanisten are more important than the motivations that undexti-
- lie this action. For regardless of Whether the pertinent decisions by the Soviet
leadership may have been based on vide-ranging expansionist obj ectives, perhaps -
worldwide strategic objectives, one fact ia irrefutable: n8mely, that the southerly
shift in the boundaries of the Soviet empire by 650-800 km, toward the Arabian Sea~
- necessitates a thorough exemination by all neighboring states of their exiating
security policies and perimetPrs of seeurity. It is equally indisputable that the
changes brought about by this southvard thrust must of necessity be perceived also
by the Weatern industrial states t~lat are dependent upon oil deliveries fram the
Gu1f region as menacing in the sense of an added threat to their mineral oil supply.
A possible result of the Afghanistan invasion is that the Soviet leaders have now
lost their last bit of credit in terms of the trust they still enjoyed among U.S.
politicians involved in foreign policy decisions~ so that those uho still consider
it best to negotiate constructively to ~educe tensions step by step in the relation-
ship between the United States and the USSR might have become a minority. But if
- the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan should have put an end to the willingness on
both sides to adopt a nonconfrontational palicy based on a common interest in sur-
vival, then the uorld must brace itself for a reneved period of serious, Yeciprocal -
threats of war by the superpowers.
The effects of the USSR's southuard thrust h~.ve thus by no means been limited to
the immediately adjacent Yegions of s~ui;hern and western Asia. To begin with~ it
must be noted that extremely far-reaching changes have tak?.n place in the wa~}rs in
which many countries of this iegion perceive the threat. The primary ones to be -
considered are Pakistan~ Iran~ Iraq~ Saudi-Arabia~ Oman and the IInited Arab E~nir-
ates. But also affected are the vital interesta of thP Western Eumpeans~ the
Japanese and othe~ large consumers of Gulf petroleum ~who are concerned for the
safety of the tanker routes. And finally~ processes of radical change are beginning
to be noted in the most varied segments of the U.S. opinion spectrum in the
executive branch~ in Congress, in the mass meclia~ in the public opinion po11s. The
outcome of thi5 development is still a complete unknown.
The Soviet Union~ s grab for Afghanistan has produced certain geostrategic advantages
at beat. Nevertheless~ the final verdict has by no m~ans been reached asxegards
the price it will ultimately have to pay for these advantagea. For i.nstance~ the
Afghanistan occupation also set in motion significant. shifts in the collective posi-
tions of certain large interest gmups not only among the members of the Arab
Lezigue and all the Islamic countries but also a great number of the nonaligned
states. In general this pracess of xevision adds up to the adoption of a clearly
solid fron~ in opposition to Soviet expansionism~ ~,hough the �i.na1~ tangible conse-
quences cannot yet be foreseen.
2. On the Preliminary Decisions Taken in 1978
To be sure~ in mak~.ng an assessment of those shifts of forces that we are now ob-
serving so clearly, we must bear in mind that the Soviet operation that began at the
end of 1979 uas actually serving only to consolidatc privileges of influence and
positions of pouer which the Kremlin had secured for itself in Afghanistan follow- -
ing the communist coup on 27 April 1978. Though the Western media had indeed re-
ported extensively on the overthrow~ the world at large was not immediately aware
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o~' its import. A contributing factor may have been that the West's foreign mini.s,-
tries were generally hesitant to be "hasty" in soundi.ng the alarm over eve~nts i.n
Afghanistan. Many of the responsible politicians and officiels apparently hoped
that the plans of the new rulers would be dashed by internal resistance from the
majority of the pesple and by the realities of Afghanistan~ s socisl structure
expectationa which were by no means grounclless~ as it turned out.
It must be recorded~ however~ that the change in zegimes in April 1978 produced as
an immediate result a substantial and qualitative change i.n Afgr~an-Soviet relations.
From this point on~ Afghanistan began to steer a course of close political and mil-~
itary dependence upon the USSR~ a dependeace that Was also unmistakabl.y reflec~ed
in the Soviet-Afghan "Treaty on r~iendship, F~iendly Relations and Cooperation~~ cor~
cluded on 5 December 1978. After this time the nerr communist government in Kabul
could still claim at most but a feu of the formal elements that define "nonalign-
ment." In truth it h~d meanwhile long since abandoned its neutrality in the realm
of foreign policy.
Brezhnev~ s comments in connection ~rith the sgning of the treaty included these re-
marks:
~'The Soviet Union and Afghanistan are good neighbors. This has become a tradi-
tion... . But then came the events of April 1978. A true people~ s revolution
brought an abrupt change in the centuries-old history of Afghanistan. Under these
conditions it is not at a11 surprising that the traditionally close ties between
our countries have t~ken on a qualitatively different character~ so to speak. That
which exists today is not simply fri~ndly relations betWeen neighbors but a pro-
found, sincere and firm friendship~ filled with the spirit of comradeship and revo- _
lutionary solidarity."
All indications are that the West was late in grasping the full ~ignificance of the -
political substance of t}-.e Soviet leadership~ s profession of "revolutionary solidar-
ity~' with the Afghan "progressive forces."
On the other hand~ to the experienced observer it vas i.nconceivable that the lead-
ers of the Soviet Union would ever abandon the ~evolutionary regime with which they
had declared their solidarity most e~nphatically despite its already obvious weak-
ness at the time the treaty was signed~ or that they woul d passiveiy accept its
� liquidation by enemies or through self-dostruction. Ar~uing against tl^.5_s were
reasons of idoology and prestige as well as calculations involving power and inter-
est policies. Moreover~ Brezhnev and his colleagues in the Politburo had presumably
made an irrevocable decision as early as Dec~ber 1978 regarding the model to be
usec3 in the "building af socialism" in Afghanistan.
Their obj ectives were patterned essentially after the model of the Mongolian
People~ s Republic~ which has not only harbored a.irbases and missile bases for the
Soviet armed forces for a long time but is also available to them at any time as a
staging area (vis-arvis the People~ s Republic of China). For at least 20 years,
Sovie~ authors have been in the habit of pointing to the example of Mongolia as a
way of refuting the Marxist argument th~t developing countries with a pre-
industrislized social structure marked by feudalism and tribalism like Afghanis- ,
tan~ for example could arrive at socialism only via an intermediate stage of
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intensive industrialization (and the attendant "creation" of their own "working
class." The ~ovi.et counterthesis goes like this:
~'The t class alliance of Russa.a' s victorious rrorking class tri.th the Mongolian peas-
antry~ assured the victory of the people~ s revolution in Mongolia~ a backward~
livestock-raising country with no working c].ass of its own. The historic experi-
ence of the Mongolian People~ s Republic thus confirmed that the peasant masses of
a backward country (in which the national working class is either nonexi.stent or
- extre,mely ~eak) can, with aid and support f~om one of victorious socialism~ s working
classes of a ootmtry or group of countries~ successfully carry out the socioeconomic
reforms that are fundamexital~ eliminate their backward condition and raise the level
of their material and cultural uelfare... . Consequently~ the alliance of the work-
ing class and the peasantry can be realized successfully also on an international
scale. This conclusion is of great importance for many developed countries that
are weak economically."
Moreover~ it a.s not only ideological significance that must be accorded to orienta-
tion along the lines of the Mongolian People~ s Republic pattern for instance~
With reference to overcoming d.ialectically the problems of formation theory alluded
to here. A glance at the history of the transformation of Outer Mongoli~ i.nto a
sa
~ellite state of the Soviet Un.ion also brings to light a number of interesting as
well as informative operational parallels ~ri.th the procedure noW being employed
vis-a-vis Afghanistan.
Up to the ti.me of the invasion by Soviet ~roops in June 1921~ this country~ which
had never formally belonged to Russia~ enjoyed an autonomous status within the
frameuork of Chinese sovereignty. The interverition came as the result of a"re-
quest for help~~ that emanated f~om a~o-called "Provisional People~ s Government of
Mongolia~' which had been famed shortly beforehand on Soviet soil with Soviet assis-
tance. On 5 November 1921~ the Soviets concluded ~rith this government a treaty in
which they recognized this body as the only legal government of Mongolia. Repeated
- promises that the Soviet troops would be ~rithdrawn after they had ~riped out Baron
Ungern-Sternbergt s White Russian units vent unredeemed, Their withdrawal did not
come until the spri.ng of 1925, after the "People~ s Republic of Mongolia" had been
proclaimed and the process of transfo~ing Outer Mongolia into a Soviet protector-
ate had been concluded. ~
3. Causa7-ities and Soviet Attempts at Justification
The question of motives behind the Soviet decision to intervene can lay claim to
topical interest from two ~andpointa in other words~ interest limited not only _
to clarification of the course of historical events. It can of course be assumed
that the Soviet leadership would have preferred to forgo the use of military force
in incorporating Afghanistaz~ into its sphere of hegemony had it not appeared~ for
specific reasons~ that the use of force was urgently necessary. The ascertai.nment
or explanation of the main motivations and causalities pertaining to this action
might thus permit conclusions as to important drivi.ng forces and other motives that
exerted a determining influence on the outcome of the Soviet decisionmaking process.
It also has to be considered politically relevant here to answer secondary questions
concerning the timing of thec~ciaion to interve~e~ the significance of the date
chosen for the intervention and the methods employed in ca.r'rying it out. ~
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In addition~ questions must be posed regardi.ng the overall conceptional frameuork
into uhich the occupation of Afghanistan must be fitted. There is sufficient evi-
dence to ind.icate that the decision to intervene arose out of a~eal dil~ma and uas
pri.marily intended to prevent at the last minute the compromising failure of an
expansionist plan that was limited strictly to Afghanistan. On the other hand~ the
possibility must not be overlooked thPt the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan might
be connected with more extensive goals - that they could be viewed as a~age in
the realization of a"grand design~" a concretely defined overall strategy that ex-
tends far beyond Afghanistan.
On the other hand, there is no need to explore further the ~ct that the Soviet U:iion
has been guilty of a scandalous violation of international law and sovereignty ~rith
its massive military operation designed to reffiove a governm~nt that had become ob-
j ectionable the government of Hafizullah Amin and to establish an occupation _
regime. In view of the situation~ the Soviet decision to use force gainst the in-
deed cruel and incompetent government of Afghanistan - but nevertheless a legal
one according to Moscow~ s criteria cannot even be palliated~ much less justified~
by any arguments or allusions to motivation whatsoever. In 1 ight of the unilateral
action by the Soviet leadership~ an action ahose obvious purpose was to iemove frcm
power the Afghan president and prime minister~ Amin~ the reference by Soviet re~pres-
entatives to Art 4 of the treaty concluded on 5 December 1978 is just as absurd as
evoking the right of collective defense as set forth in Art 51 of the United Nations
Chart er. _
~ Downright outrageous or brazen are the only words to c~scribe the attempta at justi-
fication that refer to an alleged request for assi.stance by Hafizullah Amin~ who
was "executed" in the tiake of the intervention~ or to several earlier calls for help
by his predecessor in office, tJur Mohammad Taraki~ or to the requests for assis~-
ance coming from Babrak Karmal~ Amin~ s successor instslled by the Sovi.et occupiers.
Brezhnev apparently responded initially to an inquiry from President Carter via the
~~hot line~~ on 28 December 1979 ~ri.th the unqualified statement that the Soviet
Union~ in sending troops to Afghanistan~ had been responding to an invitation from
Amin. The ~PSII general sec;retary later varied this response when he said in a com-
bination interview and ~at~~nt published in PRAVDA on 13 January 1980:
"In its defense against external aggression~ the Afghan leadership turned to the
Soviet Union while President Taraki Was ~ill in office and then repeatedly there-
after as well.~~
Brezhnev went on to say that in view of the popular uprising led by Babrak Karmal
against the ~'Amin tyrenny" and the continu3.ng menace from "external forces~ the
moment had come "to accede ~to the request made by the f~iendly government of Afghan-
istan~ since we could no longer do otheruise."
A TASS rcport in riarcn 19~0 - accorciing to which the "lsadership of Afghanistan~~
is said to have asked the Soviet Union for military assistance in a total of ~~1/~ in-
stances~" times during last December alone~~ presumably was chiefly ~signed to -
revalidate after all 3rezhnev~ s original refer~nce to an apparently suicidal re-
- quest for intervention by Hafizullah Amin. But also worthy of attention is the
Soviet version which asserts that although there had been ~rlier Afghan requests for
support~ they had not been complied with until Karmal had asked for military
assistance once aga.~.n after having seized power. ihe Soviet leadership had not
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respon~'ed to thi s call until a point nat which a lethal danger hung over the revo-
lution."
Babrak Karmal finally undertook in a SPIDGEL interviev to halfWay recc~ncile these
contradictory ~atements an.d inti,nations: -
"I'ollowing the April revolution of 1978~ Mohammad Taraki~ in accordance with corres-
ponding resolutions by the Revolutionary Council and the government~ asked the
Soviet Union. about 14 times to send auxiliary troops. Foreign aggression was
not yet so obvious at that ti.me... . But after the assassination of Taraki~ the
before~27aDecember ~97,5]~eAmin ~as forced by pressuretf`rom~major ties inf
the Revolu-
tionary Council and the Central Committee to ask the Soviet Union for limited con-
tingents of troops to countex aggress:.on on the part of Pakistan that Was possible
at any momerit. Without my personal l~owledge of this request and ~ri.th no opportuni-
ties ~on my part] to influence the decision~ Soviet military units moved into
Af ghani stan, n
According to this account~ Amin~ s alleged petition for assistance r,rould simply have
been in ~eference to defending against a�eared ect of aggression (in other words~ not
~ yet under way) on the part of Pakis~an~ vhi.le Mosoow apparently used this request as
an excuse to topple Amin and replace him with Kar.nal in all his functions. It is -
also noteworthy~ however~ that Karmal expressly denies having asked for Soviet
troops on his own initiative or having influenced in any uay Moscow~s decision to
interv arie.
The main considerations that tipped the balance in f avor of Soviet military inter-
vention were evidently those relating to the praspect of a collapse of the commun-
ist revolutionary iegime and to the probable consequ~nces for Soviet positions in
Af~hanistan. The extent to which additional motives and interests might have played
a role remains an open question that requires further examination. Nevertheless~
the Soviet juggling of alleged calls for help by Taraki~ Amin or Karmal is complete-
ly irrelevant to an assessment of the ~.cts relating to the use of force in violation
of international law~ and its role at best is that of diverting attention ~om this _
actual central issue.
No less irrelevant a~e the Soviet att~pts to defend or minimize their own actions
toward Afghanistan by countering with references to instances of intervention in =
which the United 5tates or France took the initiative. Thus~ the Vietnam conflict
was a revolutionary war of reunification unleashed by North Vietnam~ a war in which
the United States did indeed support South Vietnam militarily but was repeatedly
pushed by its allies into a more aggressive involvemexit not li.mited to defensive
targets. Equally flawed is the comparison ~ri.th the French-BeJ b~.an-Moroccan-American
interv~ntion in Shaba in May 1978. There are three reasons for this: (1) the re-
lief operation vas carried out at the request of Zaire~ s President Mobutu because ~
it ( 2) came under the same OAU (Organization for African IInity) principle that also
serves to justify the Cuban-So~ri.et pres~nnce in Angola or Ethiopia~ and finally (3)~
because Mobutu was neither overthrorm nor killed in tie course of the interver_tion.
As regards the violent overthrow of the Allende government in Chile~ although the
United States Government unquestionably shares responsibility for this act~ neither
was the change of governments effected by the use of American military iorces nor
did the Americans instigate the elevation of an i.mported puppet to the position of
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successor to Allende. At most, the Kre~lin could point to I'rance~ s participation
in the expulsion of Jean Bedel Bokassa.~ the Central African dictator and butcherer
of childr~; it has not yet dc~ne so~ however.
On the Rovolutionary Theory Aspect of the Revolution
In the lig:'~t of later developments~ special consideration should be given to those _
reasons behind the USSR' s nilitary intervention that are based on Leriinist revolu-
tionary theory in conjunction tirith Soviet military d~ctrine. Of primary signifi-
cance here is the doctrine of the nwar of liberation,11 which has recently bee~
elevated to the level of a new main category in the Soviet book on the types of
warfare. ~ccarding to this doctrine~ basically all socialis~ sta~es (hence the
Soviet Union as well) are obligated under the baruier of "proletarian international-
ism~~ to grant any and all support (including military assistance) to national or _
social revolutionary "progressive forces~" or "popular masses~" of other countries
in their struggle against the "forces of extreme reactionn internally or against
foreign "imperielists." It is left totally to the discretion of the socialist
camp to determine uho the "progressive forces" are; the s atn~ is true for the forms -
and methods of support (Russian: podderzka).
On the other hand~ political or military intervention by foreign "counterrevol~
tionary forcea~~ against the ~~progressive forces" aluays~ acoording to this doctrine~
constitutes ir.ter�erence (Russian: vmesatel~ stvo) in the affairs of another state
or '~revolutionary people.~~ It nust therefore always be c,~ndemned and publi~ly
scorned as a flagrant va.olation of int~rnational law in contrast to support for
- the ~'progressive forces" themselves~ rthich is legitimate at all times. -
Accarcling to Soviet doctrine on the types of warfare~ the pledge of "revolutionary
solidarity" - given to the Afghan communists by Brezhnev on 5 December 1978
constitutes grounds for the socialist states to pmvide 11support~~ as follows in the
aforementioned sense of the word:
1) For the ~'proletariat~~ in the event of civil rrars ("wars of liberation") egainst
the "bourgeoisie" in ~~apital.ist^ states;
2) For "oppressed peoples" in the event of "wars of national liberation" against
~~imperialism" in "colonial" and "semi-colonial" states;
" 3) For "pragressive~~ or "social revolutionary" forces in the event of ~~civil wara
in developing countries" (regar~il.ess of the political orientation of such devel-
oping countries) in $ieir ~ruggle against the nforces of extrezne reaction.~'
- There is every indication that the Soviet leadership saw the situation into which
the Afghan revolutionary r egime had maneuvered itself by the spring of 1979 as the
test case of a"civil war of liberation" which~ because of theray it uas going~
- ulti~ately necessitat�ed military ~'support~~ of the "progressive forces" by their
Soviet neighbors. The intervention by Soviet armed forces obligatory under the
tenets of ~'pmletarian internationalism" - presumably became inevitable at the
noment it became evid~nt that despite the most brutal terrorist measures the Anin
regime was heading toward certain coilapse~ or at lea.st would never again be capable
of rogainin~ control over Afghan national territo~y under its own power.
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5. Phases of Soviet Afghanistan Policy~ 1945-1979 ~
4lithin the fxamework of the policy of Soviet interests toward western and southern
Asia~ Afghanistan has always played an important role si.nce the beo nning of the _
1920~ s. Aft.er 4lorld tdar II~ the evolution of the relationship between the two
states was marked by repeated changes in conception. As a rule~ Moscow~ s course
corrections took into account external impulses specific changes in the regional
situation or in Afghanistan itself. To that exteut~ most of them amounted to
accommodation. 41ith regard to the Soviet military intervention in December 1979~
the analy: is of motivations must not fail ~to examine thP earlier phases of Sovi.et
= Afghanistan policy for visible objectives and elements of conflict or strategy.
The very first years after World War II sav the development of an obvious conver-
gence of interests between Moscow and Kabul. In vieW of the tough offensive course
which Stalin was steering against Turkey arid Iran at that time~ he was at the same
tine making a conspicwous effort to keep relations with Afghanistan on as everi a
keel as possible. Following the demonstrative abrogation of the 1921 friendship
treaty (on 19 March 1945) ~ Turkey saw itself conf~onted by the Soviet IInion with
- far-reaching demands that ranged from oontrol over outlets from the Black Sea on
the one hand to old claims tc~ Turkish border territories around Kars and Ardahan on
the other. In the nortnuestern part of Iran that had been occupied by Soviet troops
since 19l~7-~ an "Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan" (Tabriz) and a t~Kurd.ish People~ s
Republic" (Mahabad) had been established over the years; their protection by the
Soviet Union uas evidently motivated by separatist intentions if not plans for
. annexation. The lengthy Soviet attempts in both cases at intimidation and black-
mail~ using a variety of ineans to exert pressure~ ultimately ~aulted in Turkey~ s
_ joining I~ATO in I'ebruary 1952~ while both Turkey and Iran joined the Baghdad Pact
(later CIIdTO) in Nove,mber 1955 (2 years after ~:he Mossadegh inte~rmezzo).
Afghanistan~ on t?e other hand~ courted the Soviet Union in the effort to keep open
the ~'Pushtunistan auestion~~: Kabul had never recognized the nDuz'end Line" drawn in
1393 as the southeastern boundary of Afghanistan~ but had always accepted it only as
a provisional line of demarcation for the sphere of security policy responsibility
and control belonging to British India's colonial administration (in Bombay or New
Delhi). For this line cuts through ~e ~ttlement and living areas of nume~ous tribes
- which belong linguistically and ethnically to the Pushtunis (or "Pathans") and thus
- to the re.al Afghanistan ~'nation." The dissolution of British India (in 1947) led
.i immediately to conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan~ whose government for its
part viewed the ~'Duran~ Line" as the c~finitive northwest border of the Pakistani
successor state and had no intentions of acceding to any Afghan desires for revis-
ion.
Since these differ~nces were having a negative effect on Afghan-Pakistaili economic
relations~ and especielly on transit ~affic across Pakistani territory~ Kabul saw
itself forced in July 1950 to conclude an agreenent W:ith the Soviet Union on an exr .
change of trade ir. important basic materials and supplies as rrell as on Soviet de-
velopment aid. The Soviet Union further granted the Afghans duty-free trr~nsit for
their export goods across Soviet territory. Kabul received its initial Soviet
cr edit commitment (in the amount of ~ 3.5 billion) for development pro j ects ( silo s
and largo-scale bakeries) in January 1954, and ~ Afghan-Pakistani tensions increased
to such an extent tnat Pakistan closed a1.1 border crossing-points in April 1955,
Kabul found itself in the position of having to ask the Suviet Union to extend the _
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transit agreement c~ting ~om 1950. This sas arranged on 21 June; thereupon a new
Sovie~Afghan trade protocol uas signed on 27 August 1955, and in Dece~ber of the
same year Khrushchev and Bulganin took advantage of a stopover in Kabul on $ieir way _
f~om India to put an even f5riendlier ~.ce on the Soviet-Afghan relationship by meana
of additional pr~mises.
Bulganin declared publicly on 15 Deceffiber 1955 that the Soviet Union would support
Afghan demands for holding a controlled~ nonpartisan plebiscite on the "Pushtunistan
question~~ in the parts of Pakistan inhabited by Pathans. In addition~ arrangemarits
Were made to extend the Soviet-Afghan neutrality and nonaggression treaty d ating
from 21,. June 1931 (or 31 August 1926). The Soviet visitors also promised their
hoats development credits amounting tQ ~ 100 million. This credit agreeffient was
signed on 28 January 1956.
Up to that timef Soviet diplomacy had essentially pursued in regard to Afghanistan
the main goal of lending a special quality to relations betveen Moscov and Kabul
by means of varioua kinds of cooperation ~rith the Muslim monarchy ruled by Mohammad ~
Zahir Shah~ and by taking skillful advantage of the ongoing Afghan-Pakistani. con-
flict: Afghanistan seemed almost predestined to serve as a demonstration of the
possibility of peaceful and prosperous oollaboration by nonsocialist countries with
their powerful neighbor~ the USSR. Afghanistan~ the traditionally neutral buffer
state~ was apparently meant to play the mle of a"Central Asian Finland~n an
ori~ntal test case for npeaceful coe~.stence" ~ri.th the Soviet IInion.
Moreover~ beginning in 1955 the Afghanistan policy of Stalin~s successors was appar-
ently inspired by the mvre far-reaching intention of gradually binding this neigh-
boring state ever more closely to the USSR and making it more dependent upon it by
w~y of economic interdependence~ aid to education and a~ans deliveries. The Kremlin
� was thus doubtless also reacting to the i.ncorporation of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan
into the SEATO and Ct~I'I'0 alliance syste~as which had sprung up along the southwest-
ern flank of the Soviet Uni.on during 1954 ~d 1955 at the instigation of the IInited
States. Saviet specialists helped draw up a fiva-year plan for Afghanistan for the
first time in 1956; they then ~adually assumed ~esponsibility for all Afghan economic
planning. The Afghan economy became increasingly enmeshed v.th that of the Soviet
Union as a~esult of large-scale infrastructure programs and industria~ization pro-
j ects that w ere paid for with long-te~rm contracts covering Afghan r.atural gas deliv-
eri es.
That which emerged from this policy i.n the early 1970~ s can be described as a strat-
egy of inconspicuously progressing, multid.imensional ecenomiwpolitical integration
of Afghanistan i.nto the Soviet sphere of hegemony. By the end of 1978~ credit
commitmerits f~om the USSR amounted to around ~ 1,265,000,000. Afghanistan at this
time occupied fifth place (behind Turkey~ India~ Morocco and Egypt) on the list of
countries uhich had received promises of Soviet developm~nt aid (measured by total ~
commitments for the 1954-1978 period).
t4ost importantly, however~ it shared first place when it came to per capita figures
and what is even more important to actual transfers of funds. As of the end
of 1977~ the latter figures amounted to about ~ 740 million~ or nearly 67 percer,t of
the promised credits~ a percentage that was unusually good (also in comparison rrith
Sovi.et treatment of other partners).
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- Si.nce 1956, Afghanistan ad procured its a~ns alnost exclusively ~om the Soviet
Union. As oi the end oi 1977~ these deliveries had reached a volume of more than
wE~00 million. Approximately 3~700 Afghen officers and noncommissioned officers
had been trained in thc USSR by the end of 197?. Though it is true that President
- !�lohammad Daoud follo~ring the overthrow of King Zahir Shah in 19'73 is supposed
to have reduced the number of Soviet military advisers from several hundred to 35 as
an avera.ge figure for 1976 and 1977~ Daoud n~vertheless did engage increasing num-
bers of Soviet civilian advisers and t echnicians. There were 1, 350 such personnel
at the erid of 1977~ while a year later they already numbered 2~075.
Moroover~ Afghanistan had been ~ceiving technical and financial development aid
fron the United States as far back as 19~.6, chiefly in connection ~rith the Hilmand
Water mana.geffient proj ect originally undertaken by private American companies. The
first government agreement on this project was struck in June 1953. After it was
announced that Khrushchev had promised credit in the amount of ~100 million~ Wash-
in~ton li.kewise decided to increase substantia~ly its involve,ment i.n American de-
velopment aid in Af~hanistan. By the end of 1978~ the total volume of investment
credits and gifts awarded Kabul by the United States ~ounted to around ~ 526 million.
Even though President Daoud sought in 1975 to check the progress of the Soviet
pincer and penetration policy by turning for support to Iran~ Saudi-Arabia and the
United Arab ~irates in his continuing Zesistance~ Brezhnev and his Politburo col-
leagues actually had little reason to be dissatisfied with the general course of
events in Afghanistan. This by itself is ~ason enough to be skeptical of the thesis
that DaAUd was removed at Moscow~ s orde~r in the ooup of 27 April 1978. Moreover~
there are numerous and general.ly quite solid indications that the Afghan communi;t
party which played the major role in t~he overthrow the People~ s Democratic Par'ty
~ of Afghanistan (PDPA) enjoy.ed any special store of confidence with either the
CPSU Central Committee Secretariat1 s Internation~l Section or the KGBt s Kabul head-
quarters. This impression ~,ri.ll be substantiated even further in another context.
In light of the certainly unexpected total success of the vi.olent act that led to
the seizure of power by the communists (but which~ given the circumstances~ could
very easily have ended as a total fiasco)~ a fundamental change took place in the
Soviet position vis-a-vis the PDPA. While previously the party had for years been
obstinately denied recogni.tion as ~ full-fledged ~~fraternal party" of the CPSU~ it
and its leaders - chiefly T~raki and Hafizullah Amin~ organizer of the uprising
wcre now overwhelmed with honors of aIl sorts. Moreover~ their CPS'J comrades did
not leave it at declarations o� solidarity but did all they could to help put into
action the social revolutionary program proclaimed by the new regime.
But Mo scowt s top political figures were baffled and somewhat flustered not only by
the surprisingly effortless and apparesitly total triumph of the~volutionary party~
a triumph which embarrassed the skeptics and PDPA-doubters among the Soviet Afghan-
istan experts. Added to this was the fact that "official" ~Jashington and the other
4lestern powers accepted the change of regimes in Kabul ~rith a placidity that ~as
astonishing to tne Sovie~s. It was almost like a long-awaited~ past-due eve~over
which they ~~ranted Lo make as little fuss as possible instead o� sounding a loud
but probably useless - alarm.
This, too~ tended to ~use the Soviet Union to draw erroneous conclusions. It is
possible that during the summer months of 197g it had succumbed to the twin illusion
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- that the new communist rulers~ supported by the ~ned forces~ had permanently sub-
dued the entire country and that the indifference of the Western governments oould
be construed to mean that they had tacitly resigned themselves to the incorporation -
of Afghanistan into the Soviet sphere of domination. Moacotr's later options in
severel situations of dilemma that resulted from the Afghanistan development can in
general be explained more plausibly if one assumes that wholly erroneous ideas on
both of these a.mportant points still prevailed on the Soviet side for months after
the communist coup of 27 April 1g78.
However~ by the time Brezhnev and Taraki signed the Soviet-Afghan oooperation treaty
on 5 December 1978~ the Soviet leadership had presumably perceived that inereasing
resistance was developing toward the PI~A policy of radical structural changes and
modernization measures backed initially by the Soviets; this resistance was to be
found among broad segments of the population, the officer corps and the a~med forces
at large. ~nboldened by the sudden Soviet backing~ the Kabul comm~ists~ top func-
tionaries who had �ormerly not really been taken seriously b~r the CPSU apparatus,
or had even been suspected of duplicity had engaged i.n a dangerous process of
escalation, in the course of Which they greu more and more dogged in their isol~
tion the faster the numbers and the ~i.mosity grew among the enemies they had made
through intolerance, brutality and disloyalty.
It was not long be�ore o1d rivalries resurfaced within the group of PDPA leaders as
well; bitter battles were fought over poWer and policy. These struggles in turn
resulted in virtual crusades to purge the party~ the officer corps~ the ministries~
+~he media and the government apparatus. Mass arrests and other repressive measures
- became routine. Soviet attempts to weaken the position and curb the striving for
poWer of ~:afizullah Amin uho was considered the one chiefly responsible for this
development had just the opposite effect.
According to their own tiesti.mony~ the Soviet advisers had admonished Afghanistan~ s
new masters as recently as the ~11 0� 1975 to take pains to be more cautious and
moderate in word and deed ~ter the Taraki regime had in October replaced the black~
red and green national flag crith a red baziner bearin~ a party star and a golden
garland of wheat. Immed.iately thereafter~ Amin had procla.imed the Afghan revolution
to be the "continuation" of the Russian October Revolution of 1917. It was prob-
ably the result of a Soviet recommendation that President and Pri.me-Minister Taxaki
had been helping administer the Def~nse Ministry since the arrest of General Qadir
on 12 August 1978. The~~ uhen A.min assumed the office of prime minister on 27 March
1979, Taraki found (doubtless again at the instigation of the Soviets) a special
_ formula for not ~~�i*_^ling over to him control over the armed forces as well;
A Supreme Defense Counci? was formed ~,ri.th Tar~ki as its chairman; sitti.ng on the
council in addition to Amin and the new defense minister~ M.A. Watanjar (an ene~my of
Ami.n) were six other m~bers~ including the pro-Soviet chief of state security _
(Aqsa~~ A. Sarwari.
To be sure~ as the prime minister wi ~:i direct authority over the state security
service~ Arilin had finally gotten his hands on one o� the most important instruments
of domination and repression. Four months later~ in July 1979, he felt strong
enough in the wake of a cabinet shuffle to assume personal ~esponsibility for the
Defen~e Ministry and the Interior Ministry. From this point on~ TaraKi had essen-
tially to perform only representational duties and to serve as a figurehead.
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The Soviet leadership could not uatch uithout concern Amin~ s efforts to aGhieve an
autocratic position, especially sinc~ it uas becoming increasingly obvious th~.t its
regime~ s base in Afghanistan Was grotiri.ag shaky.
- Particular movos that had caused unrest in many provinces were the reaolution put
through by Amin in Novembcr 1978 to substantially speed l~p implementation of the
land reform pmgram and the government~ s ensuing sanctions end punitive measures
which also effected growing numbers of opposing mullahs~ among others. "Changes
must be carried out srriftly~~' was his motto~ ~twhile the counterrevolutionaries and
imperialists are still too weak to prevent them.n But by the summer of 1979 the
greatest part of the country uas in total turmoil~ and for this reason it can be
aaid with certainty that the question of Amin~s replac~ent or overtbrow was the
focus of the talks which Taraki had ~ri.th Brezhnev - and apparently with Babrak
Karmal as well on 10 Sept~ber in MoscoW (where Taraki stopped over on a return
f].ight from Havana).
For~ according to a later report by PRAVDA~ it was tiri.th great concern that Soviet
observers were watching at that time to see how nthe counterrevolutionary ring of
fire...was tighteiv.ng around the capital ~f Afghanistan~ and drawing closer to the
mountain peaks that surround it on all sides." Nov coming home to roost was the
extremely faulty assessment of Afghanistan~ s internal balan~e of force~ that had
been made by the responsible Kremlin officials in the light of the unexpected
communist seizure of power in Kabul in the spring of 1978. Then in the summer of
1979, Brezhnev and his Politburo colleagues oould no longer close their eyes to the
realization that the consequences of this error in judgmeat among which was
Iiafizullah Amin~s go-for-broke oolicy - were suddenly threatening to jeopardize
the fruits of decades of diplomatic spadework~ syste.matic expansion of influence
and conaiderable fi.nancial investment.
6. The PDPA: Party of Afghan nProgressive Forces"
Given as the official date for the $i.mding of the P17PA is 1 January 1965, though
~ from mid-1967 to August 1977 it was split into two separate~ vigorously feuding~
parallel parties. 'i'he two branches of the party named themselves for two short-
lived publications (KHALQ = Peogle; PARCHAM = Banner) with which they identified.
The larger Kha1q faction~ headed by vriter Nur Mohammad Taraki~ was essentially a
party of teachera~ students~ government ~ployees and journalists~ with its suppor~
ers ~probably no more than between 2,000 and 3~000 members in April 1978) concen-
trated almost exclusively in Kabul. Many Khalo, supporters had previously distin-
guiah.ed themselves as Greater-Pushtunistan activists. The weekly journal KHALQ was
able to put out five issues betueen 11 April and 16 Nlay 1966. Most of the articles -
were ~,ri~itten in Pashto; a few, however~ were in Dari~ the standard language of the
court that is closer to Persian. The first issue~ ahi.ch included the PI~A program,
is said to have sold 20,000 copies. Reflected in the program were social-revolu-
tionary principles inspired by Marxism-Leninism, but there was also a passionately
reformist all-Afghan nationalism. The int~~tion ~e.s to ~alize the ~~national demo-
cratic revolution,t~ it said "the initial and neceasary stage of the ~cialist
revolution.~~ KHAL~ was ulti.mbtely bauned because of the nunconstitutional and
anti-Islamic" views presented therein.
r
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By way of comparison~ the snall.er Parcham faction ~njoyed ev~~n better contacts
than the Khalq group ~ri.th tribal and court nobility~ the mini.sterial bureaucracy,
the officer corps and notable academic snd provincial personalities; it was even
said to have had quite close ties ~rith the police. The PDPA program ~ras the same
in principle for both the Parcham and Rhalq members~ except that the Parcham spokes-
- men place~. greater emphasis on using their latitude for legal~ and especial.ly
parliamentary~ activities during the period of the ~tnational democratic revolution,
and they expressed more cl.early their ~rillingness to conform to the constitution.
This wing of the PI~A was led by Babrak Karmal~ a lawyer and the son of a general.
At times~ however~ he was overshadoued by the demagogue and party ideologue Mir
Akbar Khyber until the latter~s murder on 17 April 1978 under still unexplained
circumstances (Khyber~ s death marked the t~eeginning of the chain of eveats that escal-
ated 10 days later into the Amin-Qadir putsch and to the seizure of power by the
communists). Appearing on 14 td~y 1968 was the first issue of the weekl.y journal
PARCHAM~ whiclz presented itself as more of a Dari publication than the Khalq organ
was. The pa~er had to stop publishing in June 1969 during the parliamentary elea-
tion campaign.
The Parcham group was reg~rded as a"royalist-communi.st party" into the early
1970~s because of its advocacy of a reform-oriented constitutionalism and its ex-
cellent connections at all ~~command levels" of the Afghan establishment~ including
the royal court. Its leaders nevertheless agreed to enter into a conspiratori~l.
alliance with Dtohammad Daoud Khan, the former pxime minister and cousin to the -
king. The coup of 17 July 1973~ which led to the fall of King Zahir Shah and to
abolition of the monarchy, tie.s the work of this coalition. As it was revealed
later, al~ among Yarmal~ s and Khybert s Parcham friends was Abdul Qadir~ an air
- force o�ficer who pla,yed a leading role in the overthrow.
After having proclaimed the republic~ Dar~ud formed a cabinet to which several
Parcham zepresentatives belonged (including Interior Minister t~i. Faiz hiohammad~ for
example). Daoud. so adopted ~ssential Parcham o~ands in his government program~
the ze~l.ization of wizich, however~ did not get beyond the initial ~ages with xegard
to the promised land reform and the announced democratization plans. Meanwhile~
the willingness of the Parcham leaders to collaborate with Daoud within the frame-
work of his ~'republic of princes" resulted in a f~Zrther exacerbation of the antag-
onism between them and the Khalq party~ which was holdi.ng to a policy of ~iff
opposition. The Parcham represmtatives 3na11y withdrew f~om the government coali-
tion in the ~cand h alf of 1975.
But it was not until the ~pring of 1977 that the cooperative ~lations ~ill teing
mai.ntained with Daoud~ s"P~ational Revolutionary Party" were severed ~ter the Parcham
leaders' expectations for the newly convened Constituent Ass~bly were$na71y shat-
tered. It was probably exa~eration and ind.ignation with Dar~ud who had succeeded
over and over again i.n catering to the political and personal ambitions of his
Parchan partners tiithout actually sharing power with theffi that ultimately moved
the Parcham leaders to enter into reunification negotiations tirith the Khalq party~
negotiations that turned out to be difficult indeed. Then in August 1a77 it was
finally possible to seal the union of the parallel. parties and restore the unity of
the PIn'A.
It was re~ported that 5oviet mediators were also brought in to help overcome opposi-
tion to the merger in both camps. This is probably true~ especially since permanent
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lines of communication had existed s.nce the founding of the PDPA in ~rly 1965 be-
tween the Soviet embassy in Kabul and some members of the PI7PA leadership~ particu-
larly Babrak Kar~aal and the later Parcham rrin,. All the more puzzling has to be
the observation that the Soviet press (including the Soviet news agencies~ news-
casters and television editorial staffs) ~ as well as the media belonging to that
segment of the international communist movement which is close to the CPSU~ had for
morc than 13 years consistently pursued izz their reporting the principle of virtu- ,
ally ignoring the existence of this oommunistic social-revolutionary party.
Thcy neither took notice of the ~undi.ng of the party nor ~eported the PDPA split or
reconciliation. ihe Afghan comnunist leaders uere a~parently neither invited to
the Third rlo scow World Conf erence of Cotr~unisti Parties (June 1969) nor a sked to
participate in the last three CPSU congresses (1966,1971, 1976). What makes this
all the more peculiar is that even representatives of noncommunist revolutionary
parties and social-revolutionary activist organizations of the mos~ varied Marxist
and socialist shadings have long been rrelcome guests at the CPS'U party congresses.
The same is true for the CPSU~ s annual October celebrations~ while all indications
~,re that the Afghan communist~ were excluded from these festivities as well.
Apart from a feW recent isolated exc~ptions that only confirm the rule~ not even the
greetings which leading P1~7PA organs certainly sent to tie CPSU and other "fraternal
ptirti.es" - as is custonary on the occasion of party congresses9 party anniversar-
ies and other occasions w~~re published in neuspapers or journal.s put out by
these parties or announced by their news agencies~ broadcasting ~ations and so
forth. It would appear tY:at the Soviet media~ but also the editorial ~affs of .
supranational communications organs ~ithin the international system of communist
parties~ systematically suppressed all news and information concerning the PI7PA~
- Khalq and Parcham. .'~.'ven quotations tak~n f~om the party literature of the Afghan
communists or from statements by their mo~t prominent representa~ives fell under
this publication brin until the PI}PA assumed power on 27 April 1978.
ihere is no precedent in tne entire history of the communist movement since the
establishment of the Comintern for this kind of disavowal or concealment with ref-
erencc to a"fraternal party" that enjoys �full internal recognition and ~spect.
Ideither consideratior. for neighborly a:lations of a special quality nor a particular
need to protect or camouflage the iecognized communist party of a certain country
can be considered a sufficient motive. Otherwise the activities~ messages of greet-
ing or attendance at party congresses by the communist parties of Finland~ or Turkey~
or Iran or Iraq would also have to go unpublicized~ something that by no means
happens. The splitting into parallel p~ties can be regarded ~ no more of a decis-
ive motive s~uzce in similar cases (for example~ with the parallel parties of the _
Firuzish~ Swedish~ Israeli~ ~gyptian or Indian communists) the CPSU leadership has
traditionally mai.ntained "normal" party relations ~rith at least one of the parallel
organizations - and so;netines uith both.
Consequently~ the final question to be examined is whether the PDPA could truly be
considered a~'fraternal party~" fully recogriized and respected by the CPSU at the
time in question (January 1965 to April 1978)~ and perhaps why it was denied ~ecog-
nition and respect. There is some suggestion that the PL1PA and the parallel parties
that emer~ed $~om it were ~egarded in Moscow (in other uords~ chiefly in the Central
Committee~ s International Section headed by the old Comintern functionary Boris N.
Ponomaryov) not as a"serious" ievolutionary party and definitely not as a vanguard
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party of Afghanistan' s"working class." Nevertheless~ the publicity ban impoaed on
tho PDPA with respect to all its activities and expressiona of opinion points to a
aubstantially more ~rious r eason for the discriminatory stance: It appears tY:at
there existed in the CPSU apparatus a Well.-grounded distrust presumably also
based on the embassy reports from Kabul and on the dossi~r put together by the KGB
headquarters there of influential PIIPA functionaries~ if not of the entire group
of this organiz.ationt s leaders, with respect to their secret police and foreign con- -
tact s.
As for assessi.ng f,he aggressiveness~ political reliability and ~~class character" of
the P17PA leadership~ the responsible CPSU and KGB authorities probably viewed with
rather a j aundiced eye these Kabul parlor-communists who had no zeal base among the
masses nor any impact of note in the provinces. 4lcrkers and f armers were to be
found among neither the leaders nor the membership. In Kabul (approximately 500~000
re;idents)~ the i.ndustrial workers constituted only an infinitesimal minority~ and
�armers or c~ricultural workers could be found only in the outlying districts~ if at
all. There were not even the begi.nningg of a trade union organization~ let alone
unions for industrial or agricultural workers. Though the Parcham agitator Khyber
had occasionally been described in press reports as a"trade union leader~" he could
cla.im at best loose contacts with the communist 4lorld Federation of Trade Unions
(;dI~TU). And this organization did not even issue an official statement ~ the time
of Khyber~ s ass.assination.
Ttie general impressi.on ~aade by the Parcham and Khalq politicians on the local Soviet
observcrs who knew then fairly well Was presumably that of a clique of restless and
restive intellectuals who in ieality themselves belonged to the establishm~n.t~ but
who expected from a change of systems the fulfillment of personal career ambitions.
Or the ?1 mi.nisters in the first Taraki cabinet (consisti.ng of 11 Khalq and 10 Pan-
cham representatives)~ a.ll but 3 had a university education; and these were military
men who had undergone ~ecial traini.ng i.n the USSR. At the time of the coup~ 5 of
the 21 ministers had held a civil service post in $ie government~ 3 were officers~
1 was an employee of the ~ate broadcasting ~rvice~ 2 were university instructors~
3 had worked as journalists or writers~ 2 were doctors~ 2 were lawyers~ 2 were unem-
ployed full-time acad~ics in other fields and the last was a restaurateur. Most
tirere charter members of the PDPA, and 13 of the 21 ministers had belonged to the
~arty~ s�irst Central Committee as full members (7) or candidates (6).
The KGB emissaries and CPSU overseers must also have had their doubts aLrout the fact
that the Khalq party was essentially a Pathan org~n.ization ~rhose Pathan nationalism
repeatedly showed through beneatYi its Marxist veneer. By contrast~ the Parcham
spokesmen came ecross ~ progressively unitarian~ nonexpansionist nationalists who
would fight to overcor~e the traditional particularism of natior,alities and tribes
~ri.thin the framework of a modern~ ~cularized Afghan nation-state. Pashto was con-
sidered the party language r~nong Khalq circles~ while Parcham members made a point
of preferring Dari on principle.
- As a youth~ Tnraki had belonged to a literary movement that uas pledged to Pathan
nationalism~ and after 1950 he made his ~putation as a writer chiefly as the au~;hor
of storie~ in Pashto. Hafizullah Amin~ before his conversion to Marxi.sm~ had prop~;-
gated a doctrine of Pathan supermen~ while playing an extremely militant nle in the
government-inspired anti-Pakistani agitation for a militant solution to the ~~Push-
tunistan question~' begi.~ning in 1953. On the other hand~ in the early 1970~ s the
"Setem-i-Melit~ moveoent (against national oppression) separated Srom the Parcl~am
communists. This was a militant alliance of Tadzhik~ U~bek and other non-Pathan
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Parchan? members who charged their own leaders tiri.th clinging to the principle of
Pathan hegemony just like their Khalq competitors and in conflict with their
affirmation of a unitary syste~. In 1975 during the period of Parcham coopera- _
tion with Daoud Khan their intrigues gaverise t,o zebellions in the Tadzhik re-
gion northeast of Kabul (Panj eri) which uere put dorrn with the help of the army.
The Set~-i-Meli movement reoresented in a particularly prnnouncad form a conviction
held by Afghanistan~ s entire left: It was not class diffe-re~ces that constituted
~ Af~hanistan~ s ma.in and central. problen; it uas the ethnic and tribal antagonisms.
It is readily apparent that the Soviet observers had reason enough to advise the
Central Committee apparatus in Moscow to act with restraint toward these woulc~-be
Afghan communists. tlevertheless~ the top CPSU officir~.ls would hardly have imposed
a publicity ban regarding the impox~tunate Kabul people~ s party members on all the
media subject to the Kremlin~s influence unless there had been other~ more compel-
ling rea:~ons to discriminate. There was truly no lack of suspicious ~.cts that could
lead the notoriously suspicious KGB specialists to believe that the PI7PA which
essentially enjoyed little credibility as the ~~vanguard par'ty of the Afghan working
class" had f5rom the t~ginning ~rved as a$ront for a number of police~ CIA~ Savak
and 14ossad agents. There is muc,h to indicate tYiat the rival_ Pareham and Khalq
leaders were in the habit of taking turns denouncing one another as police or CIA
spies to their Sovi.et contacts. It is therefore more than probable that the KGB
headquarters in Kabul might for a time prior to the surprise communist victory on
27 April 1978 have regarded the entire PTJPA as a kind of CIA �Trojan horse.~~ The
International Section of the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat would the,n logically
_ have been anxious to deny this suspicious organization admission to the solidaristic
community of CPSU-oriented communist parties under eny circumstances.
Clues to the general framework of reservations~ but also to the nature of individual
suspicions and incriminating conj ectures~ are afforded by an analysis of the educa-
tional backgrounds of the PDPA leaders~ by biographical data on the bes~lrnown PDPA
political figures and by charges or insinuations that became lrnown ~ a later point.
Undoubtedly having a long history within the PI7PA wa:: Babrak Karmal~ s assertion
spread with the help of the Soviets at the end of December 1979 that Hafizullah
Amin had in reality bcen a CIA agent. But Karmal himself had apparently been simil-
arly assailed previously by the Soviet-supported suspicion that he had played a
dubious role as a aonfidential informant to the chief of the secret police under
llaoud Khan and possibly even under the monarchy.
The Soviet observers must nave been annoyed from the very outset by the ~ct that
~ many oS the PI7PA leaders could show evidence of a European or Ameriean education at
the secondary and university levels~ as befitted the general standard of the Afghan
educational upper crust and the real elite power groups. By contrast~ very few of
- them had a l~owledge of Russian or had ga.ined foreign experience in the ~ates of
~~actually existing ~ocialism." Of the 21 members of the first PDPA cabinet~ 10 had
studied in tne United States~ 1 in France~ 1 in the FRG and 2 in Egypt. Of the four
ministers who had received no foreign schooling~ most of them had attended elite
schools in Kabul where the curricula were pa~terned after European models and where
L'uropeans and Americans were on the ~aching staffs. The same was true at many of
Kabul~ s advanced educationul. institutions a s well.
J1 reminder should bc inserted here that this first Taraki cabinet consisted of 11
Y�hr~lq ministers and 10 Parcham ministers~ that it wPS practically identical crith the
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PDPA leadarship at that time and that ~rithout exception these ministers also belonged
to the 35-man Revolutionary Council. Only the three military men in the cabinet
(Colonel Abdul Qadir, Major Mohammad Rafi~ Major Mohammad Aslam Watanjar)' who all
belonged to the Parcham faction and had joined the party at a oomparatively late
stage, had r eceived some of their education in ~ie Soviet Union. Only these three
and one other mi.nister knew Russian. On the other hand~ there was scarcely a sngle
member of the cabinet who did not have a command of ESaglish; moreover~ aome of them
could ev~n offer French and Gex~an skills. Like Taraki~ who vas most likely to be
called a"man of the people~ all the PDPA leaders had established in their checker-
ed careers notably extensive and enduring ties to the Anglo-Saxpn world and its
cultural milieu.
- Idur Mohammad Taraki (born in 1917 i.n a village in Ghazni Province~ southwest of
Kabul) ~ came into the world as the en of a sheep farmer from the Pathan Ghilzai-
Taraki tribe. At the ~e of 18 he vent to uork for a tr~ade Srm which ~nt him to
Bombay rihere he learned IYiglish at night school and was later taken on by the British
Chamber of Commerce; he was also trained as an ~glish-Pashto and E~iglish-Dari
translator. Back in Kabul in 1937, in addition to his career in business he devoted
him~elf to the study of political economics~ finishing with a degree in 19/{].. The
next steps in his career came in government service as an official in the Economics
Ministry~ editor ~.rith Kabul Radio~ commissioner ~rith the state Bakhtar news agoncy~
staff inember in the government press office and then~ until November 1953~ press
attache with the Royal Afghan ianbassy in Washington.
In 19,~7 he had joined the "A~~rakened Youth~~ literary movement that was inspired
partly by Pathan nationalism and partly by demands for democratization. In 1950
he was among those who put out the militsnt journal ANGAR (Blaze)~ which was banned
after a few months. Two highly regarded PasYi~o. short stories written by him appear-
ed in 1~51 in the magazi.ne whic.h had printed the "Awakened Youth~~ manifesto in 191~7.
Fircd by the ~overnment because of an attack on the monarchy that was published in
iJastiington in 1953, Tas'alsi opened his o~rn translation bureau in Kabul in 1951~, work-
ing mainly ~r the U. S. development aid program (AID) and for Kabul~ s II.N. delegar-
tion. In 1y62-63 he ~,ras employed as a translator with the United States bnbassy
before he decided to become a professional revolutionaty. In 1957 he had~aken an
extensive tour of several ~ast ~uropean countries and the Soviet Union. Following
the founding of the PDPA on 1,Tanuary 1965, he was immediately elected general secy-
retary of the party that had emerged largely as a result of his efforts.
Eiafizullah Amin (born in 1921 in Paghman near Ka~ul)~ was especially close to the
pDpA general secretary because of their common tribal origin (Ghilzai-Kharoti) and
close family ties: Taraki was married to one of Amin's daughters. Having com-
pleted secondary school ir~ Kabul~ Amin subsequently studied mathematics and phys-
ics~ also in Kabul. As a teacher of these subjects~ he quickly rose to the position
of director of the s chool from Which he himself was graduated. Before this~ hoc~
ever~ the good offices of a friend who was a minister made it possible in 1957 for
him to obtai.n a master~ s degree in education from Columbi.a University in New York.
Upon his return he theri became director of a teacher-training facility and also was
activc as a~'Greater-Pushtunistan" activist; not the least of his activities were
carried out among the teachers and ~udents of his oWn school. He became acquaintec:
c.rith `I'araki before returning to the United States~ where he continued his studies
from 1962 to 1965 at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University.
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lJhile in the United States~ he was very active in the association for Afghan stut `
dents and was ultimat~ly elected chairman. Karmal later maintained that at that
time no one could be the ~~head of a foreign studentst organization" in the United
- States ~~without kowtowing to the CIA." It was alleged that the CIA t~ained hi.m at
that time as a prospective ageut for infiltrating the P1~A.
In f act, Amin returned to Afghanistan shortly after the party was founded. Elected
a Central Committee candidate in absentia~ he was immediately takesi into the lead-
ership where~ as organization s ecretary~ he soon ~i.ned a dominating influence.
After having been a losing candidate for parliament in 1965, he entered that body as
a deputy in 1969. ihe rivalry between him and Karmal was a major reason for the
sE~paration by the Parcham faction in the summer of 1967.
It is now being said of Atain that r.e consciously split the party (on ordera from the
CIA~ of course) and sought through intrigue to prevent its r econciliation. More-
over~ he is said to be th~ one who g ave "the names of the underground leaders to _
the 1lmericans"; the latter "had passed them on to Prince Daoud~ uho planned to have
all those on the list shot in April 1978 - this triggered the zevolution.~~ The
Khalq leadership had always been linked with the assassination of the chief Paxcham
theoretician~ Khyber{while Khalq spokesmen held Da,oud~ s secret police responsible).
Karmal's supporters meanwhile openly maintain that Amin "had a hand in the affair^ `
(a stateffi~nt that should be nothing new to the Sovieta). ~
- In Yeality there is no doubt that Amin was the one who~ after the arest of all the
influential Khalq and Parcham leaders~ ventured to escape house arrest on 25 April
1978~ who got together the next day ~ri.th Parcham officers Abdul Qadir~ Rafi and
Watanj ar to design a plan to free the imprisoned PDPA leaders and who ultimately
had to answer politically for this operation which led to the "liquidation" of
- UaAUd Khan and his "republic of princes." Amin's reward came in the form of ap- .
pointments as deputy prime ~ainister (beside his colleague of equal ~ank~ Deputy
Prime-2~[inicter Karmal) and foreign minister in the first Taraki cabinet. Moreover~
he was from the beginning the revolutionary regime~ s"strong-man~" and presumably
for that reason he had to endeavor ~rly on to eliminate the Parcham ~ction (which
he succeecicd in do'~ng within 2 months} because he lmew that Karmal had denounced ,
him to the Soviet comrades as a"CIA agent,t~
Babrak Ktu~aal (born in 192~ near Kabul) ~ grew up in Kabul as the en of an Afghan
Army officer from the Pathan tribe of Kayar; the father is said to have risen to the
xanlc of general and also to have served as governor of Paktia Province. Karmal
attended the elite Amani School~ which was considered a"German" school. Upon
graduation from this secondary ~hool~ he began to study law. He drew public atten-
tion for the first time as a"Mar:dst~~ student leader and ts~s seritenced to 5 years ~
in prison for political agitation~ a sentence which he served from 1952 to 1955.
After completing his ~udies and serving his time in the a~my~ he worked from 1960 to
196~. in the ~~ducation and Planning Ministry.
!Ie was one of the charter rembers of the PI~PA on 1 January 1965 and was for a time
(until the split in the summer of 1967) "second-in- conmand~' after Taraki as the
political secretazy a position which he reclaimed after the ~hism was healed in
the s~.immer of 1g77. This demand uas evidently a~?ong the main points of dispute
lahich delaycd the ~conciliation. In exchange for concessions on the issue of
parity~ Karmal finally succeeded in gaining a"united leadership" made up of Khalq
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and Parchem representatives. Idevertheless~ his att~apt to force Amin out of all
positions of leadership t~y neans o� ce�~sure pmceedings provoked a massive counte~-
attaak by the organization secretary. Amin~ s revenge ceme in the form of the exf-
pulsion o� Karmal and his most trusted Parcham followers~ Anahita Ratebzad (Karmal~ s
wife), Moha~nmad Baryal~y (Karmal's brother), Nur Mohammad Nur and Abdul Waki.l. In
July 1978 they were shipped off to embassy posts in Prague~ Belgrade~ Islamabad,
Washington and London.
Karmal had won ~at in parliament for the first time in the 1965 spring elections
. ( entering the lower house with him were Parcham r eprespntatives Khyber and Anahita
Ratebzad~ while Khalq regresentatives Taraki and Amin failed to win ~ats). Of the
four PI7PA deputies~ three managed to retain their seats in 1969~ particularly be-
cause Karmal and Khyber were considered especially persuasive parliamentary speak- _
ers. Gf all people~ Aiain was added as the new fourth P17PA deputy in 1969. Des-
pite this~ a joint faction was maintained - ~rith Karmal as its spokesman until
the end of the legi:lative session in the ~ring of 1973. Thesi~ however~ in opposi-
tion to the Khalq policy, Karmal and his supporters helped Dar~ud Khan overthrow the
monarchy (on 17 July 1973) and served in the first coalition cabinets of the t~repub-
a lic of princes" in the period leading up to the fa11 of 1q75. Kasmal~ s contacts
among the younger~ Soviet-trained army officers and the police organs contributed
in large measure to the success of the operation.
. This was a time when Karmal could consider himself the clear favorite of the CPSU
~nd KGB officials stationed i.n Kabul because of his good connections in many ~
cliffere,nt places~ because of his participation in the Parcham cabinet andbecause of
- the abundance and reliability of his re~ports. Pievertheless~ only a f~w years later
he was unable to win the crucial test of strength agai.nst Amin~ a fact which per-
~ mits certain conclusions as to the original limited extent of Soviet involvement.
' In any event~ in l~pril 1978 it was Amin~ not Karmal~ who was the organizer of the
surprising PI7PA triumph. And because the Soviet leadership had previously r~ot been
pr~ared to give the PDPA its full support~ it could ill afford to withhold its
approval of the victorious iaraki-Amin team after its seizure of power (re~ardless
of all the warnings and apprehens~ons expressed by Karmal); instead~ it was forced
initially to accpp~ the team as an actual leadership duo tirithout objection.
7. On the Thesis of Remote Control of the Coup in April 1978
Of considerable inportance is the question of whether the communist coup on
?_7 April 197~ Was staged 'oy a Soviet secret ~rvice and re,mote-controlled from the
Krcmlin. Should the evidence require an affirmative answer~ the hypothesis co.uld
hardly be upheld that rIoscow susoected the PDPA of being riddled with police stooL-
pi~eor_s and CIA~ Savak and other foreign agents. Moreover~ in the ev~nt of prob-
able remate control~ greater weight would also have to be accorded tb.e conjecture
tnat the coup in 1978 and the occupation of Afghanistan at the end of 1g79 must be
viewed as pre-established stages in an overall ~rategic plan envisaging specific~
imperials elcpansionist ~oals and calling in generral for expansion ~f the Soviet
sphere of power as far as the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea,
If~ on the other hand~ the question of remote control or Soviet orchestration sho~.:l.d
have to be answered in tne negative~ the military intervention coming at the end of -
1979 could r~l.so be interc~reted nore plausibly as a"reactive?~ undertaking brought
about chie�ly as the result of internal Afghan developments~ an undertaking that
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_ quite literally dateN back to errors made much earlier by the Soviet leadership:
errors in assessing the PDPA leadership~ errors in assessing the balance of politi-
cal forces within ~fghanistan at the time power was seized by the PDPA and~ conso-
quently~ probably errors as well in ueighi.ng competing options ~r~.th reference to
different aspects of Soviet interest policy.
At the same time~ one could continue to use the working hypothesis that the Soviet
leadership was anxious because of deepseated distrust of the PDPA leadership to keep
its distance political.ly as well as in matters af publicity. The reverse conclusion
- wauld thus also be permitted: The less trust Moscow had in the PDPA~ the more dis-
concerted the ~sponsible CPSU officials must have been later on by its seizure of
_ power and excess of social-revolutionary zeal. It is also f`rom this point of view
that the Afghanistan occupation might ultimately prove to be an originally unwanted
consequence of nistakes made when charting a oourse directly ~llowing the overthrow
in April 197~.
As has already been mentioned~ the assassi.nation of Parcham leader Mir Akbar Khyber
on 17 April 1978 was the key ev~nt that set in motien the process which then very
rapidly but via a reaarkably bizarre chain of coincidences and individual decis-
ions top~led the Da,oud regi.une and brought the communists to power. The assasr
sins have thus far not been ideritified~ but as a"detonator" the assassination it-
self performed a function so incapable of substitution tha~~ the actual masterminds
would have to be :~ought in the Soviet embassy in. Kabul if it should be provEd con-
clu~ively that the coup that came 10 days later was based on a Soviet plan or ~
order. Khalq secretary Hafizullah Amin coul.d of course have organized the opera-
tion~ but it is known that the Soviet "services" had hitherto maintained consider-
ably closer ties to the Parcham faction~ while avoid~ng ~s much as possible any
dealings rrith the Khalq leadc~rs~ particularly Ami.n. If those around Karmal have of
late actually been accusing the meanwhile executed Amin of oomplicity in the murder
of Khyber~ it is certa.inly not i,ri.th the intention of ultimately exposing their own
Soviet protectors as instigators of the crime.
Then t~iere assembled at F,hyb~r' s funeral on 19 April a large crowd of people who
led by Ttaraki and other leading PI7PA representatives from both factions moved
tnrough habul in a nassive demonstration~ chanting an~i-Aiaerican and revolutionary
- slogans. An esti~ated 10~000-15~000 people took part in these rallies~ most of
them young people~ especially schoolboys and university studer_ts. Indeed~ within _
remembrance Kabul had up to that point never experi~ced such a large mass gather-
ing~ the si.ze of the group astonishing ev~n the PI~'A leaders because their own me~-
ber;hip rolls numbered at most only one-fourth of the crowd. Altogether~ this
occasion revealed the maximum potential which the PDPA would have had at its dis-
posal for a"peopleis revolution.~' This certainly seemed alarmingly large to
President Dar~ud Khan and his state security organs~ but from an objective standpoint
this ~'mass base~~ was totally i.nadequate as the mainstay for a revolution whether
from ~~below" or from ~'above.T' By Soviet defini.tions~ the actually modest mobiliza~
tion result fron the angle of rev~lutionary intentions Would more li.kely have had
to lead to the discontinuance of putsch preparations that ~ight already have been
initiated.
_ I'11 the same~ however~ the shock which themlly generated for Daoud and his police
a~paratus was so severe that they did precisely that which Taraki~ Karmal~ Amin and
~ the other PDPA leaders must have anticipated because it is the closest ~ing at hand
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in a state like Afghani.stan: They organized a large-scale roundup though not
until 24 April in the course of which the no st important PI7PA funetionaries
were arrested~ with some being j ailed and some placed under houae arreat. Curious-
ly enough, exempted ~om arrest were the military men associated with the Parcham
win~ of the PIIPA Qadir, Rafi and Watanj ar the same officers who had provided
crucial support in UaAUd~ s ~akoover of pouer 5 years �arlier~ but who had the~ been
- given the cold shoulder (air force officer Abdul Qadii' found himself ba~i.shed to
the post of chief of military slaughterhouses, for exa~ple).
It can be assumed with certainty that it would have been i.mpossible to s eize the _
entire group of PDPA leaders (excludir..g the military) in the roundup on 21,. April if
even only a few of them had possesscd Soviet orders for preparations for a coup or.
, insurrection. Open to them as a r.�efuge in just such a situation at any time at
least temporaxily - was the Sovi.et embassy~ an opportunity which indivi.dual PDPA
leaders were to t ake advanta~e of ~peatedly later on. EquaJly curious is the
fact that the Parcnaia militaz^,~ men whose ~,rillingness to undertake a putsch had
been ~eneral knowledge in the past~ and who had reason enough to seek a"reckoning"
wit;h the DaAUd re~ir~e had been spared or simply "forgotten" in the roundup.
rloreover~ even though they had takc~ training courses in the USSR~ they oould by no
means be considered pro-Soviet; raiher, they were first and forenost nationalistic
Af~han patriots~ and their initial response was to do absolutely nothing.
They apparently did not nake their first move until contacted by Hafizullah Aznin,
who had succeeded in escaping ~om the building ~.n which he had been under house
arrest. Amin in~'ormed the� ~hat the hves of tha se who had been arrested were in
cr.treme j eopardy~ since Dar~ud rras planning to hr~.ve them all killed, Thereupon the
- clecision was made to taye the offensive~ the pr:~ary goal bping the immediate ro-~
"lease of the imprisoned PDPA ~ eaders. But con;sidering Afghan customs and tradi-
tion~~ it would probably have been tantamount ~o absolute suicide for the officers
~t they had tr~ied to limit their planning t~ an operation designed to rescue the
pri,:~oners. Conseque~ntly~ fron the very outset the operation had to be focused on
thc raclical elimination of any resi~tance and on the unconditional assumption of
powcr. The three officers assumed responsibility for carrying out the hastily im-
provised operational plan, while Hafizullah llmin accepted responsibility for the
or~anizational asnects oi tne political changeover.
`i'he a~aored, air forc~ and infantry units mobilized by the insurrectionists launched
their attacl~ on the norning of 27 April. In a little less than 2l~ hours they had
~ained a.ll thcir obj ectives in Kabul and had brought the entire coun~ry under their
cont~ol. President Daoud and ~uout 30 m~bers of his family~ i.nclucling women and _
youn~ children~ were put to death. The total number of victims probably amounted
to a.bout 1,000. The miiitary, however~ evidently turned power over to the P~PA
leadership ~rithout dela~. Thus, the new regime led by Taraki (with Amin in the
~'strong-man" po~ition) was already seated firnly in the saddle on 30 April 1~78.
On ~ April 1930~ the U. S. Dc-~art~ent of State nade public a summary of official
investigations intio the ~oviet intervention and the events leading up to it. It
can be assumed fro~;~ thi.s that the occupation was carried out with great thoroughness
after every piece of av.ailable information had been evaluated. This published
re-port says of the "i�iarr.ist coup d~ etat~' of April 1978 that the Soviet Union played
~~only a minor role" in it~ "if any at all.n One can probably even believe l~leksandr _
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M. Puatanov~ Soviet ambassador at the time~ vheri he says with regard to 27 April
197a: ~~On the day the ba].loon went ups I had gone fishing."
Tho 1 iday i ssue of !4o scow' s foreign policy j ournal NEUE ZIIT ..xs sti11 very guarded
in its report that ~~military forces" not further idemtified had assumed power
in Af~hanistan on 27 April 1978. Thero was no mention of participation by a commun-
ist or revolutionary progressive party. The PDP11 also w~t unmentioned in th~ 2 May
issue~ and neither T~raki nor other nembers of the new governmen~ were presented or
tneir party functions i~entified. It was not until the issue that appeared on 3 t4ay
- that i1;'U~ Z~IT noted with A quote from Taraki that "the revolution on 27 April" was
not the ~'work of a saall group of army officers"; rather~ it had been carried out ~~a,t
the call and uncier the leadexship of the People~ s De~mocratic Party~" which "had beeu
formed as long ago as January 1965 and advocates a progressive~ national and demo-
_ cratic prograJn."
Thus~ even though the PDPA had meanwhile risen to a position as the n~~gn
i~t party~ it took 3 weeks for the special journal for foreign policy and inten-
national relations which always maintains the closest of working relationships
~,rith the CPSU Central Comraittee Secretariat~ s International Section (and the KGB~ s
Central Bureau for Foreign Information) to ':.,~e around to ac,~rnowledging the
_ leadership role actually occupied by this part~. This vas truly unusual aloo.fness
on the part of the CPSU in its dealings ?ri.th a victorious revolutionary party; it
should have immediately been accorded at leASt the status of a"national-democratic
pro~*ressive force~" for which t,here were numerous precedents. The top CPSU leaders
in Tioucow apparently needed a certain amount of time to regroup and herein lies
the essential differerice compared with ~st of the comparable cases involving Madar-
gascar~ Jticara~ua and the Philippines - in order to arrive at a new and more posi-
tive attitude toward a would-be communist party that had for decades beeri avoided
- and su~ected of alleged agent infestation.
o. Armed Intervention as a L~st Resort
Haf izullah Amin~ who of all the Khalq leaders exhibited r,ri.thou+, question the grea~
est staying power and the fewest moral inhibitions~ was the real driving force be-
hind the w aves of purges and t~rror that followed the seizure of power~ waves which
little by little through the destruction of the Pareham wing of the party~ deci-
r~ation of the officer corps and a"reorganization"of the m achinery of government
were to nip in the bud any opposition to the absurd policies of the PDPA leadership
regarcling changes in tne sy~tea, but which simultaneously isolated to an extr~ne
degree the already weaa~ Khalq �orces. Though Amin did manage to rise to the posi-
tion of prine mi.nister on z� riarcn 1979 and also to seize responsibility for the
spheres of defense a.nd the interior for the amed forces and all police forces~ in
other words he had nevertneless been unable to prevent the movement of the Islam-
ic tribal and ~ligious rebels from spill.ing over into most of the 28 provin.ces by
that same ti.me.
Tn the meantime~ of the three military leaders of the April 1978 coup~ Amin had had
Abdul Qadir sentenced to c~ath and Mohammad Rafi to 20 years in prison; he did not
_ have Qadir execu~ed~ however. aimilar things happened to Chief of the General Staff
Shahpur Ah~adzay and ilundreds of officers of all ranks. The totally demoralized
r~rrmy was threatened ~tith colla~se. :~oldiers and officers~ even entire troop units~
were deserting in increasing numbers; mutinies were the order of the da.y. It
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nappened more and more freque,ntly that the Soviet military advisers~ whose numbers
had been increased to er~und 5,000, were themselves forced to asaume the duties of
leadership to prevent a generai debacle.
Thore are many indications that Taralsi, in view of this situation~ was won over by
the Soviets to the plan of forcibly removing Amin and subsequently replacing him
uith his archrival KarmaJ_, who was being kept at the ieady in Moscow. This has al-
ready been reconstructed essentially f`rom a secret report which describes events
from Amin's vantage poi.nt and which was apparently deliberately leaked to the
Western press. Meanwhile~ horrever~ there are also reports and supplementary in-
formation from the Karmal camp uhich ~io indeed narrow down and in some ways place
a new interpretation on the f acts as they are l~own, but basically confirm them as
far as substance is concerned.
In any event, the plot against Amin in ~rhich Soviet Ambassador Pusanov was per-
sonally involved misfired, and the decisive test of atrength ended on 14 Sept~-
ber 1979, as is generally known, not tirith Amin~ s removal from office or elimina-
tion but rrith Tarakit s downfall. rolloWing 3 Weeks of imprisonment~ the latter
finally had to pay with his life for his role in this Shakespearean tragedy. Amin
had him strangled and buried a~ an unknoun ~ocation.
It is most likely that the preparations for the Soviet intervention began to shift
into high gear immediately after it had been learned in Moscow that Amin had once
again escaped tirith his life on 1Q September 1979. The power-hungry and bloodthirsty
Afghan himself must have known right at the moment when he captured the office of
the presidency that for him there would be no �urther accommodation with the Soviet
leadership. The latter~ s representatives went so far as to xemove $~om the ~asp of
the Afghan authorities four prominent co-conspirators who had participated in the
Taraki-Pusanov plot against Amin ministers M.A. Watanjar~ Sh. Mazdurjar~ S.M.
Gulabzoi and Taraki~s Security Police chief~ Azadullah Sarwari; this was accomplish-
Ed by placing them "under Soviet protection."
In early October Amin~ s foreign minister, Shah Wali, summoned 11 East bloc ambassa-
dors for the express purpose of making known these and other grievances. They also
learned that Aznin had demanded that the Soviet leadership recall its ambassador
immediately. Pusanov Was thereupon replaced by Fi.kryat Tabeyev on ~ November.
'rhe Soviet ambassador' s four charges probably found refuge at a quasi-extraterritor-
_ ial base established by the Soviets at the Bagram military airfield (50 km north of
Kabul). By all accounts~ Karmal was also flown from the USSR to this refuge a
short while later. ~ie hinself maintai.ns that he returned to Afghanistan exactly
~~15 days after...Taraki was killed" - in other words, on 20 October. A similar
Soviet statement is on record.
According to Karmal~ s account, ~~in cooperation with friends" (like Sarwari, ~rlatan-
j ar~ Mazdurj ar and uuiabzoi, for instance), he then ~~organized the forces of r esi~
tance from an und~rground base~~ (presumably located at the Bagram airfield). In
particulax, he establi,shed contact with the majority of the Revolutionary Council
n?m'aera, who Were officially in the government but were our comrades." The members
of the leadership who supported him Karmel had formed "the majority in the
government and also in the party's Central Committee." His main argument probably
concerned the number of victims of Amin~ s mass terror campaign; Karmal puts this
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figure at '~1.5 million peo~;'_e~' ("ruthlessly annihilated through mass murder").
Karmal adds: "All ~embers of the government and Central Committe~ were of the
opinion that Amin belonged before a tribunal and ought to be punished."
Thus it appears that Karmal sought from his secure haven on Afghan soil to establish
a counter-government and a counter-Central Committee of a new sort~ with most of the
members being the same ones as those in Amin~ s government and Central Committee.
According to a source close to Karmal~ his "underground activity" followed the
pattern of the coup carricd out on ~1 April 1978 by Amin and the three Parcham
officers, G~adir~ Rafi and ;Jatanj ar. For while he was the one who was doing nthe
political organizational work," there was also "a military committee~~ (presumably
chaired by 4latanj ar) uhich established contacts ~ri.th all troop commanders~ sought
to bri.ng them over to Karmal's side and developed precise action plans for a mili-
tary operation designed to end the Amin regime. It appears that the order to storm
the Darul.aman Palace in the process of which Hafizullah Amin was killed on
27 DecembQr 1979 came irom this commi.ttee and was carried out by an Afghan army
unit.
The Karm~l.ists are charactera.stically spreading the claim that Amin had usurped
Taraki~s top offices without ever having been a candidate for elective office.
This charge doubtless refers mainly to the positions of PDPA general secretary and
chairman of the Revolutionary Council. A report from Kabul by the Moscow corres-
pondent of the Indian Communist Party neuspaper NEW AGE has this to say on the
matter:
"I was told that there uas never any meeting of the leadership organs for the pun~
pose of replacing Taraki ~rith Amin through an election. Only a false report on a
meeting and his election was spread via radio~ television and the press."
The aim of such reports is obvious: Amin is made out to be a usurper~ lacking any
legitimacy deriving froa an election process. This rras designed to impugn especial-
_ ly his authority and qualifications as the legal chief of state and prime minister~
as chairman of the Revolutionary Council and as head of the party. By elimi.nating
Amin the ~~usurper" ~rith this strategera~ it becomes easier for Karmal to pass himself
off as Taraki~s le~itimate immediate successor in office and his political heir.
These problems of iegitimacy are only marginally i.mportant to the specific situa-
- tion in Afghanistan itself, rowever. For the occupation of the country by Soviet
~.rborne and arclored units an operation carried out in grand style on 25 Decem-
ber of last year and one which, incidentally, also arranged to a certain extent for
Amin' s"liquidation" together with that of tne Amin era marked the opening of a
new chapter in Soviet-Afghan relations. It had become necessary to aclmowledge
that the metnod of cooperative Soviet participation in government with the aid
of party diplomacy and a many-pronged advisory and control apparatus entitled to a
voice in all areas of i~portance had failed. An occupatior~ regime was therefore
ordeined for the country, one whose direct dominion would be backed only extremely
superficially by ~he existence of a new Afghan head of state and government.
'!'he ~ain reason for the change of nethod can be seen in the f act that Karmal~
Nloscow's "qui:~lin~," possesses neithcr sufficient personal authority and political
backin~ in the countr~~ nor the necessary "national" means o� power to keep the
!!fghan "progressive forGes" at the l~lm on the lasis of his own sovereignty, let alone
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the ability to bring the rebellious provinces back under the control of a functional
central authority rrithout direct intervention by the Soviet military. Since Taraki
and Amin totally wrecked not only the PI7�A but also the machinery of government and
the Afghan army~ an occupation ~gime was in the Soviet view the only remaining
alternative if Afg.hanistan were not ta be surrendered to the nmullahs and ayatol-
- lahs~~ in other words~ lost to the Islamic counterrevolution.
9. Afghanistan: Steppin~-Stone or Problem Colony for Mosco~f.'
Brezhnev was doubtless speaking the truth when he said in the combined interview _
and statement published by PftAVDA on 13 Jariuary 1980 that the "decision to send mil-
it,ary contingents to Afghanistan" had ~'not been an easy one~~ for the Soviet leaders~
since the occupation decision simultaneously constituted an admission of political
�ailure. Revelations such as this automatically pose serious problems of legitimar
tion for representatives of a system which is allegedly guaranteed protection by
- ~'scientific communism" fron making aggravating misjudgments.
A noteworthy clue as to motivation is to be found in Brezhnev's main argument that
the Kremlin could not ~'look on passively~T at the a}~proach "of a serious threat to
the security of the ;oviet state." But the Soviet leadership was doubtless alarmed
not so much by the alleged efforts of an unidentified brand of "imperialism" to
transform a11 of ~lfghanistan into a"military bridgehead along the southern border"
or the Soviet Union. blithout a doubt~ substantially more concrete are the Soviet
�ears that Aighanistan could become the bridgehead for the Islamic risorgimento and
for a liberation movement actively supported from Iranian as well as Pakistani ~oil;
both of these countries are regarded as "terra irredenta" - or a subjugatedzegion
to be delivered fro~a foreign domination - by those parts of Soviet Central Asia
that are still Islamic.
`i'nus, in reality i~ appears not that the Soviet Union is threatened by imperialisn
but that Soviet imperialism sees a part of its colonial territory directly threaten-
ed by the dynamics of the Islamic (counter-)revolution and its emancipation demands.
Gromyl:o~ s speci~lists on the i:ear and Middle Last have probably also recognized
that ~:his set of problens is totally beyond influencing in the inte-rnational dimen-
sion. This offers a nlausible explanation of why Moscorr is accepting with apparent--
but in reality well-calculated indifference the acts of solidarity by most of
the Islamic goverr.~F~nt;~ t�rit:i the Afghan zesistance fighters (idojahedin) in their
"holy war" ( j ihad) .
It is uncierstandable :.hat the Soviet Union itself tends to view the occupation of
llf~hanistan as a"defen~ive occupation.~' Incidentally~ it might also feel on the
defcnsive with re~ard to those radical elements of the international comnunist move-
ment ~~rhich have long been accusin~ it of neglecting its world revolutionary mission
in favor of Soviet na~ional interests, charging it in general with an exaggera'ted
_ fetzr of takin~ ri;~cs. ror this~ason alone it was out of the question for the CPSU
leaders to give up flfgnanistan, a developing country bordering on the Soviet Union
and already half bclonging to i~s sphere of hegemony. It was impossible for them
to leave the field to the nforces of extreme reaction" (and Islamic "counterrevolu-
tionaries" into the bargain) right at their own back door.
If they had permitted the Mojahedin to gain a victory over Afghanistan~ s"progres-
sive forces," there would be no stoppi.rig their decline of authority within the
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socialist carzp" that began with destruction of the Stalin myth on the occasion of
thc 2Gth CPSU Congress in 1956. ror the list of Soviet setbacks and defeats is no
less e:ctensive than that of its gains and expansionist successes. One has only to
recall the in~tance of breaking of� the Cuban missile venture and the schism with
the Chinesc, the ch.~J.lenge of reiormist communism in the CSSR~ the expulsion from
i�:~;,~t of the Soviet expeditionaz^,~ corps~ the abrogation by Egypt and Somalia of
cooperation treaties concluded with the Soviet Union and the ~;rends toward autonomy
tnat arc ga.ining ~round in many communist parties of Western Europe and other re-
gions. If the Soviet leader:hip had given Afghanistan up for lost instead of. inter-
venin~ resolutely and ~rith massive troop deployments~ this would have had great
si~;nificance for oth.er countries belonging to Moscow~ s sphere of influence~ such as
Angola, '~thiopia or South Yemen. ror the regimes in those countries believe they
can rely at any tir~e on emerge~cy Soviet intervention for assistance in defending
a,gainst foreign and domestic enc,mies. A Soviet retreat from Afghanistan involving
th~, sacri�ice of ~~revolutionary achieve~cents" would certainly have permanently
;;halccn 1;his conviction.
N.so addressed in ~is re~ard are the m~st important elements that point to a long- _
term occupation oi' Afghanistan. Meanwhile probably in mid-MPrch 1980 in Moscow
a~oviet-Afghan agreement ~as signed on the stationing of troops~ an accord that
had already been ratified by the beginning of April. Nothing is lmown of the con-
t~nts as yet~ but in any event the treaty only puts a somewhat more attractive ~.ce
on the occupation while no~ being ~le to change anything with iegard to the real
state of affairs. As long as the Kremlin has to assume that the Karmal r egime would
be playing a losin~ game without the protection of the occupaticn troops, they will
r em ~.in in th e co untr~,~.
It can by no means be ruled out that the Soviet leadership might use the period of
occupa~;ion to pursue. tne integration of Afghanistan into the "community of socialist
states" (perhaps after the pattern of the Mongolian People~ s Republic). According-
ly~ the principles of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine on the limited sovereignty of
E,OClu^I.iS~ :;l.ti~E; : 1fl it:.1c^,~lOP. tL'if.' .~~OVte~ vi~1.0T1 IrOLL.I~ tiJ? it1i1.'y" ^~p*~l 1C~..~i1.G uG ~iibI18I1-
ist~no In the meantitae, as experience with the Afghanistan intervention teaches~
Soviet ideology tod.ay can justify, in a nanner satisfactory to Leninists, armed inter-
vention under the banner of socialisn in any country in the world by aimply point- _
ing to the obligation contained in the principle of ~~proletarian internationalism"
for socialist states to provide "all manner" of support - thus military as well
for ~~progressive forces" in all parts of the globe.
l~icvertheless: 'Z'h~re are no indications at the moment that thP Soviet Union is
planning further interventions (directed toward Iran~ Turkey or Yugoslavia~ for
instance). Indeed~ as has been su~gested~ the results of a closer analysis of
events in Afghanistan tend rather to support the ~sumption that the main motiva-
tions behind the decision to ir.tervene were based on considerations ~rictly r elated
- to the situation instead of the supposition that they might hava originated$rom a
schedule of ~tages or ;oa1s pertaining to an expansionist ~~overall plan." This ob-
servation does not preclude the possibility that the occupation o� Afghanistan might -
lead many a USSR political figure or military strategist to new reflections focus-
in~ on Iran or the Persian Gulf region~ for exampJ_e. But in gerieral it is more
likely that the problems resulting &om the quasi-annexation of Afghanistan w:ill be -
- the ones on whicn the Soviet leaders rrill have to concentrate their attention.
745~
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TUNISIA
SIGNIFICANCE OF OLIVE PRODUCTION IN ECONOMY VIEWED
Paris MARCHES TROPICAUX ET MIDITERRANEENS in French 5 Dec 80 p 3332
[Text] The new olive growing season which began last month, looks good in Tunisia.
In fact, national production of olive oil for the 1980-1981 campaign is expected
to be between 145,000 and 160,000 tons, as opposed to some 85,000 tons during
1979-1980. Also noteworthy is the fact that initial estimates, which were in the
180,000 ton range, had to be lowered following the lack of rainfall during the
last months of the season in the governorate of Sfax, the principal olive-growing
region of the country. Regional information given last October by the daily
' national paper LE TEMPS also emphasized the fact that quantitatively, the olive
industry of Sfax only represented one ninth of the overall Tunisian olive production;
however, from a qualitative standpoint, it was the most productive because of the
methods used in growing (spacing, pruning, care). Evaluated at 6.5 million olive
trees, this region furnishes, on the average, one half of the country's production.
It may be remembered that, on a national level, the number of olive trees, which
numbered approximately 27 million and covered 500,000 hectares at the beginning
of Tunisia's independence in 1956, rose to more than 55 million trees covering an
area of more than 1.4 million hectares, or ne~rly one third of the country's arable
land in 1976. It is worthwhile to note that, worldwide, olive groves contain close
to 800 million trees, covering some 10 million hectares, of which 98 percent are
on the Mediterranean coast, and that the world producCion of olive oil is around
' 1.5 million tons.
As mentioned above, jobs created by the Tunisian olive oil industry equal the _
total number of those created by large agricultural enterprises, and surpass those
of market-gardening and forestry together (MTM 28 March 1980, p. 739). Ln fact,
one million Tunisians, or around one sixth of the population, live either directly
or indirectly from the olive oil industry, which entails 25 million days of work '
per year, or nearly one fourth the total number of work days in the agricultural
sector.
The fourth largest producer of olive oil in the world, after Italy, Spain, and
Greece, and second in exports of this product, after Spain, averaging around
70,000 tons yearly, Tunisia has always paid special attention to the olive oil
industry (MTM 6 June 1980, p. 1345, and 13 June 1980, p. 1430).
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Production varies, like in other countries, from one year to the next, depending
on both weather conditions and the olive cycle, which usually has a strong
harvest every two years (106,500 tons in 1975-1976, 85,000 tons in 1976-1977,
130,000 tons in 1977-1978, 85,000 tons in 1978-1979). Besides the favored place
it is guaranteed in Tunisian exports, the olive oil industry also plays an important
role in the social sector since it permits farmers to settle down, thereby improving
their revenues and stoppii~g the rural exodus. It is easy to understand the
Tunisian authorities' concern over the prospect of an expanding European Community _
and, in the near future, over the official entry of Greece into the Common Market
on 1 January. During his visit to Tunis at the end of October, Raymond Barre,
the French Prime Minister, gave assurances in this regard. (MTM 31 October, p. 2654).
This year, just before the new olive oil campaign 1980-1981 got underway, President
Bourguiba decided to sizably increase the leading price index for olive oil
production, fixing it at 450 millimes per kilo for 4 degree refined oil and 530
millimes for 0.3 degree super extra oil. Making the announcement last~ October
at the Carthage palace, Prime Minister Niohamed Mzali added: "This sizable increa~e
in the leading index, which will be given to all farmers, constitutes an encouragement
for farmers by the chief of state, that they might become more interested in the
olive oil industry, and that they might both quantitatively and qualitativel3~
improve the production of olive oil during upcoming agricultural campaigns."
COPYRIGHT: Rene Moreux et Cie, Paris, 1980
9572
CSO: 4400 E~
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