Rift in the Khalq Leadership

Amin’s relations with Taraki and the Soviet Union became strained simultaneously; it is thus necessary to trace them a little more closely. The strain in relations appeared during the Herat uprising in March 1979, in which about twenty-five thousand people were killed.^[7] The uprising was so serious that “the Soviets stepped in to support their puppet Kabul regime. Squadrons of ground-attack bombers,…based at Doshanbe in Russian Tajikistan,…drop[ped] their payloads on Herat.”^[8] But Taraki wanted full Soviet involvement. To suppress the uprising and “save the revolution,” Taraki told the Soviet premier Alexi Kosygin, “We need practical and technical help in both men and weapons.” To get that aid, Taraki importuned “like a merchant in the Kabul market, using flattery and cajolery.” During a secret trip, he assured his host, “We will never be as close to anyone else as we are to you. We are the pupils of Lenin.” But Premier Kosygin could not be moved, arguing, “If our troops were sent in, the situation in your country would not improve. On the contrary, it would get worse.” Kosygin, however, promised him additional military experts as well as grain and credit.^[9] The recently disclosed Soviet archives on Afghanistan have no reference to Amin on this point. Perhaps he did not know of Taraki’s request, but one reported incident suggests that he was against it.

After the Herat uprising, the difference between Amin and Taraki became evident; nevertheless, because of his role in suppressing it, Amin was promoted to the position of first minister (Lomray Wazir), not prime minister, as is generally understood. Also, from then on Soviet advisers who favored Taraki worked to enlarge the differences. They preferred Taraki because he wanted a closer relationship with the Soviet Union, particularly in foreign affairs. “Whereas Amin did not favor the idea of Afghanistan being pushed into the Soviet bloc, Taraki did. Similarly, with regard to the pursuit of the policy of non-alignment, Taraki preferred that Afghanistan should be non-aligned on the model of Cuba with the active support of the Soviet bloc, whereas Amin intended to keep away from the Soviet bloc, and forge friendly relations with all countries.”^[10]

Amin’s domestic policy also created friction. After he got the new post as well as the post of minister of defense, Amin tried to monopolize power, thereby alienating not only Taraki but also his close friends, Asadullah Sarwari, Aslam Watanjar, Sayyed Mohammad Gulabzoy, and Sher Jan Mizdooryar, known as the “Gang of Four.” Mizdooryar, although a member of the Gang of Four, was insignificant. Each of the first three, however, having played a role in the communist coup and being more or less of the same age as Amin, felt a sense of rivalry with him. They rallied behind Taraki, who, as a cofounder of the party and as an elder, was like a father to them.

In this context the role played by the Soviet advisers proved crucial. Raja Anwar states that “Sarwari’s defection from the Khalq chessboard was not the handiwork of Soviet advisers.”^[11] This is not true. First, Sarwari had not defected from “the Khalq chessboard.” Sarwari defected from Amin’s side to Taraki’s, but he remained within the same chessboard. Second, AGSA’s chief adviser, Colonel Bogdanov, who was at the same time the KGB chief in Kabul, influenced Sarwari to the extent that the latter would use abusive language against Amin. With Taraki’s support and the encouragement by his own advisers, Sarwari worked as if he were the head of an autonomous body. The Soviet advisers in AGSA worked on instructions only from Taraki. The great amount of human blood that AGSA shed was the work more of Sarwari than of anyone else. Of all the Khalqi leaders, Sarwari was the most radical and the most adventurous. His superior, Amin, could not restrain him; indeed, he and his associates feared AGSA.

Despite these developments, Amin still needed Taraki. Amin was anxious to keep him pleased, but at the same time he tried to strip him of power. In public, however, he praised the old man, who had developed a cult of personality. To alienate Taraki from the triumvirate, Amin concentrated on building up Taraki’s public image by calling him the “genius of the East,” “the powerful master,” and “the body and soul of the party,” while referring to himself as “his loyal disciple” (shagird-e-wafadar). Amin raised Taraki to the status of Romania’s Ceausescu, whose admirers praised him as the “Genius of the Carpathians” and the “Danube of Thought.” It was depressing to see the grinning image of yesterday’s Afghan plebeian projected from the huge framed photos fixed on the front of numerous public buildings in the city of Kabul. Even in the early stage of their rule, I noted the name of Taraki with lofty titles thirty times in three pages of the government-controlled newspaper, Anis.

Taraki, however, could not be pleased, especially when Amin engaged in nepotism. Taraki was unwilling to serve as a figurehead under “his loyal disciple,” whom he had, before their rise to power, saved from his opponents. The climax came in July 1979: in a politburo meeting, Amin pronounced Taraki responsible for the government’s failures. In August, Taraki accused Amin of nepotism.^[12] It seemed impossible for them to iron out their differences along the democratic principles on which their Marxist-Leninist party was based, even though recently they had reaffirmed their faith in the principle of “collective leadership and collective decision.” So far, however, their struggle was confined within their own circle.