Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Gunshots echoed through the granite halls of Kabul's People' House, punctuating a fresh installment in Afghanistan's long history of violence and political intrigue. When the Shootout was over, some 60 people lay dead, including, apparently, President Noor Mohammed Taraki. The new leader of the strife-torn country was Hafizullah Amin, 50, most recently President Taraki's Prime Minister. Within hours, workers in the mile-high capital had stripped hundreds of outsize portraits of Taraki from the facades of state office buildings. Many of the red-bordered images of Afghanistan's "Great Leader...
Amin's accession is unlikely to bring much peace to the ancient mountain kingdom. Afghanistan has been in continuous turmoil since Taraki came to power, in April 1978, following a coup in which former President Mohammed Daoud was gunned down in Arg Palace. Taraki's Marxist Khalq (masses) Party promptly launched a radical program of social reform and land redistribution. The policy met with violent resistance from the country's Islamic tribesmen, who make up some 85% of Afghanistan's 17 million people. Loyal to their old feudal leaders and enraged by the new, "godless" regime...
...palace and the traitor Taron and dozens of others were dead. On Sunday the Revolutionary Council announced that Taraki had resigned on "health grounds" and reassigned his posts to Amin. At week's end, the Kabul government still had not confirmed Taraki's death, but, considering Afghanistan's tradition of violent political change, it was hard to imagine that he was still alive...
Both President Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Aleksei Kosygin signed Moscow's telegram of congratulation to Amin, who is most unlikely to steer Afghanistan from its Marxist, pro-Moscow course. The Soviet leaders may be less happy with the erratic Amin than they profess. DeVoss has learned that on two occasions the Soviets advised Taraki to distance himself from Amin and reduce his power. Taraki responded by replacing Amin as Defense Minister last March. But he was unable to reduce Amin's influence with the top Khalq military officers; their support enabled him to repossess the defense portfolio...
...Washington some Administration officials believe that Afghanistan may become a Viet Nam-like quagmire for the Soviets. They must soon face the critical choice of disengaging or going in with thousands more troops to prop up a tottering regime that has been unable to communize an ancient feudal society with profound religious, geographic and ethnic divisions. Even with Soviet advisers on hand, the war against the rebels is not going well. The effectiveness of Kabul's largely conscripted 80,000-man army has been diminished by a string of mutinies and defections: since the beginning...