BY NORM DIXON
When the left-wing Peoples Democratic Party seized power in Afghanistan in April 1978, its membership was probably under 10,000 and mostly concentrated in the major cities. To mobilise broader support for the revolution and to help initiate and carry through its radical reforms, the PDPA moved to organise the masses, particularly in the cities.
Party cells and committees were launched throughout the country, even in some of the remotest areas. Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) were established across Afghanistan. They were composed largely of workers and peasants. By late 1979, the government was claiming that 70,000 persons had joined them. The defence committees not only had a military function but helped mobilise support for the land reform program and other social measures.
The PDPA and its supporters had been forced to suddenly take power in an act of self-defence, to avoid a massacre like those that followed the crushing of left-wing movements in the US-backed coups in Indonesia in 1965 and in Chile in 1973.
However, the party's Stalinist politics meant that its cadre had not been prepared ideologically or organisationally to lead a popular revolution. Instead, it had envisioned that it would be part of a coalition government with a section of the Afghan bourgeoisie committed to the peaceful modernisation of Afghan society and a relatively drawn-out development of Afghan capitalism.
Furthermore, in a country where 80% of the people were peasants or nomads, illiterate and blinded by tribal and religious loyalties, the PDPA had virtually no implantation in the countryside.
These factors led the PDPA government to rely on implementing the revolution's measures in an administrative and authoritarian manner, and at a pace faster than many people in the landlord- and mullah-dominated countryside were able to accept.
The PDPA's factionalism also weakened and divided the revolution's supporters. Just three months after the April insurrection, its Khalq (People) faction purged the government of ministers belonging to the party's Parcham (Flag) faction, forcing Parcham leaders into exile by posting them as ambassadors overseas.
In August, the government accused Parcham members of conspiring to overthrow the government in league with "a foreign power". Hundreds of Parcham members were dismissed from their jobs or detained. Babrak Karmal and other Parcham leaders overseas wisely chose not to heed an order to return to Kabul.
The PDPA was convulsed by further factional bloodletting in 1979, this time within the dominant Khalq faction. In March, Hafizullah Amin took over from Nur Mohammad Taraki as prime minister (Taraki retained the presidency) and in July Amin also became defence minister.
On September 14, 1979, Taraki attempted to violently put an end to what he believed was Amin's creeping coup. Apparently, Taraki invited Amin to the presidential palace with the intention of ambushing him. However, the operation backfired and Taraki was killed in the subsequent shootout. Radio Afghanistan announced that Taraki had been struck down by a "sudden illness". Amin named himself president.
Amin launched new waves of purges in the government and the PDPA. The few remaining Parcham figures in the PDPA leadership were expelled. The Amin regime relied more and more on naked force to retain power.
Domestic counter-revolution
Afghanistan's big landlords and merchants rapidly moved to oppose the reforms unleashed by the 1978 "Saur (April) revolution". Land reform, nationalisation of private businesses and democratic rights for women and ethnic minorities directly undermined their economic, political and social interests. The propertied classes feared that the revolution would continue to deepen, threatening their survival.
A report in the November 8, 1978 Los Angeles Times noted that there was "panic in the old bourgeois circles in Kabul ... Merchants are moving their stock out of the country, fearing the government will step into commerce".
Many began to organise the counter-revolution. For example, Sayed Ahmad Gailani, the owner of the Peugeot car dealership in Kabul, fled to Pakistan where he launched the Afghanistan Islamic and Nationalist Revolutionary Council.
A number of the counter-revolutionaries had studied in Egypt, where they became adherents of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation that advocates the imposition of a strict Islamic state in every Muslim country.
The anti-PDPA contras were backed by the mullahs, who themselves were large landowners or were at the service of the rich. The mullahs and landlords had a common stake in maintaining backward social traditions, especially against women.
The counter-revolution found it convenient to dishonestly portray its hostility to the PDPA's reforms as a defence of Islam rather than a defence of the wealth and power of the propertied classes.
Even the New York Times in 1979 could not ignore that religion "is being used by some Afghans who actually object more to President Taraki's plans for land reforms and other changes to feudal society". And a BBC reporter who spent four months with the contras also noted that they were "fighting to retain their feudal system and stop the Kabul government's left-wing reforms which are considered anti-Islamic".
While attempts by the PDPA to administratively undermine the influence of religion — especially in regard to the position of women — undoubtedly gave the reactionaries ammunition, it is false to claim that the PDPA government was anti-Islam. A year and half after the PDPA had come to power, the right-wing British Economist reported: "No restrictions had been placed imposed on religious practice."
The mujaheddin counter-revolutionaries launched terrorist raids against government offices, schools (especially co-ed schools) and clinics, particularly in areas where the land reform was underway or where peasants had rallied to the government. Teachers, literacy program volunteers and government workers were murdered, often after being horribly tortured.
As William Blum wrote in his book on US foreign policy, Killing Hope, "A favourite tactic of the Afghan freedom fighters [sic] was to torture victims by cutting off their noses, ears and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another, producing a slow, very painful death."
Washington backs counter-revolution
Contrary to the common myth that US support for the counter-revolutionary mujaheddin only began with the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan in December 1979, Washington immediately moved to overthrow the new PDPA government. It suspended all new economic aid and reduced its previously pledged aid for 1978 from US$20 million to $13 million.
Later all aid was stopped and the United States used its influence in the international financial institutions to stop loans to Afghanistan.
A propaganda campaign to portray the April 1978 revolution as a "Soviet-backed coup" was launched in the Western capitalist press. However, there is no evidence that the Soviet Union knew of, let alone ordered, preparations for the PDPA-led uprising. Cyrus Vance, President Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, admitted in his 1983 memoirs that, "We have no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup".
The US imperialists were alarmed that the Afghan revolution might deepen and offer an example to oppressed peoples elsewhere — especially in the strategic oil-rich Middle East. Claims of Soviet "expansionism" were designed to convince the American people of the legitimacy of US support for the Afghan counter-revolutionaries.
In late June 1979, more than 270 top generals, admirals, diplomats, officials and others hastily gathered at the NATO Atlantic Command in Annapolis, Maryland. They concluded that imperialist interests in the region were seriously threatened by the Afghan revolution and that it must be strangled.
In his 1996 autobiography, From the Shadows, former CIA director Robert Gates revealed that Washington agreed to channel US$500 million to the mujaheddin at least six months before the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. US President Jimmy Carter on July 3, 1979, signed the "finding" that authorised the covert program.
Carter's National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski confirmed in an interview published in the January 15-21, 1998, edition of the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur that Washington had lied about its support to the Afghan counter-revolution: "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujaheddin began during 1980, that is after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan... But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise."
Brzezinski also confirmed the date on which Carter signed "the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul".
According to a former Pakistan military official, interviewed by the Digital National Security Archive newsletter in 1988, the US embassy in Islamabad asked Pakistan military officials in April 1979 to recommend Afghan rebel organisations to receive US funds.
A month later, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was personally introduced to a CIA officer by Pakistani military officials. Thus began the illicit love affair between Washington and one of the most brutal and extreme fanatics in the mujaheddin's ranks. US officials also met with other right-wing Afghan factions.
Washington was already putting together what would today be called its "international coalition" to overthrow the PDPA. In May 1979, the State Department reported that China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates had been lined up to provide millions of dollars to the mujaheddin. CIA funds were flowing to the bank accounts of Afghan contras by August.
In October 1979, after a series of meetings with Pakistani dictator General Zia ul-Haq and Chinese government officials, the CIA had finalised Pakistan's role as the contras' quartermaster and main sanctuary; Soviet-designed arms would be bought from China so as to disguise the US role in providing weaponry to the mujaheddin.
Washington was well aware what the consequences of its actions would be. It knew that the defeat of the PDPA and destruction of the gains of the revolution would impact harshly of the Afghan people. In August 1979, the US embassy in Kabul reported that "the United States' larger interests ... would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan".
Washington also knew from the beginning that the mujaheddin could not form a viable alternative government to the PDPA regime and that its fall would be followed by chaos and civil war. The State Department in August 1979 reported that mujaheddin officials themselves had described any government composed of the Islamic fundamentalist factions as like "putting five different animals in the same cage".
There is also evidence that Washington sought to entice the Soviet Union into making a unsustainable military commitment. Gates recounts a meeting that took place on March 30, 1979, at which US undersecretary of defence Walter Slocumbe asked whether there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going in order to "[suck] the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire".
Brzezinski told Le Nouvel Observateur: "On that very day [that Carter approved covert aid to the mujaheddin], I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention... We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would... That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: Now we have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."
Why Soviet troops entered Afghanistan
Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in December 1979. Washington and the capitalist press have long claimed that this decision was an example of "Soviet expansionism". Nothing can be further from the truth. It was an act of self-defence in response to US imperialism's provocations.
Declassified transcripts of discussions between Soviet and Afghan leaders reveal that Moscow vigorously resisted the PDPA's requests for Soviet troops. Moscow only relented when it became clear that it was the last resort to prevent a hostile regime allied to US imperialism being installed in Kabul.
It is now clear that had Washington ceased its attempts to overthrow the legitimate, secular government of Afghanistan, Soviet troops would never have entered Afghanistan.
Long before the PDPA overthrew the pro-imperialist regime of Mohammad Daud on April 27, 1978, the Soviet Union had been Afghanistan's main trading partner and biggest donor. The Afghan armed forces were armed and supplied with Soviet equipment; many officers were trained in the Soviet Union.
Moscow's ties were based on strategic rather than ideological grounds. The two countries shared a 1600-kilometre border and a number of ethnic groups, such as the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkomans, lived on the Afghan-Soviet border.
For decades, the USSR was content for Afghanistan to act as a military "buffer" state between its southern border and US allies Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. Washington accepted Afghanistan's relationship with the Soviet Union.
The conservative Stalinist Soviet bureaucracy did little to encourage the development of an Afghan revolutionary movement since this would threaten its cosy diplomatic relationship with the Afghan monarchy. Had Moscow known that the PDPA was prepared to launch an insurrection, it is likely that it would have discouraged it.
However, Moscow could not ignore the April 1978 uprising once it had been successful. Within six months, 40 or so new economic aid agreements between the two countries were signed. In December 1978, a friendship treaty was signed, providing for extensive collaboration in industrial development, transport, communications, agriculture, energy, exploitation of natural resources, defence and in other fields. The PDPA's first five-year economic development plan, released in 1979, factored in the receipt of substantial Soviet assistance.
Moscow reluctant to intervene
Even as the US-backed counter-revolution became an increasingly serious threat to the PDPA government, Moscow refused to directly intervene. The Soviet leaders certainly did not want the PDPA overthrown by the mujaheddin, which would produce an openly pro-imperialist regime on the Soviet Union's southern border.
But despite the growing threat posed by the US-backed mujaheddin terrorists, throughout most of 1979 Moscow remained convinced that the PDPA government could survive, as long as the Khalq faction, which controlled the party, corrected its adventurist tendencies and broadened its support.
On March 20, 1979, Taraki rushed to Moscow soon after a bloody army rebellion in Herat, in which hundreds of Afghan officials and Soviet advisers, who were assisting the women's literacy program there, were massacred. Taraki urgently appealed for Soviet ground troops to be sent to help the Afghan army defeat the counter-revolution.
Declassified Soviet Communist Party politburo minutes reveal that Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and Prime Minister Aleksey Kosygin had already repeatedly rejected phone requests for Soviet troops, made by Taraki and his deputy Amin at the height of the Herat mutiny.
In his meeting with Taraki, Kosygin agreed to increased military supplies and additional Soviet advisers but again ruled out troops, telling the Afghan leader: "We must not allow the situation to seem as if you were not able to deal with your own problems and invited foreign troops to assist you... We believe that there are enough forces in your country to stand up to counter-revolutionary raids."
Kosygin warned that the deployment of Soviet troops "would immediately alarm the international community and would invite sharply unfavourable multi-pronged consequences. This, in effect, would be a conflict not only with the imperialist countries, but also a conflict with one's own people. Our mutual enemies are waiting for the moment when Soviet forces appear on Afghan territory. This would give them an excuse to deploy on Afghan territory military groups hostile to you ...
"The question of deploying our forces has been examined by us from every direction; we carefully studied all aspects of this action and came to the conclusion that if our troops were introduced, the situation in your country would not only not improve, but would worsen."
Kosygin offered the following advice: "We think it important that within your country you should work to widen the social support of your regime, draw people over to your side, ensure that nothing will alienate the people from the government."
This reflected Moscow's fear that the Khalq leadership's bureaucratic adventurism was playing into the hands of imperialist-backed counter-revolution.
While in Moscow, Taraki reportedly met with the exiled leader of the Parcham faction, Babrak Karmal, to discuss a reconciliation.
Amin's coup
Moscow was appalled when Amin killed Taraki and took control of the Afghan government in September 1979. This reaction had nothing to do with the Stalinist Soviet leaders' moral qualms about how Amin seized power. In fact, it is believed that Moscow had prior knowledge, and approved of, Taraki's failed attempt to physically eliminate Amin.
Amin certainly thought so. Upon becoming president he dismissed three ministers — including Colonel Watanjar, the hero of the April 1978 insurrection — who had sought refuge in the Soviet embassy. Amin demanded Moscow recall the Soviet ambassador.
Amin's foreign minister, Shah Wali, accused Moscow of interfering on Afghanistan's internal affairs.
In the aftermath of this debacle, Amin launched a new wave of purges of the government and party. The last remaining Parcham members on the central committee were sacked.
Amin also increasingly relied on military and police repression to counter opposition. He placed his brother, Assadullah Amin, in charge of a new secret police agency. The head of the trade union federation was replaced with an Amin appointee.
By November, Amin's regime had lost control of 23 of the country's 28 provinces.
The Soviet leaders not only believed that Amin's policies would fuel the counter-revolution, paving the way for the creation of an anti-Soviet, pro-imperialist Islamic state, but were now convinced that Amin, as one Soviet official put it, was preparing to "do a Sadat on us" (this was an allusion to the defection of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to become a US ally earlier in the 1970s). The head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, had earlier reported to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev that Amin was conducting "behind-the-scenes activities which may mean his political reorientation to the West".
On December 12, 1979, the Soviet leadership decide to send a large number of Soviet troops to Afghanistan. Andropov had told the Soviet leaders that exiled PDPA leaders, including Parcham Leader Babrak Karmal, "had, without changing their plans for an uprising [against Amin], appealed to us for assistance, including military assistance if needed".
On the December 24, the main body of the 50,000-strong Soviet force began to enter northern Afghanistan. Just before night fell on December 27, a force of around 1000 elite Soviet troops, who had arrived in Kabul in November for the special operation, stormed the presidential palace and gunned down Amin. Karmal returned from exile in Prague and was named president of Afghanistan.
Even though the Soviet leaders' decision to militarily intervene was aimed at protecting the Soviet Union's southern border from imperialist encroachment, its by-product was to hold off for more than a decade the victory of the reactionary mujaheddin terrorists.
However, in contrast to the enlightened political approach it urged upon the PDPA government, Moscow's brutal military tactics seemed devoid of political sensibility.
In tactics reminiscent of Washington's tactics in Vietnam, Soviet forces bombed and burned villages in areas controlled by the mujaheddin and littered the countryside with deadly landmines.
The aim was to force Afghan peasants from the rural areas into the government-controlled cities or across the Pakistan or Iranian borders.
As the mujaheddin were supplied with increasingly sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles — culminating in the CIA's decision to deliver US stingers in 1986 — Soviet bombs had to be dropped from greater heights, resulting in raids that were more and more inaccurate and caused many more civilian deaths. Understandably, vast numbers of Afghans, even those who did not support the mujaheddin, grew to hate the "communists" because of such indiscriminate repressive measures.
[This is the second in a three-part series.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, December 5, 2001.
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