Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0001/00019.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 40KB | 609 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00019}
$Pretitle{265}
$Title{Afghanistan
Chapter 4A.   Government and Politics}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald M. Seekins}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{pdpa
soviet
taraki
karmal
afghanistan
government
amin
party
kabul
april}
$Date{1986}
$Log{}
Country:     Afghanistan
Book:        Afghanistan, A Country Study
Author:      Donald M. Seekins
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1986

Chapter 4A.   Government and Politics

     Afghanistan's government in the mid-1980s was dominated and controlled by
the Soviet Union. A facade of independence was maintained, but the regime of
President Babrak Karmal was subject to the dictates of Soviet advisers who
directed his government's ministries and Afghanistan's pervasive secret
police. The population was fully aware of Afghanistan's loss of independence
following the Soviet invasion of December 27, 1979.

     As much as 80 percent of the countryside was outside government control.
Although this reflected in part the traditional autonomy of local political
leaders, antiregime guerrillas-the mujahidiin-made it virtually impossible for
the regime to maintain a system of local government outside major urban
centers. The mujahidiin also made their presence known in Kabul, the capital,
by launching rocket attacks and assassinating high government officials.

     Even Afghans not actively involved in the resistance tended to regard the
Karmal regime with contempt. To devout Muslims, the regime's collaboration
with an atheist power, the Soviet Union, was unforgivable. Regime attempts to
enlist the support of ethnic minorities, women, youth, tribal chiefs, and
the ulama (Islamic scholars) met with very limited success. Observers
estimated that only about 3 to 5 percent of the total population actively
supported the regime.

     Karmal's difficulties in presiding over a government with virtually no
popular support were compounded by the bitter and longstanding rivalry between
the Khalq (Masses) and Parcham (Banner) factions of the ruling People's
Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). In 1967 the PDPA split into these
two groups, headed by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Karmal, respectively. The split
reflected deep ethnic, class, and ideological differences. The Soviets coaxed
a reunification of the party in 1977; but when the party came to power in
April 1978, the animosity deepened as Khalq leaders purged, imprisoned, and
even tortured their Parcham rivals. In late 1985 Soviet advisers were still
unable to prevent violent confrontations between Khalqis and Parchamis, which
often ended in fatalities.

     The Soviet Union has had a substantial interest in Afghanistan since the
reign of king Amanullah (1919-29). After World War II, Moscow was the most
generous donor of economic and military aid. United States involvement in
Afghanistan was substantially less, owing in part to Washington's support of
Pakistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan were at odds over the issue of
Pashtunistan, an Afghan-supported campaign for the creation of an independent
or autonomous state for the Pashtu-speaking nationals of Pakistan. After
military supporters of the PDPA seized power and then ceded it to the civilian
Revolutionary Council headed by Taraki in April 1978, the Soviets became
increasingly tied up in Afghan internal politics. Because the PDPA had close
ideological affinities with Moscow, it could not remain a neutral observer.
Radical measures enacted by Taraki in the summer and autumn of 1978-
particularly decrees relating to the abolition of usury, changes in marriage
customs, and land reform-created great resentment and misunderstanding among
highly conservative villagers. Insurrection began in the Nuristan region of
eastern Afghanistan and then spread to most other parts of the country.
Mujahidiin, operating from bases outside the country, launched attacks against
the government, while their ranks were swelled by desertions from the Afghan
armed forces.

     Although the Soviets increased drastically the volume of military aid,
they were dissatisfied with the PDPA's radicalism. Top Soviet advisers
attempted to pressure leaders to adopt a more moderate, united-front strategy,
but with limited success. The chief obstacle was the brutal and ambitious
Hafizullah Amin, Taraki's foreign minister and prime minister after March
1979. Taraki, with Soviet assistance, attempted to remove Amin on September
14, 1979; but Amin, turning the tables, arrested Taraki after a shootout at
the House of the People (formerly the Presidential Palace), imprisoned him,
and ordered his murder in early October. Relations between the Soviets and
Amin grew distant. As the security situation deteriorated, Moscow ordered
troops into the country. The plan, carried out on December 27, 1979, had been
formulated over a period of several months. High-ranking Soviet military
officers who had been involved in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
in August 1968 played prominent roles.

     The Soviets installed Karmal, exiled leader of the Parcham faction, as
the country's new president and PDPA secretary general. Amin had apparently
died fighting Soviet troops outside Kabul. Most observers believed that the
principal factors in Moscow's decision to invade included the need to rescue
a friendly socialist regime from certain destruction and to thwart potential
security threats to the Soviet Union itself. If a militantly Islamic regime,
like Iran's, had been established in Afghanistan, it might have had
destabilizing consequences for Soviet control of the Muslim populations of its
Central Asian republics. Other observers interpreted the invasion as part of a
comprehensive strategy to gain access to the Indian Ocean and a dominant
position in South Asia and the Middle East. In the mid-1980s negotiations for
the peaceful withdrawal of Soviet troops, sponsored by the United Nations,
were under way. Few believed, however, that Soviet occupation of the country
would be a short-lived phenomenon.

A Revolution Backfires

     The regime of President Mohammad Daoud Khan came to a violent end in the
early morning hours of April 28, 1978, when military units stormed the
Presidential Palace in the heart of Kabul. Overcoming the stubborn resistance
of the Presidential Guard, the insurgent troops killed Daoud and most members
of his family. True to Afghanistan's militant traditions, Daoud refused to
surrender and died fighting. The coup had begun a day earlier, the date
commemorated by Afghanistan's new rulers as the beginning of the Sawr (April)
Revolution. According to Louis Dupree, a seasoned observer of Afghan affairs,
the coup was an "accidental" one in which the poor organization of the rebels
was exceeded only by the ineptitude of the government ("Foul-up followed
foul-up, and the side with the fewer foul-ups won"). There was a comical
element as rebel tanks, rolling toward the Presidential Palace, were caught
in a noonday traffic jam (a half-holiday had just begun a day before Friday,
the Muslim Sabbath), and speeding taxis wove in and out of the armored column.
Passersby stood around casually, watching the action. The fighting, however,
was bitter. Dupree estimates that the siege of the Presidential Palace and
engagements at other points around the city cost 1,000 lives (other estimates
are as high as 10,000, though this is unlikely).

     The coup d'etat was touched off by leaders of the leftist People's
Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA-Jamiyat-e-demokatiqi-khalq-e-Afghanistan,in Dari) and was carried out
by the party's cadres and symphathizers in the armed forces. Daoud's
determination to establish an autocratic, one-party state had alienated
numerous people, particularly in the capital, and leftists were alarmed at the
rightward shift in his policies: the president had reneged on promises to
implement progressive reforms, had purged his government of leftists, and in
the last years of his rule had sought financial support from Iran, ruled by
the shah, and Saudi Ar