Word: kabul
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...next day, however, diehard supporters of Amin resumed the fighting in Kabul. The coup, scoffed the rebel command, represented nothing more than "a change in pawns." The Japanese embassy said that gunfire could still be heard along the road leading from the Soviet embassy to the old royal palace. Nonetheless, as soon as word reached Moscow that the coup was successful, the Soviets quickly broadcast Karmal's denunciation of the Amin dictatorship as an agent of "American imperialism...
...Marxists soon broke down. After only two months as Deputy Prime Minister under Taraki, Karmal was sent into virtual exile as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia. When Taraki stripped him of his citizenship and tried to call him home, Karmal refused to obey the summons. Had he returned to Kabul, Karmal almost certainly would have been executed...
Ominously for Taraki and the Soviets, however, there were already rumblings of revolt among conservative Muslim tribesmen unhappy at the prospect of radical social and economic reforms. As the Marxists in Kabul pressed their case, the opposition gradually developed into a full-scale religious insurgency. In March, thousands of Afghans in Herat (pop. 150,000), a provincial capital 400 miles west of Kabul, rose in a revolt that lasted for several days. An estimated 20,000 civilians lost their lives; so did at least 20 Soviet advisers and their families in a series of brutal rebel attacks...
After General Ivan Pavlovsky, head of Soviet ground forces, toured Afghanistan last fall and assessed the Afghan government's predicament as close to hopeless, the Soviets became convinced of the need for drastic steps. According to former Ambassador to Kabul Robert Neumann, the Russians had three choices: 1) "To let Afghanistan go, in which case the government would have fallen within a week." That would have cost the Russians credibility in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. 2) A "massive Russian military infusion," in which the Soviets would try to squelch the rebellion. Commented Neumann: "This option opens up the real...
...well-born son of a general, Karmal has been a Marxist ever since his days as a student at Kabul University; his graduation was delayed by a stint in prison for left-wing agitation. His Parcham Party always leaned more dependably toward Moscow than Taraki's more broadly based faction, which sometimes espoused a Maoist-flavored brand of Marxism. Says former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Neumann: "Karmal is the original Communist, a dyed-in-the-wool article...