Word: karmal
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...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...
...amount of bear hugging, however, could hide frustrations over the inability of the Soviets' 85,000 occupation troops to vanquish the rebel insurgents' continued resistance in Afghanistan. In a propagandistic way, Karmal admitted as much when he complained to his Soviet hosts that bandits and terrorists armed by the U.S. and China "intimidate and loot the population and kill party members and employees of state organizations...
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...
...more than a symbol, since there is no sign of the emergence of a Vietnamese-style liberation front among Afghanistan's disparate and so far uncoordinated rebels. But the letters have far more credibility than the government and its enormous press, radio and TV propaganda machine. Indeed, Karmal is seen as a puppet and a traitor. He is commonly referred to as a saq (dog)-an unclean animal to Muslims...
...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...