Afghanistan Essay, Research Paper

The King was overthrown in 1973. Muhammad Daoud took the power as President of the Afghanistan. He established an autocratic, one-party state, later had purged his government of leftists, and in the last years of his rule had sought financial support form Iran, ruled by the Shah, and Saudi Arabia in order to make Afghanistan less dependent on Soviet economic aid.

On April 28, 1978, the regime of President Mohammad Daoud ended violently. Military units raided the Presidential Palace, in Kabul. Killed the president and most members of his family.

All happened after the assassination of Mir Akbar Khyber, April 17, a Marxist ideologue a member of the Parcham faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. (PDPA) was a Marxist-oriented party. On April 19 the party organized a mass rally and march in the honor of Khyber’s funeral. Marched through the streets of Kabul and shouted anti-American slogans in front of the United States embassy. President Daoud ordered the arrest of seven top PDPA leaders. The PDPA Central committee member Hafizullah Amin was placed under house arrest shortly. He planed a coup d’etat. PDPA leaders were liberated from a government prison. The plan for the April coup, according to Amin in a press conference that it had occurred two years ahead of the PDPA’s schedule for revolution.

Taraki, Amin, and Karmal were the central player in the leftists’ revolution of the Afghanistan. Taraki was born in 1917, was the oldest. His father was a livestock dealer and small-time smuggler. His family’s described by Dupree in Nyrop (pg. 218) as semi nomadic, traveling frequently between Ghazini Province and British India. He attended a provincial elementary school and a middle school in Qandahar and was. He began to write short stories. In 1940s his stories refluxing the living condition of Afghan peasants, which approved by Soviet critics as Scientific Socialist themes.

Amin was born in 1921, in Paghman, a town near Kabul. His father was a minor civil servant. After study mathematic and physics at Kabul University, he became a high school teacher and later promoted to the principal position. In 1957, through a scholarship he went to study at Teacher’s College at Columbia University, in New York. He returned for further studies and that time he joined with students who were interested in Marxism.

*Karmal, was born in 1929, a member of the social and political elite. He was a son of General Muhammad Hussain Khan, who served as governor of Pakita Province and had close ties with the royal family. As a law school student of Kabul University he gained a reputation as an orator and activist in the university’s student union in 1951. For his part in the Wikh-i-Almayan movement, he was imprisoned for a time, and in prison he met Mir Akbar Khyber, whose Marxist views had a deep influence on him. (Nyrop Pg. 221, 22)

The PDPA leaders established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, with Nur Muhammad Taraki as president of the Revolutionary Council and prime minister. He had no strong links with tribes or ethnic groups in any part of the country. He and his Marxist party proved greatly insensitive in dealing with rural communities and ignored their deeply rooted traditions and their strong relligious orientation. A major revolt in Nuristan province a few months later was the first step in an insurgency that gradually spread across the entire country. Mas oppression was instituted to control it. Differences between the PDPA’s two factions increased, and in Parchami leaders Karmal and Muhamad Najibulla were dismissed and sent to Eastern Europe.

Amin, in early 1979 took over Taraki’s duties as prime, killed Taraki and took the complete power. The resort to mass imprisonment and killing of opponents continued. Fundamentalist Moslem leaders, fired because of a religious revolution in Iran, reacted against the atheistic policies of the Khalqi leaders. The mass imprisonments and indiscriminate executions, outraged the population. Many soldiers took their arms join the resistance (Clifford pg. 100)

Finally, in December 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan and overthrew Amin, who was later executed. Karmal was installed as the new leader. He faced a divided party, and Mujahideen were split into many different groups. They appreciated the DU.S. Stinger ground-to-air missiles. In 1985, seven of the major Sunni groups based in the Peshawar region formed an alliance called the Ittehad-i-Islami-Afghan Mujahideen. In 1987 an eight group alliance brought together Shiite Afghan groups based in Iran as the Islamic Coalition Council of Afghanistan.

Karmal government to control the attack of the Mujahideen, tried to close of the Pakistan border. They bombed villages, attacked Mujahideen. Raiding and bombing became common. Foster (pg. 62) mentions, “the Soviets claimed that they had 1000,000 troops in Afghanistan, but the West estimated the number to be closer to 115,000. They fought a high-tech war with only limited support by the Afghan army. On the other hand, mujahideen, who numbered about 100,000, fought a primitive war with emphasis on guerrilla tactics. Yet mujahideen were the first group of fighters to drive out a Russian army since Peter the Great, tsar of Russia, began the southward expansion of His empire three hundred years earlier.”

Karmal oust and Najibbullah came in power until April 1992 Najibulla forced out and mujahideen moved into Kabul. It can only be hoped that Afghanistan can regain some stability so that the country can recover from the fighting that has gone on for so many years. An entire generation of Afghans spend their lives in war.

The PDPA was a Marxist-oriented party which two years after its founding in January 1965 split into tow factions Khalq (Masses) and Parcham (Banner). Khalq’s followers were primarily Pashtuns recruited from the non-elite class led by Taraki, and the more moderate Parcham headed by Karmal. Khalq’s followers were primarily Pashtuns recruited form the non-elite classes. Parcham’s adherents included other ethnic groups and tended to come from the Westernized upper classes. The two factions agreed in 1977 to reunite as a single PDPA. As soon the party became in power, Khalqis, Khalqis, having a strong following in the military, initiated a purge of Parchamis. Many Parchamis after the plot in the summer of 1978, were thrown in prison and tortured. Its leaders, such as Karmal, were sent abroad as ambassadors, and remained in exile.

Amin murdered Taraki

ThePDPA adhered to the Soviet model of revolution, and its leaders in both Khalq and Parcham had close ties with Moscow’s police. The Soviets were probably involved in the September 1979 attempt to remove Amin. Karmel returned.

Millions had fled to Pakistan or Iran to escape what they perceived as an intolerable situation under Soviet rule.

Resistance forces in the mid-1980s reflected the divisions and diversity of Afghan society. Most mujahideen unified but also divided by their allegiance to Islamic values and hostility to the atheistic Soviet invader.

The short story took place in a Pushton small community where the Pashun code- Pashtunwali was strongly guarded. Revenge. To one degree or another every mujahid has a grudge; loss of kin, loss of property, personal injury, eviction form the land of the lineage and its ancestors, torture, and related grievances not only justify acts of revenge but also make them a matter of family and personal honor.