Word: aminations
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...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...
Taraki's end came suddenly, in the best Afghan tradition. On Sept. 14 he was warned by four loyal government officials that Amin was plotting his overthrow. Taraki heeded the warning but ignored the first rule of Afghan politics: kill the adversary immediately. Instead, he invited his rival to a Friday afternoon conference at People's House, possibly intending to arrest him. But Amin came to the rendezvous armed with a pistol and the knowledge that Taraki's personal bodyguard, Major Sayed Daoud Taron, had changed masters. It is not known how the Shootout started, but when...
...former education student at Columbia University, Amin tried to project a statesmanlike image in his first national radio and television address. In an apparent reference to Taraki, Amin rejected "one-person rule" and announced that certain enemies of the people had been "eliminated." He promised to introduce the principle of habeas corpus, to guarantee complete religious freedom, and to reduce frictions with neighboring Iran and Pakistan, which harbors some 185,000 antigovernment Afghan refugees...
...Taraki government's most repressive measures, including the execution of at least 2,000 political prisoners, the imprisonment of 30,000 others, and countless "gross violations of human rights" that were cited last week in a report issued by Amnesty International. Says one longtime Kabul resident: "Amin is the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin...
...interview with TIME Correspondent David DeVoss shortly before the coup, Amin came on like the ruthless strongman he is reputed to be, declaring that "change must be brought quickly while the counterrevolutionaries and imperialists are too weak to prevent it." Asked how the Kabul government could claim to have the loyalty of 98% of the population when the countryside was controlled by rebels, he responded with dialectic doubletalk: "Since the leader of our party is automatically the leader of the working class, our government is supported by all the working people...