Word: karmal
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...Afghan official complained, "no decision at any level of government is taken without them." Said another senior Afghan official: "The Russians are taking over everything-we are being virtually annexed." According to some experts on Afghanistan, that may be a functional necessity: the Cabinet of President Babrak Karmal is as riddled with feuds as the rebel groups...
...service to Islam became a main theme in Karmal's diplomatic overtures toward Iran. He fired off a telegram to "Gracious Brother, Most Reverend Imam," the Ayatullah Khomeini. Karmal's message almost reverently appealed for an Afghan-Iranian revolutionary entente based on "Islamic brotherhood" and a shared hostility toward "American world imperialism-the No. 1 irreconcilable enemy of all the people of the world." Karmal promised that his government "will never allow anybody to use our soil as a base against Islamic revolution in Iran"-adding that "we expect our Iranian brethren to resume a reciprocal stance...
...cuts through lands occupied by the rebellious Baluch peoples, who live astride Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Baluchis, who have long yearned for autonomy, might welcome a Soviet-inspired Afghan invading force that would promise to honor the Baluchis' "legitimate aspirations" -as Afghanistan's new President, Babrak Karmal, has vowed to do. A friendly regime in a breakaway Baluchistan would give the Soviets an outlet to the Arabian Sea at the port of Gwadar and, from there, access to the Persian Gulf. "If I were a Russian," General Fazal told Carrington, "I would take the soft underbelly...
AFGHANISTAN. To many U.S. journalists, it seemed less surprising to be expelled from Soviet-occupied Afghanistan than to have been admitted at all. Eight days after Babrak Karmal was installed as the country's new President, the borders were reopened, and some 300 foreign journalists, half of them Western, were al lowed in. Almost immediately there was tension. Photographers snapping pictures of Soviet troops found themselves detained, their film confiscated. One ABC news team tried to avoid interference by entering Afghanistan from Pakistan to film a guerrilla maneuver, only to find that the skirmishes occurred by night...
After a Jan. 10 news conference in which President Karmal castigated the Western press, the Afghan welcome wore thinner. Two Italian TV newsmen were treated to a burst of semiautomatic rifle fire at their feet when they tried to film Soviet soldiers near the Salang Pass. A Kabul-based stringer for Germany's Der Spiegel had her car tires shot flat. TIME'S David DeVoss, traveling with Dutch Photographer Hubert Van Es, was stopped by Soviets northwest of Kabul when Van Es tried to photograph some newly widened artillery pits. The pair was held in a snow-filled...