Word: karmal
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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...
Applauded sporadically by obsequious Soviet diplomats and reporters, Karmal tried to turn aside tough questions from Western correspondents with bluster and even downright lies. How many Soviet soldiers have been killed or captured since the start of Afghanistan's internal war? "Not even one Soviet soldier has been killed, captured or wounded," he answered. When a British correspondent tried to ask a question, Karmal boorishly denounced him as a representative of British imperialism. "You invaded us three times and you got a rightful and deserved answer from the people of Afghanistan," he growled at the Briton, to the approving...
...rule out the possibility if Iran were to tumble into complete chaos. In the Administration's view, however, it was considered more likely that the Soviets would pour increasing numbers of troops into Afghanistan in order to quell the rebellion as quickly as possible and set Karmal firmly in the saddle. Then, U.S. officials predict, the Kremlin would probably want to pull out as many of the troops as possible-though some tens of thousands would have to remain-and go on a propaganda offensive trumpeting the "stability" of Afghanistan. "They don't want to stay in there...
...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?...
...mysteries of the week was what had happened to newly appointed President Karmal, who failed to show up for four days after the coup. As it turned out, his first radio address was beamed to Afghanistan from a Russian station, lending credence to the notion that he remained out of the country until his Soviet mentors decided it was safe for him to come home. Finally, on Tuesday evening, he appeared with several members of his new Cabinet at a televised rally, where he called on his countrymen to "come together and support our glorious revolution...