Word: taraki
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Dates: during 1978-1978
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Making his first trip out of his isolated, primitive country since he seized power in a military coup seven months ago, Afghanistan's leftist President Noor Mohammed Taraki naturally headed for Moscow, which was the first foreign capital that recognized his regime. After a warm greeting from Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, Taraki, 61, happily signed a 20-year "treaty of friendship, good neighborliness and cooperation" that is sure to increase concern in the West (as well as in Peking) that Afghanistan has become a new base for Soviet adventurism, one that spells particular trouble for the country...
...Soviet tilt of the new rulers in Kabul, the Afghan capital, is already stirring some recriminations in Washington. U.S. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, an ardent hawk on the subject of Soviet expansionism, growled to a U.S. diplomat visiting from Kabul this summer: "You lost Afghanistan." Yet while Taraki has steered his country out of its traditional nonaligned path, he has leavened his pro-Moscow rhetoric with occasional mentions of a desire to maintain ties with the U.S., which continues to provide aid to Kabul. TIME New Delhi Bureau Chief Lawrence Malkin, who was in the Afghan capital last week...
While the Russians in Afghanistan try to keep a low profile, Taraki's government has boldly waved the country's new red flag, which has a yellow star (symbolizing the Khalq Party) surrounded by some wheat instead of a hammer and sickle. After it unfurled this banner in October, the regime promptly 1) withdrew recognition from South Korea in favor of the Communist North, 2) described its accession to power as a "continuation" of the Russian Revolution, and 3) gratuitously parroted Brezhnev's charge of "imperialist" interference by the U.S. in Iran. But except for the ever...
...have fled across the Pakistani border and are allied with separatist movements there. Some Western analysts have suggested that the Soviets may now want to take advantage of these movements to spearhead trouble in Pakistan and also in Iran, where some Baluchis have settled. For the moment, however, the Taraki regime's ineptitude in dealing with the tribesmen seems to have checked any such plan...
...alarmism may be self-fulfilling. Iranians and Pakistanis are convinced that Afghanistan is a dagger pointed at their hearts, and they are deeply annoyed by Washington's cautious, wait-and-see attitude toward the regime of President Noor Mohammad Taraki in Kabul. An official of the new Iranian Cabinet argues that it is "naive" of the U.S. not to recognize Afghanistan as the Russian bear's paw in the region...