Word: daoud
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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...
...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 the smoke cleared an hour later, Amin was in control of the palace and the traitor Taron and dozens of others were dead. On Sunday the Revolutionary Council announced that Taraki had resigned on "health grounds...
Taraki's resignation followed the dismissal Friday of the remaining two military officers in Amin's cabinet. Taraki came to power in April 1978 following a coup that ousted President Mohammed Daoud...
...ambitious foreign powers against one another. Now it is more deviously threatened as the Soviet Union attempts to become the dominant political force by offering increased trade and aid to its weak southern neighbor. The opportunity arose after April's bloody coup replaced the nepotistic regime of President Mohammed Daoud with the shakily neutralist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. If Soviet influence succeeds in vaulting the towering Hindu Kush mountains, Afghanistan would provide the Russians with windows south to troubled Iran and Pakistan, and beyond. TIME New Delhi Bureau Chief Lawrence Malkin, who covered the coup, returned to Kabul and cabled...
Contributing to the anxiety of Iran and Pakistan is the recent shift leftward of their common neighbor Afghanistan. In April a leftist junta overthrew and killed President Mohammad Daoud. American policymakers are reserving judgment on the nature and course of the new regime, but in Tehran and Islamabad the judgment is in, and it is thoroughly pessimistic, if somewhat alarmist. Iranian and Pakistani officials are certain that the coup was instigated by Moscow. After more than a century as a neutral buffer state in the great game, Afghanistan, they say, is now a Soviet satellite. "We, Pakistan...