Word: babrak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim in seeking a settlement. It stopped short of condemning the 1979 Soviet invasion, but called for the withdrawal of the 80,000 Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq reported "intimations of flexibility" from both the Soviets and their puppet in Kabul, Babrak Karmal. But the militant Afghan rebels, in spite of their close relations with the Saudis, adamantly refused to sit down with representatives of Karmal's government...
...stepped off the Aeroflot jetliner onto the tarmac of Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, Afghanistan's President Babrak Karmal was given effusive greetings by a phalanx of Soviet officials led by Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev. The Afghan leader was on his first venture outside the Soviet-occupied country since he was installed as Moscow's puppet last December. The sheer number of senior Soviet Politburo members participating in the Moscow welcome demonstrated the Kremlin's obvious desire to shore up Karmal's legitimacy and make a show of his supposed influence with the Kremlin. Mused...
Kabul is waiting for something to happen-riots, guerrilla action, a tightening of curfew, the replacement of Moscow's puppet party boss Babrak Karmal, army or police mutiny, perhaps an even more overt Soviet takeover. However ill founded, however paranoid, the constant rumors have a reality of their own in shaping the war psychosis of the occupied city. The men seen in the streets with guns, the façade of power, are Afghans. The real occupiers, the Soviets, are invisible, except for their helicopters, the jet contrails, the daily barrage of Pravda-phrased media propaganda, the Cyrillic script...
...puppet government of Babrak Karmal, which the U.S.S.R. had forcibly installed at the time of the Christmas invasion, appeared to be on the verge of collapse. It was not only shown up as ineffective, it was practically invisible as well. A proclamation that imposed martial law on Kabul effectively gave ultimate civil as well as military authority to Moscow's army commander. With this tacit admission by the Soviets that they were the only real authority in the country, some diplomatic observers predicted they might also soon do away altogether with the fiction of an indigenous government and replace...
...Soviets inherited a demoralized, poorly trained, desertion-prone Afghan army that has no stomach or heart for fighting the Muslim insurgents. Meanwhile, the rebels show no sign of melting away before the overwhelming firepower of Soviet tanks, artillery and supersonic fighter-bombers. The Moscow-installed government of President Babrak Karmal already appears to be as discredited as Nguyen Van Thieu ever was in Saigon. Even the explanations for the invasion that Soviet officials are giving out in Moscow have a lamely defensive, Viet Nam-era ring: "We had no choice. We had to live up to our commitments...