Word: babrak
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Mustering his defenses from Kabul, Najibullah, a former head of the Afghan secret police who in 1986 succeeded another Soviet puppet, Babrak Karmal, has proved to be surprisingly resourceful. He has concentrated his formerly scattered troops in strategically important towns where they could dig in and count on some support from the urban middle class. He has played on the war weariness of the Afghan people with a series of peace-and-prosperity initiatives. "Najibullah is well organized and intelligent," one of the few diplomats still in Kabul told TIME's Paul Hofheinz, "which is more than...
...envoys at Geneva sign this week, it will bring to an end Moscow's major military involvement of the past 20 years. Soviet troops invaded in December 1979 in order to replace one Communist leader, Hafizullah Amin, with Babrak Karmal, another Communist but one more amenable to Soviet thinking on many issues. Soviet troops quickly became enmeshed in fighting with the budding resistance movement. Moscow has tried to defeat the rebels with everything from carpet bombing to lightning commando attacks, all to no avail. Soviet offers of bribes, cease-fires and amnesties have also failed to quell the mujahedin...
There may also be a threat from Najibullah's Communist rivals. In downtown Kabul, a series of small bombs exploded last week, damaging a shop and an apartment complex. Western diplomats speculate that the blasts were caused by followers of Najibullah's political opponent, former Party Chief Babrak Karmal, whom the Soviets purged last year. Karmal's followers may have staged the attacks to protest the departure of their leader for the Soviet Union two weeks ago, ostensibly for medical treatment. They fear that Karmal has been forcibly detained...
...storm had been gathering around Party Chief Babrak Karmal for months. In February, at the 27th Communist Party congress in Moscow, the Afghan leader, who first came to power when Soviet troops stormed Kabul in December 1979, was denied a private audience by Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The following month Karmal abruptly disappeared from view, even failing to show up at his country's Revolutionary Day parade--the equivalent, noted a Western diplomat in Islamabad, of "staying away from one's own birthday party." Meanwhile, the Soviet newspaper Pravda ran a front-page story attacking Karmal's failure to build...
While the Afghan fighting waxed and waned, the latest round of talks between Pakistan and the Soviet-backed government of Afghan President Babrak Karmal ended inconclusively in Geneva. The United Nations-sponsored talks are the main hope for a political solution to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As the latest Soviet offensive shows, that possibility seems as far off as ever...