Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...troubled nation with a squabbling, ineffective government; impoverished Bangladesh; unstable Pakistan, where an inept military regime is currently considering the execution of deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the autocratic but brilliant politician who rebuilt his country after its disastrous defeat by India in 1971. To the northeast is Afghanistan, where a pro-Soviet junta that seized power last year is trying to rule over one of the world's most ungovernable tribal societies. In the west is Turkey, torn by religious unrest and social instability to the point that martial law had to be declared in 13 provinces...
...just completed a crash study on Iranian policy for the Carter Administration, the U.S. is urging the Shah to modify his absolute rule in order to restore stability in Iran and the Persian Gulf. The increase of Soviet influence in the region (see map), most recently in Afghanistan, worries the U.S. The Administration is also concerned about the effects of Iran's instability on such other monarchies as Jordan and the king of petropowers, Saudi Arabia...
Though the treaty is vaguer than the friendship pacts that the Soviets have signed in the past two months with Viet Nam and Ethiopia, it further confirms the fact that the softspoken, sometime journalist who heads Afghanistan's leftist Khalq (People's) Party "considers Moscow his friend, benefactor and protector," as a senior State Department official puts it. Indeed, the pro-Soviet tilt of the new rulers in Kabul, the Afghan capital, is already stirring some recriminations in Washington. U.S. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, an ardent hawk on the subject of Soviet expansionism, growled to a U.S. diplomat...
...some Soviet technicians shopping in Kabul's bazaars. The grocer hides his best produce when he sees the Russians coming. A jeweler has a simpler defense: he just doubles his prices to the Russians. While the 3,000 to 4,000 Soviet civilian and military advisers in Afghanistan attest to Moscow's interest in the country, Kabul is not Prague or Budapest, where tanks can be rolled in quickly to enforce the Brezhnev Doctrine. Afghanistan does have one main highway, but it merely connects the four main cities like a huge beltway. The country is bisected...
While the Russians in Afghanistan try to keep a low profile, Taraki's government has boldly waved the country's new red flag, which has a yellow star (symbolizing the Khalq Party) surrounded by some wheat instead of a hammer and sickle. After it unfurled this banner in October, the regime promptly 1) withdrew recognition from South Korea in favor of the Communist North, 2) described its accession to power as a "continuation" of the Russian Revolution, and 3) gratuitously parroted Brezhnev's charge of "imperialist" interference by the U.S. in Iran. But except for the ever...