TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/80/80capsov.1

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                Ç                                                            January 7, 1980

AFGHANISTAN

Steel Fist in Kabul


A Soviet Coup overthrows Amin and sets a fearsome precedent


It was the most brutal blow from the Soviet Union's steel fist
since the Red Army's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In a
lightning series of events last week, Afghanistan's President
Hafizullah Amin was overthrown, and subsequently executed, in
a ruthless coup mounted by the Soviet Union and carried out with
the firepower of Soviet combat troops. In Amin's place, Moscow
installed Babrak Karmal, a former Deputy Prime Minister long
considered to be a Soviet protege, but not before Russian troops
were forced to fight a sporadic series of gun battles in the
streets of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.

At week's end the Carter Administration charged that Moscow was
launching an outright invasion of its neighbor, with two
mechanized Soviet divisions crossing the border and heading for
Kabul. U.S. intelligence estimates indicated that at least
20,000 troops were in Afghanistan. Said White House spokesman
Jody Powell:  "The magnitude of the Soviet invasion continues
to grow."

The Soviets obviously hoped that their brazen, perhaps
desperate, action could help their puppet regime bring a
stubborn Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan under control and
thus stabilize a dangerous flash point on their southern border.
But the coup, in fact, added a new dimension of uncertainty to
an area of the world already deeply disturbed by the crisis in
Iran. Moreover, the deployment of Soviet troops on foreign soil
in Central Asia set a fearsome precedent that cast new shadows
over international detente and Moscow-Washington relations. The
SALT II accord, already in difficulty in the U.S. Senate, seemed
even further jeopardized by the Soviet action.

Outraged reaction came swiftly from the White House. In the
strongest language he has ever directed against Moscow,
President Carter, in a televised message, said:  "Such gross
interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan is in
blatant violation of accepted international rules of behavior."
He conveyed the same harsh message to Leonid Brezhnev
personally on the rarely used White House-Kremlin hot line. At
the same time, the President got in touch directly with Western
European leaders and President Mohammed Zia Ul- Haq of Pakistan,
among others, in an attempt to obtain a collective condemnation
of Moscow. All shared his concern. As a result, Deputy
Secretary of State Warren Christopher was dispatched to London
over the weekend to discuss the situation with U.S. allies.

Other countries obviously were just as concerned about the
Soviet military intervention. Peking fumed that "Afghanistan's
independence and sovereignty have become toys in Moscow's
hands."  Iran's Revolutionary Council declared that the
intervention in a neighboring country was "a hostile action"
against "Muslims throughout the world."  Interestingly, however,
there were no attacks on Russian embassies.

The first dramatic signs of the Soviet action appeared on
Christmas morning. Moscow suddenly began a massive airlift of
combat soldiers to Afghanistan. The suspected motive at the
time:  to help the Afghan regime put down the rebellion of
conservative Muslim tribesmen. In full sight of arriving and
departing passengers, wave after wave of Soviet An-12 and An-22
transports landed at Kabul's international airport and unloaded
not only combat troops but equipment ranging from field kitchens
to armored vehicles.

By Thursday the real motive of the intervention was clear:
Radio Kabul suddenly announced that President Amin, a tough,
repressive Communist who had seized power only last September
from former President Noor Mohammed Taraki, had been deposed.
The new President, the broadcast said, was former Deputy Prime
Minister Karmal. A later announcement specified that Amin had
been convicted of "crimes against the people" and executed,
along with members of his family. Radio Kabul failed to mention
that in the upheaval, Soviet military units had entered combat
for the first time since their border clashes against China in
1969.

The fighting began at 7:30 in the evening, according to the
U.S. State Department, with Soviet troops and weapons deployed
in key locations of Kabul. In a 3 1/2-hour battle for the radio
station, Soviet troops using armored personnel carriers knocked
out two Afghan tanks and took a number of prisoners. At one
point a U.S. official reported with some relish, "The Soviets
are getting shot up pretty well."  Soviet-built MiG-21 jets flew
overhead in repeated passes. By midnight the city was reported
quiet.

The next day, however, diehard supports of Amin resumed the
fighting in Kabul. THe coup, scoffed the rebel command,
represented nothing more than "a change in pawns."  The Japanese
embassy said that gunfire could still be heard along the road
leading from the Soviet embassy to the old royal palace.
Nonetheless, as soon as word reached Moscow that the coup was
successful, the Soviets quickly broadcast Karmal's denunciation
of the Amin dictatorship as an agent of "American imperialism."

The move against Afghanistan was the first time since World War
II that Moscow had used significant numbers of its own armed
forces in a state outside the Warsaw Pact. It seemed an ominous
extension into Asia of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserts that
Moscow has the right to assist any social state in trouble.
Moscow, of course, claimed that it intervened only a the request
of the Karmal government under the terms of a 20-year friendship
treaty signed in December 1978. The RUssians made no attempt
to disguise the fact that the airlift began two days before the
coup that brought Karmal to power, thus making a mockery of
their rationale.

The military buildup had, in fact, begun several weeks before
the airlift. The best analysis of U.S. intelligence at that
time was that the Soviets were matching Washington's naval and
air buildup in the Middle East. It later seemed, however, that
apart from any U.S. buildup, Moscow acted primarily to meet a
situation in Afghanistan it could no longer effectively control.
The Russians apparently decided to make their show of force in
the shadow of the Iranian problem, much as they had intervened
in Hungary in 1956, while the West was preoccupied with the Suez
crisis. Moscow made a Realpolitik decision:  Amin would have
to go.

The Soviet choice to replace him was a Marxist intellectual
little known in the West (see below). Karmal thus became the
third Afghan leader to seize control of the government in the
20 months since the Communists first came to power in April
1978. As the new strongman, following the April coup, Taraki
at first denied there had been a Communist takeover. But in the
months that followed, internal struggles dangerously narrowed
the government's base. As he attempted to keep the revolution
on course, Taraki turned increasingly to Russian advisers to
fill a shortage of trained manpower. The number of Soviets soon
grew to more than 3,000.

Ominously for Taraki and the Soviets, however, there were
already rumblings of revolt among conservative Muslim tribesmen
unhappy at the prospect of radical social and economic reforms.
AS the Marxists in Kabul pressed their case, the opposition
gradually developed into a full-scale religious insurgency. In
March, thousands of Afghans in Herat (pop. 150,000), a
provincial capital 400 miles west of Kabul, rose in a revolt
that lasted for several days. An estimated 20,000 civilians
lost their lives; so did at least 20 Soviet advisers and their
families in a series of brutal rebel attacks.

By last fall, some 22 of the country's 28 provinces were said
to be in rebel hands. Amin, by now Taraki's Prime Minister,
cracked down with repressive measures, including the execution
of some 2,000 political detainees and the imprisonment of some
30,000 others. By the time Amin toppled Taraki and took over
completely, the Afghan armed forces themselves were demoralized
by purges and defections to the rebels, and clearly were hard
put to contain the rebellion.

After General Ivan Pavlovsky, head of Soviet ground forces,
toured Afghanistan last fall and assessed the Afghan
government's predicament as close to hopeless, the Soviets
became convinced of the need for drastic steps. According to
former Ambassador to Kabul Robert Neumann, the Russians had
three choices:  1) "To let Afghanistan go, in which case the
government would have fallen within a week."  That would have
cost the Russians credibility in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
2) A "massive Russian military infusion," in which the Soviets
would try to squelch the rebellion. Commented Neumann:  "This
option opens up the real possibility of a Soviet View Nam."  3)
A coup to install a puppet at the head of the government in the
hope that he could bring things under control.

According to Neumann, the Soviets decided on a combination of
the last two options. In the event of a failure by Karmal,
Neumann has no doubt that the Soviets will be prepared to deploy
their own forces. Indeed, the large Soviet buildup of perhaps
50,000 troops on Afghanistan's borders was a clear indication
of the Soviets' own uncertainty about Karmal's chances.

U.S. officials are concerned that the Soviet move will further
destabilize the region. The most direct impact will probably
fall on Pakistan, whose territory has provided refuge for an
estimated 350,000 Afghan rebels. There was the prospect that
in wake of the coup, another 150,000 might cross the border.
State Department analysts fear that the Soviets might even go
so far as to make military forays into pakistan. Says one
expert:  "The border between these two countries has never
really been agreed upon, and the potential for increased
conflict has dramatically heightened since the Soviet actions."
U.S. officials hesitate to speculate about the effect on Iran,
though there is some hope that the Soviet's intervention will
lessen the Ayatullah Khomeini's strident anti- Americanism.
Saudi Arabia and Iraq, meanwhile, both see the coup as an
indirect threat to themselves.

Operating from within their own borders and with no domestic
public opinion to consider, the Soviets seem almost impervious
to criticism. Moscow, after all, knows there is not much the
U.S. can actually do. Says Richard Helms, a former Ambassador
to Iran and former director of the CIA:  "It's no gamble at all.
What are we going to do about it?  We have no forces there, no
bases. What can we do for the time being but remonstrate?"

Moscow's New Stand-in

To Afghanistan's new Soviet-sponsored strongman, Barak Karmal,
toppling governments is old hat. In 1973, as parliamentary
leader of the pro-Moscow Parcham wing of the Communist People's
Democratic Party, he helped to plot the overthrow of King
Mohammed Zahir Shah by Mohammed Daoud. Five years later, he
blithely joined in the subsequent plot that ousted Daoud's
regime. For that purpose, Karmal had aligned himself with his
bitter political rival, Noor Mohammed Taraki, leader of the more
radical Khalq faction of the P.D.P., who set himself up as
President. But the alliance between the two Marxists soon broke
down. After only two months as Deputy Prime Minister under
Taraki, Karmal wa sent into virtual exile as Ambassador to
Czechoslovakia. When Taraki stripped him of his citizenship and
tried to call him home, Karmal refused to obey the summons. Had
he returned to Kabul, Karmal almost certainly would have been
executed.

Instead, Karamal, a 50-year-old bachelor, went into hiding with
other members of the Parcham group. Among them was his longtime
mistress, Anahita Ratebzad, who had been packed off as
Ambassador to Yugoslavia. When Taraki was overthrown--and
killed-by Hafizullah Amin last September, Karmal was still
underground. DIplomats speculated that the Soviets stashed him
away in an Eastern European capital as a sort of
strongman-in-reserve. As one expert puts it, "The Russians were
keeping [him] on ice until [he was] needed."

The well-born son of a general, Karmal has been a Marxist ever
since his days as a student at Kabul University; his graduation
was delayed by a stint in prison for left-wing agitation. His
Parcham Party always leaned more dependably toward Moscow than
Taraki's more broadly based faction, which sometimes espoused
a Maoist-flavored brand of Marxism. Says former U.S. Ambassador
to Afghanistan Robert Neumann:  "Karmal is the original
COmmunist, a dyed-in-the-wool article."

His record suggests that Karamal will continue to be Moscow's
man, a custom-tailored partisan, as it were. But no matter how
slavishly he follows the policies of his Soviet mentors, Karmal
does not appear to have the agility necessary to reconcile the
tribal, religious and ideological disputes that divide his
volatile country. Concludes Neumann:  "He is not a very
flexible fellow."