Word: babrak
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...collapse of the Shah: CENTO, long moribund, was disbanded.) Insofar as U.S. diplomats and intelligence experts focused on Afghanistan at all, they made two miscalculations. First, they believed that the Soviets' desire to preserve detente would restrain them in Afghanistan. Second, they had long since written off Babrak Karmal and his comrades in the pro-Soviet faction, whom the more independent Marxists ruling in Kabul had purged or driven into East European exile. Even in the early fall of last year, when an interagency intelligence report seriously raised the possibility that the Soviets might launch a full-scale "pacification...
Karmal tries for political legitimacy as the rebels fight on. More than five Soviet armored divisions were deployed around his country to help suppress the Muslim rebels. Fortified by what might be called Russian courage, Moscow's puppet President Babrak Karmal tried to improve his image last week, both inside and outside Afghanistan. In an attempt to broaden his shaky political base at home, he announced the formation of a "national unity" Cabinet, giving unprecedented prominence to non-Communist and military leaders. And in an effort to mend regional ties he made flamboyant overtures of friendship to Iran...
...that cuts through lands occupied by the rebellious Baluch peoples, who live astride Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Baluchis, who have long yearned for autonomy, might welcome a Soviet-inspired Afghan invading force that would promise to honor the Baluchis' "legitimate aspirations" -as Afghanistan's new President, Babrak Karmal, has vowed to do. A friendly regime in a breakaway Baluchistan would give the Soviets an outlet to the Arabian Sea at the port of Gwadar and, from there, access to the Persian Gulf. "If I were a Russian," General Fazal told Carrington, "I would take the soft underbelly...
...three-month-old regime of President Hafizullah Amin. The unfortunate Amin, 50, who had turned out to be a more independent-minded nationalist than Moscow wanted, thus became the third leader of Afghanistan to be overthrown and killed within the past 20 months. In his place the Soviets installed Babrak Karmal, 50, a former Deputy Prime Minister who had long been considered a Russian prot?...
...Afghanistan's new Soviet-sponsored strongman, Babrak Karmal, toppling governments is old hat. In 1973, as parliamentary leader of the pro-Moscow Parcham wing of the Communist People's Democratic Party, he helped to plot the overthrow of King Mohammed Zahir Shah by Mohammed Daoud. Five years later, he blithely joined in the subsequent plot that ousted Daoud's regime. For that purpose, Karmal had aligned himself with his bitter political rival, Noor Mohammed Taraki, leader of the more radical Khalq faction of the P.D.P., who set himself up as President. But the alliance between...