Word: karmal
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...puppet government of Babrak Karmal, which the U.S.S.R. had forcibly installed at the time of the Christmas invasion, appeared to be on the verge of collapse. It was not only shown up as ineffective, it was practically invisible as well. A proclamation that imposed martial law on Kabul effectively gave ultimate civil as well as military authority to Moscow's army commander. With this tacit admission by the Soviets that they were the only real authority in the country, some diplomatic observers predicted they might also soon do away altogether with the fiction of an indigenous government and replace...
...possible explanation for the Karmal government's ineffectiveness was the fact that the Cabinet was riddled with dissension and palace intrigue. Despite official Afghan denials, for instance, there were persistent reports that Karmal's Vice President, Sultan Ali Kishtmand, had perhaps died in Moscow, where he was supposedly flown for medical treatment following a Shootout among members of the Revolutionary Council. Another rumor, that Karmal's own younger brother and adviser Mahmoud Baryalai, had also died of bullet wounds, was squelched only after he popped up on Soviet television with assurances that "I am alive and well...
...first time, Moscow publicly acknowledged that all was not well. Pravda admitted on its front page that Kabul was beset by "unrest" and "insurgency." In the frankest admission of all, the official news agency TASS indicated that the Karmal government was in disfavor with a large part of the population. Another surprising admission was attributed by the Italian magazine Panorama to a Soviet general identified as Mikhail Kirian. He publicly conceded that "in the Afghan army, there have been deser tions," and that "the Afghans will have to work hard to put the army in order...
...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...
...first time that Afghan civilians had joined the armed rebels in standing up to the Soviets. From Moscow's viewpoint, it was thus an ominous warning that the resistance could develop into a general uprising throughout the country. Moreover, the civilian protests accompanied other intelligence reports that Karmal's dissension-racked puppet regime was on the verge of collapse. Overall, the Soviets appeared to be up against a dismal strategic reality: to suppress both the insurgency and civil disobedience, they might have to remain in the country far longer than they had perhaps intended, and they could...